When I was initially surveying the 17 Morpheus VR titles that Sony was showing at E3 2015, I came across one with a logo that was printed so small on the booth’s placard that I could hardly read it. I was about to pass it by when I saw a familiar symbol—a multicolored ‘P’—appear on the monitor below the placard. My heart skipped a beat as my brain recalled its meaning.
Somewhere in the deep of space a starship docks with a derelict science station in search of its long forgotten loot. A contract brought you there, but your employer didn’t specify the contents, or why it was abandoned in the first place. The space station is called Roulette.
Although Sony is working on engaging single-player experiences for Morpheus, their console-based VR solution is uniquely positioned for couch-based party gaming where local players interact with a player using the headset. Their new demo, The Playroom VR, does just this, shown off for the first time at E3 2015.
Salvaged is a tactical-action game for the Oculus Rift that divides your attention between command consoles and a team of 4 space marines that you must guide through the Aliens (1986) inspired sci-fi universe.
Much praise has been lavished on Valve’s ‘room-scale’-capable Lighthouse tracking system, which affords users an impressively large tracking volume for virtual reality interaction. Not to be outdone, Oculus demonstrated to us at E3 2015 that their own tracking technology is capable of a similarly sized tracking area, and says that they aren’t emphasizing room-scale VR because of feasibility constraints, not technical ones.
NextVR and FOX Sports have recently partnered to bring live streaming VR to the 2015 U.S. Open golf tournament. Live VR broadcasts of the event were available onsite and across select North American cities via Gear VR headsets.
Getty Images, the stock image company known for its vast archive of copyrighted photos, is now publishing some of their spherical content on the Gear VR ‘360 Photos’ app, with the promise of future access on the new Oculus Rift set to release Q1 2016.
IC Real Tech, a Florida based company specializing in surveillance cameras, has recently announced a successful investment round closing out at $15 million. Investment funds will go to continue development on the company’s pro-level IC720 camera and the consumer-level ALLie 360 x 360, devices featuring dual-sensor system for spherical video capture.
Crytek have announced the launch of the latest iteration of their CryEngine game engine. The big news is, it finally includes native support for the Oculus Rift VR headset.
AMD recently unveiled a supercharged, small form factor PC at E3 this week, a futuristic-looking gaming rig that promises to easily deliver the 90 FPS required by VR headsets like the new Oculus Rift. They’re calling it ‘Project Quantum’, and is said could come to market “in the not-too-distant future.”
First Life is a VR documentary hosted by the widely influential Sir David Attenborough, best known for his 9 part Life series beginning back in 1979, the latest of which came out in 2008. The VR experience is showing now on Gear VR headsets at the National History Museum in London.
