Road to VR

Social Presence & Training Social Dynamics with Virtual Humans

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Aug 12, 2016

Team training scenarios are often difficult due to the logistics involved with coordinating many different people’s schedules. One solution has been to use virtual humans as stand-ins for actual humans in team training scenarios where the conversation is mediated by ‘Wizard of Oz’ interactors who are puppeting the virtual humans. The goal is to recreate a sense of social presence so that the person being trained forgets that they are interacting with virtual humans instead of actual humans.

Elders React to the HTC Vive with Joy, Fear, and Disbelief at How Far Technology Has Come

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Aug 12, 2016

…granted, that’s not much different than how the rest of the world reacts to it in their first try of VR, but this video (above) in the ‘Elders React’ series is too good to pass up.

‘Virtual Reality Challenge’ Promises UK’s “largest VR-only Game Jam ever”

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Aug 12, 2016

Fellow virtual reality news outlet VRFocus has launched ‘Virtual Reality Challenge’ and has hopes for it to become the largest hackathon of its kind in the UK dedicated to virtual reality content.

Mindshow’s VR Movie-making Helped Me Rediscover the Joy of Play-acting

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Aug 12, 2016

Frank He rediscovers his childhood and finds a new talent for improvisational performance as he goes hands on with Mindshow, a new virtual reality application that lets you create and act in your own interactive movies.

‘Minecraft’ on Oculus Rift Launches Next Week, Touch Support Coming Later This Year

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Aug 12, 2016

Minecraft developer Mojang has confirmed that the popular sandbox game is finally coming to the Oculus Rift next week, and further that the game would get support for Oculus’ Touch VR controllers later this year.

‘Headmaster’ & Why the Physics of Stuff Flying at Your Face is so Compelling in VR

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Aug 11, 2016

When Ben Throop went to the Boston VR hackathon in June 2014, he didn’t know that Valve was going to be showing off some prototype VR hardware that had positional tracking. At this point the Oculus DK2 had not shipped yet, and so he was able to build a VR game using his soccer experience to head soccer balls into a goal. He wanted to see how it felt, and was surprised that it was actually a lot of fun. He decided to continue working on it, and last year the game, Headmaster, was first announced at E3 as a PlayStation VR launch title. Frame Interactive was back again this year at E3 showing off the game at PlayStation VR’s booth.

OSVR HDK 2 Headset Gets Detailed Teardown – Scores High in Repairability

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Aug 11, 2016

osvr-hdk-2-teardown-spawl — Photo courtesy iFixit (BY-NC-SA)

The venerable iFixit has done it again: taken a brand new, perfectly good VR headset and ripped it apart for our pleasure.

Killer Raptors and Crash Landings – ‘Robinson: The Journey’ Dev Diary Explores Crytek’s Second VR Title

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Aug 11, 2016

Robinson: The Journey is Crytek’s second VR game, coming to PSVR, following The Climb which was launched earlier this year for the Oculus Rift. A new development diary explores the game’s premise, design philosophy, and killer raptors.

‘Envelop’ Launches Open Beta of Immersive Windows Desktop Platform for Vive and Rift

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Aug 11, 2016

Envelop, the virtual reality desktop platform for Windows, has launched as a public beta for anyone with a Vive or Rift to enjoy.

‘Wake Up’ is a Surreal, Immersive Vive Puzzler with Killer Sound Design

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Aug 10, 2016

Wake Up from Austrian developers Black Cell is a new, surreal subversion of the traditional puzzle and exploration genres sporting some beautiful art direction and some arresting sound design.

‘Aerofly FS2’ Brings Ultra Realistic Flight Simulation to Rift and Vive

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Aug 10, 2016

Aerofly from developers IPACS is a flight simulator which aims to bring realistic visuals to the VR-enabled civilian flight-sim genre, and it looks stunning.

3 New VR Arcades Hit Utah, Ohio, and Washington, DC

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Aug 10, 2016

vr arcades — Photo courtesy notionVR

VR Arcades are beginning to make their spread across the US, offering users timed access to consumer VR systems and an array of games.

Research on VR Presence & Plausibility with VR Technical Achievement Award Winner Anthony Steed

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Aug 10, 2016

One of the gold standards of a VR experience is being able to achieve Presence, but Presence is an elusive concept to precisely define. Mel Slater is one of the leading researchers into Presence and says that it’s a combination of the ‘Place Illusion’ and ‘Presence Illusion’, which Richard Skarbez elaborates by saying that the Place Illusion represents the degree of immersion that you feel by being transported to another place, and the Plausibility Illusion is the degree to which you feel that that the overall scene matches your expectations for coherence.

Preview: ‘Wands’ is a Magical Steampunk Dueler for Gear VR

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Aug 10, 2016

Frank He goes hands on with Wands, a new PvP Gear VR title from NUX Studios which pitches you against your opponent in a magical duel to the death.

Valve Boss Gabe Newell: ‘For the last year I’ve spent most of my time with the VR team’

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Aug 9, 2016

At the opening ceremony of Valve’s DOTA 2 tournament, Valve head Gabe Newell explained that he’s been focusing much of his attention on the company’s VR initiatives.

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