Brass Tactics, the RTS from Defense Grid 2 (2016) studio Hidden Path Entertainment, was first teased at GDC earlier this year where they showed off their miniature tabletop world of war. As an Oculus platform exclusive, Brass Tactics is now available for pre-order on the Oculus Store with an October 19th launch date.
Facebook’s VP of Marketing, Rebecca Van Dyck, has been chosen to take over the role of CMO at Oculus.
AI and VR development firm AiSolve has acquired Clay Park VR, an LA-based strategy and advisory consultancy headed by Oculus-alum Shauna Heller. Heller takes up the position of president of AiSolve’s newly formed North American operations.
The second annual Virtual Reality Strategy Conference hosted by Greenlight Insights takes place October 24th through the 26th with new focus-areas reflecting the VR and AR industry’s lightning fast changes and growing worldwide impact across industries. The event features over 80 speakers, 400+ expected attendees, state of the art VR/AR technology demos, and innovation tours at leading Silicon Valley companies. The conference takes place in the heart of San Francisco at the Hilton Financial District Hotel.
The big Oculus Rift Summer Sale may be officially over, which saw the Rift + Touch bundle temporarily slashed from $600 to $400 for a limited time, but for some reason the US Amazon site hasn’t reverted yet to the new $500 price tag, making now the very last time you’ll be able to get the deal.
Acclaimed author Khaled Hosseini’s short story inspired by Alan Kurdi—the three-year-old Syrian refugee who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015—has been illustrated using Tilt Brush for a unique 360 degree short film. Sea Prayer is the latest of several thought-provoking VR experiences from The Guardian VR team.
One of the most emotionally-moving VR experiences that I’ve had in VR was bearing witness to Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter share his experiences at the Majdanek Concentration Camp in The Last Goodbye. Gutter not only provides a guided tour, but he is able to achieve a level emotional catharsis through the process of sharing his story that his virtual presence within the experience, amplified my own sense of emotional and social presence, which is what helped to make it such a profoundly moving VR experience. The Last Goodbye uses a unique blend of photogrammetry and billboarded stereo video that helped to transport me into a room-scale experience of multiple key locations at the Majdanek Camp as Gutter shared his memories of being there as an 11-year old child.
Education is an odd bird: we all know it could be better, while at the same time it is the best it has ever been in human history. For the last two centuries the world went through a great expansion in learning: our literacy rate skyrocketed from 12% to 88% worldwide, and Primary, Secondary and Tertiary education have all seen drastic growth (in schools and students), breaking records on almost a yearly basis.
Oculus has given the Rift & Touch their biggest discount yet: $400 to get you both the Rift headset and the Touch controllers, and a slew of bundled content. The company now confirms they’ll be ending the sale on September 4th, making it your last chance to get the headset and controller bundle before it returns to the new price of $500.
Eternity Warriors, the mobile game series, is making its way to VR soon with the aptly named Eternity Warriors VR, a first-person co-op hack-and-slash coming to Steam Early Access later this month.
Oracle, one of the world’s largest companies, announced new capabilities for their Oracle Cloud enterprise platform that’s designed to give large businesses a bird’s-eye view of their entire operation through comprehensive monitoring of digital and physical assets. Along with the new capabilities the company demonstrated how AR and VR can be leveraged for added intelligence.
