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.
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.
