Take Two Interactive, publishers of the phenomenally successful Grand Theft Auto franchise have gone on record stating that if there is customer demand for virtual reality support in their games, it’s ready to provide it.
The VRLA Meetup is holding its forth event come Saturday December 13th. To be hosted at House of Moves, a well known motion capture firm based in Los Angeles, California, 26 exhibitors will be present at the event, including many big names from the VR scene: CastAR, Sixense, Jaunt, Samsung, Unity, and Epic Games among them.
Sixense, creators of the tracking technology in the Razer Hydra, have been hard at work over the last year developing Hydra’s successor, STEM. The company has also recently announced that STEM will be compatible with Samsung’s Gear VR for both positional tracking and motion input. The company’s latest demo, a ping pong experience, shows off the accuracy and latency of the motion input system.
Oculus has caused a stir in the technology world, a statement riddled with understatement perhaps. The company and it’s founder Palmer Luckey have walked away with countless industry awards since the appearance of it’s Oculus Rift DK1 in late 2012. Now, the company can add one more to it’s trophy cabinet, the World Technology Awards for Entertainment.
At Samsung’s 2014 developer conference last week, Warren Mayoss, Head of Technology Product Development at DreamWorks Animation, took to the stage during the second day keynote to talk VR. Mayoss shared some of the initial work that DreamWorks has done with virtual reality, including five insights for new VR developers.
YEI, the company behind the PrioVR motion capture suit for virtual reality applications, has revealed its latest designs as the company prepares to manufacture and ship to its Kickstarter backers.
Samsung officially showed off 13 Gear VR titles at SDC 2014 last week. The titles, which varied from games to 360 video experiences, were being showcased on the second floor in the Game Zone area of the event. Eight Gear VR units were available, each housing a unique set of demos. After circling through the lines a few times, here are our first impressions.
At this year’s Samsung’s Developer Conference in San Francisco, Samsung finally announced it’s Oculus and Note 4 powered Gear VR headset would be available in early December. A page was launched simultaneously for US enthusiasts to register their interest in the so called ‘Innovator Edition’. It seems there’s also a UK version of this page too.
Jaunt has been busy shooting several made-for-VR experiences which the company says will be released for VR in trailer form “imminently.” Road to VR has the first look at three of Jaunt’s forthcoming cinematic VR experiences.
It’s not the moniker most developers would relish being attached to their work, but in the case of the developers at Shiny Shoe, creators of Desert Bus VR, it’s entirely appropriate.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
“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.
