Ibex is a Virtual Reality Desktop Environment for the Oculus Rift and other VR Headsets [video]

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ibex virtual reality desktop for oculus rift

The Oculus Rift developer kit might not have shipped yet, but that hasn’t stopped some intrepid developers from working on exciting Rift projects like virtual reality desktop environments.  Hesham Wahba is a developer working on one such project, he calls it Ibex. The goal of Ibex is to create a full virtual reality desktop environment for use with the Oculus Rift and other head mounted displays / VR headsets. Such an environment could provide the user with a huge amount of virtual desktop space even when there is little physical room to spare. I spoke with Wahba about his exciting plans for Ibex.

Blackspace is a Hybrid-RTS Game with Oculus Rift Support, Fundraising with Kickstarter [video]

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Blackspace screenshot. Currently in Kickstarter, the game will support the Oculus Rift.

Blackspace is a rather awesome looking upcoming hybrid-RTS (real time strategy) game which plans to incorporate the Oculus Rift head mounted display. The game, which is notable for being one of the first non-FPS (first person shooter) titles pledging Rift support, is currently raising funds for production through Kickstarter.

Hands-on With Sony’s HMZ-T2 ‘Prototype SR’ at the Tokyo Game Show

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Last week news broke that Sony would be demonstrating an augmented reality ‘Prototype SR’ head mounted display at the Tokyo Game Show. This HMD is based on the new HMZ-T2 which Sony announced at the beginning of the month.  Toshi Nakamura of gaming news site Kotaku got a chance to experience the demonstration that Sony put together with the HMZ-T2 Prototype SR. The reaction? “I’ve seen the future of virtual reality, and it is terrifying.”

Project Holodeck Update: Razer Now Official Sponsor, The Team Tests the Oculus Rift

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Exciting info for the team of Project Holodeck, Razer is now an official sponsor. The company, which was founded in 1998 and manufacturers PC peripherals for hardcore gamers, will supply the Holodeck team with hardware pertinent to the project and offer a direct line for technical inquiries. The announcement comes shortly after the Holodeck team got their hands on the latest Oculus Rift prototype. I spoke with Project Holodeck producer James Iliff about the sponsorship and the latest developments with the project.

Valve Denies Working on Its Own Head Mounted Display for Virtual Reality Games Despite Internal Research

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Photo Credit: Stuart Isett

It’s no secret that Valve is internally researching virtual reality. Michael Abrash is publicly known to be Valve’s virtual reality and augmented reality researcher. Valve recently put out a job posting for an industrial designer noting that the company is frustrated with the stagnation of gaming interactivity. Even basic input, the keyboard and mouse, haven’t really changed in any meaningful way over the years. There’s a real void in the marketplace, and opportunities to create compelling user experiences are being overlooked”, went the description of the position — yet Valve continues to deny that they are working on their own head mounted display for virtual reality games.

Sony to Show off HMZ-T2 HMD Prototype with Head Tracking and Pass-through AR [Video]

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Sony appears to be finally experimenting with augmented reality and virtual reality on their HMD line. The company has traditionally marketed their HMZ-T1 and HMZ-T2 head mounted displays as a “personal 3D viewer” rather than anything to do with VR or AR. At the famous Tokyo Game Show, which starts on the 20th of this month, Sony will be presenting to a limited audience a head mounted display prototype that incorporates head tracking and pass-through video for augmented reality.

How Virtual Reality Can Teach You to Fly

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Probably since the first time humans laid eyes on flying creatures we’ve wished we could fly ourselves. With apparent ease, birds, insects, and even some mammals take to the sky. The mere idea of flying has inspired song, art, and plenty of failed inventions, all long before we were even close to achieving real flight. Leonardo da Vinci famously tried his hand at creating some flying machines toward the end of the 15th century, but it wasn’t until the 1900s when the rather novel concept became a reality thanks to the Wright brothers. Since then you could probably say we’ve mastered the skies. Jumbo jets carry hundreds of passengers to the opposite side of the globe in less than a day, most modern military air superiority fighters are capable of surpassing the physical limitations of human pilots. But it isn’t really us that is doing the flying. We just ride inside of machines that can fly. Some experimental aircraft travel so fast that an on-board human pilot is nothing but a limitation. Such tag-along flying fails to satisfy the vivid dreams of many… flying with no machine; speeding over your house, over your town, over the ocean — perhaps even into space — all under your own effortless control. Maybe one day we really will be able to fly; who’s to say that humans won’t develop wings after a few billion more years of evolution?

