Jaunt VR, a company dedicated to creating a platform for the production of cinematic virtual reality content, today announced that it has closed a series B funding round, raising $27.8 million, led by Highland Capital Partners with participation by Google Ventures.
Netflix Hack Day is a recurring event at the popular video-streaming company where employees spend 24 hours building cool experiments for the platform. One such experiment is ‘Oculix’ a virtual reality version of Netflix which supports the Oculus Rift and the Leap Motion gesture controller.
As with any free-market system, the law of supply and demand will drive prices up when supply is short and demand is high. The Oculus Rift DK2 is a hot commodity, and even with the company pumping out the popular VR headset as quickly as possible, some folks are willing to pay a huge premium to get one without waiting.
While the Oculus Rift is poised to invade the homes of gamers, we’re increasingly seeing the DK1 and DK2 used in promotional ‘out-of-home’ venues. Immersion-Vrelia have announced a new division dedicated to developing a VR headset designed for out-of-home use in venues like arcades and theme parks.
David Rowe, the developer behind the unofficial CtrlAltStudio Viewer for Second Life and Open Sim, has released a preliminary build to give Oculus Rift DK2 users their first glimpse into the popular virtual world.
While there was lots of great info to come out of our Gamecom 2014 interview with Oculus VR, perhaps the most telling bit was the way the Oculus founder Palmer Luckey answered the question about an unconfirmed VR input device that the company is reportedly working on.
At Gamescom 2014, Road to VR Editor Paul James got to sit down with Anton Mikhailov who works in Sony’s ‘Magic Lab’, an R&D division tasked with creating innovative experiences for PlayStation. Mikhailov revealed that the company has had prototypes of the Morpheus VR headset for a year and a half prior to revealing the public developer kit at GDC 2014 back in March. He further expounds on his work on Morpheus’ vision tracking and Sony’s desire to create a calibration-optional experience.
Oculus VR are, arguably, the most exciting company in the tech industry right now. In the 12 months since I last met Palmer Luckey (Founder) and Nate Mitchell (VP of Product) at Gamescom, their business has exploded. Facebook’s acquisition has catapulted them even further into the public eye and given them the resources to change the world by introducing what they believe to be the last platform, virtual reality. I got a chance to sit down with the dynamic duo at Gamescom 2014 to reflect on a brutal and exhilarating year.
“The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn’t it be? —it is the same the angels breathe.”
– Mark Twain, Roughing It, Chapter XXII, 1886
Following the recent news that Minecraft (2011) creator Markus “Notch” Persson was “officially over” the Facebook/Oculus acquisition, Oculus VR CTO John Carmack appears to have offered to port the game to VR.
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.
