Just about the only thing we know so far about the new Daydream standalone VR headsets in the works from HTC and Lenovo is that they are… in the works. Now however we’re getting a little more clarity about the hardware: both will be built around Qualcomm’s VR headset reference design.
VR World NYC is a new VR arcade that opened on June 24th in New York City right next to the Empire State Building. They have three floors with 55 different VR experiences, and they’re using an all-you-eat buffet business model of paying $39–$49 to have unlimited access to play all of the available experiences. It’s a great opportunity for tourists and New York residents to get their first room-scale and 360 VR experiences, but it also has a bar, plenty of places to hang out, as well as a number of different multi-player social VR experiences.
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, who left the company back in March, has backed a crowdfunding campaign for Revive—a hack which allows HTC Vive owners to play games from the Oculus platform—to the tune of $2,000 per month to support its continued development. The action comes in stark contrast to the closed ecosystem approach of the Oculus organization.
With an intuitive control scheme and accessible gameplay, this simple and satisfying VR action game for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift and Touch turns out to be an excellent showcase of the fundamental benefits of using VR hardware for gaming. Drone Hero recently launched on Steam Early Access.
Having done the core R&D for what would become the Vive controllers, Valve is continuing to iterate on VR input. The company’s new ‘Knuckles’ controllers are not so much ‘held’ as they are ‘worn’, offering users a natural grab and release motion without dropping the controller. Since their debut toward the end of 2016 at the company’s Steam Dev Days event, a Knuckles development kit is now shipping to select developers and brings ergonomic improvements over earlier prototypes.
According to a report from Polygon, augmented reality company CastAR is heading for a shutdown, laying off staff from the Palo Alto headquarters and its internal AR software development studio in Salt Lake City. CastAR’s consumer hardware was due to launch this year.
Having announced ‘Vive Studios’ at the end of 2016, HTC is steadily building up its first-party VR content offering. After a number of relatively well received titles launched under the umbrella of Vive Studios, we take the latest, Front Defense VR, for a test drive.
A report from MacRumors provides compelling evidence that Apple has quietly acquired SMI, also known as SensoMotoric Instruments, a company specializing in eye-tracking technology.
The process of diagnosing a concussion is largely a subjective process of variations of attention, focus, and balance, which means that the existing self-reporting methods are unreliable and easily gamed. Using foundational research from military research, SyncThink has created a portable concussion diagnostic tool that uses a tablet and either a Gear VR or Oculus Rift DK2 fitted with an SMI eye tracker. They claim to be able to objectively detect symptoms of a concussion within 60 seconds through subtle variations of attention and an impaired ability to make predictions of a moving dot within VR. I had a chance to catch up with SyncThink CTO Dan Beeler at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in September 2016 to talk about the science and technology behind their EYE-SYNC product.
Tower defence title Ancient Amuletor from TiGames is launching for PlayStation VR tomorrow sporting multiplayer co-op and an adorable art style. Here’s a look at the launch trailer.
ViveNchill is a new bolt-on cooling system comprising two angled fans that the creators claim will banish foggy, sweaty headset issues for good.
Entering the Wasteland, sneaking up on a group of raiders and shooting them down with guns in your own two hands, tossing back a Nuka-Cola, hanging out with Dogmeat; these are some the things that get fans excited about playing Fallout 4 VR. And in case you’ve been cryogenically frozen in a nuclear bunker this past year, you should know Fallout 4 (2015) is coming to HTC Vive―that and Bethesda demoed an updated build at this year’s E3, showing off an improved UI that should address some worries about porting the flatscreen game to VR headsets.
Knuckles, Valve’s unique VR motion controller, is already in the hands of select developers who are no doubt designing ways to use the controller’s 5-finger tracking. In the video published by Zulubo Productions, we get a better look at just what Knuckles can do.
At E3 this month we learned that the intriguing multiplayer mode of Lone Echo will be spun out into its own game called Echo Arena. While both Lone Echo and Echo Arena launch on July 20th, the latter is in open beta for this weekend only, available now.
As part of the Steam Summer Sale, HTC is offering a rare $50 discount on the Vive headset, along with a $50 Steam gift card to capitalize on VR deals during the sale. The bundle also includes the recently released Star Trek: Bridge Crew, and two older VR games.
