3 Impressive WebVR Examples Worth Checking Out With Firefox’s New Support for Vive and Rift

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Image courtesy Josh Carpenter

Now that the latest release of Firefox supports WebVR on the Vive and Rift by default, you may be wondering what you can do with it. Here’s three examples worth checking out.

Save 55% on ‘Batman: Arkham VR’ Through August 22nd

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Batman: Arkham VR (2016) is both the first VR Batman game, and the first VR title from developer Rocksteady Studios’—you wouldn’t know it though, given the game’s excellent visuals and well crafted VR design. If you haven’t had a chance to become the Batman just yet, you can pick up the game at a big discount through August 22nd.

VR Puzzler ‘Light Tracer’ Coming to PSVR Next Month

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Oasis Games have announced a September release for whimsical VR puzzle-platformer Light Tracer, in a recent post on the PlayStation Blog. The game involves guiding the Princess up a giant tower from the perspective of a ‘godlike entity’, solving puzzles and defeating bosses using an interesting motion control system.

Today’s Firefox Update Brings Rift and Vive WebVR Support to Everyone

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Image courtesy Mozilla

Today is a big day for WebVR as the latest public update to Firefox adds support for the Rift and Vive, making it easy to step into VR experiences that are served directly from the web.

NASA-backed ‘Mars 2030’ Now Available – A Beautiful, Educational Trek That’s Rough Around the Edges

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The education-focused Mars 2030 launches today on SteamVR for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, soon to come to PSVR. With 40 square kilometers of explorable terrain, the experience successfully achieves its main objective: to make the user feel like they are on Mars. However, while its stunning canvas has great potential, its execution currently suffers from a lack of features, and a number of technical problems.

The Gift Economy Dynamics of ‘Anyland’ & Social VR Anecdotes

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Anyland is a social VR experience focusing on worldbuilding and avatar creation tools that allow you to create interactive experiences while in VR. They’ve also implemented an open sharing feature that makes it easy to collect objects from the world and share them with other people. Stephanie Mendoza is a VR developer and artist who has spent a lot of time creating worlds and exploring the gift economy dynamics within Anyland, and I had a chance to capture some of her stories and social experiments.

You Can Watch This Week’s ‘Dota 2’ International Championships With Friends in VR

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Beginning today through the 12th of August is one of the biggest E-sports events of the year, the 2017 International Dota 2 Championships. With a prize pool of more than $23 million, there’s a lot on the line. You can get an inside-the-game front row seat through the Dota 2 VR Hub.

Oculus’ New ‘Stereo Shading Reprojection’ Brings Big Performance Gains to Certain VR Scenes

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A finished frame rendered with SSR | Image courtesy Oculus

Oculus is calling its latest rendering tech ‘Stereo Shading Reprojection’, and says that for scenes which are heavy in pixel shading, the approach can save upwards of 20% on GPU performance. The company says the new VR rendering technique can be easily added to Unity-based projects, and that it “shouldn’t be hard to integrate with Unreal and other engines.”

Reflecting on AltspaceVR’s Technical Achievements & Social VR Lessons Learned

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amber-royAltspaceVR held its final official Good Bye gathering on Thursday, August 3rd after announcing last week that they had run out of money and their investors decided to not invest any more. News of the social VR platform’s closing rippled throughout the VR community over the past week, and some are wondering if it’s any type of bellwether about the overall health of the VR ecosystem. There have been a number of discussion threads on Oculus subreddit, Vive subreddit, and Twitter that had employees chiming in on imminent plans and the challenges of dealing with trolls and harassment in VR.

Valve Sends ‘Knuckles’ Controller Dev Kit to Revive Developer

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Image courtesy CrossVR

Valve isn’t being shy about their support for Jules “LibreVR” Blok, the developer behind Revive, a hack which allows the Vive to play games from the Oculus store. Having patched SteamVR on more than one occasion to ensure Revive’s continued compatibility, the company has now sent Blok the Knuckles controller dev kit

New Fresnel Lens From Wearality is Thinner Than a Quarter

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Nearly two years ago, Wearality created a unique Fresnel lens for VR headsets offering a claimed 150 degree field of view. The company successfully funded a VR viewer featuring the lens called Wearality Sky through Kickstarter. The company recently revealed a new and improved lens, but this time around they intend to act as a supplier rather than directly selling a viewer to consumers.

VR Design Tool ‘Gravity Sketch’ Launches in Early Access

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VR-optimised 3D creation tool Gravity Sketch is now available on Steam Early Access. Developed by a group of design engineers at the Royal College of Art, the software is ‘for everyone’, but its feature set has particular relevance to creative professionals, and could become an invaluable tool for industrial design visualisation.

‘The Lost Bear’ Side-scrolling Platformer Coming Exclusively to PSVR This Month

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Odd Bug Studio’s debut title The Lost Bear arrives exclusively on PlayStation VR this month. Described as a “2D cinematic platformer”, the player controls Walnut, a young girl who sets out to save her teddy bear from the Toy Snatcher

VR-based Treatment for Vision Disorders Shows Positive Results in Peer-reviewed Study

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Image courtesy Vivid Vision

Vivid Vision offers a virtual reality based treatment for lazy eye disorders. A new study published in the peer-reviewed BioMed Journal of Ophthalmology finds positive preliminary results which “indicate the potential for a new treatment for adulthood amblyopia.”

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