Almost none of the predictions I made during my 2014 year-end podcast were correct. In fact, If you listen to that podcast now, most of the comments I make could technically be made again right now and still be relevant. Despite the fact that 2015 wasn’t the breakthrough year for VR that we wanted, I still felt the need to do a quick summary and make some final observations.
After revealing the Touch ‘Half Moon’ prototype earlier in 2015, Oculus has continued to hone the already impressively designed VR controller. Alongside an update stating that Touch would be shipped in the second half of 2016, the company also released a new photo of the latest design.
Oculus has announced that their ‘Touch’ VR controllers will be released in the second half of 2016. Previously the company had expected the Oculus Touch release date to come in the first half of the New Year.
We covered the news today that Samsung will be debuting a new motion controller designed specifically for virtual reality and it’s Gear VR headset at CES next week. Now, some new images have surfaced of the devices which give us a better look.
A UK based company company who has integrated EMS (Electro Muscular Stimulation) into a wireless suit, they claim is capable of allowing you to feel sensations ranging from a cool breeze to the impact of a bullet.
The Samsung and Oculus engineered Gear VR mobile headset is available in many countries now at retail, but unlike it’s desktop brethren from Oculus and Valve / HTC, it currently relies on basic, standard input for its applications. Samsung look to be changing that in 2016, as they prepare to demo a new motion controller designed for more intuitive control in virtual reality. It’s called Rink, and it’ll be shown at CES next week.
As one of the necessary steps for getting a product ready for consumer sale in the U.S., the HTC Vive and its laser-based ‘Lighthouse’ base stations have received approval from the FCC.
Trond Nilsen studied with Tom Furness at The University of Washington and currently works with him the RATLab LLC. He has a Ph.D. from University of Washington, which focused on building educational games that teach human anatomy. He moderated a couple of panels at the Seattle Virtual Reality Expo focusing on education in VR as well as medicine in VR. He talks about the experts featured on each panel as well as the some of the most memorable insights. There is a lot of huge potential for education and VR, as well as a lot of difficult challenges for navigating the privacy and regulatory controls that healthcare VR applications will be facing. Trond also talks about the VR Hackathons, the Virtual World Society, and his passion of world building in VR.
The organisers of the Open Source Virtual Reality movement (OSVR) have today announced that their supporter list has grown to 300, with the recent addition of 70 new companies and groups interested in developing for Open Source VR.
Oculus have just announced that Playful Corp’s 3D made-for-VR platformer Lucky’s Take will be packed in fot free inside every Oculus Rift consumer box at launch. As if that wasn’t enough good news for you, here’s a brand new trailer to whet your appetite for the Rift’s arrival in Q1 2016.
See Also: Playful’s Lucky’s Tale to be Bundled with Every Oculus Rift
Oculus have today announced that Playful’s virtual reality platformer, Lucky’s Tale, will join CCP Games’ EVE:Valkyrie inside the box of every new Oculus Rift VR headset shipped at launch.
Unreal Engine 4 has been at the forefront of virtual reality (VR) for some time now, but this new augmented reality plugin allows developers to take real world imagery and overlay virtual imagery onto it, as this new video demonstrates.
One of Google’s most iconic, if perhaps elusive projects – Google Glass, has received an update. This is the new, foldable, Google Glass, designed for the workplace.
Damon Hernandez has been an interactive 3D developer for the past 15 years, and he’s interested in developing VR applications that solve real world problems within the construction industry. He’s interested in using the web as a distribution platform using open standards because he sees that this will be the most sustainable and robust distribution platform in the long-run. I had a chance to catch up with Damon at the Seattle VR Expo where he gave me a quick tour through the open standards landscape for VR.
A new type of haptic sonar glove developed by Ph.D. candidates Aisen Carolina Chacin and Takeshi Ozu of the Empowerment Informatics program at Tsukuba University in Japan, lets the user “feel” underwater object using a mix of SONAR echolocation and ingenious water jets for feedback.
