XR Industry News
The latest news on the XR industry. Covering AR, VR, MR, spatial computing, and the most important companies and platforms in the field.
Google’s Chief Game Designer to Talk Tango at GDC, Augmenting Virtual Reality with the Real World
Google will be demoing some of their new sensor-assisted virtual reality technology at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, which promises to "enable Holodeck-like experiences with less than $100 add-on cost" to mobile devices. While not explicitly named,...
‘Neos Core’ Enables a World of Multi-User, Multi-device VR Collaboration
Tomáš 'Frooxius' Mariančík, the man behind the Sightline series has reached what he calls a "major milestone" with his continuing creation and education platform Neos. Today he unveiled a breakthrough framework which allows multiple users to gaze into and collaborate...
Sony Morpheus Development – ‘Vanguard V’ Dev Shares Perspective
With the Gear VR and Oculus Rift 'Crescent Bay' prototype currently in the spotlight, it shouldn't be forgotten that Sony's PS4 VR headset, Project Morpheus, is still brewing in the background. Development kits are out in the wild and work has...
HTC Partners on $1.5 Billion VR Investment Fund with Shenzhen Municipal Government
HTC and the Shenzhen Municipal Government announced plans to set up a joint China VR Research Institute, creating a 10 billion RMB (~$1.45 billion USD) Shenzhen VR Investment Fund to accelerate the development of the VR industry in China.
China’s third...
Insider Notes from the HTC Vive VR Jam at London’s Playhubs
The HTC Vive came to London recently, courtesy of Valve and PlayHubs, to form the centrepiece of a dedicated VR Jam. Mike Algar charts his room-scale developer adventures for us in this guest post from inside the event.
Mike Alger is...
FOVE Raises $11 Million Series A Investment to ‘Accelerate Mass Production’ in Fall 2016
FOVE today announced a Series A investment of $11 million led by the Colopl VR Fund with participation by Hon Hai VC fund 2020, and Samsung Ventures.
Fove, who is creating a VR headset with inbuilt eye-tracking, raised $480,000 on Kickstarter last...
Kite & Lightning Raises $2.5M for ‘Bebylon’, a “mini-Sword Art Online”
Kite & Lightning, an LA-based studio known for some of the burgeoning VR industry's most polished experiences, today announced that their next big project, the VR vehicular melee party brawler Bebylon Battle Royale, has been funded to the tune of $2.5...
VR Devs Experiment With Virtual Locomotion at HTC Vive VR Jam in Austin
Last weekend, Owlchemy Labs and VR Austin hosted an event in conjunction with Valve, HTC, Nvidia, Epic, and Unity, that gave VR developers a chance to created rapidly prototyped VR experiences for the brand new HTC Vive headset that works...
Hands On: ESI’s Incredibly Accurate VR CAD Simulation Lets You Take Cars Apart
Dominic Brennan gets his hands on ESI Group's latest iteration of IC.IDO, their automotive visualisation tool that uses CAD-accurate data to generate extremely realistic VR simulations which let you take apart (or fix) your own virtual car.
The GPU Technology...
Leap Motion’s ‘Planetarium’ Gives you the Power to Grab Constellations
In a new technical demo from Leap Motion's labs, you can use your hands to soar through space and manipulate entire constellations with mere gestures. The Planetarium aims to illustrate ideas in virtual reality user interfaces and demonstrate the...
Visualizing the Latest Features Found in Oculus SDK v0.6.0.0
A clever set of visualizations covering some of the major changes to Oculus' new software developers kit (SDK) has surfaced, and may help the non-developers among us get a better grip on exactly what these changes mean for VR.
Thanks to...
Epic’s ‘Showdown’ Demo Runs at 60 FPS on Morpheus After UE4 Optimizations
Epic's high fidelity Showdown demo was only barely able to hold framerate on one of the most powerful GPUs in the world when it debuted last September. But now, after optimizations for Unreal Engine 4 on PS4, the demo runs on...
VirtualGrasp Aims to Finally Deliver Realistic Hand Interactions in VR
Swedish robotics specialists are working on a system to allow game developers to deliver realistic, realtime and dynamic interaction animations, so that your VR hands can finally grasp in-game objects convincingly.
By the end of this year, every major virtual reality...
Here We Go (Again): The VR Industry Is Spinning up Just like Online Video 10 Years...
Here we go again. A decade ago, it was online video that changed everything. Now virtual reality is set to change the world once more. As we approach the Q1 2016 Oculus Rift release date, you can literally see and...
AR Specialist Zappar Nets $3.75m in Funding, Aims to “Democratize Augmented Reality”
Zappar, a London-based developer in the Augmented Reality space, is announcing the closing of its Series A funding round. The $3.75m investment will accelerate the development of several new products along with increased support for ZapWorks, their flagship content...


















