Having demonstrated their impressive eye-tracking and foveated rendering technology to us at CES last month on a modified Oculus Rift DK2, the company have now unveiled they’ve applied the same principals and technology to Samsung’s mobile VR headset, the Gear VR.
Three One Zero and 505 Games recently revealed that they’ll be ready to ship their space exploration and survival game, ADR1FT, which is being developed for VR and standard gaming platforms, will be ready to ship on March 28th alongside the Oculus Rift. This latest trailer reminds us of why we can’t wait that long.
WoofbertVR is an educational application that transports you to virtual museums where you can have an art tour complete with audio narration. It was co-founded by Elizabeth Reede, who used to be a curator of the Museum of Modern Art and has a lot of connections within the art world. I had a chance to catch up WoofbertVR developer Phillip Moses, who is the head of Reload Studios’ Rascali VR Lab. He talks some of the intentions behind this educational app as well as future plans to expand into multi-player functionality that would enable tour guides to give live art history lessons. We also talk about some of their locomotion approach, and the tradeoffs between the artistic decision to maintain a sense of presence versus minimizing motion sickness. WoofbertVR has a lot of ambitious plans for the future of education in VR, so much so that they count Kevin Spacey as a patron and investor in their project. It’s currently a free download available in the Gear VR store, and will be coming to desktops & consoles later this year.
Road to VR will be landing in sunny Barcelona, Spain for its very first Mobile World Congress (MWC) this year, bringing you all the latest news to come out of the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry—and quickly becoming a showcase for the latest AR and VR tech.
Samsung is keeping the lid shut on exactly why they featured the Gear VR in their ‘Unpacked’ teaser trailer, an event that promises to see the unveiling of the Galaxy S7. But if you’ve already got your hands on a Gear VR or a Google Cardboard viewer, you’ll be able to see the event streamed live on the eve of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) directly to your headset.
One of the most popular VR experiences at Sundance New Frontier this year was Across the Line, which is a piece that simulated what it feels like to walk through an abortion clinic protest line. It was produced by Nonny de la Peña’s Emblematic Group and 371 Productions. It contained a mixture of live-action, 360 video documentary along with a room-scale, CGI recreation of walking past protestors who are calling you everything from a “whore” to “wicked jezebel feminist.” It’s a visceral, emotional, and intense experience, and Molly Eagan was there to talk to people before and after they experienced it. She’s the Vice President of Planned Parenthood Experience, and I had a chance to catch up with her to talk about some of the reactions and how this project came about.
Cross-platform VR app store WEARVR has taken the wraps off of several new features including a self-submission system and storefront functionality for developers to sell their apps.
On stage at TED 2016, Vrse founder Chris Milk conducted what the company is calling “the largest simultaneous virtual reality experience in history.” Using a dedicated app and Cardboard VR viewers handed out at the session, 1,200 attendees peer into the virtual world together.
Kaleidoscope, the virtual reality and immersive film festival, is on the road again in 2016 – this time hitting 10 cities in 9 countries around the world to show case 30 VR works which demonstrate the power of the medium’s storytelling potential.
Oculus has announced an invite only event to coincide with GDC which promises a preview of the games new owners will be able to get their hands on after launch.
Acer has announced its plans to release a VR device in the first half of this year. While Acer is staying mum on the details, we could be seeing prototypes at next week’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.
This week Leap Motion released ‘Orion’ a brand new made-for-VR hand tracking engine which works with their existing devices. Time and again we’ve seen promo videos from the company showing great tracking performance but then found it to be less than ideal across the broad range of real-world conditions. Now, an independent video showing the Orion engine in action demonstrates Leap Motion’s impressive mastery of computer vision.
Robert Scoble is veteran tech journalist who has seen thousands of demos, but last Thursday he saw a demo of the Meta Two AR galsses and it blew his mind. So much so that he told me that his life can now be separated into the two categories of “life before the Meta demo” and “life after the Meta demo.’ Robert hinted to me that he’s going to be making some significant changes over the next couple of months to put more of his focus into covering what’s happening in AR and VR space, and he decided at the last minute to fly out to Unity’s AR/VR Vision Summit to network with attendees. So what was it about the Meta Two demo that was so mind blowing for him, even more so than his first experience with the Oculus Crescent Bay prototype? I caught up with him at the vision summit where he talked about the Meta demo where he could place TV screens around the room, talk to holograms, and use natural gestures to have interactions with virtual objects that made him feel like he was living in Tony Stark’s futuristic lab.
NextVR has been forging ahead with their plans to make immersive, live VR broadcasting a reality. Today, the company has announced a multi-year deal with FOX Sports to bring “virtual reality coverage of the nation’s top sporting events” to VR headsets.
Meta has remained relatively silent about the future of their hardware after raising a $23 million Series A early last year. But today at TED 2016 the company showed what they’ve been doing with the cash—crafting what appears to be a vastly improved next-generation AR headset.
