The latest in a series of regular articles exploring virtual reality, Noah Nelson today ponders how the rise of VR film-making may be scuppered by traditionalist attitudes towards the medium and how VR’s power to promote human empathy might just not work for some or even many viewers.
CCP Games, the company behind the hugely successful ‘EVE’ franchise and early VR adopters with VR space combat shooter EVE:Valkyrie, have announced they’re to expand their efforts in VR development with the help of $30M in funding.
Motion sensing peripheral specialists Leap Motion’s second development event ‘3D Jam’ has had over 180 submissions for projects that fuse the Leap’s input capabilities with virtual reality. This entry ‘VRez’, inspired by classic Dreamcast shooter Rez, caught our eye as a nicely intuitive application of modern input techniques to a traditional gameplay mechanic.
Daniel “SvenViking” Fearon is a developer behind the Scorched Battalion turn-based artillery game, which won the Silver prize for the Oculus Mobile Game Jam. Daniel talks about some of the design principles between alternating between first and third-person perspectives, and the evolution of that project.
So, you’ve got the right Samsung phone and you’re sitting patiently for your new Gear VR—currently available for pre-order from Best Buy—which is bound to come any day now, right? There’s loads of fun virtual reality apps to download once you get it, but how are you going share your virtual experiences with the world?
VorpX, the drivers that lets you play your favourite games in virtual reality on the Oculus Rift, has just received an update that brings with it official preliminary support for the newly released Fallout 4.
In a world all too full of crowdfunding campaigns built on an idea and some rendered mockups, I was impressed to see LucidCam CEO Han Jin pull a polished and functional VR camera out of his pocket—even more so when I saw the quality of the imagery it could capture.
Specular Theory CMO Ryan Pulliam and founder Morris May talk about some of the 360-degree video experiences that they’ve produced over the last year including an edgy Sundance film called Perspective: The Party, which tells the story of a sexual assault from the point of view of the victim and perpetrator.
OTOY, one of the leading pioneers of digital light field rendering, has tweeted an intriguing snippet claiming they’ve managed to leverage Valve’s Lighthouse tracking to add positional tracking to Samsung’s mobile phone powered Gear VR headset.
The blocky architecture of Korix may look simple, but in this real time strategy-meets-tower defense, appearances can be deceiving. Warning: you may be overwhelmed with the sudden urge to flip over the virtual game board.
The AuraVisor is an untethered ‘all in one’ VR headset which strive to address issues with both mobile and desktop VR. The Kickstarter has just passed its £100,000 goal, and we went hands-on with an early prototype to see how it’s shaping up.
The stunning Gear VR adventure title from the creators of Monument Valley is now released and it remains one of the most stunning and intriguing VR titles to date. UK based developers Ustwo Games have celebrated the title’s arrival with a new trailer, and it reminds us why this game has generated so much attention and excitement.
Icelandic developer Sólfar Studios have announced that their quest to bring one of the world’s greatest natural wonders, Mount Everest, to virtual reality just got a significant boost. They’ve announced received over $2M in seed funding to bring their mountaineering expedition VR experience.
With the reveal of today’s pre-order for the first consumer Gear VR, Oculus has launched the beta version of Arcade, the company’s first-party title currently featuring 21 classic arcade games from Sega, Midway, and Bandai Namco. Oculus Arcade beta is available on all Gear VR units old and new.
