The new Leap Motion Mobile Platform consists of hardware and software optimised for VR and AR hand tracking on mobile devices. Building on the success of the original Leap Motion device, the brand new hardware aims to be tightly integrated into future mobile VR headsets.
Today at the Microsoft’s Windows Hardware Engineering Community event in Shenzhen, China, the company announced that VR/AR (mixed reality) headsets from top manufacturers are due to hit the market in 2017. What’s more, they’ll run on integrated Intel graphics without the need for a dedicated GPU.
The Khronos Group announced on Tuesday that they have a critical mass of major VR players who are collaborating on a VR open standard. This VR open standard will have a software and hardware component that will enable VR application portability across VR platforms, but also minimize the cost for hardware integrations across different VR platforms. The Khronos Group has been able to get public support for this initiative from VR headset manufacturers including Valve, Oculus, Google, & OSVR as well as the major GPU and CPU players of AMD, NVIDIA, Intel, and ARM.
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Back in March 2015, Neil told me that the VR industry needed a period of innovation before trying to pin down an open standard. But now that the major VR headsets have now launched, there’s not enough significant differences between the major VR SDKs to warrant third-party hardware peripherals to have to create custom integrations. The benefits for standardization outweigh the costs of having a fractured ecosystem, because this VR open standard will enable smaller VR companies to write a single driver that allows them to interface with all of the major VR headsets.
I had a chance to catch up with Khronos Group President Neil Trevett to talk about this call for participation on this VR open standard. There’s not a preliminary specification that’s been developed yet, but they wanted to go ahead and make this announcement in order to let the industry know that there’s enough consensus for this to happen, and to encourage participation from other upstart VR companies.
Neil estimated that this standardization process usually takes around 18 months to finalize, but it may move quicker depending upon how motivated the major companies are to lock it down and remove barriers to innovation. Designing an open standard is more of an art than a science, and Neil said that they would try to limit the scope of the standard, but also allow for extensions. You can read more information about this initiative here with a number of quotes including Oculus, Valve, Google, OSVR, and Epic Games.
Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
Based on the popular party game Mafia (also known as Werewolf), Werewolves Within represents Ubisoft’s first dive into the world of social VR games. I first got my hands on the game at GDC earlier this year, and while it remains basically the same since I last played, really settling into the gameplay provided me with some amount of insight into myself, including just how comfortable I am lying to complete strangers. The answer: I’m surprisingly comfortable.
Quill is Oculus’ ‘VR paint’ app, and it’s nothing short of spectacular. Tucked away inside this creative-focused app, however, is an interface that’s so simple, you might miss its brilliance.
Melbourne-based firm Zero Latency has raised $7 million in venture funding. The company specialises in out-of-home ‘warehouse scale’ local multiplayer VR experiences, and is beginning to open attractions around the world.
The Oculus Touch motion-tracked controllers have launched today after 8 months of the Rift solely supporting gamepad experiences. I wanted to take a moment to dig into some of the more subtle technical nuances when comparing the Oculus Rift & Touch with the HTC Vive, but also some of the larger VR ecosystem considerations to take into account. So today’s episode of the Voices of VR podcast is an op-ed analysis comparing the Touch controller and room-scale tracking technologies, as well as the overall content and developer ecosystems.
Virtuix, the creators of the Virtuix Omni treadmill, posted an update to customers yesterday stating that they won’t be fulfilling pre-orders to customers outside the United States. According to the company, trying to ship the 80kg (175 lbs) square meter box the Omni comes in to non-U.S. customers “has proven naive and unfeasible.”
I’m listening to the soundtrack of The Matrix right now, and it’s because I just played SUPERHOT VR, a one-of-a-kind game exclusively for Oculus Touch that will make you feel like you’re in the midst of the highly choreographed slow motion action that The Matrix is known for—except in VR, you’re the director.
Oculus Touch is out tomorrow and we finally get to test just how well the optical ‘Constellation’ tracking system handles itself, all the way from rug scale to beyond roomscale.
Oculus are offering a new Touch launch bundle which packs in 5 of the best supported titles into one $90 bundle.
‘Step Into Rift’ had been Oculus’ mantra since the launch of the headset back at the end of March, but with the launch of Oculus’ dedicated motion controllers, Touch, players can finally ‘Reach Into Rift’ too.
Ahead of the launch of Oculus Touch, the company has finally detailed its ‘experimental’ camera arrangements for 360 degree and ‘roomscale’ tracking, allowing us to take a look at how those tracking volumes compare with the HTC Vive.
Uber Entertainment, the studio behind Planetary Annihilation and the VR title Wayward Sky, have announced their next virtual reality game, Dino Frontier, for PlayStation VR.
Oculus’ dedicated motion controllers Touch launch officially on December 6th, but some lucky pre-orders have already been delivered. But there are worrying signs that launch day delivery may not happen for others.
