Retinad, a company working to bring immersive advertising and analytics to virtual reality, has just closed a $500,000 early-stage round to bring their solution to market. Avoiding the worst case banner-in-your-face approach, the company is jumping feet first into VR, bringing immersive (but not invasive) pre-roll ads and useful analytics tools that could be a hit with developers and advertisers alike.
The first round of judging of the Oculus Mobile VR Jam is over, and we now have our finalists—a total of 61 submissions split between two tracks, Games and App/Experiences.
A group of students at designed and developed this stunning looking 2 player co-op game in just 12 weeks with a team of 11. The title was created as part of a Game Design module at the University of Derby in the UK.
Built on Unreal Engine 4 and designed from the ground up for the Oculus Rift VR headset, Courage is a suspenseful puzzle game revolving around protagonist ‘Alex’ a young child who’s only companionship in her dream-state is a ghostly dog, representing Alex’s inner-courage. Alex must battle through various chapters, each representing a different fear to conquer.
The team are looking to release a demo for the title “soon”, to be playable on the Oculus Rift DK2. In the mean time, feast your eyes on the world of Courage in the screenshot gallery below. Also, check out the game’s official website right here for more info.
An invite went out today beckoning its recipients to “Step into the Rift” on the 11th of June, 2015 in San Francisco—just a few days before E3 begins in LA. We want to step in. Oh yes, we do.
A clever set of visualizations covering some of the major changes to Oculus’ new software developers kit (SDK) has surfaced, and may help the non-developers among us get a better grip on exactly what these changes mean for VR.
FOVE is a Japanese technology company who are endeavoring to tackle an issue that will likely become a focus for the VR industry sooner than you think, eye-tracking in virtual reality. The company’s new headset employs gaze-detection for input, and today they launch their first Kickstarter campaign in order to get the hardware out into the community.
Developers love their shirts and Valve is no exception. Joe Ludwig, a Valve programmer who has been closely involved with the SteamVR project, was spotted today rocking out a shirt with an exploded view of the company’s Lighthouse base station.
Some of the inner workings of Valve’s Lighthouse base station, an infrared laser-emitting device used for ‘room scale’ positional tracking, were revealed today by Valve developer Joe Ludwig.
“Join DreamWorks Animation for a discussion on innovation and diversification. The award-winning, CG animation studio that brought you How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda is combining its 3D filmmaking expertise with state-of-the-art technology to create new immersive experiences. Learn how DreamWorks Animation is leveraging VR technology to re-invent traditional storytelling.”
This event is being live streamed and should start at 5pm PST, watch it embedded above.
“Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg will share his perspective on why user-created experiences are essential to the future of VR and what we can learn from other technologies and media that have been transformed by democratized content creation.
Drawing examples from Second Life’s 12 years of success, Ebbe will share insights into the power and value of user-created virtual experiences; the challenges inherent in empowering users to create their own interactive, social VR content; and the approach Linden Lab is taking as it develops the next-generation platform for virtual experiences.”
Ben Lang is on the ground at the SVVR Expo 2015 LiveBlogging the event. Updates should appear automatically below, no need to refresh the page.
The 2015 SVVR Conference and Expo kicks off today and it looks to be a packed schedule. To kick our coverage off, Ben Lang will be LiveBlogging Valve’s Joe Ludwig’s talk ‘OpenVR and You’.
“Valve is committed to the open PC platform and Virtual Reality is an important part of that. Come hear Joe Ludwig from Valve talk about what OpenVR has to offer application developers and how the company is making its Lighthouse technology available to hardware partners.”
Speakers:
Joe Ludwig, Programmer at Valve
Ben Lang is on the ground at the SVVR Expo 2015 LiveBlogging the event. Updates should appear automatically below, no need to refresh the page.
Accompanying today’s launch of AltspaceVR, the company behind the application, also called AltspaceVR, has released an updated build that further expands upon social features and also adds a selfie function because, you know… selfies. Additionally, recently added environments help round out the platform’s VR social spaces.
AltspaceVR, a social VR app which allows users to connect and communicate in real time within virtual reality, is breaking free of its invite-only beta chains and officially opening its doors to the world for good.
Google’s annual developer conference ‘I/O’ appears to be touching on virtual reality with a session dedicated to VR game design at the event.
