Sony is no stranger to virtual reality, having a long history of exploring the technology throughout the years. Sony’s ‘Magic Lab’ Director, Richard Marks, tells me about the company’s history with VR and the development of PlayStation VR.
Convrge, the social VR platform known for ease of use and low poly style, is officially opening their Gear VR beta on Saturday, Dec 19. To add to the news, the team behind Convrge has also revealed that they have recently taken part in a fellowship program run by Y Combinator, one of the most prestigious incubators in the world.
Mozilla today released A-Frame, an open source library for creating virtual reality web experiences without having to know the powerful (but complex) WebGL. Designed for web developers, A-Frame aims to make it easy to create high-performance and responsive virtual reality experiences that run right out of your browser.
James McCrae wants to lower the barrier to entry for creating virtual worlds with janusVR. He has a PhD in computer science from University of Toronto, and he’s created a sophisticated technology stack that allows front-end web developers to rapidly prototype interactive virtual worlds using a simple HTML-like markup language. These worlds are connected to each other through portals and provide an early look at what the metaverse might feel and look like.
Casino VR is an online multiplayer casino, currently hosting Texas hold’em poker games in a social VR environment. Created by a San Francisco based team, the free online casino is gearing up to not only offer more social casino games, but also a cross-compatible environment that will host Oculus Rift DK2 user and Gear VR users in the same space.
Star Citizen, a hugely ambitious space epic, one of the first crowdfunding success stories to also pledge virtual reality support, has just launched its Alpha 2.0 release. Not only that, their total funding pot has now reached an astonishing $100M.
AltspaceVR, the social VR platform, has always had a unique visual approach to presenting your digital self in a virtual space, but it may not have been to everyone’s tastes. Now, the company has introduced for familiar looking avatars to express yourself with.
Elite: Dangerous evolves today as the virtual reality supporting space epic gets its first expansion pack Horizons, which brings planetary landings at the start of Frontier’s ‘Season Two’ of expansion packs which will extend into next year. Oh yeah, there’s an awesome trailer which goes along with it.
Crytek just announced its new virtual reality rock climbing game The Climb, coming exclusively to the Oculus Rift platform next year. We sat down with Crytek and Oculus to discuss the new title.
Crytek is widely known for best-selling titles like Crysis and the Far Cry series, but today they’re announcing an exciting new VR-exclusive game called The Climb. When coupled with previously-announced VR games Robinson: The Journey and Dinosaur Island, it shows that Crytek is serious about virtual reality, and is devoting significant resources into developing for this emerging technology.
Classic PC first person RPG horror title System Shock is getting a sequel, and the developer is actively gauging interest in virtual reality as development of the sequel, System Shock 3, gets under way.
This week, the HTC Vive tour, bringing the SteamVR based VR headset to people around the world, makes a stop in Taipei, Taiwan with the expected suite of VR experiences in tow. Just one thing was different, seems the Vive picked up some new branding.
Over the weekend, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey “Threw Oculus Sensors in opposing corners of this room for the hell of it,” replicating a ‘room-scale’ VR setup like the HTC Vive. The result? “Works fine,” he says.
While NASA has a long history of sending probes and rovers into space, advancements in robotics has made deployment of human-like robots an increasingly attractive prospect. But it turns out that controlling such humanoid robots remotely is challenging. NASA and Sony have been collaborating to explore how VR might be used to train operators to control robots in space.
