Facebook’s 2017 F8 developer conference has seven scheduled sessions dedicated to VR. The company’s annual two-day event is dedicated to exploring the future of Facebook’s family of apps and services (including Oculus), and how businesses and developers can leverage them.
Within premiered their first real-time rendered, interactive experience at Sundance New Frontier this year with Life of Us, which is the story of life on the planet as told through embodying a series of characters who are evolving into humans. The experience is somewhere between a film and game, and ends up feeling much like a theme park ride. There’s an on-rails narrative story being told, but there’s also opportunities to throw objects, swim or fly around, control a fire-breathing dragon, and interact with another person who has joined you on the experience. You learn about which new character you’re embodying by watching the other person embody that creature with you, and the modulation of your voice also changes with each new character deepening your sense of embodiment and presence.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has once again affirmed his belief in the significance of augmented reality technology. Interviewed during a recent trip to Europe, he spoke broadly about how AR could benefit everyone’s lives in the future, highlighting the way it allows users to remain ‘present’ in the real world. Underscored by years of relevant hiring and R&D, Cook’s words appear to further set the stage for the company’s rumored foray into the AR space.
Robinson: The Journey’s recent Steam release got off to a rocky start with a fatal bug which prevented players from even starting the game. Today, a 140MB patch from Crytek appears to have fixed the problem.
Earlier this year Oculus began offering additional Sensors for sale along with and their new Earphones. Now all the in-the-box accessories can be purchased as well.
After remaining a PSVR exclusive since its November release, Crytek’s gorgeous Robinson: The Journey recently popped up on Oculus Home and has now come to Steam. Following the unfortunate lack of VR controller support, a rocky Steam release has been met with a major bug preventing many players from launching the game, and no official support for the HTC Vive.
Dave Ranyard, who headed up Sony’s London Studio throughout PlayStation VR’s development, has announced the formation of a new VR-focused game Dream Reality Interactive.
Developer Human Interact announced this past week that they are collaborating with Microsoft’s Cognitive Services in order to power the conversational interface behind their Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, interactive narrative title named Starship Commander. They’re using Microsoft’s Custom Recognition Intelligent Service (CRIS) as the speech recognition engine, and then Microsoft’s Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) in order to translate spoken phrases into a number of discrete intention actions that are fed back into Unreal Engine for the interactive narrative.
Industrial Training International is readying their VR Mobile Crane Simulator for the March ConExpo Event in Las Vegas. The simulator uses an Oculus Rift headset in combination with a modular rig, in order to significantly reduce the costs of training, compared to both real-world and older simulator solutions.
Steam Direct, a new sign-up system for launching games on the store, is due to replace Greenlight in Spring 2017. Currently, any developer or publisher new to Steam is required to submit their game for approval through Greenlight, which involves a small fee and community voting; the new system may have different implications for VR developers.
Valve chief Gabe Newell is optimistic about the future of VR, considering the studio is in development of three VR titles—not mini-games or experiences, but “full” VR games—but what about the future of VR hardware?
The impressively svelte VRGE VR headset dock has passed the 50% mark of its $30,000 Kickstarter campaign goal. With support for the Vive, Rift, and PlayStation VR (and their respective controllers), the dock appears to be a smart accessory for VR early adopters, but it won’t be a sure thing until the campaign is fully funded.
Slightly Mad Studios has begun the promotional campaign for Project CARS 2, revealing a new trailer and some new details. Now due ‘late 2017’, the game has confirmed VR support for PC, while PSVR support is in development but not yet promised.
Ubisoft’s upcoming VR multiplayer game Star Trek: Bridge Crew is delayed again, this time to May 30th. The good news? Ubisoft is letting you choose the good ol’ NCC-1701 from ‘The Original Series’ (TOS) so you can play solo as captain, or as an officer in a crew of up to four online players.
