The Virtuix Omni VR treadmill is headed to Kickstarter on June 4th. The company has released a new gameplay video showing the Omni in use with the Oculus Rift and Half-Life 2. Virtuix will be giving away a number of Omnis prior to the launch of the Kickstarter
Theme Park Studio lets you design your own amusement park and ride the roller coaster of your dreams; with a set of convenient editor tools for quick content creation and both Oculus Rift and Razer Hydra support, the program looks to be made for future Rift engineers. The Kickstarter goal has been reached, now Pantera Entertainment has extended funding for the ambitious project.
Fractals are intricate, infinite, and beautiful repeating patterns that are created from an equation. A fractal rendering program called Boxplorer2 recently added support for the Oculus Rift, allowing you to create mesmerizing 3D fractals which you can fall forever into.
Outerra is an in-development ‘world rendering engine’ which is literally capable of rendering a geographically detailed world on a 1:1 scale. The developers have shared with us a video showing initial Oculus Rift Outerra support and are expected to soon release support to the public.
Back at GDC 2013 I had a chance to speak with Unity’s Emil Johansen about the Oculus Rift.
Project Holodeck is an ambitious project out of the University of Southern California to create a low-cost fully embodied virtual reality environment with the help of the Oculus Rift, Razer Hydra, and other hardware. The team showed off their latest progress on their first game, Wild Skies, at USC’s annual ‘Demo Day.’
Among the Sleep is a forthcoming horror game by Krillbite Studio which, thanks to passing its $225,000 stretch goal, will be developed with Oculus Rift support.
We were lucky enough to recently get our hands on the latest beta of the soon-to-be-released vorpX DirectX injection drivers, similar in aim to the community supported Vireio Perception offering, which adds Oculus Rift head-tracking, stereoscopic 3D, and pre-warping support to vanilla games not built with the Rift in mind. The commercial product is due for release very soon and the extensive play-testing we’ve done so far shows it to be an impressive package.
Earlier today we noted that Google had mentioned some sort of Google Maps integration with the Oculus Rift and Leap Motion. A source on the ground at Google IO 2013 gives us the first photos and early details.
This week is Google IO 2013, the company’s annual developer conference. While we expected to hear about Google Glass, it turns out Google may be bringing Oculus Rift support to their new version of Google Maps.
The Razer Hydra motion gaming controller has become the defacto virtual reality input device for many developers working with the Oculus Rift. Razer has extended their 50% off sale to the end of May, giving you a few more weeks to nab the controller for a great price.
VRcade looks like the next logical step for immersive video gaming: With full body & weapon tracking, haptic feedback, a large motion capture arena and realistic graphics, the system offers everything needed to get closer to the virtual reality most of us know only from movies. Road to VR takes a look at VRcade and the exciting future of virtual reality gaming.
It’s one of the more obvious mods for the Oculus Rift, but also potentially the most useful. Strapping a camera to the Rift let’s you see the outside world, which could be used for much more than just finding your way to WASD.
We’ve been watching Ibex, a virtual reality desktop environmental for Oculus Rift, closely over the last few months. The latest beta features full head tracking, video playback, and is now available for Windows and Mac.
Hey there VR fans. A bit of meta-news today. I’d like to welcome Dominic Eskofier to the Road to VR team. Dominic joins in as a news contributor. He’s well versed in the world of online journalism, works in the games industry, and shares our enthusiasm for virtual reality! Eagle-eyed readers out there will have already noticed that he’s authored a number of articles:
I asked Dominic to share a bit about himself:
Hi, I’m Dominic and it is my pleasure to greet all readers of Road to VR from behind the news desk!
Not too long ago, I was a simple user myself and it still feels a little unreal to be writing for the site that I regard so highly in all things VR. But here I am and I will try my best and use my skills to make the site even better! So, what’s to say about me? I’m 28, live in Germany and when I’m not writing for Road to VR, I use my spare time for rock climbing, web surfing, beach volleyball, moderating subreddits like /r/oculus and just chilling with friends.
Another chunk of my time goes into video games. Me and my two brothers owned computers and consoles from a very early age on (Anyone remember the Sony MSX?), so I’ve always regarded video games as the medium of our generation. I think that video games are only in their infancy and that technologies like the Oculus Rift or the upcoming new consoles will propel our medium forward in the near future. I’m very lucky to be able to use my passion for video games at my workplace, since I’m a Product Manager in the games industry right now.
After studying Electrical Engineering, I decided to pursue my passion and started my career in 2008 as an intern at one of Germany’s largest gaming websites. After my bosses liked my work, I was offered an editor job, both writing for print magazines and managing content on community-focused websites. As Product Manager, I don’t spill out sentences in such a regular basis now, so being able to write for Road to VR is both an honor and a good outlet for my writing-itch.
So, why am I interested in virtual reality? To be honest, I completely missed the 90’s VR craze and maybe it was better that way. My first entry into a virtual space was via the Oculus Rift. After reading so much about it in the MTBS3D forums and seeing John Carmack demo the Rift at E3, I was offered the chance to try Palmer Luckey’s mysterious duct-taped device myself, at Gamescom 2012. I still vividly remember the feeling after my 20 minutes in a spacestation on Mars: despite my slight nausea, it was one of the most profound gaming experiences I ever had – the implications of the technology are just huge.
I couldn’t get the experience out of my head, daydreamed about VR Arcades and virtual wing suit flying and all the other possibilities. I soaked up every piece of information available about the Rift, cared about the growth of the Oculus subreddit and now, here I am at Road to VR, writing for one of the major outlets about virtual reality. As I said, it still feels unreal – but I sincerely hope all of our readers will like my upcoming articles. I had the chance to play around extensively with an Oculus Rift Dev Kit, so more information directly from the source will be coming soon – stay tuned!
Looking forward to amazing times with you,
Dominic
