Oculus Announces Connect 2 Schedule, 3 Days Full of VR Knowledge-building
Review: ‘InCell’ is a VR Racer That Puts You Inside the Microscopic World of a Cell
InCell is VR racing game that shrinks you down to play among the micro structures of a human cell. Visuals, gameplay, and the feel of the game are all on point, but some of the educational material seems a little whitewashed by the amount of focus put on game mechanics.
Elite: Dangerous ‘Close Quarters Combat’ Beta Released, VR Gameplay Footage Emerges
Elite: Dangerous has been a benchmark virtual reality application for a while now, but for those who love space combat and find the remaining gameplay mechanics of E:D a little laborious, a new, free expansion pack may well provide the action packed fix they require.
Designing Cross-platform Controls and VR Locomotion for the First-person Adventure Game Pollen
Pollen is a first-person exploration game set in space by Helsinki-based Mindfield Games. I had a chance to catch up with Project Lead Olli Sinerma at PAX Prime to talk about the story behind the game as well as some of the lessons learned from working on Pollen for the past two years.
New OSVR HDK v1.3 Headset Gets 120Hz OLED Display, New Optics – Ships in October
OSVR, the open source virtual reality project founded by Razer and Sensics, today announced the latest version of their HDK (Hacker Development Kit) VR Headset. The v1.3 version of the open source headset includes an improved display and optics.
OSVR Gets NVIDIA ‘Gameworks VR’ Support, Adds 65 New Industry Collaborators
The OSVR project is celebrating the addition of a further 65 companies in support of their initiative, among them GPU technology giant NVIDIA, adding a low latency, driver optimised ‘Direct Mode’ to the list of OSVR’s features.
How VR Productivity Apps Could Make Us As Smart As Sherlock
In the first of a new regular series of reports, Noah looks at how virtual reality could use fictional ideas like Sherlock Holmes’ ‘mind palace’ as inspiration for new productivity applications, helping us all to function at a higher level.
Oculus Story Studio Talks Tooling, Using “out-of-the-box tools as much as possible”
Oculus Story Studio, the company’s in-house content creation studio that has produced a number of highly polished experiences, recently released a surprising ‘tell all’ blog post detailing just what sort of tools the team of VR content creators use.
Designing the 6DOF Controller Gameplay for Final Approach
John Nagle is the CTO at Phaser Lock Interactive, who is developing a Vive game called Final Approach. The gameplay of Final Approach involves selecting miniature planes flying through the air and then drawing landing paths in 3D space with a 6DOF controller. It’s sort of an arcade-style air traffic controller game where you’re an invisible giant helping planes and helicopters land and take off. But then you can shrink down to normal scale and help to put out fires and clear the sea gulls from the runway.
Valve Confirms ‘Aperture Science’ VR Demo is Not HTC Vive Exclusive
In a tweet by Valve writer Chet Faliszek, he has confirmed that the brilliant Aperture Science demo used in Valve’s press and public displays of SteamVR hardware at various shows, will not be exclusive to the HTC Vive and will in fact work on “All OpenVR compatible HMDs with tracked controllers”.
Owlchemy Labs Shows Off New Convenience Store Level in ‘Job Simulator’
Owlchemy Labs’s Job Simulator has become a staple demo in the HTC Vive demo reel thanks to its fun and intuitive room-scale interactions with everyday kitchen items. The studio has just revealed a teaser of another job that will have players employed in a convenience store.
Epic Games Releases ‘Showdown’ UE4 VR Demo, Compatible with Rift, Vive, and Morpheus
Epic Games has shown the world some of the most visually stunning VR experiences to date, and today, one of them (Showdown) is being released for free as a UE4 VR sample for developers to learn from.
Pantomime’s ‘Playground’ iOS App Lets You Reach in to Virtual Worlds with an iPad
Pantomime, the company founded by VPL-alumni David Levitt and Sims-developer Don Hopkins, released its Playground app for iOS today. Pantomime describes the app as a “Consumer Immersive 3D Platform” that does not require a headset—think a radically mobile VR display that can be paddled like a Nintendo Wii controller—but with greater precision.
