Black Friday Deal: Free Shipping on Samsung Gear VR
Samsung’s Gear VR headset is shaping up to be a hot holiday item… if you can get your hands on one.
Black FridayDeal : $1 Samsung Gear VR Phones or $250 Best Buy Gift Card
With Samsung’s consumer Gear VR headset now up for sale, folks looking for compatible phones this holiday season should keep their eyes peeled for holiday deals. For Black Friday, Best Buy is offering cash back in the form of a gift card for Gear VR phones or deep discounts if you’re buying on-contract.
Improving E-Commerce Conversions with 3D Models of Products with Prizmiq
Darrick Morrison is a the founder and CEO of Prizmiq, which is working as e-commerce tools to scan products with photogrammetry techniques, and then embed them within a shopping cart experience. Darrick comes from an ecommerce background, and he has found that seeing a 3D rendered product has been able to increase conversions and reduce returns. He sees that virtual reality has a huge potential to disrupt a lot of the brick and mortar retail stores by being able to better replicate the proportion and scale of products within a virtual reality experience. He also foresees that augmented reality experiences will start to be a much bigger part of adding a layer of marketing experience, but providing purely digital fashion items. He sees that VR and AR has the potential to unlock the creative potentials of our imagination, and has a visionary perspective for how VR and AR could help our culture mature as we’re heading towards a potential transhumanist singularity.
Virtuix Omni Walks the Wasteland in Fallout 4, Powered by VorpX
The Virtuix Omni is well on its way to being the first consumer-facing VR treadmill to hit the market, with the first shipments set to go out in next month. In the mean time, Virtuix is keeping the hype alive with a new video demonstrating its use with Fallout 4 in VR, using the VR injection driver VorpX.
John Carmack Casts Critical Eye Over Gear VR Title ‘Bazaar’
John Carmack takes up his role as VR educator once again as he takes a technical deep dive into new Gear VR title Bazaar and analyses, ruminates on and illuminates where the developer could make changes to improve their design and technology approach.
Elite:Dangerous Horizons 1.5 Beta Brings HTC Vive Support
Elite:Dangerous is evolving and the first in a series of expansions, named Horizons, will be available on November 30th – bringing with it a host of new features. One exciting addition is the first inclusion of official HTC Vive / SteamVR support in the upcoming beta release, the development team have revealed.
Sixense Reveals 3 New STEM VR Controller Demo Videos
Sixense’s wireless motion controller system STEM and its protracted development process seems finally to be nearing an end. To that end, the company have released 3 new videos of demo games early adopters will receive along with their hardware.
VRGO Passes Kickstarter Goal, Announces Stretch Goal and Referral Program
VRGO, the wireless motion controller using inertial input that you sit on, has passed it’s £20,000 Kickstarter goal and has announced a stretch goal to provide a customised version of the chair.
Elite:Dangerous Gets Big Black Friday Discount
One of the finest virtual reality experiences around has just got a whole lot cheaper as Frontier Developments joins the holiday sale madness and slashes the price of it’s space epic Elite:Dangerous by 67% to just £9.99 ($15).
Using Psychedelics and Virtual Reality for Self-Discovery
Matthew Terndrup is a virtual reality journalist and content creator who’s interested in exploring how the combination of psychedelics & virtual reality can help the process of self-discovery. Matt traces the influence that psychedelics have had in helping to shape key technological innovators including the inventor of the mouse Douglas Engelbart as well as Steve Jobs. Matt has been investigating the history of VR and psychedelics, and has found that there are indeed some interesting connections. He talks about some of the VR experiments by psychonauts Terrence McKenna and Timothy Leary, as well as some of the potentials for using psychedelics for creative inspiration and the amplification of psychedelic experiences.
Psytec Games and Windlands Team Join Forces
Two up-and-coming VR development teams behind two extremely promising made-for-VR games have relvealed they are to team up. Psytec Games, makers of Crystal Rift, has announced that the duo behind Windlands, a first person VR grappling hook action title, are to join the company.
7 Great Gear VR Experiences to Introduce Your Family to Virtual Reality Over Thanksgiving
If you’ve gotten a hold of a Gear VR recently, then you’ve probably already downloaded near everything in the store on your visual buffet through the first consumer-ready virtual reality headset. If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving with a family get-together, the right set of apps and a few hard-won tactics will let you show everyone why you’ve gone crazy for VR—and why they should too.
Exploring Research into the Virtual Body Ownership Illusion
Domna Banakou is a Ph.D. student studying with Mel Slater at the Event Lab in Barcelona, Spain. She’s been researching different aspects of the virtual body ownership illusion in order to investigate the short-term and long-term impacts of embodying virtual avatars which have different qualities than your physical body. Specifically, she found that embodying the avatar with childlike proportions can result in an overestimation of the sizes of virtual objects. She also has found that it’s possible to create the illusion of attributing things that appear to be coming from your avatar, but that you hadn’t actually said. There are a number of potential implications for how the virtual body ownership illusion through VR can alter our sense of self and identity, and Mel Slater’s Event Lab is on the forefront of investigating these questions.
Rev VR Podcast (Ep. 113): Thanksgiving and VR with Boaz Ashkenazy
Most of my regular listeners know that I have recently taken a job in the architectural visualization world. I have moved to Seattle to work for a company called Studio 216, and am very thankful for the opportunities provided to me. In this Thanksgiving episode, I talk to my boss, Boaz Ashkenazy, about how Studio 216 is using VR to lead the arch vis world into the future.
