GDC is once again upon us, and on March 2-6 the people responsible for creating the games we love come together at the Moscone Center in San Francisco to talk shop. This year, virtual reality dominates the conference agenda. Here’s what we’re looking forward to.
On the tail of their newly granted patent for a mobile head mounted display, Apple is continuing to search for new hires that would bring augmented and virtual reality experience to the company.
The developers of [NUREN] The New Renaissance have released a demo of their feature-length virtual reality music experience, showing a segment that reminds me of just why I got into this VR business in the first place: dancing robot girls and space ships.
Yesterday, Apple was granted a patent for a Gear VR-like mobile headset which would use a portable device (like a smartphone) as the primary display. The patent strikes similarities between both Samsung’s Gear VR and a swath of VR smartphone adapters out there like Google Cardboard. Patent attorney Eric Greenbaum tells us that the patent could have “broad ramifications” for mobile VR headsets.
Additions to the TED 2015 speaker lineup have been announced, and Rony Abovitz, Founder, CEO and President of Magic Leap, is heading to the conference to speak about… to reveal… well, we’re not too sure really—par for the course considering the secretive nature of the company.
On the tail end of this year’s GDC, Meta will be hosting their very first 24-hour AR hackathon centered around their Meta 1 Developer Kit, a crowdfunded augmented reality headset that is now shipping out to backers. The event comes after the company recently raised a $23 million Series A investment.
I love it when developers send me their stuff to try before it goes live. When I am intrigued by what I see or experience, I immediately try to get them on my podcast to discuss their project. Thus is the case with [NUREN] The New Renaissance.
Proton Pulse for Google Cardboard is free of cost for a whole month starting today on the Google Play store. The full game, which came to Cardboard in December 2014, has 53 different levels and 5 boss battles to keep you playing on your low-cost VR smartphone adapter for hours to come.
[NUREN] The New Renaissance is planned to be an interactive cinematic VR experience, more than an hour in runtime, featuring original music and voice-acting. The project, which will work in virtual reality with the Oculus Rift, and on standard monitors, is led by artists Jake “Virt” Kaufman and Jessie Seely. The duo are taking NUREN to Kickstarter to turn their vision into reality.
It was announced yesterday at the New York Toy Fair that Mattel’s View-Master is ditching the film ‘reels’ and partnering with Google “to deliver an affordable, kid-friendly immersive digital experience” using a chunky plastic version of Google’s Cardboard smartphone viewer for educational VR experiences.
SEER, an augmented reality device from San Francisco/Shenzhen based Caputer Labs Inc, launched their Kickstarter campaign in late January, and have already reached beyond $75,000 of their $100,000 funding goal. The device, which takes advantage of the user’s smartphone, boasts having the “world’s largest FOV” (field of view) at 100 degrees.
Not like taking a few jumps on a raked path in the woods behind my house like I used to do as a kid—I mean really mountain biking, the kind of thing you’d see on a GoPro commercial. The kind of thing that would almost certainly result in my death if I tried it without practice. Thanks to a motion bike and a VR headset, I got to taste the thrill without the risk. But can I really say “I went mountain biking”?
Bei Yang, the ‘Creative Technologies’ leader at Walt Disney Imagineering, will be holding a talk on March 5th at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) and revealing VR strategies learned by the R&D arm of Disney over the past 20 years of its existence.
I am a big fan of open source stuff, so when I heard that Razer and Sensics have decided to team up to bring an open source virtual reality platform to the VR space, I knew I had to talk to them.
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