A new video produced by IKinema showcases Orion, their new full-body animation system that uses HTC Vive tracking hardware. Their expertise in inverse kinematics results in convincing, affordable motion capture using a small number of tracking points.
Popular VR title Arizona Sunshine and two others are soon to get native support for the Virtuix Omni VR treadmill. Virtuix has also announced that the company has become a “formal hardware partner of HTC.”
For immersive technologies like AR and VR to be effective, they need to understand not only about our world, but also about us. But we don’t even understand us all that well yet; as we capture more biometric information on our quest to lose ourselves in augmented and virtual realities, we’re learning more about ourselves too.
Swiss / LA based developers apelab have announced their latest project for Gear VR. It’s called ‘Break a Leg’ and it puts you in the top hat of an “improvised magician” as he strives to entertain his audience. Here’s the game running with the soon to be released Gear VR motion controller.
With the Galaxy S8 and S8+ coming later this month, Samsung is hoping to sweeten the deal with a free Gear VR headset and Controller for US and Canadian pre-orders before April 20th. And while there are plenty of free games on the Oculus app store, Samsung is also giving away a free Oculus content pack to get you started (US purchases only).
I had the chance to give the keynote at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Conference where I provide some historical context for virtual reality tracing the evolution of communications mediums in order to contextualize my elemental theory of presence. It traces the history of the science and philosophy, and shows how VR is providing a direct experience of how much of our reality is subjectively constructed with our entire bodies. Hopefully this talk will help contextualize where we’ve been and where we’re going with VR, as well as a holistic framework to doing experiential design.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
Here’s the video of the talk:
Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
In an update rolling out to Gear VR users over the next few weeks, Oculus Home on Gear VR will see a 2x boost in pixel resolution, according to Oculus, and load times improved as much as 3x. Oculus CTO John Carmack details the techniques that have resulted in the visual improvements.
VRLO, the UK’s leading meetup for virtual reality practitioners and enthusiasts, had its seventh edition on March 20th. Hosted by Rewind, in association with Advertising Week Europe, VRLO 7 attracted 350 attendees who glimpsed the present and future of VR and AR from Epic Games, HTC, BBC Studios, and more. Road to VR’s Jon Tustain brings us interviews and coverage from the event.
It’s the joke everyone in the VR space has made at least once: ‘virtual virtual reality—how meta!’ But developer Tender Claws has taken the idea and applied it to a new Daydream experience which explores common themes of “VR, AI and our collective sci-fi hallucinations.”
The live-action Ghost in the Shell (2017) film starring Scarlett Johansson is already in theaters worldwide, but Oculus has today published the VR experience so you can get a slice of the android-kicking action direct on your Gear VR or Oculus Rift.
Founded in 1993, Immersion Corp. designs and licenses haptic technology that’s come to be used in gamepads you’re well familiar with. Now the company is developing a new haptic programming system which aims to help game developers make better haptics effects for their games, faster.
Downward Spiral: Prologue (2017) is a sci-fi adventure game that takes you into a lovingly recreated ’70s retro future of CRT monitors and space stations abound. Featuring a single-player and coop mission, and multiplayer deathmatch mode Downward Spiral: Prologue feels like the creators have torn out the first few pages of an Arthur C. Clarke novel and realized it in virtual reality.
At SVVR 2017 this week in Silicon Valley, Chinese VR developer organization VRCore brought a range of content to the show representing some of the VR work happening in the West. Among that content was Audio Beats by developer Famiku, a SteamVR game for Vive and Rift with surprising polish and compelling gameplay.
Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Oculus VR and designer of the Oculus Rift, is stepping down from his position at the company.
Blueprint Reality, developers of VR puzzle game Awaken, have launched the MixCast VR Studio on Steam. Developers can quickly add the free SDK to their Unity-based VR games, which allows users to easily set up, broadcast, or record mixed reality gameplay footage with the help of the utility.
