Physically moving your body around to move through the virtual world is a great way to enhance immersion, but it can be potentially dangerous if users lose a sense of their real world surroundings. To keep users safe, Valve introduced what they call the ‘Chaperone’ for the HTC Vive headset, a virtual wall which appears when needed to keep users from exiting a safe playspace. Oculus is working on their own version of such a system which will be especially important for the upcoming launch of their Touch VR controllers.
There was a VR Village again this year at the SIGGRAPH 2016 conference where a lot of experimental interactive technologies were on display. I had a chance to talk to the program chair Denise Quesnel about some of the content themes and technologies this year at the SIGGRAPH VR Village as well as the different technology trends that were emerging.
Obduction, the hotly anticipated adventure puzzle game from the creators of Myst (1993), launched on PC on August 24th, but did so before the Oculus Rift version of the game was ready for release. Now the creators say it will be a little bit longer, but eventually anyone with the game will get access to the Rift version.
With a name that could only have come from the mind of Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland, Squanchtendo is a VR game studio founded by Roiland and former Epic Games producer Tanya Watson to “[combine] edgy, mature comedy with refined, high-end gameplay mechanics and stories.”
Uncorporeal are unveiling what it terms as it’s “Holographic Photography Technology” which the team claim will allow anyone with a smartphone to create 360 VR viewable scenes with 3D parallax from a few dozen photos.
Back in February, Amazon announced that they had purchased and forked Crytek’s CryEngine and made the full source code available in a free AAA VRgame engine offering called Lumberyard. The only catch is that if you want to use any public cloud service, then you have to use Amazon Web Service offerings.
This project uses Kinect depth cameras to the fuse virtual and the real to produce real-time mixed reality footage with no green screens required, all using Microsoft’s depth camera Kinect.
According to the official Oculus product page, the company is offering free shipping on Rift orders through the end of the month.
PlayStation VR Worlds is a collection of VR mini-games created by Sony’s talented London Studio. The studio has detailed new features designed to improve first-time VR experiences for those showing VR to their friends and family, and competitive features to keep gamers coming back for more.
A video game is a reflection of its maker, and usually the smaller the developer team, the more clear it is to see something of its creator within. I think I caught a glimpse of project creator Sos Sosowski somewhere in Mosh Pit Simulator, a game currently in development that according to him is supposed to “bring mayhem upon a crazy world of weird humans in virtual reality.” It was bright, insane, and off-putting, and held together with spit and glue, but deeply and undeniably interesting.
Dexta Robotics are looking to create the next generation VR input device, one that not only lets you interact with virtual objects but also lets you sense the size and solidity of them, letting you touch virtual reality. This is the Dexmo exoskeleton glove.
Debuting early next month at Call of Duty XP 2016, the official fan celebration hosted by Activision, attendees will have a chance to see what’s being called an “exclusive” Call of Duty VR experience running on PlayStation VR.
Ripcoil is a two-player duelling game from Oculus Studios and Sanzaru Games, and as one of 30 titles coming to Touch later this year, it’s poised to help fill the growing VR eSports genre. I got a crack at the demo at this year’s Gamescom, and proved that I am much better at tossing things in VR than I am in real life.
Drive Club VR from Reflections is due to land on PlayStation 4 within the launch window beginning October 13, and this new hands-on gameplay footage demonstrate why it’s becoming one of the most hotly anticipated titles for any VR platform.
