Untethered Android mobile VR headset developer GameFace Labs has today announced an eclectic group of new hires from the world of gaming and hardware hacking. Ex Sony London Studio Head David Ranyard, infamous iPhone ans PS3 hacker George Hotz (aka Geohot) and Ex Mojang developer Ryan Holtz are to join the company.
Samsung’s to bring a new set of experimental headphones to SXSW that uses electrical impulses to fool your inner ear into thinking your body is physically moving. What’s more, they seem to be pitching the new headgear for virtual reality use alongside the company’s Gear VR headset.
HTC Vive title Fantastic Contraption has flaunted its room-scale credentials to impressive effect in various mixed reality videos. Now, the team from Radial Games and Northway Games demonstrate you can enjoy the title just fine as a seated ‘desk scale’ experience by producing a video which demonstrates just that.
In this episode of the Rev VR Podcast, I am joined by my good pals over at the Left-Handed VR Podcast, Bob (aka Coznefx), Jason (aka Apieceoffruit, and Matt (aka Holotape). We discuss GDC, STEM, Lighthouse occlusion, Hover Junkers, and much more.
VRChat was one of the first social VR applications, and they’ve been holding regular virtual meetups for the past couple of years. VRChat has a Social SDK that allows Unity developers to add social functionality, and so their metopes have been focusing on doing guided tours and group explorations of user-generated worlds. I had a chance to talk to co-founder Jesse Joudrey who had a lot of really interesting insights about the unique qualities of the VR medium to be able to facilitate these types of shared experiences where the narrative is created through the multitude of shared perspectives. VRChat wants to push the boundaries of being able to explore surreal worlds while still maintaining a suspension of disbelief that’s helped with social presence.
In what’s being widely called the “Year of VR”, GDC 2016 will be the first major battle in the War For Your Head. VR headset frontrunners Oculus and HTC/Valve are due to begin shipping the Rift and Vive in less than a month, with Sony’s PlayStation VR coming not far behind. Three headsets, three platforms, and each of them wanting to win the right to be worn by you.
Valve today confirmed the existence of SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode which will effectively allow players to play any game from their Steam library inside of VR on big virtual display.
With major consumer VR headsets on the precipice of shipping, NVIDIA’s has put virtual reality among the top focuses of their annual GTC conference coming next month.
Samsung is celebrating the launch of their latest Galaxy S7 line of smartphones in Spain with a special Madrid event featuring ‘Gear VR Theater’, a shared ‘4D’ 360 video experience comprising multiple headsets and multiple synced motion platforms.
This is Tactical Haptics’ latest tech demo in action, a VR painting application designed to show off the capabilities of their skin stretching Reactive Grip force feedback technology integrated with the HTC Vive’s SteamVR motion controllers.
The ever popular Snapchat image sharing app has a small augmented reality feature called Lenses which detects user’s faces and inserts real-time effects on top. Samsung has seen fit to use the AR feature as an advertisement for their Gear VR headset.
Crytek has released their impressive VR tech demo Back to Dinosaur Island 2, the precursor to their forthcoming Oculus Rift exclusive The Climb and PlayStation VR exclusive Robinson: The Journey, to download for free right now.
Star Wars is coming to the HTC Vive courtesy of ILMxLab we now know, thanks to the experience’s trailer leaking briefly. It’s to be called Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine and this is what it looks like.
One of the most compelling applications of VR will be the educational experiences that will be possible, and David Whelan’s Immersive VR Education has been making some big innovations in this space. They’ve created the VR documentary about the Apollo 11 moon landing, which has won awards at the Future of Storytelling, Unity’s Vision Summit, and the Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories. They also just released the alpha version of Lecture VR, which aims to be the Powerpoint of VR complete with 4D effects, networked learning environments, and opportunities to directly apply science to problems within a virtual space. I had a chance to catch up with David at Unity’s Vision Summit where we talked about Apollo 11, Lecture VR, and the future of immersive education.
