Ghostbusters is coming to virtual reality courtesy of the team at The Void, who are bringing their mixed reality technology to bear on a new VR experience based on the latest movie in the franchise. What’s more, you’ll be able to get your hands on it at Madame Tussaud’s, New York, soon.
At Nvidia’s special Editors Day event in Austin, Texas, the company unveiled an enhancement to it’s VRWorks APIs which now includes what it says is the first “Physically Based Acoustic Simulator Engine”, accelerated by Nvidia GPUs.
Otherworld Interactive recently announced that their horror experience Sisters just surpassed one million downloads for Google Cardboard. To celebrate, they released a compilation of reaction videos of people screaming and slamming VR headsets into the ground.
While doing horror in VR by yourself may be utterly terrifying, experiencing horror in VR while other people are watching you can be a lot of fun. Your terror and screaming is immediately following by a lot of uncontrollable laughter, which can be really contagious. Overall, it’s such an peak emotional experience that people want to capture and share online. These videos of visceral reactions are in part what has fueled Sisters to become one of the first VR applications to reach one million downloads.
I had a chance to catch up with Otherworld Interactive co-founder Robyn Tong Gray to talk about why people like to be scared, using indirect control to trigger action in VR narratives, cultivating emotional presence, and creating an ambiance and soundscape to amplify your VR story.
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Here’s the reaction video compilation celebrating a million downloads of Sisters
Here’s Robyn’s talk from the Unity VR/AR Vision Summit titled “Emotional Presence in Virtual Reality: The Making of Café Âme and Sisters”
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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
NVIDIA has announced an advanced screenshot tool called Ansel which allows users much greater control over in-game photo capturing, including the ability to shoot 3D 360 degree imagery which is viewable in VR headsets. You can preview Ansel’s output today in the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and Google Cardboard.
NVIDIA recently announced VR Funhouse, a new virtual reality experience which showcases the company’s GPU-based physics systems.
NVIDIA today announced a number of software tools and updates to go along with the company’s newest GPU, the long-awaited GeForce GTX 1080 and the budget GTX 1070. Among them was a VR sandbox that shows off all the cool physics-based interactions you can have with the greater horsepower afforded by the new hardware and software optimizations.
Nvidia just announced the GTX 1070, a card based on the new Pascal 16nm FinFET architecture that outperforms the Titan X and it’ll retail for $379. Plus, you’ll be be able to buy it from June 10th.
NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang today announced a new tool at the company’s ‘Special Event’ that will allow users to natively capture 360 images in-game, and then view them in VR headsets. The news accompanied the long-awaited announcement of the company’s newest GPU, the GTX 1080.
At a special event in Austin Texas this evening, GPU giant Nvidia have revealed their long awaited next generation graphics cards based on the company’s new ‘Pascal’ architecture and built to tackle the rigours of virtual reality. The first card available on this new architecture is the GTX 1080.
NVIDIA has announced a ‘Special Event’ which will be livestreamed starting at 6pm PT today (May 6th).
Acclaimed comedian and musician Reggie Watts is bringing his surrealist lyrical style and infectious comedy act to virtual reality later this month. Fans can attend the show from within AltspaceVR’s social VR platform, or spectate via the YouTube livestream.
It’s that time of year again—when people pretend to care about horse racing by putting on ridiculous hats and getting drunk during the daytime. Yes, it’s the Kentucky Derby, and this time you can watch it live in your Gear VR headset starting Saturday.
On April 26, 1986, there was a catastrophic nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine rated as the highest severity of level 7. Thirty years after the disaster, there are still ongoing construction projects to confine the disaster within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. A number of Ukrainian filmmakers are in the process of making an interactive documentary titled Chornobyl360 about these ongoing remediation efforts as well as the impact that it’s had on the surrounding area. I had a chance to catch up with producer Kirill Pokutnyy at SVVR to talk about the interactive documentary innovations, the long-term impact of nuclear energy disasters, and creating an empathy piece for the earth.
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There’s an ongoing Kickstart fundraising campaign for Chornobyl360 that is 22% funded with 24 days remaining.
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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
Dexta Robotics is pioneering what they see as the next logical step for immersive experiences, being able to touch the virtual world, and to feel it push back. Their Dexmo VR gloves are designed to provide resistance to the wearer, corresponding to their interaction with the VR environment. In this guest post, Dexta Robotics founder Aler Gu brings us up to date with Dexmo’s progress.
Fans of the prolific anime production house Studio Ghibli, known for iconic films like Princess Mononoke (1997) and Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), are probably already well aware of developer Nick Pittom and his Ghibli-inspired demos. Following a recent update, you can now pop your head into some of the most candid recreations of Studio Ghibli classics using the new Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.
