Facebook has today announced an update to the social network’s News Feed which will now include support for 360 video. Revealed back in March during Facebook’s F8 developer’s conference, the company has lined up a number of premium content providers to ‘chum the 360 waters’ so to speak.
At the IEEE VR conference this year, there was the first-ever workshop on Virtual and Augmented Reality for Molecular Science (VARMS). Molecular science is one branch of science where virtual reality has a lot of applications, and Logan Herche from the University of the Pacific talks about his presentation about “Visual Similarity Analysis of Atmospheric Nucleation Data using Virtual Reality.”
The 2015 Proto Awards are over for another year, and as attendees awake from their after-party hangovers, footage from the event is emerging. One of the biggest highlight this year was the surprise appearance of Ivan Sutherland who accepted a ‘Special Founders Award’. Sutherland is regarded as a virtual reality legend primarily for his work as inventor of one of the first ever VR headsets, the Sword of Damocles.
Ixian Gate is a unique, psychedelic virtual reality experience formed from a collaboration between artist Jess Johnson, Music Video director Simon Ward and VFX artist Kenny Smith, based on Johnson’s dazzlingly bizarre creations. The results of this unlikely pairing is teased in this beguiling trailer and forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition.
This latest promo video from HTC, highlights the enthusiasm the featured developers have for the Vive’s SteamVR powered “room-scale VR”. SteamVR developers Cloudhead Games (The Gallery: Call of the Starseed), Owlchemy Labs (Job Simulator), Phaser Lock Ineractive (Final Approach) and Northway Games (Fantastic Contraption).
The HTC Vive is first VR headset to launch for the SteamVR platform and should ship in limited number by the end of year with a full release Q1 2016.
Starbreeze, an “independent creator, publisher and distributor of high quality entertainment products” has announced that its StarVR headset will receive eye-tracking support as the result of a partnership between specialist in the field, Tobii.
With Oculus’ annual Connect developer conference now less than 24 hours away, the VR community at large is saturated with excited speculation about what might be revealed. One thing we won’t be seeing at the event, says Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, is positional tracking on Samsung’s Gear VR headset.
In a move seemingly designed to diffuse mounting expectations of VR enthusiasts everywhere on the eve of Oculus’ Connect developer conference, Palmer has quelled any hopes of Oculus Rift CV1 pre-order at the show. However, seems like we may still be in for a few exciting surprises.
Oculus’ 2nd developer conference ‘Connect’ is almost here, starting on the 22nd September running for three days. For this year’s event, Road to VR are taking to the social virtual reality social platform AltspaceVR to bring you the chance to enjoy a daily virtual reality recap of everything that happened during the event, hosted by our very own Executive Editor, Ben Lang.
Himanshu Chaturvedi wanted to investigate the impact of the uncanny valley within training simulations that include interactions with virtual humans. The specific training scenario was a simulation for nurses to help them identify the signs of rapid deterioration. They investigated different avatar styles that ranged from realistic to stylized to black and white sketches. They did find that the stylized and sketches were more effective in demonstrating the signs of rapid deterioration.
Late Night Shop is a first person ‘mannequin evader’ built by Plymouth, England based studio Total Monkery. The game, which is currently in pre-alpha, is excruciatingly close to a personal nightmare of store mannequins come to life.
The virtual theater in Convrge, a VR social platform known for their characteristic low-poly style, is holding another communal livestream viewing, this time featuring the Oculus Connect 2 keynote adresses.
We’ve already seen a fair few fan-made virtual reality recreations of popular sci-fi franchise, but this latest recreation of Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s Enterprise-D starship will redefine your expectations from future efforts.
