The Virtual Reality Awards 2014 Celebrate VR’s Finest – Vote For Your Favourite Now

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Virtual Reality is still in it’s infancy, but in the last two years has inspired countless developers to push the boundaries of this fledgling platform. The 2014 Virtual Reality Awards aims to highlight the talent that’s helping to build the future.

First Impressions of Project Beyond, Samsung’s 360 3D Camera for VR

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In a surprise announcement at SDC, Samsung revealed Project Beyond, a 360 degree 3D camera for filming virtual reality content. We got to take a look at the unit first hand and experience the VR video that it captures.

SDC 2014: The Human Perceptual System in Virtual Reality – LiveBlog @1pm PDT

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“This talk will focus on the human component of VR: your perceptual system. Virtual reality systems like the Oculus Rift and Gear VR replace the visual input to your brain in a way technology never has before; for better or worse, this raises unprecedented opportunities and challenges. I will give a brief, high-level overview of some key perceptual system functions, some interesting phenomena that occur in VR, and the importance of understanding them all for building comfortable content.”

Speaker: Richard Yao, Research Scientist, Oculus VR

Ben Lang is on the ground at the Moscone Centre in San Francisco for the Samsung Developer Conference 2014 to liveblog this event. Updates will appear automatically below, no need to refresh your browser.

Rev VR Podcast (Ep.84): Astronomy, Education, and Hygiene with Rob Swatton & Dave Weir

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In this episode of the Rev VR Podcast, I am joined by Rob Swatton and David Weir from Earth & Sky in New Zealand. They have plans to bring Virtual Reality and Astronomy together to create an amazing guided tour of the universe.

SDC 2014: Creating Realistic Sound for True Spatial Immersion in VR Applications, Liveblog @5pm PDT

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logo-gray-letters“Our experiences in the real world are formed using multiple senses and include audio cues from objects which may not even be visible. In virtual reality, one of the main challenges is recreating this true spatial immersion. In this session, you will learn about Phonon, a cross-platform audio physics engine that uses the physics of sound to recreate spatial immersion. Phonon analyzes the 3D model of the environment, and figures out direct sound paths, early reflections and occlusion, and reverberation in real-time. Phonon is available as a Unity plugin, and a C API that supports integration with any game engine and audio engine. Using advanced techniques such as Head-Related Transfer Functions (HRTFs), convolution reverb, and physically-based diffraction, Phonon can help you deliver true spatial immersion in VR applications.”

Speakers:

Anish Chandak, CEO, Impulsonic
Dinesh Manocha, Phi Delta Theta Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Ben Lang is on the ground at the Moscone Centre in San Francisco for the Samsung Developer Conference 2014 to liveblog this event. Updates will appear automatically below, no need to refresh your browser.

Beautiful Hi-Res Images of Samsung’s ‘Project Beyond’ Surface, Along with New Video

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Think Tank Team, the alias given to Samsung’s ‘Research America’ group have launched a website celebrating the research, design and engineering that went into Project Beyond, Samsung’s newly announced 3D 360 VR Camera tech.

Oculus Announces Samsung Gear VR Price, Starts at $199 – Pre-Register Now—Breaking

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gear vrSamsung’s Developer Conference has certainly made its presence felt in the VR community today. At the keynote event earlier, Samsung announced that the ‘Innovator Edition’ of their Gear VR headset would be released in ‘early December’. In a blog post on their website, Oculus has announced that the headset collaboration with Samsung will retail for $249 with a bluetooth gamepad and $199 standalone.

VR Dungeon Crawler ‘Crystal Rift’ Launches Kickstarter Campaign

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It’s interesting to see genres and themes returning in an entirely new and yet familiar form. Grid-based dungeon crawler Crystal Rift is built from the ground up for virtual reality, yet draws on some very traditional game mechanics. The two-man development team behind the game have now launched a Kickstarter campaign.

SDC 2014: Getting Started with the Oculus Mobile SDK, Liveblog @3pm PDT

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logo-gray-letters“This session will focus on the Oculus SDK for Mobile developers. Topics will include tips for getting started with the SDK for both native and Unity application development, an overview of the TimeWarp architecture and its impact on development, tips for high-performance mobile VR applications, interface design in VR, planned improvements, and insights gained and challenges overcome during the development of Gear VR. Attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions of the engineers responsible for developing the Gear VR SDK.”

Speakers: 

  • J.M.P. van Waveren, Senior Engineer, Oculus VR, LLC
  • Jonathan Wright, Senior Engineer, Oculus VR, LLC

Ben Lang is on the ground at the Moscone Centre in San Francisco for the Samsung Developer Conference 2014 to liveblog this event. Updates will appear automatically below, no need to refresh your browser.

News Bits: Latest iRacing Update Adds DK2 Positional Tracking

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iRacing’s recent Season 4 update finally brought with it Oculus Rift DK2 support, but it was missing something fairly crucial – positional tracking. In the latest update available now, the world’s most popular online sim racer has now addressed that omission.

Positional tracking is of course vital to battling one of VR’s biggest enemies to a pleasant experience, motion sickness. Despite iRacing’s gameplay being decidedly fixed in terms of seating position, making it ideal for VR, it’s surprising how much positional tracking was missed. Once you’re used to the subtle cues the Oculus Rift DK2, your really miss it once it’s gone.

There is an as yet unresolved issue inherent to games which incorporate the ability to alter your lateral view with head movements, it’s awfully easy to break the game by ‘clipping’ through in-game assets (walls, cockpits etc.). So it’s interesting to note that iRacing has adopted to limit the user’s lateral movement to prevent these sorts of issues. We’ll see how this works out long term, but it certainly seems as if the developer has taken care with this implementation. In any case, iRacing remains one of the best VR experiences out there alongside it’s rival Assetto Corsa.

You can sign up to and download iRacing here.

SDC 2014: VR Design: Transitioning from 2D to 3D Design Paradigm, Liveblog @1pm PDT

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logo-gray-letters“The commercialization of virtual reality provides an exciting space for designing user experiences and interfaces. However, this mostly unexplored technology holds a different set of opportunities and challenges for traditional two-dimensional designers. In this session, we will demonstrate the Gear VR, review research pertaining to VR experience design, and discuss the implications VR can have on your working process.”

Speaker: Alex Chu, Interactive Designer at Samsung Research America

Ben Lang is on the ground at the Moscone Centre in San Francisco for the Samsung Developer Conference 2014 to liveblog this event. Updates will appear automatically below, no need to refresh your browser.

SDC 2014: Oculus Launches Mobile SDK for Android Development on Gear VR—Breaking

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Oculus has just released their long awaited mobile SDK for Android development on Samsung’s forthcoming Gear VR headset.

SDC 2014: Samsung Announces ‘Project Beyond’ A 3D 360 Camera for VR – Breaking

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SDC 2014 has just kicked off and at the opening keynote, Samsung have just announced  that, alongside their new Note 4 based VR Headset, they’ve also got a 360 Stereoscopic 3D camera, designed and built to capture video for virtual reality.

SDC 2014: Samsung Gear VR ‘Innovator Edition’ to Launch in U.S. Early December—Breaking

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Today at Samsung Developer Conference 2014, the company has announced that their mobile VR headset, Gear VR, will launch in early December, just in time for the holiday season.

John Carmack Wants Minecraft on Samsung’s Gear VR

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John Carmack, famed developer and Oculus CTO, is known for being open and frank. Having prodded Minecraft developer Mojang on the topic in the past, now that the company has changed hands following its sale to Microsoft, Carmack has once again reached out publicly to ask what needs to be done to get Minecraft on Gear VR.

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