Artist Anna Zhilyaeva recently created an ‘augmented reality painting’ for her YouTube channel, ‘Anna’s dream brush’, which is dedicated to VR-based art. The work combines mixed-reality footage using VR software Tilt Brush with a real painting on canvas.
Wilson’s Heart, the latest exclusive on the Oculus Rift and Touch, has launched to much fanfare, including a funny take on the game (and VR in general) by Conan O’Brien.
UploadVR opened up their new 20,000 square foot Upload LA co-working space in April. I had a chance to catch up with co-founders Taylor Freeman and Will Mason as VRLA to get the inside scoop. Mason told me that opening up this huge co-working space in Los Angeles represents an energetic shift from the VR technology born out of Silicon Valley to focusing on content & storytelling in VR.
With a new technique, Adobe wants to turn normal monoscopic 360-degree video into a more immersive 3D experience, complete with a level of depth information that promises to give the user the ability to shift their physical vantage point in a way currently only possible with special volumetric cameras—and all with your off-the-shelf 360 camera rig.
John Legend is coming to VR. News of the multi-talented artist’s involvement in Baobab Studios’ latest, Rainbow Crow, spread last week. To recap, Rainbow Crow is an adaptation of a Lenape Native American tale, and Legend’s starring as the eponymous varicolored bird, writing and performing original songs and serving as executive producer.
Nokia’s improvements to the software for their professional OZO VR camera platform are significant enough that the company has opted to now call their VR camera the ‘OZO+’, even though the hardware remains the same. This is the result of a major firmware update combining with a custom-built image signal processing framework used in the new OZO Creator 2.0 software, launching in May.
VRgluv has blown past its $100,000 funding goal in 56 hours on their Kickstarter page, with 27 days still to go. The product is described as the “first affordable force feedback gloves” that feature “total hand tracking, full force feedback, and pressure sensitivity”.
At the NAB Show currently in progress in Las Vegas, Nokia announced a partnership with Lucasfilm to deliver an immersive behind-the-scenes VR experience of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. This forms part of the existing, multi-year technology agreement between Nokia and Disney, where the OZO camera is being used to create unique VR content.
The Tribeca Film Festival featured over 30 different VR experiences within their Storyscapes and Immersive Virtual Arcade, and I had a chance to catch up with curator Loren Hammonds about some of the highlights of the festival program with genres spanning from live-action narrative, animated narrative, documentary, interactive installations, guided tours, empathy pieces, and even a couple of immersive theater, mixed reality pieces. The overall focus and theme that connected all of the VR pieces is storytelling, both in terms of strong storytelling execution as well as in innovations around interactive storytelling.
If you don’t already know Cliff Bleszinski from his involvement with the Unreal Tournament and Gears of War franchises, you may remember him from Oculus’ 2012 Kickstarter video. Now under the banner of his own studio, Boss Key Productions, Bleszinski says he’s been seeking funding to develop a big budget VR title.
In development by indie studio KUKURU3, Panzerwehr: 1949 is a mech combat simulator made for VR which imagines an alternate WWII timeline where mechs rule the battlefield as anti-tank hunters in a war that’s dragged on to 1949.
Batman: Arkham VR (2016) is one of PlayStation VR’s top games, and an exclusive too, until now. Developer Rocksteady has launched the game for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
Comedy Living Room, the stand-up comedy show created by Matt Lottman and Frank Chad Muniz (and literally held in a living room), is hosting its first show in VR on Thursday, April 27th at 5pm PT. The collaboration between Comedy Living Room, comedy group JASH, and social VR app AltspaceVR will feature six comedians and a “house party complete with pool, BBQ and endless Frisbee”.
Wilson’s Heart (2017) is a psychological thriller that takes you on a wild first-person adventure through the mind of a hospital patient recovering from a curious surgery, one that has replaced his live-beating heart with a strange machine. Ripping it from your chest, you find it gives you a growing number of abilities to help you not only fight against your personal demons, but also some very real ones that have passed into the world thanks to experiments done by the brilliant, but clearly insane Dr. Harcourt.
