Facebook’s Non-advertising Revenue ‘primarily driven by Oculus,’ up 80% to $297M

In Facebook's Q1 2020 earnings call today, the company overviewed its latest financial situation and noted that Oculus products were a major contributor to $297 million in non-advertising revenue. While Facebook makes the vast majority of its revenue from advertising,...

Wireality is an Experimental Haptic Feedback Device Using Shoulder-mounted Strings

Carnegie Mellon University researchers published a paper recently that proposes a novel VR haptic feedback device, which unlike strictly hand-worn haptic devices, lets you feel objects in VR with a measure of 'positional' resistance. Researchers Cathy Fang, Yang Zhang, Matthew...

John Legend, Tinashe to Play Live Shows in Social VR Platform ‘Wave’

Wave isn't your garden variety social VR platform. With an emphasis on virtual raves, replete with immersive visualizations and regular live performances, it's become the de facto concert platform for VR users. Now Wave says it's bringing more artists this...
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Mozilla Launches ‘Hubs Cloud’ on AWS, the ‘WordPress of Social Virtual Spaces’

Mozilla today announced the launch of Hubs Cloud, an AWS-hosted service that allows organizations to run their own private virtual spaces that can be customized to their needs. You may have heard of Hubs already; it's Mozilla's web-based social VR platform which...
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Hand-tracking Text Input System From Facebook Researchers Throws Out the Keyboard (sort of)

A prototype from Facebook Reality Labs researchers demonstrates a novel method for text input with controllerless hand-tracking. The system treats the hands and fingers as a sort of predictive keyboard which uses pinching gestures to select groups of letters. Text...

Why You Shouldn’t Play ‘Half-Life: Alyx’ Without a VR Headset

Half-Life: Alyx (2020), Valve's made-for-VR entry into the fabled Half-Life series, launched late last month on SteamVR-compatible headsets to near-universal praise. If you don't own a VR headset but still want to play though, I'd caution you against playing it...

‘Alien: Isolation’ on Sale for $2 for a Limited Time, One of VR’s First Great Games

Alien: Isolation (2014) was one of the first truly good games to get support for PC VR headsets. If you're wondering why everyone is still crazy about years later, it'll only take you $2 to find out. Thanks to Steam's...

‘Bigscreen’ Brings On-Demand Movies in New ‘Movies & Events’ Update

Bigscreen, the social VR viewing platform, introduced paid movies late last year so you could buy a ticket to join people in watching a number of 2D and 3D films at set times, working more or less like a...

‘Dreams’ PSVR Expansion Now in Final Development Stage, Suggesting Nearby Launch

Dreams (2020) launched out of Early Access on PS4 earlier this year, and while PSVR users have been patiently awaiting any news of the promised VR support, Media Molecule has stayed fairly mum on the subject. Now the studio's creative...

The 3 Most Common Arguments Against VR and Why They’re Wrong

With the recent release of Half-Life: Alyx, VR has been thrust into the spotlight of the mainstream gaming audience. While players and critics alike have universally praised the game, pushing it to become one of Steam's best rated games...