Steam Launches First ‘VR Weekend Sale’, 181 Vive and Rift Titles Discounted
Steam has launched the first VR Weekend Sale giving steep discounts on VR titles for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, including a huge 20-game bundle at 30% discount.
‘Dota 2’ Releases Social Spectator Mode ‘VR Hub’
Dota 2 today released free DLC that lets you watch live and recorded matches from SteamVR compatible headsets. The new VR Hub adds a social component to the game that lets you and your friends watch Dota 2 together like never before—and just in time for The International.
Oculus CTO Shares VR Dev Tip: ‘The Formula for Avoiding Aliasing’
Oculus CTO John Carmack is an OG of the game development world has demonstrated a deep understanding of the ins and outs of computer rendering. In a detailed technical post published on Facebook, he shares a useful tips with VR developers which explains how to avoid ‘aliasing’, a common CGI artifact.
Cracking the Narrative Code of VR with the Interactive Documentary Genre
Back in 2014, the CLOUDS interactive documentary premiered at Sundance New Frontier where it debuted a VR interface to navigate over 40 oral history interviews with creative coding pioneers. Movies have typically been pretty linear, but how could a documentary become more interactive?
New deadmau5 and Absolut Vodka VR Experience is Free and Still Not Worth it
Absolut deadmau5 is a new VR experience featuring electronic music artist deadmau5 (aka Joel Thomas Zimmerman). Released yesterday on Oculus Rift, Gear VR and Google Cardboard, fans get a brief chance to see 360 video of deadmau5’s studio and concert, and complete a number of tasks as you guide a low-poly likeness of the iconic mouse-eared musician to the night’s concert venue.
FOVE Debuts Latest Design for Eye Tracking VR Headset
FOVE, the company behind the eponymous eye-tracking VR headset, today announced that they will be showing off a new industrial design at both Comic-Con and SIGGRAPH 2016 where attendees will have a chance to demo the new headset design themselves.
‘L.A. 2097’ is Your Own Little Slice of ‘Blade Runner’
L.A. 2097 is VR experience loosely based on the tech-noir classic film Blade Runner (1982), and although offering only a single re-imagined scene from the film—Rick Deckard’s high-rise apartment balcony—the demo holds a surprisingly tight grip on the imagination. We spoke with project creator E’van Johnston to learn more about his atmospheric sci-fi balcony and where it’s headed next.
Visionary VR to Give First Glimpse of Content Creation App at VRLA Next Week
Visionary VR, a stealth virtual reality startup which announced a $6 million fundraise back in March, will give the first glimpse of their VR storytelling application at VRLA.
Kite & Lightning Raises $2.5M for ‘Bebylon’, a “mini-Sword Art Online”
Kite & Lightning, an LA-based studio known for some of the burgeoning VR industry’s most polished experiences, today announced that their next big project, the VR vehicular melee party brawler Bebylon Battle Royale, has been funded to the tune of $2.5 million in seed funding.
AMD Announces Radeon Pro WX 7100 GPU Focused on Professional VR Film Editing
In an event at SIGGRAPH this evening, AMD’s Radeon Technology Group introduced a new line of ‘Radeon Pro’ WX-series GPUs. AMD has aimed the WX 7100 specifically at virtual reality content creation.
NVIDIA’s New Quadro P6000 GPU Targets VR Industry Professionals
NVIDIA has announced its latest line of professional focused GPUs aimed at the VR industry and its specs impress, as does its potential price.
NVIDIA Announces ‘VRWorks 360’, Claims “Real-Time” VR Video Stitching
SIGGRAPH 2016 is underway, and as is traditional for NVIDIA, the company has brought with it a raft of professional and prosumer to announce. And for those involved in the rapidly expanding world of 360 video and film, they’re announcing a new VRWorks 360 Video SDK which they claim will allow you to “Capture, Stitch, and Stream VR Content in Real-Time with VRWorks 360 Video SDK.”
‘Lawnmower Man’ Director Brett Leonard on Building Storyworlds
Brett Leonard’s journey into VR all started when he moved to Santa Cruz and started partying and smoking pot with some of the elite visionaries from the Silicon Valley technology scene. He was an aspiring writer and film director who got inspired by Jaron Lanier’s evangelism of virtual reality technologies. Brett got to try out a lot of cutting edge VR and then went on to help popularize the term “virtual reality” on a global scale with his 1992 film The Lawnmower Man, which is a dark cautionary tale that also contains many prophetic predictions. It’s still one of the earliest and most accurate portrayal of the potential of VR as an immersive video game medium, and Palmer Luckey has cited it as an inspiration for being able to step into a video game. It also shows how VR could open up new neural pathways into the mind and serve as one of the most transformational mediums today.