For those that are a bit less patient, virtual reality is the answer to dreams of flight and we’ve got the technology for you to experience it today.

Oculus Rift Creator Builds 120 and 270 Degree FoV HMD Prototypes

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Palmer Luckey has been a virtual reality junkie since before the Oculus Rift. He claims to have the largest private collection of head mounted displays in the world, totaling some 43 units. And as the Rift has shown us, Luckey doesn’t just collect, he also builds. As such, he’s built a number of prototypes that push the field of view far beyond what the Rift will deliver — among them 120 degree and 270 degree HMDs.

Valve Hiring for Hardware Position (possibly VR related), Oculus LLC Lists 6 Job Opportunities

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Valve, the beloved makers of the Steam digital game distribution service and a number of famous games like Half-Life 2, Portal, TF2, and more, has never made any hardware products. New broke last week that they were looking to hire someone with hardware expertise and that they are doing so explicitly to explore potential hardware devices. The head of Valve, Gabe Newell, and Valve’s AR/VR researcher, Michael Abrash, have both publicly endorsed the Oculus Rift — could this upcoming hardware product be related to virtual reality? Meanwhile Oculus is doing it’s own hiring, the company is looking for experienced individuals to assist in the production of the consumer version of the Oculus Rift head mounted display.

Silicon Micro Display Resumes ST1080 HMD Production After Hurricane Closed Factory

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Last week Silicon Micro Display made an announcement on their blog that the company’s South Korean factory lost power due to a hurricane and was rendered in-operable. Now the company has announced that utilities have been restored to the factory and that it is re-opening.

Oculus Rift News Bits: Kickstarter Ends at $2.4 Million, Two New Games Pledge Support for Rift, and More

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Kyle Orland of Ars Technica Demos the Rift

The Oculus Rift Kickstarter officially ended last Saturday. Reeling in an impressive $2,437,429, the campaing achieved a whopping 947% of its original 250k goal and secured the #6 position of top grossing Kickstarters of all time. Last week, Adhesive Games announced that Hawken would support the Rift at launch. This week, two new games a pledging support for the Oculus Rift. Furthermore the Oculus Rift continues to impress the press, but not without a few issues.

Sony Quietly Announces “All New” HMZ-T2 HMD, Reduces Weight by 20% [Gallery, Specs]

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Sony has quietly announced a refreshed version of their HMZ-T1 head mounted display. The HMZ-T2 reduces weight by 20% which is good given that weight was one of the top issues with the original. The press release making the announcement calls the HMZ-T2 “all new” and “totally enhanced” but in reality little has changed. A more appropriate name would have been ‘HMZ-T1.5’.

Is This The Destiny of AR? 2 Visions of an Augmented Reality Future [videos]

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I’d like to present two excellent AR concept videos which give a little glimpse into our world, not too far into the future, where AR is an integral part of life. Wearable computing and augmented reality are almost inevitable, but exactly how they’ll be utilized — for better or worse — is anyone’s guess. These two videos not only show realistic possibilities of advanced AR technology but also present smart commentary on the ramifications of such connected technology.

Experience Augmented Reality Now on Your iPhone or Android Phone for Free with Aurasma

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Aurasma is a free augmented reality app that runs on iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad), and Android. Using your phone’s camera and other sensors, the app projects digital scenes onto the real world through your device’s viewfinder. Aurasma is definitely a neat piece of demo technology but the question that haunts augmented reality remains: what is it good for?

PCGamer Goes Hands-on With the Oculus Rift in Video: “Everything You’ve Heard is True”

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PCGamer’s Owen Hill met with Palmer Luckey and some folks from Oculus to try out the Rift at Gamescom. After using it, he opines “The Oculus Rift is the most exciting peripheral I’ve ever used. This is the virtual reality headset I’ve been dreaming of since I was a little boy; true future tech that will redefine what it means to play games.”

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