Latest UE4 Release Includes Time-Warping, Couch Knights Demo and is DK2 Ready

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Jul 17, 2014

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Just because VR is more immersive doesn’t mean its only use is to get your adrenaline pumping. Aaron Lemke is one of only a few developers getting serious about relaxing and meditative virtual reality experiences. Eden River’s peaceful gameplay and hummable music provide a beautiful respite from not just the stressful real-world, but also from the usual conflict-driven gaming tropes. Lemke today is announcing that Eden River HD, an update to the original Eden River demo, will launch on August 8th. Road to VR has an exclusive early preview of this tranquil title.

Radial-G Just Earned Itself a Spot in My Oculus Rift Demos Folder (video)

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Jul 16, 2014

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As a fan of the Wipeout series, I absolutely had to try Tammeka Games’ Radial-G, a low-grav arcade racer with Oculus Rift virtual reality support. While I’ve long enjoyed the frenetic action-packed racing of Wipeout, could a similar title work in VR—with a cylindrical track no less—without also being a vomit simulator? I was delighted to find out that Radial-G is not only fun in virtual reality, but it somehow dodges simulator sickness with the same ease that its ships hover above the track.

First Oculus Rift DK2 Shipment Delayed to Polish New SDK

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Jul 16, 2014

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Oculus VR today has made an official announcement about the shipping status of the first batch of Rift DK2s. The shipment, which the company previously said would be leaving distribution facilities on the 14th of July, has been held to provide Oculus with more time to polish and test the latest version of the Oculus SDK.

News Bits: Oculus Now Accepting Registration for Connect Developer Conference

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Jul 16, 2014

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Early last week, Oculus VR announced its first official developer conference, Oculus Connect. Registration for the conference was expected to open on the 10th, but was delayed indefinitely. Today, Oculus has opened registration for the Connect VR developer conference.

Rev VR Podcast (Ep. 72): While We Wait For Our DK2, A Talk with VR Chat Developer Jesse Joudry

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Reverend Kyle

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Jul 16, 2014

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It is the week of July 14th, as the first shipments of the much anticipated Oculus Rift DK2 are expected to head to developers, and the VR community has one thing on their mind: when are they going to get an email, or a statement, or something to indicate where their DK2 is? Jesse and I have decided to be patient, and instead talk about a few other subjects to keep our minds off of it.

Valve’s SteamVR, Now with Support for Mac and Linux, Is the Best VR Web Browser Yet for the 2D Web (video)

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Jul 15, 2014

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While there are a number of people and projects currently working on what the future of VR on the web might look like, the question remains: how do we use the internet—as we know it today—in VR? One of SteamVR’s best features has nothing to do with gaming—its built-in web browser is the best way to view the 2D web in VR.

Join Road to VR for a Live VR Roundtable Discussion in Virtual Reality—Friday at 11:30am EST

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Road to VR

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Jul 15, 2014

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This friday, the 18th of July, Road to VR will be hosting a live roundtable discussion about VR, in VR. The entire team will be assembling across half the globe inside the Riftmax virtual reality software to talk VR. Anyone is welcome to be a member of the live audience.

Review: Infinity Runner—The Game Nobody Thought Would Work with the Oculus Rift (for good reason)

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Jul 14, 2014

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Today Wales Interactive launches Infinity Runner, which is exactly what it sounds like—an infinite running game like many found on mobile platforms. The team appears to have successfully ported the genre from mobile to PC, but does it work as a virtual reality game for the Oculus Rift?

News Bits: Xing: The Land Beyond – ‘Rainforest’ Demo Released

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Jul 13, 2014

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We’ve been waiting for a playable slice of White Lotus Interactive’s Oculus Rift enabled title ‘Xing: The Land Beyond’ since the team teased it might be on its way shortly after this year’s E3 expo.

The game, which successfully completed its Kickstarter campaign last year, is a first person, puzzle / adventure title, very much influenced by the classic Myst series on PC. The 3 person team have wowed visitors at recent expos, and stands as one of the most promising title in development for Oculus’ VR Headset. The newly released demo seems to be a version of demos shown at those shows.

Our idea is to take players on a beautiful, fantastical and spiritual journey through the afterlife. It is non-combative and there are no time-restraints. We want players to feel intrigued by the story and puzzles presented, but also relaxed in the lush environments we create using the Unreal Engine 4.

You can grab the demo via Oculus’ ‘Share’ portal here. The team would also like to hear what you thought of the demo, you can let them know via this short survey. Finally, you can keep up to date with the White Lotus Interactive team and Xing’s development here.

Aerometrex Combines Impressive 3D Mapping with VR for Intense Flyovers

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Jul 12, 2014

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Flying in virtual reality, a commonly held wish by enthusiasts since the dawn of the technology. The prospect of swooping over virtual landscapes, your mind convinced your body has taken flight is an extremely enticing one. Now that virtual reality technology is becoming a more and more accessible with the advent of the Oculus Rift, attention turns on how best to achieve this experience. There’s one thing you’ll certainly need for that realistic touch, convincing virtual terrain.

Australian company Aerometrex are working on just that. They are digital aerial mapping specialists who have focussed on providing realistic captures of towns and cities across the real world in order for them to to be realised in the virtual world.

The company flies dedicated UAVs carrying sophisticated cameras across the desired location capturing extremely high resolution and geospatially mapped photos of the area. Combined with 3D depth sensing technologies (collectively known as aero3Dpro), this allows the company to produce astonishingly accurate and lifelike 3D models based on the captured data.

