Kokoromi Collective’s Heather Kelley on Designing ‘SUPERHYPERCUBE’

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Image courtesy KOKOROMI

heather-kelleyOne of my favorite VR games is the Kokoromi Collective’s SUPERHYPERCUBE, which is a very stylized 3D Tetris game with amazing sound design. It’s a VR experience that really gives your brain a stimulating spatial memory workout. I first had a chance to play SUPERHYPERCUBE at the XOXO Festival, and I learned more about the process of designing the game from Kokoromi Collective members Heather Kelley & Phil Fish. I had a chance to do an interview with Heather at Sony’s GDC event this year where she described to me a bit of their game design process and long history of developing this game going all the way back to 2008.

The Problem With Projections and What Makes the Just-released ‘2016 VR Industry Report’ Different

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Today we publish the 2016 Virtual Reality Industry Report. Co-authored with VR business intelligence firm Greenlight VR, the report is a distillation of years of experience, research, and analysis into an accessible and comprehensive foundation of the virtual reality landscape, with the goal of informing forward-looking strategies.

Rev VR Podcast (Ep. 117): VR – What Team Are You On?

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I was finally able to record this podcast episode without getting enraged at the topic. Lines are being drawn in the sand with talks of “Rift vs. Vive”, and I wanted to address this rationally and give my thoughts.

Lucid VR Receives $2.1M in Seed Funding, Partnering with ODM Wistron

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Lucid VR, the makers of the stereoscopic 3D camera LucidCam, today announced a seed funding round to the tune of $2.1M, bringing a significant raise in funds to the team’s successful Indiegogo campaign which attracted over $100,000 in funds over the course of November and December of last year.

Following Rift Delay, HTC Vive Backorder Pushes Into June

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The HTC Vive opened for pre-orders back at the end of February and officially launched just last week on April 5th. The headset’s backorder date is now into June for new orders.

First Look: Striker VR Reveals Latest Prototype Design and Impressive Haptic Effects

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Striker VR is moving ahead with their haptic gun technology that we’ve been anticipating for some time now. The company today has revealed their latest prototype design of the ‘ARENA Infinity’ which is headed first to out-of-home VR arcade installations.

Facebook Unveils ‘Surround 360’ an ‘Open’ 3D 360 Camera and Video Stitching Pipeline

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At Facebook’s developer conference F8 in San Francisco today, the company have unveiled their latest push into the immersive, VR video arena – a rugged, production ready 360 3D camera and video stitching pipeline capable of 8k per eye spherical images.

This Assetto Corsa Mixed Reality Video Shows VR Racing’s Potential

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This enthusiast video which uses green screen video capture to fuse virtual reality footage, demonstrates how impressively accurate VR racing games are becoming.

Valve Engineers Talk Lighthouse Evolution & Favourite VR Memories

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ben-jacksonjeremy-selanAt GDC this year, I had a chance to talk with Valve developer Jeremy Selan and tracking engineer Ben Jackson about the evolution of room-scale tracking technologies, as well as some of the oral history stories that include some of their favorite memories and types of experiences within VR. They didn’t talk about any specific future plans for things that they’re not ready to talk about yet, but Jeremy did allude to the fact that there’s a lot of latent hardware functionality that’s shipping with the Vive that can be turned on with a software update. We also speculate a bit about the potentials of using the front-facing camera to track static objects with fiducial markers, the desire to go beyond room-scale in VR, and using controllers to prototype tracking other body parts until Valve presents a solution that makes it easier and more aesthetically pleasing.

Oculus Projects Two Month Delay for Some Early Rift Pre-orders

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Unfortunately some more bad news for early adopters who pre-ordered the Rift and expected it to arrive on or around the March 28th launch date. The delay has now pushed expected shipping dates of some day-one pre-orders into late May and even June.

Storytelling in VR: Ambiguity and Implication in 1st Person Narratives

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rob-morganRob Morgan is the writer of The Assembly, and he spoke last year at GDC about narrative design in VR and the importance of accurate body language in NPCs to maintain a sense of presence. He returned to GDC this year to talk about some of his lessons that VR can learn from writing stories in AR. He has a lot of interesting insights about how to use ambiguity and implication to drive narratives within a first-person story to allow a user to have a more immersive and personalized experience.

NASA-backed ‘Mars 2030’ is a Breathtakingly Real Slice of Martian Landscape the Size of ‘Skyrim’

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Backed with support from NASA, the development of Mars 2030 is underscored by a singular mission: do everything possible to make the player feel like they’re actually on Mars. And that, apparently, means starting with a massive, detailed recreation of an actual part of the planet’s surface.

Latest VorpX Adds Oculus Rift CV1 Support, HTC Vive Support “Planned”

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The latest release of VorpX, the VR injection driver that lets you play your favourite non VR games in VR, is here and it brings support for the consumer edition (CV1) Oculus Rift.

Oculus Rift Teardown Offers Glimpse of Unique Lenses, LEDs, and More

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The folks over at iFixit have taken the shiny new Oculus Rift consumer VR headset and pulled it apart to find out exactly what’s inside. Among a look at the headset’s IR LED placement and circuit boards, we get a glimpse of unique lenses.

Poll: Mix & Match Your Ideal VR System

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