Despite announcing that the Oculus Rift would support Android all the way back during the company’s 2012 Kickstarter, Oculus VR has been quite secretive about their forthcoming Android SDK. In an interview at Gamescom 2014 last week, the company alluded that work is still underway on bringing virtual reality to mobile.
While Unity was arguably the engine of choice for indie Rift developers early on, Unreal Engine 4’s recent change to crazy-reasonable pricing and impressive new graphical capabilities has it catching on like wild fire. A VR enthusiast as taken 13 beautiful Unreal Engine 4 demos and compiled them with the latest version of the engine with support for the Oculus Rift DK2. Low-end PCs need not apply!
After initially speaking out against Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR back in March, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson is ready to move on.
Titans of Space is one of the classic Oculus Rift DK1 experiences. It takes users on a tour through the solar system, with a particularly amazing star size comparison at the end which is unlike anything you’ve ever seen in an astronomy book. It was also one of the first Rift experiences to support positional tracking, thanks to a clever use of the Razer Hydra controller. Now, this go-to Rift experience has been updated for the DK2.
The much lauded Oculus Rift DK2 is in high demand. Shipping began at the end of July and Oculus says they’ve already shipped more than 20,000 of their 60,000 orders. The company recently updated their order page to indicate that new units are expected to ship starting in October.
After a stressful day at work, I needed to unwind. I popped on my DK2 and loaded up Eden River HD. It helped so much that I had to talk to the creator, Aaron Lemke, on this episode of the Rev VR Podcast.
“Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so,” Douglas Adams once wrote, and it’s a fitting way to summarize how fast the last 12 months have felt since I was at Gamescom in 2013. Visiting the biggest games show in Europe again this year illustrates how far the VR industry has come in that year. VR hardware is still front and centre of course, but this year it’s all about the VR games.
Today Valve has released an update for SteamVR, the virtual reality mode for the popular game distribution service. The update enables Oculus Rift DK2 support for Half-Life 2 and the Steam Big Picture mode. Here’s a detailed guide to get it working.
Toxic Games, the makers of Q.U.B.E, a first-person puzzle game for the PC with Oculus Rift support, have announced today that a sequel for their game is in the works for the PS4. Q.U.B.E 2 will also support Project Morpheus, Sony’s VR headset.
I am incredibly excited about the near-future of VR after seeing these three new videos from Sixense, makers of the forthcoming STEM VR controller. The new videos demonstrate the exciting user experiences that become possible when players move from abstracted controllers to natural motion input.
New users are eager to test out the Oculus Rift DK2 have been bugging Oculus to add a DK2 compatible section to the official Oculus Share database since the headset was released at the end of July. The section has been added and starts with 9 demos with support for the Oculus Rift DK2.
At a Sony press event today during Gamescom 2014, the company showed the flight combat game War Thunder running on Sony’s VR headset, Project Morpheus, and with a ‘HOTAS’ joystick accessory.
Today the Virtual Reality Foundation has announced the The Proto Awards, a virtual reality award show that will be hosted at the Blossom Ballroom, the site of the first Academy Award ceremony in 1929.
Samsung’s long rumored VR smartphone adapter just left the rumor mill and entered into (virtual) reality. The Verge has published a photo of the device allegedly codenamed ‘Project Moonlight’.
Within hours of Google’s announcement of Google Cardboard, a radically simple VR smartphone adapter, DODOcase started taking offers for a pre-made version of the kit. DODOcase says they’ve sold 15,000 of the kits so far and expect to reach 1 million by the end of 2014.
