Epic Games’ Big Data VR Challenge has been underway since March and is coming to a close next week. With luck, the teams have created some entirely new ways of visualizing complex data sets in a VR space so that their hidden meanings can be easier understood.
Sad news greeted the VR attractions sector with the confirmation from the Orlando Sentinel that DisneyQuest, the famous Indoor Interactive Theme Park, would be closing its doors in 2016 for the final time. Originally opened in 1998, the Orlando, Downtown Disney virtual entertainment facility was to have been one of over twenty facilities planned; however, only a sister site would ever be opened in Chicago, and that would close just over a year from opening.
Daniël Ernst is the founder and sole member of The Shoebox Diorama, a production company dedicated to exploring the brand new artistic possibilities of a new genre, the virtual reality diorama.
Although Oculus has revealed the design of the consumer Oculus Rift (the so called ‘CV1’), there’s still some crucial facts that we’ve yet to learn about the highly anticipated VR headset.
A recent survey conducted by Touchstone Research, an online marketing research firm, suggests that kids and teens between the ages of 10–17 know what VR is, and when they see it in action they think it’s “off the charts cool.”
Just before nearly doubling their Kickstarter funding goal of $250,000, Fove introduced a new and improved design for their eye-tracking VR headset, making it lighter, smaller, and more ergonomic.
VR: The Movie is an in-depth documentary film that follows virtual reality from its mid-1900s past to the VR technology of today. The documentary features interviews with designers, scientists, engineers and several industry professionals to help illuminate virtual reality’s legacy.
Oculus and OTOY have today announced the winners of the second round for Render the Metaverse, a three-month long contest to find the most compelling 360-degree stereo-panoramic still images rendered by OTOY’s OctaneRender software.
We recently got our hands on the latest ‘Mark 6’ mobile VR headset prototype from GameFace Labs. The ‘Head Mounted Console’ as the company calls it, features a 2560×1440 OLED display and an on-board processor, making the device a self-contained mobile VR headset with a notably wider field of view than Samsung’s Gear VR. The company says their headset will be on par—or better—than Gear VR’s superb headtracking latency.
Shuhei Yoshida, President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, recently revealed that Sony won’t be producing or funding any first-party “non-gaming content” for Project Morpheus.
The second annual Proto Awards will be held on September 22nd alongside Oculus’ Connect developer conference. The award ceremony highlights the best in virtual reality content. Submissions for consideration close on July 15th.
OSVR’s Hacker Developer Kit (HDK) VR headset has started shipping units to early supporters. We take a peek at some potential future upgrades, including Wearality Sky 150 degree FoV lenses and an Android phone holder faceplate.
FlyInside FSX, a project that brings VR support to Microsoft Flight Simulator X (2006), has been successfully funded in its first week on Kickstarter with 23 days left in the campaign.
Although Oculus has sold more than 175,000 development kits, the vast majority of the world has still never had the opportunity to try the Rift VR headset, let alone any virtual reality headset. For a technology that frequently inspires notions of ‘you have to see it to understand it’, being able to try-before-you-buy will be a major hurdle for consumer adoption. In an effort to educate the public on what VR is all about, Oculus plans to put Rift demo stations in retail locations.
Magic Leap recently announced that Rio Caraeff, former president and CEO of Vevo, has assumed the role of the company’s Chief Content Officer. Like many recent hires at Magic Leap, the first order of business is usually to explode somehow.
