The Future of Immersive Education with Apollo 11 VR & Lecture VR
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.
Inside ‘Realities’ Jaw-droppingly Detailed Photogrammetric VR Environments
Realities wants to transport viewers to exciting places across the globe in ways that are much more immersive than the single, flat vantage point of a 360 degree photo or video. The company is creating an efficient photogrammetry pipeline to build sometimes frighteningly realistic virtual environments that users can actually walk through.
BigScreen is Making Virtual LAN Parties Real, Beta Signups Now Open
BigScreen is a new VR application which brings you and your computer into a shared virtual space with your friends. The company is today leaving stealth to announce the closing of a seed round and that former Convrge creator Hayden Lee is joining the team as a co-founder.
PresenZ Upgrades CGI-Quality VR Rendering Tech with More Realistic Reflections
PresenZ, a software solution that creates pre-rendered CGI VR scenes, is now able to render realistic reflections that have accurate depth and parallax just like those in the real world.
‘Elite Dangerous’ Support Coming to Oculus Rift at Launch
Frontier Developments, makers of Elite Dangerous, today announced that the open-Universe space sim will be supporting Oculus Rift on day one of its March 28th launch. The good news: if you already own the game, you’ll be getting Oculus support for free.
Oculus Sample Framework Provides Valuable Guidance in VR Design
Oculus has recently released an intuitive learning tool for developers and designers looking to get into the medium. While it can be useful in wrapping your head around the do’s and don’ts of VR design, Oculus maintains that the info presented in the Sample Framework for Unity is more of a helping hand in exploring your options.
8 Minutes of the HTC Vive’s Front-facing Camera in Action
Take a wander into SteamVR’s neon-infused window on the real world whilst in VR, utilising the HTC Vive Pre’s front-facing camera in this video which takes a thorough look at the feature.
Bringing VR Content Creation to the Masses with Unity’s ‘Carte Blanche’
Dioselin Gonzalez is a senior VR engineer at Unity Labs who is working on bringing VR creation tools to the masses. Project “Carte Blanche” will be launching sometime in 2017 and will be targeting desktop VR consumers with an Oculus Touch or HTC Vive who are not programmers. I had a chance to catch up with Dioselin at Unity’s VR/AR Vision Summit where she talked about these next-generation VR authoring tools.
Oculus Bringing New Multiplayer Games and Social Features to Gear VR
Oculus today announced a number of new social features and two multiplayer games coming to Samsung’s Gear VR headset this week. Among the new features is Facebook 360 video integration and private rooms in Oculus Social.
Oculus Showing First Look at ‘Minecraft’ on Gear VR at GDC Next Week
Announced initially back in September, Oculus is bringing the ever-popular Minecraft to both the Rift and Gear VR. Next week at GDC 2016 we’ll get our first glimpse of the game’s mobile version.
‘Raw Data’ Gets New Trailer, Early-access Coming Soon to Vive
Raw Data is heading to the HTC Vive, launching soon as an Early-access title. A new trailer shows the game’s sci-fi action combat.
