Launching originally for PlayStation VR, Robinson: The Journey was carefully optimized and tweaked to ensure consistent performance across all PS4 systems. The recently released Rift version—despite lacking Touch support—fortunately puts control into PC players hands, allowing you to max out the visuals, if your computer can handle it.
Robinson: The Journey, Crytek’s second VR title and former PSVR exclusive, has landed on the Oculus store. Priced at $40, the game unfortunately lacks support for Oculus’ Touch controllers, leaving players to use a gamepad to awkwardly facilitate the game’s many hand-based interactions.
Knockout League (2017) is a single-player, arcade-style boxing game that promises to get your heart pumping as you duck, block, and punch your way to victory. Harking back to NES classic Punch-Out!! (1987), you learn pretty quickly that a storm of punches—the moral equivalent of button-mashing—will get you nothing if you can’t time them correctly to your opponent’s repertoire of moves. So while Knockout League can’t promise what you might call “boxing sim” realism, it definitely delivers a lot of fun along with the stark realization that I clearly don’t get enough exercise.
Developer: Grab Games
Available On: Oculus Touch, HTC Vive (Oculus Home & Steam)
Reviewed on: HTC Vive
Release Date: January 24th, 2017
Note: This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game’s current state, and will not receive a numerical score.
Intel says ‘Project Alloy’ is an open reference platform for companies who want to build advanced, all-in-one VR headsets. But the headset itself still in ong going development. Developers working closely with the headset have shared new details on what’s coming in the next version.
Jason Rubin, Head of Content at Oculus, has recently teased ‘months of high-profile VR content’ for the hardware. In a recent tweet, he points towards the upcoming release of Rock Band VR, an exclusive title for Rift and Touch, as the starting point.
Ever since Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus in 2014, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has poised the move as a strategic bet on a technology that would eventually change the way we communicate. In the company’s most recent earnings call, Zuckerberg asked for “the patience of the investor community” as he reminded them about his belief in Oculus as a long term bet.
‘OpenVR Advanced Settings’ is a dashboard overlay that allows access to advanced functionality of any headset running SteamVR. The menu is accessible in VR, meaning you can easily adjust options such as supersampling without removing your headset.
Augmented reality is conceptually so broad, there’s almost no limit to what you could imagine doing with the technology. But rather than throwing out the playbook entirely, we’ll to our grand visions through useful incremental steps that begin with integration into existing content built around today’s paradigms. A concept video using HoloLens and Final Fantasy XIV, shows how AR could be incredibly useful as a ‘Second Screen’ companion for gaming and more.
Koei Tecmo, the Japan-based publisher that brought you Dynasty Warriors, Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series, have today unveiled a VR arcade cabinet that is more than just an enclosure for a PlayStation VR headset. Called VR Sense, the cabinet is said to embody a few technologies including a motion-simulating seat, a scent function, a wind function, a thermal function, a touch function, and a mist function.
The Rift-exclusive Rock Band VR is due to launch on March 23rd, with a game + guitar bundle priced at $70. The game takes a wildly different approach to musical gameplay than its predecessors, but also has a classic mode that fans will instantly recognize.
Star Citizen‘s Senior Graphics Programmer Ben Parry has dropped a disappointing bombshell regarding the status of the crowdfunded title’s long awaited VR support, indicating that players may be waiting some time for it to emerge.
VR Bangers, an adult virtual reality content studio, has announced a new gadget they say will help fans “finally feel like they are getting kissed and caressed, while their favorite girls whisper right into their ears.” While it’s undoubtedly bizarre looking, the camera/microphone mannequin head aims to take the place of a traditional camera or a microphone so that the studio’s actors can act more naturally and therefore give the end user a more immersive experience. If only it didn’t have such lifeless eyes (black eyes, like a doll’s eyes).
Motion capture specialist IKinema has demonstrated its new in-development low-cost motion capture system which uses use 6 points of SteamVR tracking points to deliver a pretty accurate recreation of real world motion.
