Lenovo revealed at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC) their new line of Nvidia certified VR Ready computers, the company’s next step in VR dedicated hardware. And if you’re thinking of getting your hands on the new line of ThinkStations—the P910, P710, and P510—you better have some serious cash on hand.
Realities is a collection of incredibly detailed virtual environments created with a technique called photogrammetry. It’s about the closest thing we’ve seen yet to teleportation, and you’ll be able to check it out for yourself come April 5th, when the experience launches alongside the HTC Vive on SteamVR.
Although Valve is now prompting Rift users to install SteamVR, there’s more steps to actually get the Oculus Rift working with Steam. In a few quick steps you can use your Oculus Rift to play Steam and SteamVR games. Our quick guide will show you how.
Virtual Reality has the power to transport you to anywhere in the world, and NextVR has been one of the leaders of giving you a front row seat to live sporting events including hockey, boxing, NASCAR, basketball, soccer, and golf. NextVR recently signed a five-year deal with FOX Sports, who have the rights to broadcast the NFL, Major League Baseball, and the U.S. Open Golf Championship.
I caught up with NextVR’s VR evangelist Helen Situ at GDC talk about the highlights of the past year of their livestream VR broadcasts, and where they’re going next. They’ve been experimenting with a lot of different camera positions, broadcasting real-time binaural audio, augmenting the experience with graphical overlays, and exploring how to give the viewer more agency in choosing the different perspectives that are available.
At GTC 2016 next week, NVIDIA Research will take to the stage to explore “computational display” prototypes for next-generation fidelity and form-factors in VR and AR headsets.
It seems HTC are experiencing technical issues with their payment processing systems and customers’ banks which are leading to some pre-orders for their forthcoming HTC Vive VR system being cancelled.
It seems that Oculus are acknowledging the troublesome Rift launch and associated delivery delays by covering shipping costs for affected customers. According to emails sent out by Oculus to customers still waiting for the consumer Rift VR headsets, the delays are due to “Component Shortages”.
At Sundance earlier this year, Oculus Story Studio revealed Quill, an in-house production tool that uses the company’s Touch controllers to create VR illustrations. At GTC 2016 next week the studio will explore the technical challenges faced while creating the program.
The HTC Vive is due to land on people’s doorsteps from April 5th, and our in depth review is on its way then too. In the mean time, here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect to get in the box to help tide you over.
Timoni West is principal designer at Unity Labs, and she’s been working on creating tools within Unity to be able to create VR from within VR. I first talked with Timoni in October about these content creation tools which were revealed to the VR community for the first time at Unity’s VR/AR Vision Summit in February. I had a chance to catch up with her to talk about creating VR in VR for both developers and non-developers.
While the first high end consumer virtual reality headsets are just beginning to launch, virtual worlds have been around for years. Although they may not be immersive in the sense of VR, they are undeniably complex and engaging, as illustrated in the record-breaking Battle of M-OEE8 which took place in EVE: Online on the same day the Oculus Rift launched.
It’s been known since early 2016 that HTC planned to integrate bluetooth into the Vive headset to allow your phone to talk to the headset while you’re in VR, but we didn’t know what platforms or specific functionality would be supported. Now with the launch of the HTC Vive app on iOS, the answer is becoming clearer.
Although Valve has buddied up with HTC to create the Vive as SteamVR’s flagship headset, the company has made it clear that they want SteamVR to be headset agnostic. Now Steam is identifying Rift users and prompting them to install SteamVR.
I got the first glimpse of what advertising within a VR experience might look like when I saw a demo of some ads playing on the Immersv platform. I was within an movie theater similar to Oculus Cinema watching a 2D video screen where there was a 30-second video of a VR game being advertised. It’s still early days for advertising in VR, but Immersv co-founder & CEO Mihir Shah expects that VR has the potential to become a content marketing platform on steroids once it becomes easier to produce 3D spherical videos of VR gameplay, movies, and tourist destinations.
Felix & Paul are among the most respected in the as yet young field of immersive filmmaking and now, the studio has been nominated for 2 daytime Emmy awards for their VR films “Inside Impact: East Africa” and “Inside the Box of Kurios.”
