Road to VR

Magik Gallery – Highlighting Artists Using VR as Their Canvas

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Jul 7, 2017

magick-gallery-rift — Photo courtesy Magik Gallery‏

Nick Ochoa curated some of the top artists producing work entirely in VR for the Magik Gallery show that happened in San Francisco, CA on May 20th. It was an ambitious effort to introduce VR creation tools for artists within a fine arts context in the Terra Gallery space. There were physical posters of scenes showed around 15-20 VR stations featuring an individual piece of art, as well as opportunities to try some of the VR art tools like TiltBrush. Most of the VR art pieces featured some dimension of scale or vastness that showcased some of the unique affordances of art within VR, and the intention was to inspire the art scene within San Francisco for how VR could be used as a medium for expression and storytelling. I had a chance to catch up with Magik Gallery founder Ochoa the day before the showing to talk about his efforts to get art within VR to be taken more seriously within the larger art world.

‘Fantastic Contraption’ Gets PSVR Release Date & Price – Exclusive Levels, Native 120 FPS Rendering

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Jul 6, 2017

Fantastic Contraption, one of the first (and still one of the best) VR puzzle games out there, is finally coming to PSVR on July 11th and has been specially tuned for the platform, including unique levels not seen elsewhere and graphical enhancements for PS4 Pro.

Google Announces ‘Blocks’, a VR App Like ‘Tilt Brush’ for Modeling 3D Objects

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Jul 6, 2017

Google wants to make it easier for VR/AR app developers to create 3D objects with its new app revealed today called Blocks, a program designed to let you build assets for the immersive mediums from within the VR headset itself.

You Can Buy an Oculus Rift + Touch Bundle in Germany for €450

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Jul 6, 2017

Germany-based customers looking to snap up a deal on Oculus Rift and Touch, the VR headset’s motion controller, are seeing one of the biggest price cuts thanks to German electronics retailer MediaMarkt. Normally costing €708 for both Rift and Touch, the special sale bundle has slashed prices to a total of €453.99 including VAT and shipping to anywhere in Germany.

Volkswagen Group is Building VR Apps to Help Employees Collaborate Across the Globe

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Jul 6, 2017

Teaser_DB2017AL00604_large — image courtesy Volkswagen Group

Volkswagen Group, the multi-brand automotive company, has developed VR apps to make long-distance collaboration in production and logistics an easier task. Using the HTC Vive, the company has created what it calls the Volkswagen Digital Reality Hub Group, a VR platform that will help the company’s employees collaborate across the Audi, SEAT, ŠKODA and Volkswagen brands.

State of VR with the Venture Reality Fund & Why They’re Continuing to Invest

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Jul 6, 2017

Virtual Reality Headsets have not sold as many units as some of the more optimistic analysts have predicted, and VR Fund’s Tipatat Chennavasin says that the relatively quick adoption of smartphone technologies have spoiled a lot of people within the investment community. But despite the adoption being slower than some had hoped, Chennavasin still sees a lot of optimistic indicators for the long-term investment of companies that are driving the evolution of the medium in different industry verticals.

Apple Developers Join WebVR Community Group Shaping the Future of VR on the Web

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Jul 6, 2017

Image courtesy Apple

WebVR is an in-development open standard that aims to define how browsers should communicate with VR hardware, allowing developers to create VR experiences that are served directly from the web. With Apple’s newly public interest in VR, developers from the company have join the W3C WebVR Community Group to have a say in the development of the WebVR standard.

‘Noda’ is a Mind Mapping Tool for Spatial Thinking in VR

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Jul 5, 2017

Gaming in VR is great, but there’s huge potential for the tech to be used for productivity too. One early stab at that is Noda, a mind mapping tool for the Vive and Rift.

Nokia and Xiaomi Announce a Long-term Partnership to “Explore” AR and VR

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Dominic Brennan

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Jul 5, 2017

The Finnish and Chinese companies today signed a cross-licensing patent deal ‘focused around the data center’, according to a CNBC report. This will allow Nokia and Xiaomi to develop new products, as they look to collaborate further in areas such as the Internet of Things, augmented and virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.

Hands-on: ‘Augmented Empire’ is an Engaging, Story-Driven Tactical RPG for Gear VR

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Jul 5, 2017

augmented empire (3) — image courtesy Coatsink Software

At this year’s E3, we got a chance to go hands-on with Augmented Empire, a narrative-driven tactical RPG coming exclusively to Gear VR on July 13th. Created by Coatsink, the studio known for the Esper series and helping Boneloaf develop Gang Beasts (2016), the action plays out on a tiled game board displayed as an augmented reality diorama.

New ‘Warehouse-Scale’ VR Arcade Offering Simultaneous 8-Person Multiplayer

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Jul 5, 2017

When laser tag came into arcades and theme parks around the world in the 80s and 90s, a new industry of custom, commercial-grade laser tag hardware was born—coincidentally the same point in time when VR experienced its first massive hype cycle and went back into proverbial hibernation. Now that VR is back, location-based entertainment (LBE) facilities are eyeing virtual reality as ‘the next laser tag’, a place where a group of friends could go and experience something unique together. Enter VRstudios.

‘Strange Beasts’ is a Sci-fi Short About Augmented Reality in the Vein of ‘Black Mirror’

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Jul 5, 2017

strange-beasts-ar — image captured by Road to VR

Truth is oftentimes stranger than fiction, but because wide-spread, photorealistic augmented reality is still in the realm of science fiction rather than science fact, we usually defer to the storytellers and visual effects gurus to explore the possibilities. In one such sci-fi short called Strange Beasts, augmented reality is capable of delivering a realistic Tamagotchi game superimposed onto the physical world.

This Startup Aims to Deliver a VR Headset with ‘Human Eye Level’ Resolution

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Jul 5, 2017

varjo-20-20-headset-prototype-featured — Varjo's "20/20" prototype hiding inside of an Oculus Rift, image courtesy The Verge

Varjo Technologies, a Helsinki-based startup now out of stealth, recently demonstrated what it calls the world’s first human eye-resolution headmounted display. Intended for its own swath of Varjo-branded headsets, the new display configuration promises “unprecedented resolution of VR and AR content limited only by the perception of the human eye itself.”

Samsung Mobile VR Reference Headset Revealed With Eye-tracking

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Jul 4, 2017

samsung-exynos-3-headset-2 — Photo courtesy Rappler

Not to be left out of the reference design fun (with Intel, Qualcomm, and more already offering headset blueprints for others to build upon), Samsung has revealed its VR headset reference design.

Diversity in VR: Lessons from the Oculus Launchpad Initiative

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Jul 4, 2017

In March 2016, Oculus announced their Oculus Launchpad program with the idea that in order for VR to be successful, then there needs to be a diverse range of content created from diverse set of creators who are informed by different ethnicities, cultural backgrounds, and gender identities. Oculus brought together over 100 diverse content creators for a one-day training, and awarded scholarships to 11 projects from the dozens of prototypes submitted at the end of the program. Oculus Launchpad participant Dale Henry wrote up a detailed critique of the Launchpad program that provided a lot of constructive criticism for improvements that he’d like to see.

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