Announced on Vertigo Games’ social media channels and via the PlayStation Blog, VR zombie shooter Arizona Sunshine has been confirmed for a June release on PlayStation VR, along with support for the new PSVR Aim controller. The zombie wave-based shooter initially launched on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in December 2016, becoming one of the fastest-selling VR games on PC.
At today’s Microsoft Build 2017 presentation, creators at Cirque du Soleil demonstrated a custom creative toolset on stage using HoloLens technology. The world-class theater production company says the tools can be used to greatly enhance and accelerate the set design process for future shows thanks to real-time local digital collaborative design. But, speaking to Microsoft’s self-described Mixed Reality “spectrum,” it was also demonstrated how a remote VR user could seamless collaborate as if they were standing on stage with the others.
Microsoft Technical Fellow and chief inventor of HoloLens, Alex Kipman, took the stage today at Microsoft Build 2017 to show off a number of upcoming mixed reality hardware and software streaming out of the company and its partners. Among the announcements—including pre-orders of Windows Holographic Headsets from Acer and HP and a new VR hand controller—was a teaser for more to come at E3 in June.
Battlezone (2016), the low-poly, high-action reboot of the classic Atari game, launched as a timed exclusive with PlayStation VR when it hit shelves in October of last year. Today owners of HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and OSVR can now strap into the cockpit of the game’s sci-fi hovertanks.
Today Microsoft has unveiled their Windows Mixed Reality motion controllers. The controllers fill in a major gap in Microsoft’s strategy to become the “most complete platform across the broadest range of mixed reality devices and experiences.”
Today Microsoft announced that developers in the US and Canada can now pre-order the Acer ($299) and HP ($329) Mixed Reality headsets from the Microsoft Store. Delivery of the headsets is scheduled for August 2017.
The HoloLens is the most impressive augmented reality headset on the market today, and their developer kit is already being deployed into industries ranging from architecture, engineering, design, sales, medicine, and education. Microsoft is taking a holistic approach with Windows Mixed Reality being baked into Windows 10, meaning that developers can create a single application that can run on the HoloLens, on one of their partner VR headsets, on a Surface tablet, or as a desktop app. At Microsoft’s Build conference today, the company is announcing a new OEM VR partner with HP as well as inside-out, six degree-of-freedom input controllers for VR headsets made by Microsoft partners like Acer.
Praised as one of the greatest games ever made, the 13 year old Half-Life 2 is a lauded piece of gaming history. But soon you’ll be able to revisit the perils of City 17 using the latest and greatest VR hardware around. A reborn mod project is bringing compatibility for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive with full motion input support, remastered visuals, a made-for-VR UI, realistic weapon interactions, and more.
In an interesting move, Google has acquired Owlchemy Labs, makers of the multi-platform hits Job Simulator (2016) and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017).
Pixvana, makers of the cloud-based 360 video creation studio SPIN, today announced that their software services—integrated at the core of Valve’s own Steam 360 Video Player—will be launching today into beta. This effectively lets SPIN users publish their VR videos directly to the Steam Store, but more importantly means VR headset owners will be able to browse and watch high-quality streaming content (up to 12K) directly in Steam using their Steam VR-supported headset.
While virtual reality surely has high performance requirements to maintain a comfortable experience, immersive AR may ultimately require a greater level of performance if we’re to achieve the theoretical ideal.
Having founded Oculus in 2012 and been an important face for the company throughout its growth from fledgling startup to $2 billion acquisition by Facebook and beyond, it was a shock to see Palmer Luckey leave the company just two months ago. Having shied away from the public eye since September 2016 after the ousting of a polarizing political position, Luckey has gone on record in an interview for the first time since leaving the company.
Omnipulse is a new haptic technology out of Cornell’s Organic Robotics Lab which uses an array of embedded pneumatic actuators to create haptic feedback which feels quite ‘organic’ compared to the more ‘mechanical’ of many other haptic technologies out there. With the ability to form the flexible Omnipulse skin into arbitrary shapes, the technology could be integrated into VR controllers, gloves, or potentially even haptic VR suits.
The Microsoft Build conference starts this week, and I expect that we’ll be learning more about the HoloLens as well as Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality operating system. Microsoft has been evangelizing about virtual reality the past couple of years now, and I had a chance to catch up with Microsoft Technical Evangelist Kat Harris at PAX West last Fall. She’s been teaching VR 101 development courses at different conferences, and we talk about what she’s been telling game designers about maintaining presence, building immersive experiences, and how to deal with some of the biggest breakers of presence including VR locomotion and the uncanny valley. We also discuss the limits of virtual reality when it comes to haptics, uncanny narrative, the future of artificial intelligence in enabling collaborative role-playing, and the power of world building & storytelling in games like Minecraft.
Penrose Studios’ latest VR film work, Arden’s Wake: The Prologue, has debuted at TriBeCa Film Festival’s Virtual Arcade. As “Prologue” implies, Arden’s Wake will be released in episodic form, though the final number of ‘episodes’ in the series, as well as whether or not Penrose might have other stories to tell in the world of Arden’s Wake, has yet to be decided, according to the project’s director and Penrose founder and CEO Eugene Chung.
