Squanchtendo’s First VR Game ‘Accounting’ is Hilarious and Completely Free
What’s better than Justin Roiland making a VR game? Justin Roiland making a VR game and releasing it for free. That’s right, newly formed VR studio Squanchtendo’s first game, Accounting, will be completely free.
‘Feral Rites’ Review
Feral Rites is a third-person VR adventure-brawler from Insomniac Games released for the Oculus Rift. Set on a mystical island, you play as a beefed-out warrior trying to avenge your father’s death by kicking, punching and slashing everyone in your way.
MSI Details VR One Backpack PC: 7.9 Pounds, GTX 10-series GPU, Hot-swappable Batteries
The ‘VR One’ from MSI debuts at the Tokyo Game Show this week. The backpack provides tetherless VR gameplay powered by NVIDIA’s 10-series GPUs with a hot-swappable battery for extended VR gaming without a tether.
Using HoloLens to Visualise Motion Capture Performances in Realtime
Motion capture techniques are used throughout the VFX industry, but a new project from Mo-cap specialist and developer Jasper Brekelmans aims to bring live, augmented reality previews for motion capture performance, unlocking the ability to preview dances in realtime overlaid onto reality.
Chess World Championships to Broadcast Live in Pay-per-view 360 Video
One of the world’s oldest competitive games is to get the immersive video treatment as this November’s World Championship is streamed live in 360 video.
Google Brings Cardboard Camera to iOS, Take 3D ‘VR Photos’ With Your 2D Camera
Google’s Cardboard Camera lets you capture immersive photos from smartphone hardware you already own. The app has now launched on iOS, letting you snap 360 degree 3D photos from your iPhone.
Simulating Crowds of Virtual Humans in Immersive Environments
The IEEE VR conference held a new pre-conference workshop this year on Virtual Humans and Crowds for Immersive Environments. Movies like Lord of the Rings and video games like Assassin’s Creed use this research in order to create convincing group behaviors with NPCs, and architects want to be able to test their building designs to ensure that they are comfortable for different types of flows of people and evacuation scenarios.
‘Cloudlands: VR Minigolf’ Level Editor Makes Building New Courses As Easy as Legos
Cloudlands: VR Minigolf’s new level editor makes creating and sharing new courses a snap.
Artists Are Taking to ‘Tilt Brush’ with Incredible Results
Virtual reality has been described as a ‘new medium’—that is, a canvas for creation which is unique among other forms (books, radio, paint, music, video, etc). The truth of this is becoming abundantly clear thanks to artists who are adopting programs like Tilt Brush to make amazing works of art which offer undeniably
VirtualGrasp Aims to Finally Deliver Realistic Hand Interactions in VR
Swedish robotics specialists are working on a system to allow game developers to deliver realistic, realtime and dynamic interaction animations, so that your VR hands can finally grasp in-game objects convincingly.
Star Wars ‘Mos Eisley’ Realised in Staggering Detail on UE4, VR Version Coming
An environmental artist with a passion for Star Wars has realised the iconic location of Star Wars’ Mos Eisley space port in jaw-dropping detail via Unreal Engine 4. What’s more, it’s coming to VR soon and you can download the demo now.
Microsoft is Bringing WebVR Support to Edge, Windows 10’s Default Browser
Microsoft has announced plans to bring support for WebVR to Edge, which succeeds Internet Explorer as the default web browser in Windows 10.
Tracking Your Hands Using Flex Sensor Technology with Manus VR
I had a chance to try out the Manus VR hand-tracked controller on the expo floor of GDC this year and saw that there a couple of really strong use cases for having your hands and fingers tracked in VR. You can be a lot more expressive within social VR, and in mixed reality experiences where passive haptic feedback is available, having your hands tracked can actually increase the level of embodied presence.
I had a chance to catch up with the lead designer of Manus VR, Stijn Stumpel, at GDC where we compared Manus VR to Leap Motion, talked about how the flex sensors work, the use cases where having tracked hands makes sense, their extremely polished demo called Pillow’s Willow, and where they’re going in the future.
Preview: Jon Favreau’s ‘Gnomes and Goblins’ Sparks the Imagination and Demands Your Curiosity
Gnomes & Goblins is a real-time interactive experience currently in development by VR production company Wevr and created by film director Jon Favreau, an industry professional known for his work on films such as the Iron Man franchise, Chef (2014) and The Jungle Book (2016). Releasing yesterday on Steam for the HTC Vive, I curiously popped my head into the fantasy realm and was immediately entranced by the solidity of the world set in front of me.
