The Assembly is a first-person adventure game that wants to put your moral fiber to the test. Much like a novel, the game alternates back and forth between two characters: a brilliant neurologist entering the shadowy research institute eponymously dubbed ‘The Assembly’, and an equally brilliant virologist trying to get out. As both characters, you come to better understand why the mysterious organization was driven to the shadows, and why it should probably stay there.
Today marks the launch of NVIDIA’s GTX 1060, the least expensive of the company’s 10-series GPUs so far revealed. According to Nvidia, the GTX 1060 matches the performance of the former flagship card, the GTX 980, but at only 120 watts. Starting at $249, the 1060 faces off against AMD’s $199 RX 480.
There’s been a lot of talk about the latest data from Valve’s latest Steam Hardware & Software survey, most of it drawing erroneous conclusions about overall market share of VR headsets while missing out on a very interesting data point.
Valve’s ‘Lighthouse’ tracking system affords the HTC Vive a ‘room-scale’ tracking space for the VR headset and its controllers through the use of area-sweeping lasers. But exactly how accurate is it? Oliver Kreylos, a VR researcher at UC Davis, has a great analysis of the system which tells us that and much more.
During an ILMxLAB panel at this years Star Wars Celebration event in London, Batman movie writer David Goyer was introduced as working on a full Star Wars narrative VR experience that focuses on the series most recognisable villain, Darth Vader.
Just announced at a Star Wars “Meet ILMxLab” panel at the Star Wars Celebration expo in London, Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine will be released for the HTC Vive on Steam for free on Monday 18 July.
Oculus’ latest Software Developer Kit (SDK) has just been released, and adds support and documentation for a brand new ‘Enter’ button on the left controller not yet seen in the wild.
Microsoft unveiled ‘Project Scorpio’ to the world at E3 this year, stating that it would provide the Xbox platform enough power to run high fidelity VR experiences. But a recent interview with Xbox head Phil Spencer seems to show a company still unsure about its future in VR.
Google had a high-end, standalone virtual reality headset in the works that was recently ditched in favour of the Android-centric ‘Daydream’ VR platform, a new report suggests.
The SteamVR powered HTC Vive virtual reality system may see an updated “HTC Vive 2.0” before the end of the year according to a report citing suppliers to the Taipei based firm.
Dr. Ming Lin has been working on realtime physics simulations before physics engines were cool. Ming is now actively researching how to simulate audio in real-time. Rather than recording or generating sounds that are then simulated within a virtual environment, Dr. Ming and her students are pioneering methods for “coupling sound synthesis with sound propagation to automatically generate realistic aural content for virtual environments.” She’s also using machine learning techniques to be able to extract the material properties of the environment from a sound recording.
I had a chance to catch up with Ming after she presented some of her SynCoPation techniques as a part of her keynote at the IEEE VR academic conference in March. You can read more about some of her virtual sound simulation work in the “Interactive Sound Rendering” section of her vast amount of VR-related research.
LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST
Audio PlayerMusic: Fatality & Summer Trip
Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland today revealed a teaser for an upcoming VR game called Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality based on the cartoon’s lovably weird universe. The HTC Vive demo of the game will make its debut at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego.
Pokémon Go, the latest “AR” infused sequel to the classic Nintendo franchise is sweeping the world on mobile phone platforms. But what would it look like running on a dedicated augmented reality headset? Developer CapitolaVR decided to find out by building a Pokemon Go inspired test game for their brand new Microsoft HoloLens.
Sony is gearing up for the PlayStation VR’s launch this October, but you shouldn’t be boxing up your DualShock 4 gamepad in favor of the Move motion controller just yet. According to a statement from Sony issued to Eurogamer, you’ll be able use the DS4 in all PSVR games to come.
