Though people speak of the ‘metaverse’—a vast network of interconnected virtual worlds—as a far flung future concept, in reality we already have the underlying structure built and functioning on a massive scale; it’s called the internet and it connects billions of us together. The only thing holding the internet back from becoming the metaverse is a way to step inside of it. Mozilla, it turns out, is working on the solution.
With deliveries of the HTC Vive Developer Edition now arriving, Valve has released the ‘Setup guide pamphlet’ that’s included in the box. Filled with classic subtle humor from Valve, the pamphlet also confirms IPD and eye-relief adjustments on the HTC Vive headset, as well as several interesting tidbits about the system.
Arguably the games industry’s most important annual event, the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2015 begins in LA next week. As the final E3 before the retail release of three major virtual reality headsets from Oculus, Sony, and Valve/HTC, we take the opportunity to look back at the last three years of consumer VR.
Tilt Brush, the made-for-VR painting program that lets you create anything and everything with the stroke of a virtual brush, have announced “the world’s first VR painting exhibition” to take place June 12-13th, 2015 in San Francisco.
The first Vive Developer Edition headsets and controllers for SteamVR are arriving and Owlchemy Labs have been kind enough to provide us with high resolution shots of the system, including the new wireless Lighthouse tracked controllers.
Valve’s first ‘Vive’ Developer Edition VR headsets and controllers are now shipping and some lucky devs already have them. We take an early look inside the box.
The first class of Rothenberg Ventures’ ‘River’ VR accelerator have graduated. Thirteen companies, in which Rothenberg invested a combined $1.3 million, showed off their latest work at the company’s annual Founder Field Day event. Road to VR was on the scene to see what the companies had accomplished during the three month accelerator.
The 2015 AWE (Augmented World Expo) is around the corner and it’s set to feature over 200 companies that are blazing trails in the augmented and virtual reality industry. Better yet, Road to VR readers get 50% off the entrance fee.
There’s a coming tide of VR peripherals on the horizon, and haptic gloves represent a compact, and (relatively) cost-efficient solution among the multi-pronged challenge that is VR input.
Oculus today announced the winners of the Mobile VR Jam, a contest that saw some of the most innovative games and experiences targeted at the Gear VR platform.
Project Tango is Google’s computer vision initiative that seeks to equip consumer devices with consistent and useful environmental tracking capabilities. Google thinks that the platform could be useful for virtual and augmented reality too, and is encouraging developers to start experimenting by adding an AR/VR track to the Project Tango dev contest.
Oculus has revealed their second VR film project from Story Studio, the company’s internal CG film studio. The VR film is called Henry and is based on a lovable but folly-prone cartoon hedgehog.
Reload Studios, a VR development studio formed by former Call of Duty developers, has announced that they’ve received a $2 million investment from World Innovation Lab.
The latest public data point on the number of Google Cardboard viewers shipped shows tremendous growth for this inexpensive entry point into virtual reality.