The captured imagery is adjusted, corrected and assembled by sophisticated software to produce a 3D map you can take a very convincing flight over.

The company recently released a video demonstrating one of their 3D models being presented through the Oculus Rift (video top), and it’s an intriguing idea for presenting and communicating 3D space on such a large scale to people efficiently and effectively. OF course, all I want to do is zoom about pretending to be Superman – something that the video captures quite nicely.

As Aerometrex are focussed on corporate cliental however, it’s currently unclear if they’re ever likely to release tastes of the experiences on offer to the general public. The are apparently working on integrating Myo support, the gesture capturing hardware which senses muscle movement and translates it into input data, which would certainly allow naturalistic flight controls.

You can find more about Aerometrex here, and their dedicated aero3Dpro page here.

VRelia Partners with ImmersiON to Offer VR Headsets and Content

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Jul 12, 2014

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Immersion_vrelia_featured — The ImmersiON 'Pro' VR Headset

The ImmersiON 'Pro' VR Headset — The ImmersiON ‘Pro’ VR Headset

VRelia, a Spanish company recently formed with the aim of providing users with high resolution VR Headsets, has announced a partnership with ImmersiON, a startup formed from the key players behind TD Vision, a company with a history in 3D technologies and video codecs.

We first covered VRelia back in February, at which time they were planning to offer not one but three different VR headsets to compete directly with Oculus VR’s Rift. Since then, it looks like the company has returned to the drawing board and has now paired down it’s offering count to 2. The VREye Go, a headset smartphone harness much like that which we’ve seen from vRase, Durovis and countless others. The VREye Pro offers what’s claimed to be 2 x 5.9″ Full HD (1080p) display panels which the company claims delivers an effective resolution of 2190 x 1920, a slightly confusing figure given that 2 x 1080 (vertical resolution of a full HD panel) = 2160.

The VRelia VREye 'Go' mobile phone VR Headset — The VRelia VREye ‘Go’ mobile phone VR Headset

The products sold by ImmersiON share the same base specs as above and adds what looks to be dual front facing cameras in order to facilitate augmented reality experiences. It’s also key to point out that the images of all these HMDs are at this stage merely renders, and that should you choose to opt for pre-ordering one of the ImmersiON devices, you’re also opting in to beta test early versions of the new VR headsets as it seems there’s no final hardware as yet not to mention a complete absence of pricing. Furthermore, there’s no clear indication when those placing their orders might receive actual hardware.

TDVision seems to have had their hand in many technologies over the years, including the production of their own VR Headset, the TD Visor. It’s their software platform called AlterSpace which is highlighted in a recent press release announcing the partnership though and this seems to take the form of an online collaboration, chat and social VR hub where people can hang out in VR, share online content and socialise. Beyond that, it’s not too clear how the software plays a part in pushing the VREye headsets, or even if / when it will be made available – the Alterspace website seems completely unfinished and the only documentation I could find on TDVision’s website seemed to describe concepts and planned features only.

Competition is great, on that we can all agree. But right now it’s simply unclear precisely what this announcement means for the VR Industry. With hardware that’s yet to enter the beta stage and an unclear roadmap for ImmersiON’s value added software packages, we’ll just have to wait and see.

Altspace Raises $2.5 Million From Google Ventures, Formation 8, and More for Shared VR Browsing Environment

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Jul 10, 2014

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Altspace (formerly Qualia3D) is announcing that they’ve raised $2.5 million in venture capital to develop a shared virtual reality browsing environment. Investors include Google Ventures, Formation 8, Dolby Family Ventures, and more. Altspace is developing a shared VR environment with a heavy focus on browser-based interactivity.

News Bits: ‘Aliens, Trolls and Dragons’, 12 Minutes of Oculus Rift Enabled Action Adventuring (Video)

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Jul 10, 2014

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Virtual Reality is still and emerging (perhaps re-emerging) technology and gaming platform. As such, new surprises and interesting uses of the technology are never far away right now. ‘Aliens, Trolls and Dragons’ is an Action Adventure game with native Oculus Rift support that offers VR enthusiasts an over-the-shoulder 3rd person view on the the gameworld.

Lucky’s Tale blew some minds at E3, not necessarily because it looked particularly world shattering in terms of either gameplay or visuals, but because it was a slap in the face for anyone who believed virtual reality gaming was restricted to a first person view. A console style platformer, with an inventive on-rails and freestyle camera mapped to your head movements was a pleasant surprise indeed. ‘Aliens, Trolls and Dragons’ offers up a 3rd person view, with a Gears of War style offset view, mapped to head tracking.

In a new 12 minute gameplay video demonstrating the game’s native Oculus Rift support with the player glancing around the gameworld as their on screen protagonist slashes enemies with swords and surveys the environment. It’s a great looking game and certainly one of the better independently developed Oculus Rift titles out there.

The game itself is developed by Polish code house Kubold and will transport the player to a future where space travel has allowed mankind to reach far into the universe. You play a security officer from a crash-landed vessel, on a planet that bears an eerie resemblance to medieval earth. Your task, to find and free your crew mates by kicking the humanoid alien’s butts.

‘Aliens, Trolls and Dragons’ is due out fall 2015 but will be delivered in an episodic format, the remaining chapters to be released later. You can find more on ‘Aliens, Trolls and Dragons’ at the homepage here and Kubold’s site here.

Digital Combat Simulator (DCS), the DK2 Enabled Flight Sim That Flew under the Radar at E3 2014

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