We’ve all seen those ‘books’ about VR that seem to be nothing more than a quick cash grab, taking advantage of a burgeoning industry and hoping to dupe a few suckers into spending a few dollars. I am here to tell you that this book is nothing of the sort. Sky Nite, author of Virtual Reality Insider: Guidebook for the VR Industry is the real deal.
In a new technical demo from Leap Motion’s labs, you can use your hands to soar through space and manipulate entire constellations with mere gestures. The Planetarium aims to illustrate ideas in virtual reality user interfaces and demonstrate the versatility of the company’s motion sensing technology.
Valve isn’t holding another Steam Dev Days this year, a developers conference organized by the company in 2014. Instead they seem to be focusing their developer outreach energy on March’s rapidly approaching Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Alex Vlachos, a senior graphics programmer at Valve, is going to be sharing some hard-earned wisdom about advanced graphical rendering in VR drawn from experience with their in-house VR headset prototypes.
First class passengers on Qantas Airlines will be getting quite the surprise to go along with their eight-course tasting menu, made-to-order signature dishes from Chef Neil Perry, award-winning wine and champagnes, leaf tea and espresso coffee, cotton pajamas, slippers, skincare products, toiletries, eye mask, noise-cancelling headsets, and open access to the First Class Lounge in Sydney and Melbourne so they can enjoy complimentary treatments at Qantas’ luxurious Aurora Day Spa. They’re getting Gear VR, which is nice too.
I am pleased to announce that VR Casters, the world’s first and only 24/7 streaming VR podcast radio station is turning on its servers today at 12:oopm EST, and is ready to broadcast the future to you.
International developers have been waiting patiently to buy Samsung’s Gear VR mobile headset internationally ever since the US release on December 8th. Many of them have their virtual reality applications ready to go, yet they have no way to test them without a way to purchase the headset. That was at least until a developer in Australia plugged an Oculus Rift DK1 controller box into the Galaxy Note 4 (the phone that powers the Gear VR headset).
AltspaceVR is hosting another open beta weekend, and they want you to bring the chips and dip this time for a shared viewing of Super Bowl XLIX. Whether you’re rooting for the Patriots or the Seahawks, you’re sure to have a great time hobnobbing while watching on the largest screen playing the big game in virtual reality.
Wearing a brown cardboard box on your face is so 2014. So for the new year, DODOcase’s popular VR smartphone adapter (inspired by Google Cardboard) is getting a splash of color with the help of their new customization tool, letting you drag and drop your own designs and images to make something truly unique—if you only want just one copy, that is.
Last month, Rothenberg Ventures launched ‘River’, an accelerator through which they committed to investing $100,000 in 10 seed-stage virtual reality startups. Today the company has announced that its decided to bump the inaugural class count up to 13, totalling $1.3 million of investment in the VR ecosystem. Companies joining River hail from countries across the globe, including FOVE, from Japan, a company working on a VR headset capable of eye tracking.
I’ve been fortunate to try the Virtuix Omni VR treadmill several times over the course of its development. At every point though, I was testing some variation of the original prototype seen in the company’s highly successful Kickstarter campaign. That is until now—at CES 2015, Virtuix revealed the production version of the Omni, and I got to take it for a stroll (and sprint).
Before consumer virtual reality reaches any sort of widespread adoption, it must first begin to work its way into the public consciousness. To that end, we’ve spotted the Oculus Rift, one of the leading VR headsets destined for the consumer market, on NBC’s popular comedy series Parks and Recreation. Its portrayal is brief, but raises interesting questions about how the public will at first perceive virtual reality.
Every year the movie industry descends upon the small town of Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival, a nearly two-week long independent film showcase of everything from documentaries to art-house. This year however, some of the bigger hits didn’t take place in any one of the little town’s 15 theaters, but rather in the side rooms where critics and other industry types hooked into an Oculus Rift to experience VR at its finest.
Though consumer virtual reality R&D has been healthily reignited, the challenge of marketing these new devices begins to take rise. Samsung is first to take a stab at selling VR to everyday consumers, and that means somehow explaining what VR is to the masses, without going door to door to get people to try on a headset. Two new ads from Samsung are taking that first marketing step for Gear VR—how’d they do?
The movement of virtual and augmented reality from niche industrial and enthusiast technology to something the world is talking about really was palpable at CES this year. Here’s a 6 minute video tour of the world’s biggest technology event highlighting most of the VR and AR devices on show.
Previously only available online from Samsung, the Gear VR mobile headset is now available in the US from Best Buy, one of the country’s largest electronics retailers.
