During a recent virtual reality hackathon at OCVR, I was able to try out a crazy contraption called the Virtusphere—essentially a giant acrylic human hamster ball that lets the user feel like they are walking through a virtual world. It was an intense and exciting experience that I will never forget.
At Sony’s PlayStation Experience event earlier this month, the company brought together four prominent folks from the game industry to chat about the future of virtual reality and Sony’s ‘Project Morpheus’ VR headset for the PS4.
VRClay, the digital sculpting software built for virtual reality and motion sensing peripherals, has just launched the first public beta.
Epic Games, creators of the Unreal Engine game authoring software, plan to include support for Samsung’s new Gear VR headset in the next major version of the software.
Another video has surfaced within the past few days of VRClay, sparking more curiosity around the only 3D modeling software currently designed to be used in virtual reality. We reached out to the team behind the software and were granted an exclusive hands-on with closed beta before it heads out to the general public.
In the spirit of Christmas, some members of the VR community have mashed up their passion for virtual reality with today’s holiday. We offer a quick roundup of some of our favorite Christmas VR creations.
A new VR version of the classic 2011 mobile game, Temple Run, has just been released and is now available on Samsung Gear VR. Like all of the titles that currently populate the Oculus Store, the game is free to download.
vorpX, the 3D driver that can add Oculus Rift VR support to your games, has just received a major update. Version 0.7.5 brings with it a raft of updates including full support for some of the year’s biggest games.
Eden River, a virtual reality relaxation experience, is now available on both Steam and Google Cardboard. The game, which essentially replicates the experience of floating down a lazy river, was produced by indie game studio Unello Design as an effort to elevate the artistic side of gameplay while creating a space for quiet reflection.
From Canadian developer Space Bullet Dynamics comes a mech action shooter built from the ground up for the Oculus Rift VR headset. This is Vox Machinae, and it looks extremely promising.
One of virtual reality’s greatests strengths—that it’s a unique and unprecedented experience for most—is also one of its greatest weaknesses when it comes to marketing the technology. Without actually trying VR for themselves, how do you sell someone on the experience? Clearly this is known by Samsung as the company has taken their new VR headset to America’s largest mall to spread the word of VR.
Iris VR‘s Technolust is a regular favourite at Road to VR towers, so when its developer Blair Renaud (aka AntiCleric) released a new demo featuring both 3D positional audio and utilising cutting-edge photogrammetry techniques, we had to get our hands on it.
IndieCade announced the top 20 semi-finalists of the Leap Motion ‘3D Jam’ yesterday. The lucky 20 entrants will go on to compete for the first prize of $5,000 cash and $2,500 in travel costs to send them to IndieCade East 2015 conference in New York City, where the team will present their game with Leap Motion.
All 156 entrants, hailing from 40+ nations around the globe, were initially given a raw score calculated from community votes which determined their pre-semi-final rankings. The IndieCade judges calculated theses scores and weighed in on a final judgement last night, rewarding the top 20 for their hard work and dedication with a featured spot in a Leap Motion marketing campaign as well as a free Leap Motion Controller for each team member.
We take a look at some crowd favorites that have made it through to the semi-finals, with titles like Aboard the Lookinglass, Hauhet, Magicraft, Soundscape VR, and Weightless among the group of 20 semi-finalists.
The concept behind Aboard the Lookinglass by Henry Hoffman is simple: looking through your left hand shows you the past, and looking through the right shows you a horrible future you never wish to visit, allowing you to manipulate objects from the past and transport them to the future, but not really because then the object wouldn’t exist in the first place and… ok. Not so simple. Hoffman shows his keen understanding of Leap Motion’s current limitations (i.e. spot-on dexterity) by turning the hands into a new set of tools that don’t necessarily rely on pin point accuracy to do their job—moving the game forward.
VRARlab’s Hauhet, the demo’s namesake deriving from the Egyptian goddess of infinity, could at least have you playing this Portal-esque game until our Sun turns into a red giant (surely not for infinity). It’s oozing with style, and the team’s choice to go with the puzzling game mechanic, which requires the user to refract a laser beam around the abstract geometric hall until it reaches a pyramid, is clever and promises some exponentially complex gameplay to come.
Leave your battle axes and heavy armor at home, because you’re about to enter the world of arcane magic with StormBringer Studios’ Magicraft. Ranking third on the list of most popular demo last week, Magicraft turns your hands into mystic weapons of fire and ice that you use to remove obstacles and solve puzzles. We would stop and worry about what we’ve become, usurping the dark arts in a way our master never taught us to, but we’re way too busy blasting crap.
Sander Sneek’s Soundscape VR attained the highest score among the community last week, and for good reason too. Soundscape lets you DJ your own tracks in a seemingly tron-inspired landscape, but more importantly, the game utilizes the Leap Motion Controller (LMC) in a way that makes it immediately apparent what you’re supposed to do—no readme files needed—making Sneek’s experience a shoe-in to the top 20.
Lazily drifting through space, messing around with bits and bobs in zero-G; it’s a pretty common childhood dream, and Martin Schubert has brought it to life in his demo Weightless. The futuristic space observatory doesn’t offer much in the way of game objectives, but who needs aliens popping out of your chest and hunting you down when you can sit back and relax a little for once in your space-faring career.
All demos entered into IndieCade’s Leap Motion ‘3D Jam’ are downloadable for both PC and Mac, so don’t forget to check out all 20 semi-finalists at IndieCade’s website for downloadable copies and promo videos.
Contest winners are scheduled to be announced on January 10th, 2015, we’ll report back with the results.
Another year, another Internaional CES. But as the rapid growth of the VR industry shows no signs of abating, we look at the signs that mean 2015 will be the year VR heads to people’s homes.
