Having revealed SteamVR and the Vive VR headset just six months ago, Valve and HTC set an aggressive consumer release date of Q4 2015. This would make the companies first-to-market over major competitors. Now, however, Valve is dialing back expectations for the HTC Vive release date, saying that most of the headsets will go out in Q1 2016.
While the HTC Vive’s room-scale VR experience is one of the best available today, the device itself still needs to undergo a significant metamorphosis from development kit to consumer-ready product. Details about exactly what changes we’ll see in the consumer device have been slim but we’ve gleaned new info from HTC.
Fantastic Contraption, the free 2008 building game that challenged players to use a variety of tools to get their contraptions from point A to point B, is receiving a 3D makeover for virtual reality on the HTC Vive.
Two Bit Circus VR, an experiential entertainment company based in LA, has developed a system to sync 360 VR video experiences across ‘limitless’ local Gear VR users to help create a truly shared VR experience.
Null of Hope, a retro first-person adventure RPG produced by Wade Arcade, gives a new twist to the genre and puts you in the game like never before. A ‘list and click’ variant of the popular ‘point and click’ games of the ’80s and ’90s, Null of Hope faithfully reproduces the vibe with period art and music.
We wrote yesterday how Texas based code-house Phaser Lock Interactive was to debut their new VR airport management title Final Approach at PAX Prime in Seattle from Friday. Well, feast your eyes on the very first trailer to accompany the game’s debut at the show.
Phaser Lock Interactive, a developer formed from veteran coders from the games industry, are to bring their SteamVR HTC Vive launch title Final Approach to PAX Prime in Seattle this weekend. The team will have HTC Vive hardware at the show to show off the game.
Resolution Games, a company formed from mobile development veterans, has announced it’s to receive $6 million in funding from Google’s investment arm to make VR games everyone can play.
Virtual reality is probably doing something right if people are poking fun at it and in a new skit from the Jimmy Kimmel Live talk show, Facebook’s relationship with Oculus and that social network’s possible VR future is mercilessly ribbed by the show’s host.
Lightning Rock is a small development company based in Australia who are working on a retro inspired action puzzler called Marble Mountain who’s Steam Greenlight campaign is currently doing rather well.
HTC Vive title Hover Junkers creators StressLevelZero felt that their house pet Bandit was missing out on all the room-scale VR goodness enjoyed by the rest of the clan, so they rigged up a controller and put him in VR.
KartKraft, a go-kart sim created by Melbourne based games studio Black Delta, revealed VR-compatibility at Gamescom 2015 for their upcoming title. I had a chance to hop into their 6-degree-of-freedom hexapod motion simulator to race along a laser-scanned, virtual version of Geelong Karting Club in Melbourne, Australia.
Kat Walk, the newest addition to the lineup of VR treadmills, has raised a total of $149,278, putting them well over their initial $100,000 Kickstarter funding goal. KatVR, the China based company behind the VR locomotion device, have announced that non-Kickstarter pre-orders for the device will be coming soon.
