Design Your Dream Kitchen with the HTC Vive (video)
A result of the AEC Hackathon, Helsinki – this neat prototype application lets you don the HTC Vive virtual reality headset, pick up the SteamVR controllers and sculpt your own designer kitchen. A simple but neat user interface lets you select materials for walls, cupboards and even lighting and furniture. Yet another example of non-gaming applications that we can genuinely see being a boon to retail in the not too distant future. This is the work of Finnish developers Samuli Jääskeläinen, Taru Muhonen and Paavo Happonen.
Consumer Gear VR May be up for Pre-Order November 10th
Samsung’s mobile phone (and Oculus) powered Gear VR vr headset us to become available for pre-order in its first consumer form on November 10th according to a user who attended a recent Best Buy tech demo. The new $99, lighter model will replace the two previous ‘Innovator’ editions first launched at the end of last year
Virtual Tours of Real Estate Units with uForis VR
Dora Cheng is one of the co-founders of uForis VR, which is a VR company that is focused on creating pragmatic applications of virtual reality. One of their first big VR projects was to create virtual tours for the Domus Student Housing. They had to figure out a production pipeline that could operate at scale in order to capture thousands of photo spheres of apartment units within a 3-month period. Dora talks about all the production and post-production challenges that they had to solve that included processing, stitching, color correcting, and creating a VR application wrapper that’s viewable within the Gear VR.
A Look at Crowdfunding’s Role in the Virtual Reality Renaissance
Guest writer Sebastian Bos takes a historical look at virtual reality’s affinity and maturity has been symbiotic with the growth in popularity of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. Although, as Sebastian explores, it hasn’t always been plain sailing.
Review: ‘Dead Secret’ is one of the Early Great Successes in VR Thrillers
Relying on jumpscares in VR to make a game frightening is fundamentally lazy. There’s no finesse, no building terror that creeps inside you, just the looming possibility that a ghoul can flash in front of your face, thereby activating whatever squishy evolutionary mechanism that regulates fight or flight. Thankfully, the devs over at Robot Invader understand this in their new first-person mystery thriller Dead Secret, which seeps in much deeper than any garden variety jumpscare could.
SEA VR Returns as the Largest VR Event in the US Northwest
Michael Glombicki shares his thoughts on the recent SEA-VR virtual reality community event, held in Seattle last month, and ponders the future of the community scene as VR becomes a mainstream technology.
Oculus Connect 2 Developer Session Videos Now Online
Outside of the more visible publicity surrounding announcements at Oculus Connect 2 in September, the event is of course primarily a developer focused event, designed to bring creators up to speed with the latest in virtual reality techniques and technology. As such, this year all developer sessions and talks were filmed and Oculus has just released those videos online for those not lucky enough to attend the event.
Facebook Expects First Year VR Headset Shipments in Line with Early Smartphones, in the “Hundreds of Thousands”
During today’s Facebook Q3 2015 earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg set measured expectations for first year shipments of VR headsets.
Now Watch Any 3D 360 YouTube Video on Google Cardboard
YouTube today announced that on top of its support for monscopic 360 video that Google Cardboard owners will now be able to view stereoscopic 360-degree video as well any YouTube video in virtual reality just by toggling a built-in ‘theater mode’.
E McNeill on Designing the Real-Time Strategy VR Game Tactera
I had a chance to catch up with E McNeill at Oculus Connect about his design process for the Real-Time Strategy game called Tactera, which he developed for the Oculus Mobile Game Jam. He talks about some of the design constraints that he had by only having a single touch input, but he also wanted to simplify and streamline the gameplay mechanics in order to be better suited for virtual reality.
Lytro’s ‘Immerge’ 360 3D Light-field Pipeline is Poised to Redefine VR Video
Lytro have today revealed plans which take the company’s expertise in ‘still’ light-field photography into the realm of VR film. The company have developed a scalable end-to-end solution for shooting, processing, editing and rendering next-generation 360 footage that allows a viewer to move around the captured scene in real time.
First Glimpse of Linden Lab’s Next-gen Virtual World, Project Sansar
Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life (2003), has been cooking up their new VR-ready virtual world in stealth for some time now. The company has revealed two screenshots giving us the first glimpse of what that new world will look like.
WWE Goes 360 on Gear VR via Milk VR Platform
The entertainment industry seem to be slowly realising that the next generation of fans may well prefer immersive viewing options to consume their favourite sports. According to a press release, the WWE will now bring wrestling fans closer to the action with 2 videos launching on Samsung’s own 360 video portal Milk VR.
