Now that both of our Kickstarters are over, Justin Moravetz, the creator of Proton Pulse and Vanguard V, and I decide to go back and examine what worked, what didn’t, and give some tips to potential Kickstarters in the VR community.
Today Homido is launching a new VR smartphone adapter along with a sleek app designed to play 360 degree, cylindrical, 3D, and 2D videos in a virtual reality format on iOS and Android smartphones.
The VR Philly Meetup is holding its second gathering tomorrow, August 27th, the group’s first meeting since the launch of the Oculus Rift DK2. The new headset will be on display at the Meetup, along with guest speakers and community networking time.
On August 19, the Cyberith team debuted their Virtualizer virtual reality device for the first time in the United States at an event sponsored by Silicon Valley VR and Road to VR, with LinkedIn graciously providing meeting space in Mountain View, CA. Cyberith is nearing the end of their successful Kickstarter campaign (which we’ve written about previously), having raised $306,000 of their original $250,000 goal with five days still to go.
In this presentation, founder Tuncay Cakmak provides insights into the origins of the Virtualizer, and demonstrates its use while wearing a PrioVR tracking suit.
A technical issue prevented a complete demonstration with locomotion, but attendees were able to put the Virtualizer through its physical paces.
For more information on the Virtualizer, please visit their Kickstarter page or web site at cyberith.com.
Many thanks, also, to our friends Sixense, Trinity VR, and Tactical Haptics, who provided demonstrations of their next-generation virtual reality controllers at the event.
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.
