VR Development
Oculus to Talk “Breakthroughs in Spatial Audio Technologies” at Connect Conference
Oculus Connect 4, the company's fourth annual developer conference, is set for October 11th and 12th in San Jose, California. There, Oculus will share with developers some of its latest research and developments, including what's coming to the company's VR Audio...
Unity’s Main Branch Now Supports NVIDIA VRWorks for Enhanced Rendering Features
The latest release of Unity, version 2017.1 now officially supports NVIDIA's VRWorks rendering tech. VRWorks contains a number of rendering features unique to the company's GPUs which are designed to improve performance in VR applications.
Update (7/13/17): After several months...
‘Lone Echo’s’ Virtual Hands Are an Unexpected VR Innovation
Oculus had talked much about 'Hand Presence' with the launch of their Touch VR controllers last year, but few games have implemented the controllers in such a way that truly deliver on that promise. Combined with Touch, Lone Echo's impressive...
AxonVR is Building a Generalized Haptic Display
AxonVR was awarded US Patent No. 9,652,037 of a "whole-body human-computer interface" on May 16th, which includes an external exoskeleton as well as a generalized haptic display made out of microfluidic technology. I had a chance to demo AxonVR's...
‘Audio Factory’ is a Compelling Showcase of Google’s Spatial Audio Engine for VR
Google has released a Daydream VR app called Audio Factory, a polished and even entertaining demonstrating their Spatial Audio Engine for VR. Described as “VR’s second sense”, spatial audio is a key aspect of maintaining a high level of...
Oculus Launches Improved Developer Hub, Updated Documentation
Oculus’ new developer hub website is up and running, featuring better navigation, documentation and search capabilities. The improvements address many of the requests and feedback received from the recent global developer survey, and follows an initiative to increase overall...
NVIDIA Shows How Physically-based Audio Can Greatly Enhance VR Immersion
Positional audio for VR experiences—where noises sound as if they are coming from the correct direction—has long been understood as an important part of making VR immersive. But knowing which direction sounds are coming from is only one part...
Google Announces New Tools to Develop High-performance Daydream Apps
During the opening presentation at today's Unity Vision Summit, Nathan Martz, Developer Platforms Product Manager at Google, took to the stage to talk about new tools that the company is releasing to help developers create high-performance apps for Daydream, Google's...
New Unity Tools Bring Interactivity and Real-time CGI to 360 Video, Now in Beta
360 video combined with real-time CG and interactive elements was demonstrated on stage at today's Vision VR/AR Summit 2017 keynote. Using two layers of video with 3D elements in between, it is a simple way of enhancing standard 360...
Unity CEO: VR Will Get Huge, But Devs Need to Survive and Avoid Hype Until it...
At VRLA 2017, Unity CEO and games industry vet John Riccitiello dumped a little cold water wisdom on the hype surrounding the red-hot VR industry. Riccitiello believes VR is coming and it will be huge, but advises that developers stay...
Understanding Predictive Tracking and Why It’s Important for AR/VR Headsets
In the context of AR and VR systems, predictive tracking refers to the process of predicting the future orientation and/or position of an object or body part. For instance, one might want to predict the orientation of the head...
Crytek-Incubated ‘VR First’ Program to Double Number of Academic VR/AR Labs in 2017
VR First, the global initiative to seed academic institutions with VR/AR hardware and software, today announced that it's nearly doubling the number of its VR labs in universities and science parks across the globe by the end of 2017. With currently 26...
‘COMPOUND’ Demo Hits SteamVR, Puts You in a VR World of Lovingly Detailed Retro Graphics
COMPOUND is a VR hobby project from developer 'NotDead' which aims to immerse you in a world of lovingly crafted pixel art, retro-styled first person shooter.
Update (4/6/17, 11:48PM PT): Compound has received a major update with v0.03b and has launched on SteamVR...
Oculus CTO: Improved Gear VR Visuals Part of a “brand new Oculus runtime system,” Details Improvements
In an update rolling out to Gear VR users over the next few weeks, Oculus Home on Gear VR will see a 2x boost in pixel resolution, according to Oculus, and load times improved as much as 3x. Oculus...
TouchSense Force Plugin Aims to Help VR Game Devs Make Better Haptics, Faster
Founded in 1993, Immersion Corp. designs and licenses haptic technology that's come to be used in gamepads you're well familiar with. Now the company is developing a new haptic programming system which aims to help game developers make better...
