The gaming world is pivoting towards virtual reality as more and more conferences and festivals begin playing with VR. This momentum was extremely prevalent at this year’s IndieCade in Southern California as about a quarter of the booths contained virtual reality headsets.
IndieCade is an annual gaming festival in Culver City, California which attracts hundreds of game enthusiasts from all over the world. This year, Oculus VR strolled in with a custom chromed-out virtual reality filled trailer that dazzled the attendees throughout the event.
Alien: Isolation is Creative Assembly‘s stab at moving a beloved movie franchise into a compelling interactive experience. Early word on the title was that, unlike the execrable Aliens: Colonial Marines before it, Isolation was something a bit special. What’s more, at GDC earlier this year, Oculus proudly showed the triple-A title in a VR enabled version that terrified all who played it. Alien: Isolation was the virtual reality hit of the show and with good reason.
Buried toward the end of Michael Abrash’s must-watch keynote at Oculus Connect was the announcement of a new research division within Oculus which Abrash says is the “first complete, well funded VR research team in close to 20 years.” He says that their mission is to advance VR and that the research division will publish its findings and also work with university researchers.
Leap Motion is teaming up with IndieCade for a ‘3D Jam’ dev contest which utilizes the company’s motion controller. Leap recently released a ‘VR Mount’ for their motion controller which connects to the front of the Oculus Rift and the company is hoping to see VR-based and desktop submissions from developers pining for $75,000 in prizes.
VRVana, developers of the Totem virtual reality headset, have announced they’ve pulled their Kickstarter campaign in favour of a pre-order system for interested VR enthusiasts.
At E3 2014, Oculus revealed a demo Alien: Isolation with support for their Rift DK2 VR headset, and it was a hit. However, it was officially stated that game would not ship with Rift support. Turns out, the developers left the code in the game to enable VR mode and some smart folks figured out how to turn it on with a simple hack.
Most of you know Eric Greenbaum as the lawyer who’s been on the Rev VR Podcast several times to discuss the legal woes of certain VR companies. In this episode, he’s here to discuss ‘About Face’, his VR comfort and hygiene System, as well as several of his other ventures in the VR industry.
The Final Fantasy series of RPGs is one of the longest running franchises of its kind and certainly one of the most successful, selling millions of copies over multiple decades and gaming platforms. Final Fantasy XIII hits Steam for PC today promising revamped visuals. It may also include support for the Oculus Rift, if an option to opt in to the SteamVR Beta is any indication.
Spurred by the current lack of a Linux SDK for the Oculus Rift DK2, a group of developers sought to dissect the Rift’s optical tracking system by reverse engineering the DK2. The information that was tediously corralled together is quite technical so we’ve have rounded up the critical focal points in an easier to read format to show why this community project is important.
After a successful Kickstarter in October of 2013, Sixense is nearing completion of their STEM motion controller. Prior to the first units shipping out to backers, the company it’s releasing 3D printable components which will allow hobbyists and hardware makers to create add-on accessories, like gun, sword, and other attachments, for the controller and STEM Pack.
After 2 years of Oculus putting their collective brains and talents to solving the “hard problems” of VR displays and low latency head tracking, at Oculus Connect this year, we heard a new topic beginning to garner attention: VR audio. Oculus’ recently revealed ‘Crescent Bay’ prototype is the first from the company to include integrated headphones. Well aware that audio in VR needs to be more than mere stereo for Presence, the company also announced that they’re licensing a 3D spatial audio processing technology called RealSpace 3D Audio from Visisonics.
As virtual reality begins to hit the mainstream, more and more production studios are starting to explore the vast potential of creating immersive virtual experiences. One such example is the global digital design company known as Ustwo who is priming up to release a beautiful VR game in December called Land’s End for the Samsung Gear VR.
Early adopters of Samsung’s forthcoming Gear VR headset are in for a treat. The creator of Darknet has announced that the full version of the award-winning game will initially launch for free on Gear VR.
Today it’s been announced that Warner Bros., DC Entertainment, and OTOY are collaborating to recreate the iconic Batcave from Batman: The Animated Series in virtual reality for Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift. OTOY is providing what they call “holographic video” technology to render the scene in a way that’s true to the Batcave of the classic 90’s show.
