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.
Arjan van Meerten, the indie 3D artist and musician behind the widely acclaimed Surge VR music video, has confirmed Apex as his next project.
Korix a visually-minimalist VR RTS headed to PlayStation VR claiming to be the first title to run natively at 120Hz on the headset.
It seems the Ghostbusters franchise isn’t done capitalizing on the video game market just yet, because the first installment of a new Ghostbusters experience is heading to PlayStationVR today. The experience (read: not game) was developed by CreateVR and Sony’s in-house VR production studio, and is entitled Ghostbusters VR – Now Hiring, Act 1: Firehouse.
Researchers from Disney use a virtual reality headset and a real ball tracked in VR to understand the perceptual factors behind the seemingly simple act of catching a thrown object. The researchers say the work sets a foundation for more complex and meaningful dynamic interaction between users in VR and real-world objects.
THE VOID, the untethered mixed-reality park, is opening a new location in Dubai, UAE. The new Dubai-based park is the company’s second public location, and will be hosting their Ghostbusters: Dimension experience—the same currently running at their first location at Madame Tussaud’s New York.
I recently attended the Experiential Technology Conference where there were a lot of companies looking at how to use biometric data to get insights into health & wellness, education for cognitive enhancement, market research, and more. Over the next couple of years, virtual reality platforms will be integrating more and more of these biometric data streams, and I wanted to learn about what kind of insights can be extrapolated from them. I talked with behavioral neuroscientist John Burkhardt from iMotions, one of the leading biometric platforms, about what metrics that can be captured from eye tracking, facial tracking, galvanic skin response, EEG, EMG, and ECG.
Developed by Polish studio CD Projekt RED, 2015’s Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is surely one of the best regarded games to launch in recent memory. Studio co-founder Marcin Iwinski says the studio is watching VR carefully, but he’s still waiting to see what compelling made-for VR content looks like.
NASA and Oculus have launched their collaborative project ‘Mission: ISS’ for the Oculus Rift for free and it’s offers a detailed, visually sumptuous virtual reality trip to space that most of us would otherwise never experience.
In a new report from IDC (International Data Corporation), the market research firm predicts a near 10 fold increase in the shipments of augmented and virtual reality headsets in the next 4 years, bolstered by a plethora of new devices and “expanding array of content for both consumer and enterprise users.”
Qualcomm’s latest VRDK headset is a reference design that the company has positioned to act as a foundation for consumer electronics makers to create their own headsets based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon VR hardware. Now with manufacturing partners on board, the first consumer headsets based on the VRDK reference design are expected to launch in the second half of 2017.
Despite its major role in the growing VR space, HTC’s overall business continues to struggle financially, posting significant losses over the last two years. Working to turn things around with a restructuring of assets and priorities, the company is facing the sale of a smartphone factory in Shanghai. The proceeds from the $91 million sale will largely funnel toward the company’s Vive VR business, according to China Daily.
