Five Theories of Motion Sickness Triggers in Virtual Reality
When people dream about what they want to do in VR, it inevitably involves actually moving around within a virtual environment. But VR locomotion triggers simulator sickness in a lot of people, and solving it is one of the biggest open problems in virtual reality. NextGen Interactions’ Jason Jerald wrote a comprehensive summary of much of the pertinent academic research about VR in The VR Book, and in Chapter 12 he summarizes the five major theories of what may cause simulator sickness.
Valve’s Only VR Title, ‘The Lab’, is the Highest Rated Game on All of Steam
Among more than 9,000 games on Steam, Valve’s VR title The Lab is heading the platform’s list of top rated games.
‘Mr. Robot’ 360 Experience Set to Stream to all Major VR Headsets For Limited Time
Mr. Robot fans take note: a special one-time-only 360 experience is headed your way for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Gear VR and Google Cardboard-enabled smartphones exactly at 10:45 AM PST on Thursday, July 21st.
‘The Assembly’ Review
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.
Hands-on: NVIDIA Launches GTX 1060 and Benchmarks Against AMD’s RX 480
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.
Oculus Rift Growth Spurt Halts HTC Vive Market Share Expansion
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.
Analysis of Valve’s ‘Lighthouse’ Tracking System Reveals Accuracy
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.
New Darth Vader VR Experience Coming from ILMxLAB, Here’s a Quick Peek
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.
‘Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine’ is Released for HTC Vive 18 July
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.
New Oculus Touch Features Detailed in Latest Oculus PC SDK 1.6 Release
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.
XBox Head Phil Spencer Sends Mixed Messages on Project Scorpio and VR
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.
Report: Google Ditched Plans for High Spec Oculus Rift Rival
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.
New HTC Vive Version May Be Coming This Year, 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.
Auto VR Sound Generation via Physics Simulations and Machine Learning
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.
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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
