Updated: Vive Deluxe Audio Strap Sells Out at Launch, Vive Pre Requires Conversion Kit

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HTC Vive with Deluxe Audio Strap | Photo courtesy HTC

The hotly anticipated Vive Deluxe Audio Strap launched just yesterday and the initial stock has already been nabbed, apparently putting the unit out of stock in both the US and EU regions. HTC has also confirmed that the upgraded headstrap isn’t compatible with the Vive pre, along with investigating some deterioration issues with the strap’s foam padding.

Oculus Brings Rift to 90 Libraries in California for Public Access VR

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Image courtesy Oculus

Oculus has announced a pilot program to place 100 Rifts and Oculus Ready PCs in 90 libraries throughout the state of California, from the Oregon border down to Mexico. Detailed on the Oculus Blog, the new partnership with the California State Library hopes to highlight the educational potential of VR, as well as provide easy access to VR hardware within the heart of local communities.

‘EVE: Valkyrie’ Gets 33% Price Cut Across All Headsets

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EVE: Valkyrie (2016), one of the first games to launch on the Oculus Rift (and eventually found its way to PSVR and the HTC Vive), is getting a big price cut.

‘DiRT 4’ Launch Lacks VR Support but Codemasters Hasn’t Ruled It Out Just Yet

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Codemasters’ new entry into their long-running rally game series launches this week for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Unlike its predecessor DiRT Rally, DiRT 4 currently features no VR support on PC or PSVR, but a future update is possible.

Bringing Fun & Whimsey Into Your Home with ‘Woorld’, Winner of Google Play’s ‘Best AR Experience’

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robin-hunicke-2017Funomena’s Woorld won the ‘Best AR Experience’ category at the recent 2017 Google Play awards. In the game you scan your room with a Google Tango-enabled phone, and then you’re encouraged to decorate your space with extremely cute art and characters designed by Katamari’s Keita Takahashi. Part of the gameplay in Woorld is to figure out how to combine different objects together in order to unlock new objects and portions of the story in your space.

Here’s the Star Wars VR Demo Apple Showed During Their Keynote

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At yesterday’s keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2017, Apple revealed the new iMac Pro and updated 27” Retina iMac, both of which are VR-ready, along with a slew of other VR related product updates. John Knoll, chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic, presented a mixed reality Star Wars themed live demo of VR content created on Mac and played on the Vive.

Apple’s ARKit is Bringing Augmented Reality to “hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads”

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image courtesy TIME

Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is here, and today’s keynote saw a number of VR-specific announcements including Apple’s first VR-ready computers to go along with the launch of the company’s newest macOS High Sierra. While the company is finally going ‘VR-native’ for desktop, Apple is also zeroing in on augmented reality for iOS 11 with the entrance of their newly revealed app developer kit ‘ARKit’.

Apple Announces First VR-Ready Computers

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image courtesy TIME

Apple has finally made a commitment to VR, announcing on stage today at Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2017 that not only will they offer an external GPU developer kit for MacBooks capable of meeting the graphical demands of VR, but that both the new 27-inch iMac and the iMac Pro will be VR-ready out of the box.

Apple Embraces VR: Every Virtual Reality Announcement From the WWDC 2017 Keynote

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Image courtesy Apple

At Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference today, the company made a major shift in their embrace of virtual reality with several new VR announcements during the event’s opening keynote.

Intel & Major League Baseball Partnership Will Bring Free Weekly Games Streamed in VR

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Photo courtesy Intel

Live VR broadcasts from the world’s biggest sporting leagues are steadily becoming easier to find. A major new three year partnership between Intel and MLB, America’s leading baseball league, will bring weekly live baseball games streamed in VR for free to Gear VR via Intel’s ‘True VR’ tech.

Kopin Reveals “Smallest VR Headset” With 2k x 2k Per Eye Resolution @120Hz

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Display specialists Kopin in partnership with Chinese company GoerTek have announced a new reference VR headset design that it claims is the smallest of its kind integrating the firm’s ‘Lightning’ OLED micro display panels sporting a substantial 2k x 2k resolution.

3 New PSVR Games to Watch: ‘Tiny Trax’, ‘Theseus’ and ‘The Persistence’

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Image courtesy Firesprite

After a lull in PSVR quality titles, PlayStation VR owners can now look forward to a handful of genuinely promising titles appearing for the platform in over the next few months. We pick 3 of the most promising PSVR games to either recently surface or on their way imminently.

Taking After ‘Sword Art Online’, Oculus Founder Wants to Make a VR Game With Serious Consequences

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Palmer Luckey | Photo courtesy Oculus

Having recently departed Oculus after founding the company in 2012, Palmer Luckey has assured the world that he’s still very interested in virtual reality and has hinted at some of the things he’s pursuing for future projects. Taking a cue from Sword Art Online, an anime where players get trapped in a virtual reality game, Luckey says he’s interested in the idea of a virtual game with serious real life consequences.

Four Kits to Get Into VR Sim Racing on Any Budget

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Photo courtesy CXC Simulations

Virtual reality is a natural fit for the sim racing genre, bringing high visual immersion in line with detailed and realistic driving physics. But if you’re playing with a controller (or worse, a keyboard!) you’re missing out the depths of immersion that such games can provide. This article presents an introduction to sim racing hardware, with kit recommendations for any budget, including wheels, pedals, and accessories, combined with sim rigs.

MindMaze’s MASK is a Practical and Promising Approach to VR Face-tracking

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Photo by Road to VR

MindMaze, a neurotechnology startup, is developing a simple, low-cost approach to face-tracking called MASK—claimed to be compatible with any VR headset—that can map significantly more life-like expressions onto your virtual avatar.

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