Road to VR‘s Chris Madsen steps into new interstellar, subterranean 360 3D thriller for Gear VR, SONAR, and finds a bleakly beautiful immersive gem of a movie. This is the first movie from Filmacademy Baden-Württemberg and looks to be a great preview of things to come from the institution.
Sightline: The Chair is a virtual reality demo designed as a sort of showcase for the technology and one we’re a big fan of. Now, developer Tomáš ‘Frooxius’ Mariančík of has released the latest iteration and it’s packed with technical and creative updates you’ll want to see.
Looking for something fun to play in VR? We’ve got the top 10 downloads from the last week on the WEARVR app marketplace, a cross-platform repository of virtual reality experiences.
RGBverse is a constant roller platform arcade with beautiful 3d graphics, non-stop action and captivating music that will hook you within minutes and is bound to sharpen your reflexes.
You will encounter things like…
Colored energy platforms and rings
Robotic enemies coming after you
Various weapons shooting at you
Intense non-stop action
4 different game speed settings
Boss fight
9 story mode stages
30 thrilling challenge stages
Non-linear gameplay
So, what are you waiting for? Switch your color and JUMP!
“The challenge is real” – Softpedia review
Platforms: Oculus Rift DK1/DK2 (Windows)
Inspired by Taroko Gorge in Taiwan. Take a relaxing boat ride on calm waters through nature with this short VR tech demo.
Platforms: Oculus Rift DK1/DK2 (Windows)
This is Leeco Studio’s impressive first project on UE4 using 3ds Max, Marvelous Designer, Photoshop and Speedtree.
Platforms: Oculus Rift DK2 (Windows)
DinoTrek is a Virtual Reality immersive experience showing what it might have been like to live during the time of the dinosaurs! It is designed for Google Cardboard, by Geomedia, Inc. and HIVE VR.
Platforms: Oculus Rift DK1/DK2 (Windows/Mac)
Step right up and take a ride through the corridors of a haunted mansion. You can sit back and relax, but that’s easier said than done. It’s the haunted carnival ride you remember from your childhood, with a VR twist.
This is a short preview version, and you can experience the 1st part of the ride right now. More coming soon!
Platforms: Oculus Rift DK2 (Windows)
Follow the story of Null as he embarks on an epic adventure; In a retro VR experience previously only possible with the power of your imagination. A first-person “list and click” RPG with turn-based combat takes you back to one of yesteryear’s favorite genres; packed with all of the colorful pixels and raspy melodies of the time. Null of Hope is a full and vivid RPG experience which offers a wide variety of exciting environments, characters, monsters, items and skills. Watch your environment bend to the whims of the game, making you question where the game ends and the real world begins. Designed from concept for virtual reality, Null of Hope is poised to be the definitive retro VR experience, challenged only by the nostalgic memories of your past.
Platforms: Oculus Rift DK2 (Windows)
“The Hum:Abductions – VR Proof of Concept” is a VR experience created – by Totwise Studios – to share with you a first insight of their efforts creating The Hum:Abductions – the alien abduction horror game in which they are working. You will take the role of a man who will discover the terrible situation of his family, while beginning a journey to the unknown. This Proof of Concept is not intended to show actual gameplay features from the final game
Platforms: Oculus Rift DK2 (Windows)
Flying Aces VR is a flight sim/combat game set during World War 1. Take to the skies and experience the birth and rise of aerial combat during the Great War (1914-1918). Develop and test your piloting, gunning and bombing skills in structured missions, and lead your side to victory from above!
Platforms: Oculus Rift DK2 (Windows)
A beautiful demo from a small VR content company based in Israel. This was made for one of their clients to show the advantages of virtual reality real estate tours as a sales catalyst.
Platforms: Oculus Rift DK2 (Windows)
Did you wake up this morning with an urge to view all eight Starship Enterprise models in glorious virtual reality? We thought so….
This is just a fun little project thrown together by a Star Trek fan. Each of the ships is the correct size relative to one another, but their scale is set to 1:100.
See Also: Preview – ‘Enterprises’ a VR History of Star Trek’s Most Beloved Ship
Platforms: Rift DK2 (Windows)
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
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.
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”.
