Six Flags to Use Gear VRs on New VR Roller Coaster Experiences
The US theme park Six Flags has announced it’s to partner with Samsung to bring VR roller coasters to a selection of its theme parks in 2016 using Gear VR headsets.
Explore Game of Thrones’ Castle Black in a New Fan-Made VR Experience
The Night’s Watch has a sacred duty: to protect Westeros from whatever it is that lives beyond the Wall. But you don’t need to take the sacred oath (or swear to celibacy) to traipse around Castle Black or experience the hair-raising heights of the Wall in a newly released fan-made VR recreation—just a VR headset and a rock solid penchant for high places.
Adi Robertson on Sundance Highlights and VR History
Adi Robertson is a senior reporter for The Verge, and she was at Sundance covering the latest developments of VR storytelling. I caught up with her to unpack some of her New Frontier highlights including narrative innovations, how empathy pieces incite anger in her, surprise orgies & insect vision, VR auteurs Felix & Paul, as well as her her top 5 Sundance experiences.
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I also talk to Adi about the epic oral history of VR that she co-wrote after the Oculus acquisition by Facebook, as well as her experiences of using mobile VR in public.
Adi is VR gamer at heart, and talks about some of her favorite VR demos like Bullet Train as an example of feeling exhilarated with pure emotion, and hopes to see more interactive worlds on par with Job Simulator.
Adi sees storytelling in interactive games is still of an open problem, and believes that VR has the potential to be an interesting interactive media that allows us to make art that is impossible without it. But that this may limit our imaginations to reaching the full potential of creating Matrix-like worlds that could change the way that we see reality. She’s looking forward to exploring virtual worlds, immersing herself in SOMA-like VR worlds, and making all of our wildest sci-fi dreams about VR come true.
You can follow Adi’s stories on the Verge, and be sure to check out her beginner guide to the HTC Vive Pre:
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Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
‘Evolution Pinball VR’ is the ’80s Style Pinball Showdown You Always Wanted as a Kid
Pinball machines are a dying breed, but Evolution Pinball VR: The Summoning aims to put you back in touch with the arcade classic with the help of virtual reality.
Karl Krantz on VR Startups, SVVRCon, and Time Dilation
Karl Krantz made a strategic move to California in order to start the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality meetup in May of 2013. One year later, he organized the first consumer VR conference with SVVRCon that had 400 people and 35 companies. SVVRCon 2015 had 1400 people and 100 companies, and Karl is expecting it to double once again for SVVRCon 2016 on April 27-29 with a projected attendance of 3000 people and 200 companies.
Oculus Founder: Rift Will Support Mac “If they ever release a [high performance] computer”
While Oculus had once supported the Rift on both Mac OSX and Linux with early builds of their SDK, it was back in early 2015 that they indefinitely “paused” support for those platforms. Now Oculus founder Palmer Luckey says that whether or not the Rift supports Mac is “up to Apple” and the performance of the computers they decide to release.
Hands-on: Meta 2 Could Do for Augmented Reality What Rift DK1 Did for Virtual Reality
The Meta 2 development kit, made available for pre-order by the company today, isn’t perfect. But then again neither was the Rift DK1, and it didn’t need to be. It only needed to be good enough that just a tiny bit of imagination is all that was needed for people to extrapolate and see what VR could be.
‘Meta 2’ AR Glasses Available to Pre-order, 1440p with 90 Degree FOV for $949
Meta have today opened up pre-orders for their ‘Meta 2’ augmented reality development kit glasses today and have revealed the specifications for the units as well as the price.
‘Budget Cuts’ and Physical Room-Scale VR Gameplay on HTC Vive
Budget Cuts is a first-person stealth game that’s one of the more fun and engaging room-scale HTC Vive experiences that I’ve played. You’re an aspiring spy trying to infiltrate a robot-protected building in order to approve your job application. Part of the intention behind this game was to push the limits of physical action that was incorporated into the game play with sneaking around, looking around corners, and peaking over obstacles. There’s also a very unique teleportation method where you can look through the lens of a Portal-like window that you can sweep around an area in order to preview your next teleportation destination. I had a chance to catch up with Neat Corporation’s Jenny Nordenborg and Joachim Holmér at Unity’s AR/VR Vision Summit to talk about their design goals with Budget Cuts, some of their favorite stories and reactions to the game, and some of their future plans. Budget Cuts is expected to be finished sometime later this year.
‘Playthings’ is a Wonderful World of Hamburger Drums and Hot Dog Xylophones
Before his death, acclaimed psychonaut and technologist Terrence McKenna once said that virtual reality “…is a technology that will allow us to show each other our dreams. We will be able to build structures in the imagination that we cannot now share with each other.” Playthings, a prototype interactive experience from Always & Forever Computer Entertainment, is like the wonderfully manic fever dream of a candy-fuelled pre-teen, and we need to see more.
15,000 HTC Vives Pre-Ordered in 10 Minutes, Now Backordered to May
The pre-order countdown for HTC Vive is over, but if you’re still on the fence on whether to get that shiny new VR headset, you’re still not too late to pick one up for May shipment.
‘Ninja Trainer’ on Vive is Like Kinect ‘Fruit Ninja’, Except it Actually Works (really well)
While Fruit Ninja was neat in concept, the performance limitations of the Kinect made it amount to little more than glorified flailing; the latency and lack of precision made you feel more like a parody than a ninja proper. Thankfully, the precision tracking of the latest VR systems is ready to bring out the real ninja inside.
Latest ‘Final Approach’ Trailer Shows New Gameplay and Mini-games
Phaser Lock Interactive’s title Final Approach, the RTS-style airport management mash up gets a new gameplay trailer showing off much more of what you’ll get up to, including a peek at mini games, fending off UFO invaders and micro-managing mini disasters.
McDonalds Introduce ‘Happy Goggles’, a Portion of VR with Your Happy Meal
In a move surely to reinforce the message that “VR has arrived”, McDonalds in Sweden are bundling Google Cardboard-esque VR googles with their Happy Meals, assembled from the packaging the food came in.
Alex McDowell on World Building in Storytelling
One of the most inspiring keynotes at Unity’s AR/VR Vision Summit was by Alex McDowell on world building and storytelling. Alex was production designer for Minority Report, Fight Club, & Lawnmower Man, and so he’s been creating imaginal worlds for many years. Alex argues that the process of building worlds can inform and inspire stories, and that storytelling is coming full circle from tribal oral traditions to singular viewpoints and now back to multiple perspectives with immersive experiences. He says that the more multi-disciplinary VR and VR gets over time, then the more rich and profound the experiences are going to become. I had a chance to catch up with Alex after his keynote to unpack some of his innovative world building narrative work that he’s been doing at 5D GlobalStudio and at USC with the
Leviathan Project.
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Here’s a video of Alex’s keynote at the Unity AR/VR Vision Summit:
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Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio
