virtualreality
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Crowdfunded 3D headphone startup Ossic closes its doors
It's a sad time if you're a fan of 3D audio. Ossic, a startup that crowdfunded a pair of headphones that personalized 3D sound for your ears, has shut down due to a lack of funds. It successfully shipped a handful of developer-oriented units in January, but didn't have the money to mass-produce the devices for most listeners. There's no mention of customers getting refunds, although that's typical for crowdfunding efforts given that contributions are considered investments rather than guaranteed purchases.
Jon Fingas05.20.2018
Oculus' mobile VR now supports paid add-ons for apps
Downloadable extras are a staple of the gaming world on PCs, phones and consoles, but not in VR. With Oculus' devices, you've either had to buy another app or hope the creator would be kind enough to throw in thew new content for free. Not anymore: Oculus has introduced beta support for paid DLC in the mobile store serving both its stand-alone Go headset and Samsung's Gear VR. If a game developer wants to expand the story, for example, they can ask you to pay a small amount instead of charging for a wholly separate app.
Jon Fingas05.20.2018
'Marvel Powers United VR' is still headed to Oculus this year
Last year Disney revealed that a Marvel VR game is on the way for Oculus headsets, and things have been fairly quiet since. Marvel Powers United VR will allow for four-player co-op as gamers take on the roles of various heroes in the Marvel universe like The Hulk, Captain Marvel, Deadpool or Loki. With Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2 both currently in theaters it would seem like the perfect time for the title to release widely, but apparently not yet. UploadVR spoke to Oculus Studios EP Mike Doran who confirmed that the Sanzaru Games-developed project is still on deck for release later this year. Last year before the Thor movie came out developers revealed his character would be playable, but so far there's no word concerning whether Black Panther or Thanos are joining the action. There are in-store demos of the game available if you can't wait for the full experience, or just check out the reaction video below from fans who tried it at Comic-Con.
Richard Lawler05.19.2018
VR in the sky is better than VR in your home
I'm watching someone on the edge of a helicopter as he counts down with his hands. Three, two, one, and we leap. Well, I don't actually leap. Instead, I fall forward into an iFly indoor skydiving wind tunnel and I start to float. In my helmet, I'm falling toward the Alps while the "countdown person" and another skydiver pull off incredible midair acrobatics. It's like Cirque du Soleil with less makeup and fewer French accents.
Roberto Baldwin05.18.2018
SteamVR Input beta test helps controllers adapt to any VR game
With the latest beta version of SteamVR Valve is now testing a new setup for controllers that makes things more customizable no matter what controllers you're using, what the game was designed for, or what capabilities the user has. With the new SteamVR Input system, developers are now able to offer alternate control schemes without updating the game itself, while gamers can adjust bindings for buttons and switches to their liking, then share those setups via Steam Workshop.
Richard Lawler05.15.2018
'CoolPaintrVR' is PlayStation VR's 3D painting app
PC-based virtual reality has a few applications for creating art, but so far PlayStation VR owners have been left high and dry in that regard. That changes now with CoolPaintrVR from Singular People and WildBit Studios. You can use either a DualShock 4 or PlayStation Move controllers to craft your masterpiece, but the latter will almost assuredly offer the most natural painting experience. As VRFocus points out, in addition to exporting your finished product to USB for sharing, the app will also capture your entire creation session for 3D playback. Interested in getting your hands (virtually) dirty? It'll only set you back $20.
Timothy J. Seppala05.14.2018
Japan Display built a 1,001-ppi screen for VR headsets
Japan Display (JDI) has unveiled plans for high resolution LCD screens that could substantially improve the displays found in current VR headsets. JDI -- a joint enterprise made up of Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi -- says it's developing a 3.25-inch 1,001 ppi (pixels per inch) LCD, which will also purportedly feature lower latency and energy consumption levels. According to JDI, these are the key ingredients required to unlock natural-looking video on higher resolution displays.
Katrina Filippidis05.11.2018
A VR quest to make you care about endangered species
Most of us don't think about rhinos on a daily basis. We're too consumed with maintaining inbox-zero or making sure our cat is healthy. When the last male white northern rhino died in March, the impact on most of us was minimal because the now-extinct 2-ton mammal wasn't lumbering around our living rooms. We're gravely concerned the moment Mr. Whiskers starts acting funky, though. That's because he's a part of our everyday environment and, as such, we're emotionally attached to him. This theory is called environmental amnesia. Basically, it's the belief that we don't consider what's going on outside of our immediate surroundings. We think that whatever is happening around us is normal. It's something that Fountain Digital CEO Svetlana Dragayeva thinks virtual reality can help address by showing people how wondrous our planet's creatures can be in an intimate setting -- their homes. "This is where technology can really help us shape new types of [emotional] relationships so that we actually become curious about what's going on in the offline world, and become more involved in saving [it]," she said.
Timothy J. Seppala05.07.2018
Wander 'Burning Man' in VR with help from the Smithsonian
Despite hosting tens of millions of visitors annually, the Smithsonian remains inaccessible to anyone unable to physically make the trip to visit. That's why the Smithsonian American Art Museum is partnering with Intel to accelerate efforts in digitizing its 157 million-piece collection. It's first project will allow attendees to virtually wander the site of the annual Burning Man festival.
Andrew Tarantola05.05.2018
Google's latest app easily transfers VR180 footage to your phone
Google's work toward democratizing virtual reality has taken a big step forward. The company recenlty released the VR180 app for Android and iOS, which takes photos and video captured on its special VR cameras and uploads them directly to Google Photos and YouTube. There's an option for live-streaming too, according to TechCrunch. You'll need one of Google's VR180 cameras to use the app, of course, but there are already a few options to choose from in that regard. Lucky for you, Lenovo's Mirage Camera is available as of today.
Timothy J. Seppala05.04.2018
One man built his own vacation spot in VR
When most people fancy a vacation, they pack up their suitcase and go somewhere warm like Barbados. Not Bastiaan Hooimeijer, who goes by the name "Naam" online. Instead, he built his own holiday spot inside virtual reality. The result — crafted using Google Blocks — isn't an idyllic beach or a villa hidden in the French Riviera. It's a small caravan in a poky piece of land surrounded by piles of discarded junk. The world is bright and colorful, but it's not the sort of place that Lonely Planet would send one of its travel writers.
Nick Summers05.04.2018
Lenovo Mirage Solo review: A solid VR headset looking for a niche
There's nothing quite like spring in New York. It's warm, but not too warm. Protests and open-air markets are spinning up at Union Square. The popsicle vendor next to the office is slinging treats while the heady aroma of kebabs from the food truck around the corner draws a crowd of lunchtime regulars. At long last, people are luxuriating outside, and New York feels alive again. Naturally, because the city was brimming with energy, I had no choice but to go outside and goof around with a VR headset. You see, Lenovo's Mirage Solo is part of a new breed of self-contained VR headsets. You don't need to connect it to a powerful PC or stick a phone inside of it. You just turn it on, pick up Google's classic Daydream controller and dive right in. While headsets like the Oculus Go are accessible because they're fairly cheap, Lenovo and Google were a little more ambitious. They needed to take the existing Daydream concept and make it more capable. By cooking up a way to help this all-in-one headset understand your movement in the real world and translate it into virtual ones, I'd argue they succeeded.
Chris Velazco05.04.2018
Google's first VR Doodle honors filmmaker Georges Méliès
Visit the Google home page today (May 3rd) and you'll find an unusual Doodle of a stick-thin man with a pristine suit. Click and you'll be presented with a YouTube player that brings the quirky figure -- French filmmaker Georges Méliès -- and his creations to life in a wonderfully animated 360-degree short. Google is calling it a VR Doodle, which it is, sort of. Back to the Moon will be part of the Spotlight Stories app, which works with Cardboard and Daydream headsets. It will also be available for high-end VR headsets, such as the HTC Vive, through Steam and Viveport.
