Although the Oculus Touch ‘Half Moon’ motion controller prototype was revealed back in June, there’s not yet an openly available development kit like the Rift DK1 and DK2 to speak of. Like the Crescent Bay headset prototype (predecessor to the consumer Rift) however, select developers have their hands on Half Moon already.
Pollen, a first-person exploration VR game from Helsinki based Mindfield Games, is well on its way for its series of multi-headset launches soon too come, including Sony Morpheus, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift. We sat down to talk with CEO Ville Kivistö and Project Lead Olli Sinerma to learn more about it.
The Assembly is a morally ambiguous adventure game built from the ground up for virtual reality by nDreams. In this new gameplay video, Senior Designer Jackie Tetley walks you through some brand new footage whilst offering commentary on how the development team arrived at design choices and how VR differed from traditional game production.
The Assembly currently has no release date but is scheduled to ship to all major VR platforms. We’ve already gone hands on with the title at E3 on the Oculus Rift Crescent Bay and Road to VR’s Scott Hayden will be checking out the Morpheus demo at Gamescom this week. Stay tuned for more coverage of this title.
Gamescom 2015 has just started, a time when a sizeable portion of the European gaming community flocks to Cologne, Germany for a chance to get a glimpse at the newest that the videogame industry has to offer—which in our case means the latest virtual reality games and gear—and more specifically to me, getting to see the Oculus Touch controllers for the first time.
Oculus Cinema is a first-party VR application that recreates the experience of having your own personal cinema or leather chair adorned home theater. And while it’s great to feel like you’re sitting in front of a massive screen, what fun is it alone? Oculus understands that movie-going is not a solo activity and says that they’re building online multiplayer and social features into the app.
Mindfield Games, a Finland based games studio, have given Road to VR exclusive new footage showing pre-alpha gameplay of their soon-to-launch sci-fi themed exploration VR title, Pollen.
Although the company isn’t ready to release it as a commercial product just yet, Samsung is now soliciting the interest of content creators who might want to make use of their ‘Project Beyond’ VR camera.
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.
