Appearing this week on the stage of Oculus competitor HTC at the Tokyo Game Show, Oculus founder emeritus Palmer Luckey affirmed that he’s continuing to work on projects within the VR industry.
Intel is investing in the future of immersive computing through their Virtual Reality Center for Excellence. They’re pushing the boundaries of high-end of VR gaming experiences, pursuing initiatives to help VR reach critical mass, and exploring how RealSense depth sensor cameras and WiGig wireless technologies fit into the VR ecosystem. I was able to demo an early prototype demo of an HTC Vive game rendered on a PC and transferred wirelessly to a mobile headset, and it’s part of a research project to search for additional market opportunities for how high-end PCs could drive immersive experiences.
The Fallout 4 VR hype machine is slowly ramping up to full speed, as the company today released a talk with the game’s Lead Producer Andrew Scharf about some of the finer points of retrofitting the entire game for VR headsets.
Bechtel, the global construction and engineering company, and Industrial Training International (ITI), the training and technical service company known for their work in creating VR versions of the industry’s heavy equipment, are collaborating to recreate even more crane types for VR training.
For OpenVR-compatible headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, watching streaming 360 video from from your browser is now as simple as clicking a button and putting on your headset. This is all thanks to Opera’s latest version of its developer browser, which now supports 360-degree video playback in VR headsets directly via a built-in player. The company also says they’re planning to integrate full WebVR support in the future.
At this year’s Virtual Reality Developers Conference (VRDC), HTC announced a number of changes to Viveport to celebrate the one year anniversary of the app store and its subscription service. Developers will receive a 100% revenue share between October and the end of the year, Viveport Arcade Manager enters open beta, and a new toolset called the Viveport Scene SDK has launched.
Hallelujah is a new experience by VR film studio Within that’s captured using Lytro’s latest Immerge light-field camera which captures volumetric footage that makes for a much more immersive experience than traditional 360 video. Hallelujah is a performance of Leonard Cohen’s 1984 song of the same name, and mixes the latest in VR film capture technology with superb spatial audio to form a stunning experience.
VRChat, one of the earliest social VR apps, announced that they’ve completed a $4 million Series A investment round lead by HTC’s Vive group. Joining HTC are venture capital firms Brightstone VC, GVR Fund and Rothenberg Ventures.
Intel is scrapping plans to launch the Project Alloy headset as an open reference design, citing lack of partner interest.
In a new series of articles on the official Oculus Developer Blog, the company is offering an overview of additions to the Oculus Audio SDK, specifically new techniques for near-field 3D audio and volumetric sound source rendering. These articles serve as a primer for Oculus Connect 4, taking place October 11th and 12th, which will feature presentations about their “breakthroughs in spatial audio technologies.”
XING: The Land Beyond (2017), a puzzle-adventure from White Lotus Interactive, is set to ship today—a good 4 years after they initially launched their Kickstarter and successfully stretch-goaled their way to include Oculus Rift support.
Oculus and HTC have already reduced the prices of their respective headsets, with the Oculus Rift now selling for $500 and HTC Vive for $600. While graphically-capable PCs are cheaper than ever thanks to new GPUs and software optimizations, you still need to pony up the cash for a min-spec system ($699 for an OEM-built machine). HTC hopes to address this in China with a new partnership between Dalian Television and Beijing Cyber Cloud to offer a set-top, cloud-based box—meaning you don’t need a traditional VR-ready rig to run VR games.
Apple’s newest iteration of the iOS mobile operating system is here, and with it comes the ability to turn your iOS 11 compatible device into an honest-to-goodness augmented reality viewer. Thanks to a few months of lead time with Apple’s developer tool ARKit, the App Store already has plenty of useful apps and interesting games boasting AR capabilities.
Intel is exploring an interesting approach to making VR less expensive and more accessible. The company’s so-called ‘Portal Ridge’ system streams SteamVR content to a smartphone-based headset over WiFi while using the Vive Tracker and controllers for tracking of the headset and input.
