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.
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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.
Pete Moss is known as the “VR Dude” within Unity, and has long seen the potential of virtual reality. He’s really been on the frontlines of this virtual reality revolution over the past 3-4 years creating a bridge between the hardware manufacturers and content creators. I had a chance to sit down with Pete at the Intel Buzz Workshop a few weeks back to let him reflect on the consumer launch of virtual reality, and some of the emerging trends that he sees. VR locomotion is still a big open problem that he’s actively researching, and he encourages people to reach to him if you have innovative ideas. He also shares his perspective of the future of audio in VR, and the vital role that VR artists will play in expanding our minds.
Codemasters have responded officially to Road to VR on why DiRT Rally, which recently received Oculus Rift VR support, lacks support for the rival SteamVR based HTC Vive system.
Nvidia’s VR Funhouse is a virtual sandbox chasing reality, one designed to demonstrate how GPU accelerated physics can enhance presence in immersive environments. It’s released for free today on Steam, but is it any fun?
Unity Technologies has announced a $181 million Series C investment led by DFJ Growth, a venture capital firm with the likes of Twitter and Tesla in their portfolio, in order to continue their dominance of the game engine market. Unity claims to have 45% of the “full feature game engine market” and even more in the mobile 3D gaming space (yes, Pokémon Go is running on Unity).
