How VR Video is Being Used to Help Kids Conquer Fear of Swimming

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A new Swedish initiative hopes to encourage the country’s children, one fifth of which cannot swim, some suffering anxiety and fear of water, to take the plunge using a 360 VR video experience.

PlayStation VR Game Boxes Will Look Like This

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Sony have released example artwork for PlayStation VR launch titles that gives us a look at how the company intends to let consumers know they’ll need $399 worth of additional hardware before they buy the games.

Official ‘Fruit Ninja’ Hits the HTC Vive on Early Access

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Fruit Ninja, the popular franchise from Halfbrick Studios, has officially made its way into VR. Now available on Steam Early Access for HTC Vive, Fruit Ninja VR lets you slice and dice with the best of them using dual katana swords that are bound to have you playing the part of fruit assassin in your living room.

‘Sequenced’ & the Challenge of Interactive VR Narratives

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Emilie-JolyThe first time that I experienced Sequenced, I had no idea that my gaze directions might have been triggering different branches or small events within the story. Experiencing an interactive drama, but not knowing it was one of the design challenges that Valve’s Chet Faliszek has previously described to me. But there are many other challenges with balancing interactivity and narrative that Apelab CEO & Sequenced producer Emilie Joly explained to me at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality conference in April.

Does the VirZOOM Exercise Bike Solve the VR Locomotion Problem?

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Eric-JanszenVR on exercise bikes like VirZOOM is going to be AMAZING… for some people, and I may not be one of those people. Movement within virtual environments is a hard problem, and while VirZOOM addresses some of the challenges of VR locomotion, people who are sensitive to simulator sickness will likely still have issues with some of the games developed by VirZOOM.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the physical action of moving my legs was enough activity to trick my mind into making some types of VR locomotion a more comfortable experience. However, there were still a number of other game design decisions that triggered motion sickness in me including tilting the horizon line, lots of vection and optical flow, accelerating and decelerating, and moving up and down hills.

I had a chance to up with founder Eric Janszen at GDC after going through their different game prototype demos to hear more about their design intention, how they were integrating interval training within their gameplay design, and some of their future plans of integrating more mobile VR headsets.

Searches for “HTC Vive” Have Caught up with “Oculus Rift” and May Be Accelerating

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When it comes to Google searches, “HTC Vive” has recently matched “Oculus Rift” and may be continuing to rise.

Distance Underestimation in Virtual Environments

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Victoria-Interrante2Academic VR researchers have shown that “people typically underestimate egocentric distances in immersive virtual environments,” sometimes up to 20%. This could have huge implications for architectural visualizations, but also for anyone making aesthetic judgments based upon the proportion and scale represented within a virtual environment. I had a chance to catch up with University of Minnesota professor Victoria Interrante at the IEEE VR conference to talk about her 12 years of research into some of these perceptual and cognitive effects within virtual environments. We talk about some of the causes, the role of embodiment in distance estimation, photorealistic vs stylized environments, and the impact of having virtual humans within the environment.

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‘DiRT Rally VR’ Launches July 11th, New Oculus Rift Update Trailer Here

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DiRT Rally, the off-road racing sim from Codemasters, just got a brand new Oculus Rift trailer. Even better news: the VR version is officially coming to both the Oculus Store and pushing out to existing PC users simultaneously on July 11th.

NVIDIA’s New GTX 1060 Answers AMD’s RX 480, Starts at $249 and Launches July 19th

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NVIDIA has today announced the GTX 1060 GPU, their answer to AMD’s budget-oriented RX 480. The company says that when it comes to VR rendering the card is equal in performance to the former flagship GTX 980 but at twice the power efficiency.

Unreal Engine and Unity to get NVIDIA’s New VR Rendering Tech

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NVIDIA recently took the wraps off of Simultaneous Multi-projection, a new rendering technology built into the company’s latest series of ‘Pascal’ GPUs which is designed to enhance VR rendering performance. Nvidia says the tech is soon to come to Unreal Engine and Unity.

You Can Now Buy Unofficial Oculus Rift Facial Interfaces, Kickstarter Now Live

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VR Cover, the company known for its aftermarket accessories for VR headsets, recently revealed their latest project, an array of Oculus Rift-compatible facial interfaces and foam padding that effectively replaces the one shipped stock with the Rift.

NVIDIA ‘VR Funhouse’ Coming to Steam for Free This Month

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VR Funhouse, Nvidia’s physics sandbox revealed alongside the GeForce GTX 1080 in May, is coming to Steam this month for free. Nvidia is keeping mum on exact release dates for now.

‘DiRT Rally VR’ Coming Soon to Oculus Store, Steam to See VR Update “this month”

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DiRT Rally, the racing sim from Codemasters, doesn’t have an official launch date for the Oculus Rift just yet, but in an Nvidia blog post announcing new optimized drivers for the game, we learned that the racer is coming soon to the Oculus Store and updating for VR support on Steam later this month.

SoundStage Lets You Build Your Dream Music Studio in Room-Scale VR

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This is SoundStage, from solo developer Logan Olson, a VR application that aims to let musicians build their own dream music studio, allowing them to play, record and mix from within VR on the HTC Vive.

Apple Granted Patent for High Field of View AR Display

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Apple has just been granted another AR/VR related technology patent, to add to their growing list. In this case it’s a transparent, high field of view display which looks to be aimed at the augmented reality sector and, alongside other mounting evidence, could indicate Apple is preparing to enter the immersive technology race sooner rather than later.

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