The Google VR team shared some impressive figures at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week – more than 10 million Cardboard viewers have been shipped worldwide. Google’s low-cost smartphone enclosure for viewing VR content has been available since 2014.
LG is the first company after HTC to follow the path laid out by Valve for headset makers to bring their wares to SteamVR. That path involves using SteamVR Tracking technology and OpenVR API to create a headset which can tap into the same Steam-powered content ecosystem as the Vive. LG’s step into VR represents more than just a new headset though, it represents new choices for consumers and new competition for HTC.
The Gallery – Episode 2: Heart of the Emberstone is coming this spring to Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, and for fans of the first episode, Call of the Starseed (2016), it can’t come a moment too soon. Stepping into the demo at Unity’s booth at this year’s GDC, I got a chance to experience something that not only features a heady mix of highly tuned visuals and clever puzzles, but a familiar feeling that Cloudhead Games says pays homage to ’80s sci-fi/fantasy movies like The Dark Crystal (1982) and the Indiana Jones series. From what I’ve seen, it would be silly for me not to be excited.
Sparc (ex-Project Arena) is somewhat of an oddity in the VR space. While some developers are focusing on recreating certain real-world sports like minigolf or tennis, Eve Online studio CCP has gone a different direction by creating an entirely new sport, one that you could call a true “VR native.” After popping into the game, which mostly retains the core gameplay we first saw at last year’s Eve Fanfest, I sat down with Morgan Godat, executive producer of the company’s VR Labs, to learn more about what makes Sparc spark.
The Acer Windows Mixed Reality Development Edition headset is shipping this month, the first HMD to include the inside-out tracking technology pioneered on the HoloLens. This marks the beginning of the rollout of Microsoft-endorsed VR headsets that support ‘world scale’ tracking and ‘mixed reality’ apps.
In an aggressive move that’ll help lower the bar of entry still further for VR, Oculus have announced sizeable permanent price drops for both the Oculus Rift headset and Oculus Touch controllers, both now cut by $100 each.
When the Robo Recall title screen first appears – a voice calling its name out like a boxing ring announcer while the electro-rock soundtrack builds in the background – arcade aficionados could be forgiven for thinking they had stepped into an alternate universe where Sega’s legendary arcade divisions were still churning out hits to this very day. That’s the company in which Robo Recall belongs.
Unlike an arcade machine you won’t need a stack of shiny coins to play this shooter. If you own an Oculus Rift, it’s being brought to you absolutely free of charge.
Speaking at GDC 2017, Jason Rubin described VR wireless technology as “compressed, not perfect, and expensive” and “the wrong direction for right now”. Rubin’s task at Oculus is to deliver compelling VR content, and believes that hardware features such as wireless, while desirable, simply add to the cost of a product that is already considered too expensive.
The demo, presented at NVIDIA’s event yesterday where they announced the new GTX 1080 Ti, covers a large area brimming with opportunity for physics-based interactions, a field of seemingly infinite boulders and a bulldozer created to show off the sort of scale that GPUs can drive interactions for rigid body simulation.
The latest version of NVIDIA’s FCAT VR analysis tool is here and it’s equipped with a wealth of impressive features designed to demystify virtual reality performance on the PC.
Eye tracking experts SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) have collaborated with Valve to bring their technology to OpenVR. Eye tracking-enabled HTC Vive units are being shown at GDC 2017, as part of an R&D effort to integrate eye-tracking support into Valve’s OpenVR API.
Mage’s Tale is a VR Action RPG set in the world of classic fantasy RPG The Bard’s Tale. It is being shown at GDC 2017 for the first time on Oculus Rift and Touch and here’s six minutes of gameplay footage to whet your appetite for the title.
When it comes to VR, best practices say that the player’s in-game movement should be static, and if the player needs to move, it should be within their physical space, or through some locomotion method that’s comfortable in VR, like blinking or teleportation. Then along comes Sprint Vector, the latest title from Survios, the developer of Raw Data, which smashes those best practices with surprising success.
Tonight NVIDIA has announced the top dog of their GeForce GTX graphics cards, the GTX 1080 Ti. The new Ti model succeeds the GTX 1080 to become the flagship GPU of Nvidia’s consumer line.
AR/VR Austin returns for its third successive year, presenting a mini-conference named ‘Alternative Realities’. Taking place as an unofficial event during the SXSW 2017 festival on March 11th, this year’s event will question the impact of social and political change on the AR/VR industry.
