In February, ZeniMax filed an injunction to request the worldwide blocking of sales of products that use Oculus software, which includes both Rift and Gear VR hardware, following a recent high-profile court case against Facebook/Oculus. According to a Bloomberg report, the hearing was held on Tuesday, where Oculus’ lawyers fought the ban, which has so far not seen a ruling.
On August 7th 2017, YouTube Space LA hosts the beginning of the VR Creator Lab, a 3-month program to assist content creators in producing “original and experimental” 360-degree videos. Along with regular mentoring and advanced education from leading VR instructors, participants will receive $30K–$40K in funding toward the VR video production projects.
IBM Watson, the artificial intelligence platform designed to understand natural language, today launched support for Star Trek: Bridge Crew (2017) across PSVR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
Valve has lifted the veil somewhat on its Knuckles controllers, first revealed as a prototype last October at the company’s annual Steam Dev Days conference. In a blog post today, Valve showed off some specs of the Knuckles dev kit alongside a button-map of the device, revealing the controllers will have multiple capacitive sensors to allow for some basic 5-finger tracking.
Korea-based TEGway is developing ThermoReal, a thermoelectric array which can generate heat and cold with impressively low latency. The flexible nature of ThermoReal could make it suitable for integration into VR controllers, gloves, and more.
Dungeon Chess, described as “the first official Dungeons & Dragons-themed Gear VR Game”, is now available on both Samsung’s mobile VR platform and the Oculus Rift. The title combines classic chess gameplay with iconic D&D creature designs and suitably atmospheric environments.
Spherical YouTube videos with over 1,000 views now include ‘360° Heatmaps’ within the Analytics section of the Creator Studio. The new feature provides a visual representation of low to high attention areas of the video, helping to inform content creators of what aspects of a 360-degree scene are engaging viewers the most.
HBO’s show Silicon Valley entertains with tales of the pervasive startup culture of California’s San Francisco Bay Area. While virtual reality has graced the show previously, season four is bringing it closer to the fore, with the show’s main characters becoming intertwined with the eccentric Keenan Feldspar, a fictional Silicon Valley wunderkind developing a pair of virtual reality goggles. A wild looking prototype version of the fictional headset seen in the eighth episode of this season turns out to be not a prop, but an actual prototype of a product that’s on the market today.
Valve has added the first wave of SteamVR Collectibles to SteamVR Home, unlockable rewards which can be used to decorate your virtual Home space or modify your avatar. This new feature further expands the rich customisation and interactivity found in the SteamVR Home Beta, the recent major advancement to the SteamVR launch interface, and is a vision of what ‘achievements’ might look like in the future.
Oculus premiered about a dozen games ahead of GDC this year, and one that stood out to me was Mage’s Tale for its distinct art style and passion in using VR to fulfill childhood fantasies of becoming a spell-casting magician. Mage’s Tale is an action RPG dungeon crawler where you search for dozens of different potion ingredients to create over 100 different spells, and then battle enemies with variations of your fire, ice, wind, and lightning spells.
My favorite narrative VR piece that I’ve seen so far this year is Rose Colored by Adam Cosco that premiered at VRLA. It’s a science fiction morality tale that is asking us to look at a potential future of immersive technology. I’m cautious to say much more without spoiling his experience, and so I’d highly recommend checking out Rose Colored either on Vimeo, Facebook, or Samsung VR before listening to this interview.
Stepping into The Mage’s Tale, a first-person dungeon crawler RPG that puts you in the enchanted boots of an apprentice mage, is a bit like jumping into your own personal ’80s sword and sorcery flick. With elemental magic at the ready, you get to experience classic dungeon crawler stuff like exploration, spell crafting, puzzles, and battle against a number of monster types—and all of it in the immersive realm of VR. While at times a little rough around the edges, The Mage’s Tale is a charming throwback that vaults you head-first into a dank and mysterious universe of inXile’s other series, The Bard’s Tale.
One of the biggest VR stories at E3 2017 was that Bethesda’s Fallout 4 (2015), Doom (2016), and Skyrim (2011) are all coming to VR this year. VR gamers have been hungry for AAA content and it while Bethesda’s announcement is a great step in that direction, HTC says you can expect more on the way.
Despite its primary competitor, Oculus, making a major price cut to the Rift & Touch earlier this year, HTC’s Vive headset still sits at a hearty $800. The company’s GM of VR, Daniel O’Brien, tells us why HTC hasn’t cut the cost of their headset in response.