Nick Summers05.02.2018
Make trippy music in VR with pals (and OK Go)
When I heard that OK Go frontman Damian Kulash was teaming up with VR studio Within to create an interactive music-making experience, I was stoked. But when I checked out Lambchild Superstar: Making Music in the Menagerie of the Holy Cow at the Tribeca Film Festival, I was simply bewildered. Not in a bad way, though. Although it's not the traditional jam session I was expecting, Lambchild was still a supremely quirky and unabashedly weird trip of discovery and collaboration.
Cherlynn Low05.02.2018
Facebook and RED are building a camera for 3D VR video
Most VR video isn't immersive in the truest sense. You can spin around, but you can't lean forward or step to the side to get a better view. Facebook and RED are helping to fix that -- they're partnering on an "all-in-one" camera that offers six degrees of freedom for 3D and 360-degree video capture. The team-up will combine Facebook's depth detection technology with RED's low-light performance to record all the 3D information in a scene (not just those in well-lit areas) to give you the freedom to walk around in a video.
Jon Fingas05.01.2018
Facebook users will be able to make normal photos look 3D
Facebook has been working to implement 3D objects into user interactions, but at the company's F8 conference today, announcers introduced a few new features to add dimensionality and VR to photos. This summer, users will be able to upload pictures as a 'new media type' allowing them to capture 3D moments in time, according to the social network. But it's also adding a new feature that takes photos of old locations -- your childhood home, perhaps -- and uses machine learning to recreate them in VR, albeit in a funky pointillism-like style.
David Lumb05.01.2018
'Jurassic World: Blue' tells a dinosaur's story on Oculus VR headsets
Now that Oculus Go is here, you can expect a deluge of experiences built to take advantage of affordable VR -- and one of the first will be enticing if you're a Jurassic Park fan. Felix and Paul Studios (the team behind Jurassic World: Apatosaurus) has returned with Jurassic World: Blue, another VR experience based on the dinosaurs-run-amok franchise. The two-part companion to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is designed for both the Oculus Go and Rift, and follows its namesake intelligent velociraptor around Isla Nublar as she struggles against other dinosaurs as well as the island itself. Yes, it's a movie tie-in, but part of the attraction is an improved take on the behind-the-scenes technology.
Jon Fingas05.01.2018
Oculus Go standalone VR headset is now available for $199
Oculus' first stab at a standalone VR headset is finally here after several months of hype. The Oculus Go is now available to order from the company's website for buyers in 23 countries, with US pricing set at $199 for a version with 32GB of storage and $249 for a 64GB model. Americans can also buy the headset from a mix of online and physical retailers including Amazon, Best Buy and Newegg.
Jon Fingas05.01.2018
$199 Oculus Go VR headset is ready for pre-order on Amazon
We're just hours away from the first keynote speech of Facebook's F8 event where we're expecting to hear about all kinds of things, including its mass-market standalone VR headset. Facebook showed off early standalone VR work with "Project Santa Cruz" two years ago, then last year revealed the Oculus Go and its $199 price. We got some hands-on time with its comfy wireless experience at GDC recently, but now Amazon watchers Wario64 and the Tracker App note that Monday night it became ready for pre-ordering. If you're already sure you want one of the headsets that will bring a VR experience without requiring any help from a PC or phone then you can go ahead and get in line now. The only issue remaining (other than any idea about details or software support) is the release date, which Amazon has filled in with a likely placeholder of December 31st. Update: After debuting at F8 earlier today, the headset is now officially on sale, and you can read our review right here.
Richard Lawler05.01.2018
Oculus is bringing live VR theater to your face
When you think about it, VR is ideal for the theatrical world: you'll always have the best seats in the house, and you can interact with the play without stepping on a stage. And now, Oculus wants to take advantage of that creative freedom. In an interview with CNET, the company's Yelena Rachitsky revealed that the company is working on an immersive theater format where VR lets you interact with live actors. The concept isn't strictly new (there have been VR performances before), but Oculus' approach would maintain that interactivity without being limited to performances that happen in one place.
Jon Fingas04.30.2018