It’s an argument I’ve heard time and time again from people who have never used VR. “You look so dumb with a headset on. No one wants to wear something on their head.” Then you give them a headset and they become an instant convert.
Researchers at Stanford University have unveiled a prototype VR Headset which they claim reduce the effects of VR sickness through the use of an innovative ‘stacked’ display which generates naturalistic light fields.
Virtual reality hardware has set something of a trend at trade show awards over the last few years. Oculus in particular have traditionally cleaned up in the ‘best hardware’ category at shows like CES for example. Now it seems to be the turn of HTC’s SteamVR powered VR Headset the ‘Vive’ as it receives a nomination for ‘Best Hardware’ at this year’s Gamescom awards.
Past winners and nominees include the Oculus Rift DK2 (winners in 2014), Sony’s Project Morpheus (nominated that same year) and the Cyberith Virtualizer VR treadmill. Oculus walked away with CES 2014’s overall ‘Best of CES’ award for it’s DK2 predecessor the Crystal Cove feature prototype.
You can find the rest of the show’s award nominees over at the Gamescom awards page here. HTC are at Gamescom demo’ing the Vive to attendees who were lucky enough to snag a slot during registration which opened a couple of weeks ago.
Road to VR are at Gamescom all week bringing you the latest news from the show floor.
Frontier Developments just announced a new expansion series called ‘Horizons’ bringing with it planetary exploration and a new loot system. Here’s a new teaser trailer to whet your appetite ahead of the expansion’s first instalment’s release – set for Christmas 2015.
Demonstrating the add-on’s ‘seamless’ space to atmospheric exploration system and, more importantly, gives us a (very brief) glimpse of the new Surface Recon Vehicle.
Frontier Developments, creators of intergalactic trading and combat title Elite Dangerous have today announced a series of expansion packs which will bring planetary landings and will offer new crafting an looting systems.
Pollen from Helsinki based developer Mindfield Games is an immensely promising ‘Oculus Rift Optimised’ story driven adventure set on Saturn moon Titan. The title is coming to Gamescom again this year and the studio has released this new screenshots ahead of the show.
At GDC Europe 2015, Autodesk has announced that their new Stingray game engine will launch worldwide on August 19th. The engine will support the Oculus Rift VR headset out of the box.
Gunjack is a quite gorgeous looking turret-shooter for Samsung’s Gear VR headset. The game is set in the EVE universe, that of developer CCP Games’ Eve Online. As an arcade-style shooter, players can collect powerups as they fend off waves of enemies. The game will launch with the consumer version of Samsung’s Gear VR which CCP affirms will come this fall.
August 14th kicks of the SHVR Vive Jam, a collaboration between HTC and the Shanghai VR Meetup to bring teams from across China for a weekend of rapid prototyping room-scale VR experiences for the SteamVR platform. Road to VR signs on as the official media sponsor of the SHVR Vive Jam and will be on-site to bring reports from the event in Shanghai.
The International Dota 2 Championships have returned to the KeyArena in Seattle this year to see twenty teams compete in front of crowds in excess of 15,000 people. Can’t make it in person? Why not pop into AltspaceVR and enjoy the action with your fellow VR nerds?
Kat Walk, a VR treadmill from China based company KatVR, can now add its name to the list of omnidirectional treadmills currently in pre-order, which includes the likes of Cyberith Virtualizer and Virtuix Omni.
The bullet time infused action game SUPERHOT has just released a beta version of the game to Kickstarter backers and a new video showing gameplay from the new release.
WEARVR and Road to VR are joining forces this month to bring you VR goodness from the WEARVR app marketplace, a cross-platform repository of virtual reality experiences. This video gives a glimpse of the top 10 most popular experiences from the last week.
Which is your favorite?
Interested in listing your app on WEARVR? The company encourages you to reach out to info@wearvr.com. In the next few weeks they’ll allow developers to manage their own listings and upload files directly.
A developer at Facepunch Studios, the team behind Garry’s Mod, has whipped up a Minecraft VR prototype for the HTC Vive. Thanks to natural input devices like the SteamVR controllers, interaction and manipulation will be beyond anything gamers have seen before, completely redefining building games as we know them.
Want to step inside the HTC Vive and SteamVR? HTC continues their ‘Vive World Tour’, hauling the headset around the US and beyond to give folks a chance to try out the new headset. The tour makes five stops in August.
