Crytek recently announced a new initiative that they’re calling VR First. The goal is form so-called ‘VR First Labs’ within academic institutions to act as ready-made centers for a wave of future VR developers.
Since publishing his popular DIY VR headset guide back in 2014, Austin “Ohaple” is back with his latest refinements to the project, allowing you use use your DIY headset (or an off-the-shelf viewer like Google Cardboard) to play PC games by streaming them to your smartphone.
David Bowman is Director of Production at Crytek, and he gave me the inside story of how VR went viral within Crytek to the point of having well over 50 developers and multiple triple AAA quality VR projects in development for the Sony PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive. He’s been doing game development for over 20 years now, and he’s never seen this much excitement internally about a new technology. There were developers who were willing to work for free on VR because they were so excited to help discover the new game mechanics and emotions that were only possible within VR. I caught up with David at the VRX conference where the told me about integrating VR into the CRYENGINE as well as Robinson: The Journey and their latest Back to Dinosaur Island 2 tech demo.
When it comes to the virtual reality industry today, the way people are looking at VR is very natural, but also very wrong. While we all incessantly talk and freak out about experiences like flying over the grand canyon in VR, it’s actually user-generated content in VR and new original voices that are set to emerge and lead the coming revolution.
Bespectacled Gear VR owners know the drill: smash into the headset for as long as your temples and poor nose can stand, and hope that you’re not crushing or scratching anything in the process. VR Lens Lab, a German-based crowdfunding project, wants to change that with their prescription lens holders that pop into the headset and let you go glasses-free.
I sit down with Valve Writer, Game Developer and seemingly omnipotent VR Evangelist Chet Faliszek to discuss the new Vive Pre, Valve’s focus on a safe VR experience, expectations for the upcoming VR content showcase and his startlingly sneaky cat.
UK theme park Thorpe Park has revealed that a virtual reality ghost train experience in development for some 3 years will finally open to the public this year, powered by the HTC Vive VR headset.
Jim Geduldick is the Professional Marketing Manager at GoPro, which includes all of the ways GoPro cameras are used within cinema, virtual reality, broadcast television & photography. Jim talks about how the history of spherical video at GoPro goes back to 2011, and how virtual reality provided a platform to actually watch these immersive videos. He also talks about GoPro’s Odyssey camera, which is created in collaboration with Google’s Jump camera platform. He alludes that Google is doing some highly advanced post-processing with the information from the 16 cameras, but wasn’t able to provide many more official details yet.
HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang may be considering spinning off the VR side of the business into a separate entity, causing stock prices in the Taiwanese company to rise sharply today.
It’s nothing short of amazing when you can take a tour of a town that doesn’t exist anymore, and Arnswalde VR takes you back to the once-West Pomeranian city to see just what it was like before the turbidity of WW2.
Michael Lenzi is the CEO & co-founder of Atomic VR, and they’ve spent the last couple of years experimenting with untethered VR experiences. They’ve created a backpack with custom hardware that can run a desktop GPU for up to an hour, and they’ve also created a Star Wars-inspired Lightsword Experience that can be played in a space up to 20 feet by 20 feet with a Vive. They’re currently not interested in mass producing their hardware solution, but are interested in enabling and developing eSports VR experiences that give you a more active workout.
Spellbound is a new made-for-VR game which uses Leap Motion and the Oculus Rift DK2 to allow your actual hands to perform some nifty spell-casting in the virtual world, amongst other things.
We went hands on with the new, real-time, VR experience inspired by the Ridley Scott movie ‘The Martian’ and found its mix of high production values, motion controllers combined with motion chairs seriously compelling.
Jamie Kelly is a co-founder and president of VR Studios & VRCade. They’re creating a series of out-of-home VR gaming experiences that can be played in spaces as small as 15’x15′ and as large as 150’x75′.
