A UK firm is making a bid for the untethered virtual reality headset space with a new headset called AuraVisor, a self-contained immersive device which packs processing power and display into one headset. The device hit Kickstarter on Monday and has already passed 50% of its £100,000 funding goal in around 24 hours.
Opaque Media Group, a Melbourne-based VR studio, recently announced Earthlight, an upcoming first-person space simulator that places you in the flight suit of a current day astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
While the latest generation of haptic feedback in controllers has come a long way since the days of N64’s ‘Rumble Pak’ add-on, it’s fundamentally based on the same principle: rumble. Whether it’s the ERM motors of days passed, or linear actuators thought to be used in next-gen VR devices like Oculus Touch and Vive controllers, rumble will only take you so far, but not far enough.
7 Nanocycles is a demo made by Sweden-based indie developer Nicklas Nygren (aka ‘Nifflas’), and is a deceptively addictive game concept that lobs you in your tiny spaceship through a world of floating geometric shapes.
As we reported recently, Paramount Pictures are currently rolling out demo booths to 15 AMC theaters across the US to demonstrate a snippet of the forthcoming virtual reality horror experience based on the Paranormal Activity horror franchise. Frank He attended an event near him for Road to VR and captured this reaction from an in-booth night-vision camera, recording one of the attendees freaking out during the HTC Vive powered experience. Her reactions are hilarious, but are also a great endorsement of the power virtual reality holds to terrify us completely.
If you’re looking to get your hands on an new Oculus Rift DK2, you should start trawling the online auctions for a mint-in-the-box headset, because the company’s latest and final developer kit is now sold out.
There are many out there who dream of going to space, but far fewer willing to take the risks involved to experience it for real. Earthlight is a multi-platform VR experience which aims to simulate the experience of an astronaut, heading to a headset near you in Q1 2016 from Australian developers Opaque Media Group. Check out this new 360 trailer and this collection of new screenshots.
I recently attended VR Launchpad 2015, a one day event where VR startups had a chance to pitch their ideas to investors and the community. The event was presented by SVVR and Road to VR and held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. As usual, several well-known VR personalities attended, and I took the opportunity to catch up with my good friend and fellow podcaster, Cris Miranda.
Hao Li is an assistant professor at USC who has been collaborating with Oculus Research on facial tracking while wearing a virtual reality headset. The group’s initial prototype and research paper “Facial Performance Sensing Head-Mounted Display” was presented at SIGGRAPH 2015.
WebVR is not a new thing — people have been talking about using WebGL to render interactive 3D graphics in the browser for over half a decade, in various different implementations. What is new, however, is the availability of open source libraries that even novice developers can use to build VR experiences in very little time. Even just 24 months ago, this would have been difficult to state. But the hard work of a few dedicated enthusiasts (Josh Carpenter, Brandon Jones, Vlad Vukićević, Tony Parisi, and Boris Smus just to mention a few) has opened up a world of new content for the web.
VFX specialists MPC have collaborated with Sony Pictures on building a virtual reality experience to promote the box office hit horror comedy film Goosebumps, as well as handling visual effects for the movie itself.
As reported previously, the virtual reality injection driver that lets you play your favourite games in virtual reality is now released. This update bring with it a host of technical enhancements, and a selection of newly supported games such as The Witcher 3, Mortal Kombat X and Star Wars classics Jedi Knight II and Knights of the Old Rebublic.
We’ve been tracking Playful since E3 2014, when the developer behind virtual reality platformer Lucky’s Tale blew away the pre-conception that VR was reserved only for first person games. Now, the developer is to receive $25M to accelerate the game’s development.
Mary Spio is the president and founder of Next Galaxy, and she’s working on a number of different VR experiences including music videos, medical training, and enterprise applications. They’re also developing the Ceekars 4D Headphones in order to increase the immersion from audio. They’ve included haptic feedback on the ears and band of the headphones in order to do things like amplify the feeling of wind blowing or a passing train. Mary loves going to concerts, and so she’s channelling her passion for music into the virtual reality experiences that she’d like to have. Next Galaxy is working with some heavy metal bands and talks more about how she sees that VR could help increase the engagement and distribution of music for bands who adopt the technology.
