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.
Mozilla, the creators of the Firefox web browser, is a major advocate for the web platform and is fostering significant efforts to make sure that virtual reality is a ‘first-class citizen’ of the internet. With the launch of A-Frame, web developers can easily begin experimenting with VR directly on the web.
Bandai Namco Designer Michael Murray has dropped some fairly major hints that their forthcoming Tekken 7 will not feature a full, fighting ‘VR mode’ for the game proper when it ships next year supporting Sony’s PlayStation VR headset.
Oculus and UNINTERRUPTED have released a new 12+ minute short film directed by Felix & Paul, a 360 documentary following the NBA star in his training regime.
The Virtual Reality Company is a 360-degree video production studio in Hollywood that has Steven Spielberg as an advisor. I had a chance to catch up with Joshua Watson, Emily Cooper, & Chris Edwards at Oculus Connect 2 to get a sneak peak of some of their premiere storytelling experiences that they’re working on. They haven’t announced any specific projects yet, but they’re working on a pilot for a VR show as well as an immersive documentary. Some of the VRC founders come from a pre-visualization studio called Third Floor, Inc, and they created a immersive traveling attraction for The Marvel Experience which the VRC says these types of theme park attractions have a lot of similarities to creating a VR experience. The VRC seems to be really well positioned to provide a bridge between video game and film franchises and it’s worth keeping an eye on them as they’ve got a lot of connections within the industry.
