Beyond the question of safety (Oculus’ official recommendation is that children under 10 not use the Oculus Rift) and the fact that the child’s IPD is probably too low to properly see through the Rift, one has to wonder what psychological impact virtual reality might have when used from an early age.
Back in January, Microsoft Research revealed an interesting project called Illumiroom. The system, which uses a Kinect and commodity projector, scans the environment around your TV and uses the info collected to intelligently project extra info around the TV with the goal of creating a more immersive gaming experience. Back then we only got a teaser of the tech — now Microsoft has made public a more detailed account of the system’s capabilities and a full paper detailing the techniques.
Yesterday, LG Display announced the world’s thinnest 5.2-inch full HD display. As more panel makers announce full HD displays of this size, it means more choices and lower costs for the forthcoming Oculus Rift consumer version.
The creator of the Ocean Rift demo is hard at work on an atmospheric FPS for the Oculus Rift that looks wickedly fun. The game affords full avatar embodiment with arms controlled by the Razer Hydra. So far the developer has released a few teaser videos and plans a public demo release in the near future.
If you’ve been following the Oculus Rift saga since the beginning, you’ll recall that Hawken (2012, Meteor/Adhesive) was said by the developers to have Oculus Rift support as of the open beta launch on December 12, 2012 — even before the Oculus Rift would start shipping to Kickstarter backers. Many months later, the VR community was left wondering what happened to the project when it failed to materialize. Now, Oculus tells Road to VR that the project is still in the works, and reveals the unfortunate reason for its delay.
Gamers of a certain age rejoice! The first ‘true’ 3D First Person Shooter that spawned a generation of FPS nuts, Quake (id Software, 1996), has been given the Oculus Rift treatment. We take a quick look back at the Quake legend and it’s future, in VR.
You’ve read our article on the VIP Preview of The Gallery: Six Elements, now read the Mini Q&A. We catch up with Denny Unger, Creative Director at Cloudhead Games, to find out about what development life is like post-kickstarter.
Lunar Flight is an independently produced PC game by developer Shovsoft which challenges the player to master to nuances of low gravity flight. With Oculus Rift support on the way, Lunar Flight is set to become one of the most full-featured Rift experiences to date.
CXC Simulations knows a thing or two about racing simulators — they build some of the best in the world. And now they’re testing their premium racing simulation system with the Oculus Rift.
Yuval Boger is the CEO of Sensics, a company focused on the professional HMD market — used for research, military training, and high-end simulation. Recently I spoke with Boger about the state of virtual reality and the interplay between the consumer and professional fields of head mounted displays.
A few months back, Google Glass took its very first shower. Now, Sensics CEO Yuval Boger takes the zSight 810 ruggedized HMD for a dip to prove its durability.
Virtuix has released a new video showing Minecraft being played on two Omni’s with the Oculus Rift. Will future LAN centers one day be filled with rows of Omnis?
The Virtuix Omni is an omnidirectional treadmill made for virtual reality gaming. The device is in the midst of an already successful Kickstarter that is on it’s way to raising more than 1 million dollars.
Virtuix used the Minecrift mod to add unofficial Oculus Rift support to Minecraft. The CEO of Virtuix, Jan Goetgeluk, tells me that “Even though the Minecraft graphics seem unsuited for VR, the game is actually a blast with Rift + Omni.”
The Kinect-based tracking still looks iffy. Virtuix plans to ship the Omni with their own tracking solution that should be better suited for the task than the Kinect. Made-for-Omni games are likely to have more seamless implementation of player movement.
Sadly, there were no VR-related surprises from the big console manufacturers at E3 this year. However, Microsoft’s Kinect 2.0 could become a key virtual reality input device thanks to a rich set of features and substantially improved performance.
