Road to VR

Lytro’s Latest VR Light-field Camera is Huge, and Hugely Improved

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Apr 11, 2017

lytro immerge — Photo by Road to VR

In the last few years, Lytro has made a major pivot away from consumer-facing digital camera products now to high-end production cameras and tools, with a major part of the company’s focus on the ‘Immerge’ light-field camera for VR. In February, Lytro announced it had raised another $60 million to continue developing the tech. I recently stopped by the company’s offices to see the latest version of the camera and the major improvements in capture quality that come with it.

‘Tornuffalo’ Shows What Full-body VR Gaming Could Look Like with Vive Trackers

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Dominic Brennan

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Apr 11, 2017

Using HTC’s Vive Trackers, Tornuffalo—named after a combination of ‘tornado’ and ‘buffalo’—has been given a ‘Full-Body Action’ mode, an early example of full body tracking in a VR gameplay scenario. This simple action game involves dodging flying debris (which occasionally includes buffalos) heading towards your body, while trying to smash crystals for points.

‘#Archery’ Takes VR’s Bow & Arrow Mechanics to the Logical Extreme

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Apr 10, 2017

Shooting a bow and arrow in VR is a satisfying game mechanic. It uses both hands in a 6-DoF interaction that couldn’t work with a traditional game controller. VR Unicorns’ new game #Archery takes this bow and arrow shooting mechanic to the logical extreme in a quirky fashion that’s similar to their game #SelfieTennis. Now available on early access, I had a chance to talk with #Archery developers Jakob Johansson and Max Nilsson at GDC where they talked about their game jamming and rapid prototyping process that’s motivated driven by novelty and getting bored easily.

AMD Acquires Valve-invested Wireless VR Company Nitero

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Apr 10, 2017

nitero — Photo courtesy Gizmodo

AMD has announced that it’s acquired Nitero, a company lately focused on creating technology to eliminate the tether from VR and AR headsets. In a rare move, Valve—co-creator of the Vive and creator of Steam—invested a “significant amount” in the company prior to the acquisition.

Viveport President on HTC’s New VR Subscription Service

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Apr 10, 2017

April 4th was the one-year anniversary of the HTC Vive, and HTC released the subscription service for Viveport for $7/month to try out five new VR applications per month. I had a chance to catch up with Viveport president Rikard Steiber at GDC to talk about the genre differences between Viveport and Steam, future support of VR headsets beyond the Vive, their support for delivering content to China, as well as some of their arcade licensing options.

Understanding Pixel Density & Retinal Resolution, and Why It’s Important for AR/VR Headsets

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Apr 10, 2017

psvr-teardown-display — PSVR 1 display and housing | Photo courtesy iFixit (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

While most of us are used to dealing with resolution figures that describe pixel count (ie: a 1920×1080 monitor), pixel density stated as pixels per degree is a much more useful figure, especially when dealing with AR and VR headsets. Achieving ‘Retinal resolution’ is the ultimate goal for headsets, where at a certain pixel density, even people with perfect vision can’t discern any additional detail. This article explores those concepts, and takes a look at how far today’s headsets are from retinal resolution.

Inexpensive GTX 1050 Ti Gets Official Thumbs-Up for Oculus Minimum Spec

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Apr 9, 2017

Following the launch of the more powerful GTX 1060, 1070, and 1080, NVIDIA revealed the latest in their low-end GeForce GPUs, the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti in October 2016. While not the first in line for a premium VR experience, the more powerful 1050 Ti now officially meets the Oculus Minimum Specification.

Apple Points to VR as One Reason Why Next Mac Pro Needs to be More Powerful

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Apr 9, 2017

At present, modern VR headsets are for the most part unsupported on Apple computers, largely because many of the company’s computers do not meet the recommended hardware specifications. Apple may rarely hint at it, but the company is thinking about VR… and so are its customers. Recently Apple has admitted that the current Mac Pro isn’t standing up to the needs of some of its customers, and VR is one reason why.

‘Forestry’s’ Procedural Mesh System Offers Unique VR Crafting & Destruction

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Dominic Brennan

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Apr 8, 2017

Procedural mesh destruction and construction underpins Decoder VR’s first title, Forestry, which just launched on Steam. Built for Vive, Rift and PSVR, the game’s fully destructible world presents a vast forest for the player to cut to pieces, which can then be used to create new objects.

Steam VR Anniversary Sale: ‘Raw Data’ & ‘Tilt Brush’ Free-play, Deep Discounts on 224 VR Titles

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Apr 7, 2017

steam-vr-aniverssary-sale — Photo courtesy Valve

With the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive shipping one year ago this month, Valve is getting in on the ‘VR Anniversary’ action with deep discounts on more than 200 VR titles and free-play access to Raw Data (2016) and Tilt Brush (2016).

Preview: Visually Dazzling VR RPG ‘The SoulKeeper VR’ Plans For a Full Story With Deep Lore

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Apr 7, 2017

VR gamers have longed heavily for deeper titles that go beyond the surface-level experiences that make up a large portion of today’s VR content. They’ve longed for games with depth and complexity; developer HELM Systems plan to offer exactly that with The SoulKeeper VR, a forthcoming action adventure VR RPG for Vive and Rift with spell casting. The developers have shared new details with Road to VR leading up to the game’s release in Early Access on SteamVR this Spring.

‘COMPOUND’ Demo Hits SteamVR, Puts You in a VR World of Lovingly Detailed Retro Graphics

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Apr 7, 2017

COMPOUND is a VR hobby project from developer ‘NotDead’ which aims to immerse you in a world of lovingly crafted pixel art, retro-styled first person shooter.

‘Robo Recall’ Update Brings Additional Improvements to 360 Degree Tracking

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Apr 7, 2017

One of the slickest titles on the Rift right now, Epic Games’ arcade shooter Robo Recall has received an update which addresses one of the bigger criticisms the title received at launch, 360 degree tracking for the Oculus Touch.

Hands-on: ‘EVE: Valkyrie’ Groundrush Update Drops Daring Dogfights to Dangerous Altitudes

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Apr 6, 2017

eve-valkyrie-groundrush-5 — Photo courtesy CCP

Fanfest is upon us again, CCP’s yearly festival in Reykjavik for all things EVE Online, but to go along with the round table discussions and announcements surrounding the massive multiplayer universe is a new update to the studio’s sci-fi VR arcade dogfighter EVE: Valkyrie (2016). Coming April 11th to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PSVR is an expansion called Groundrush that promises to deliver even more of that Star Wars-esque spaceship experience with planet-based maps (and one that looks awfully like the planet Hoth) among a host of other updates.

New ‘EVE: Valkyrie’ Update ‘Groundrush’ is Bringing Planet-based Dogfights

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Apr 6, 2017

EVE: Valkyrie (2016), the arcade dogfighter from EVE Online studio CCP Games, is about to get a big update that promises to take the game in what lead game dev Andrew Willans says via an official Sony blogpost “new and exciting directions.” Called Groundrush, the new update—launching April 11th—will include tweaks to existing systems and a brand new map, Solitude, that brings the dogfight to the surface of a snowy planet.

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