This week’s Silicon Valley VR Expo 2017 is set to bring together the core of the VR industry from Silicon Valley and beyond. As VR’s biggest industry event, this year’s event represents the most diverse group of companies from around the world ever to attend the conference.
Summer Lesson, a rather unique offering among PSVR games, launched alongside the headset in Japan back in November. Now, come April 28th, the game will see a broader release into Southeastern Asia release with English subtitles, opening the door to enjoyment by those who don’t speak the game’s native Japanese language. Those in Western regions interested in the title may be able to download it as well.
The developers at Harmonix didn’t set out to create an open-ended music creativity tool with Rock Band VR, but once they realized how compelling it was to simulate the feeling of being a rock star on stage in VR, then they completely pivoted the production of their game. They discovered that it wasn’t as gripping in VR to force users to focus on any single gameplay mechanic, and so they focused on allowing users to look around to cultivate deep feelings of immersion and stage presence.
Education is widely expected to be an area where AR and VR will see major play, but we can’t start at zero and immediately arrive at a world of immersive, transformed education. It takes stepping stones. MyLab is one such stepping stone, which, using Microsoft’s HoloLens headset’ offers up a touchless, interactive periodic table for chemistry students.
Fitting for Gorillaz, who are ‘virtual band’ consisting of four fictional characters, the group’s highly anticipated fifth studio album (and first since 2011), ‘Humanz’, saw the release of its first track (Saturnz Barz (Spirit House)) as part of an impressive 360 music video.
Obduction is an adventure game hailing from Cyan, the same studio that produced the ’90s point-and-click classics Myst (1993) and Riven (1997). The game has been hotly awaited since it netted over $1.3 million on Kickstarter back in late 2013, but despite the fact that it’s officially launching on PC today, fans hoping to strap into a VR headset and start exploring will have to wait a little bit longer. Cyan maintains the VR version of the game is ‘coming soon’, but that didn’t stop us from getting our hands on a so called ‘pre-release version’ for the Oculus Rift.
Starfighter Inc., said to be the spiritual successor to X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (1997), is one of the most interesting space combat simulation projects currently in development. Recently relaunched on Kickstarter, developers Impeller Studios’ new crowdfunding campaign has a smaller goal but much more to show.
Hackney House London is the new venue for the return of the London VR Developer Sessions in partnership with the upcoming Virtual Reality Show. The tri-monthly event presents a forum for immersive content developers to meet, share, collaborate and showcase their work.
This week’s v1.13 update to Assetto Corsa includes native OpenVR support, adding official Vive and OSVR support to the title. The popular racing simulator previously only supported the Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive owners had to use the Revive hack to launch the game in VR.
When Gear VR games are ported to the Rift, you usually end up with is more of the same; a game with nicer graphics and the added benefit of positional tracking, but more or less the same experience. However with Drop Dread (2017), Pixel Toy’s port of their critically acclaimed Gear VR on-rails arcade shooter, the addition of Oculus Touch has brought the game to whole a new level of difficulty and hands-on action.
The dream of watching live sports courtside from the comfort of your home through VR is steadily becoming a reality. Oculus and Intel have teamed up with Turner Sports and CBS to stream six March Madness games live in VR, with prices starting at just $2.
Recently launched on Steam, Warpaint is a turn-based strategy game that lets you customize your troops by painting them to your taste. The game supports both Mac and PC, and features VR support via SteamVR (Vive, Rift, and OSVR). Taking inspiration from board and tabletop games like hexagonal chess and Warhammer, Warpaint’s gameplay is easy to pick up but hard to master.
Advanced Brain Monitoring is a 17-year old neurotechnology company that has been able to extract a lot of really useful information from EEG data. They’ve developed specific EEG Metrics for drowsiness, inducing flow states, engagement, stress, emotion, and empathy as well as biomarkers for different types of cognitive impairment. They’ve also developed a brain-computer interface that can be integrated with a VR headset, which has allowed them to do a couple of VR medical applications for PTSD exposure therapy as well as some experimental VR treatments for neurodegenerative diseases like Dementia.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the big-box retail giant, is focusing on the future of VR and AR, along with other emergent technologies, with its newly unveiled tech startup incubator.
