Latest
Fight off post-apocalyptic bandits in 'Arktika.1'
It's a hundred years in a post-apocalyptic future and a second ice age has arrived. You're a mercenary, hired by a Russian colony to protect the facilities from bandits, criminals and other... creatures. That's the basic premise behind Arktika.1, a brand new VR title developed by 4A Games with the help of Oculus Studios. This first-person shooter is an Oculus exclusive, and importantly, it's also a Touch exclusive, which means it's designed from the ground up to utilize the VR firm's motion hand controllers.
The next batch of Oculus games highlights the Touch controller
2016 has been a banner year for Oculus for one main reason: After four long years, it finally shipped the consumer edition of its VR headset. Sure, it's pricey at $600 and sure, it requires a pretty powerful computer, but for a first-generation product in an extremely young field, the Rift delivers the goods. One of the reasons for that is that Oculus has been busy cultivating a vast ecosystem of games and apps for years now, thanks to the company's fervent developer community. On the eve of Oculus' third annual developer's conference, we got to get a sneak peek at the very latest that community has to offer. The big theme this year? Getting to use those soon-to-be-available Touch controllers.
Oculus to offer earbuds for the Rift headset
The Oculus Rift already comes with a set of built-in headphones, but what if you're more of a earbuds person? Well, Oculus just announced a pair of in-ear buds designed specifically for the Rift. Simply detach the bundled headphones and attach the appropriately called Oculus Earphones. According to Oculus, they have advanced noise isolation and have drivers optimized for VR. Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe even went on to say that they're one of the most higher-end earphones in the world. The Earphones will be available for $49. You can pre-order them on October 10th, and they'll ship on December 6th.
Virtually hang out with up to 7 friends in Oculus' 'VR Rooms'
Oculus announced a host of new social features for platform during its OC/3 press event on Thursday. In addition to Avatars, which allow users to customize outlines of their faces with various accessories and skins, the company also rolled out Parties and Room. Parties are just what they sound like -- groups of up to eight users can band together and chat. And if you want a dedicated area to do that in, Oculus also announced Rooms. This collaborative space differs from the Facebook-centric chat app that we saw back at F8 earlier this year. Rooms is designed to behave more like a virtual living room where groups can congregate to play games or watch a movie, rather than a simple gathering of avatars.
Oculus Touch to launch on December 6th for $199
Until now, the Oculus Rift has been incomplete. It's a comfortable, high-end VR headset, but without Touch the experience feels like a preview. A taste of the platform's full potential. Thankfully, that's all about to change: At Oculus Connect, the company announced that its motion controllers will be out on December 6th. They'll cost $199, putting the combined Rift price at $798. For reference, the HTC Vive with its wand controllers costs $799. PlayStation VR launches next week for $400, but that's only the headset -- you'll need to pay extra for the camera and Move controllers.
Customize your appearance in VR with Oculus avatars
Oculus avatars allow anyone using the Rift to create a customized version of themselves, complete with more than 1 billion permutations of clothing, accessories, hair, face and color choices. Oculus VP of Product Nate Mitchell introduced the new avatar system, personalizing a character live on stage during today's Oculus Connect 3 event. The avatars will be used in various games and social experiences in the Oculus ecosystem, including the newly announced VR Rooms and Sports Bar VR, and the whole endeavor goes live when the Touch controllers ship on December 6th.
Oculus' next headset is a cross between the Rift and Gear VR
Virtual reality is kind of stuck between two markets right now: an extremely mobile but lower quality, phone-powered experience, and an very high end, expensive, wired PC experience. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg says neither is really good enough for the future of the platform. Virtual reality needs to be high quality, wireless and mobile. Today at Oculus Connect 3, Zuckerberg announced that it's coming. Referred to as the "Santa Cruz," the company now has a prototype wireless virtual reality headset designed to bridge the gap between the high end Oculus Rift and the portable Gear VR,.
Facebook shows how you'll hang with friends in VR
Back at F8 earlier this year, we saw a demo of a couple of people interacting with each other via virtual reality -- sort of like VR Skype. Now, at the Oculus Connect event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off a much better version of the software. Instead of just a color outline of your face, you can have animated cartoon-like avatars, which are complete with facial expressions. You can even create draw-in-the-air swords and lightsabers, and then play around with them in VR.
You can shop many stores entirely in Facebook Messenger
You've had the option of chatting with stores in Facebook Messenger for a while. Wouldn't it be nice if you could complete the entire sale without leaving chat? Shopify thinks it can help on that front: it's trotting out a feature that lets you browse and buy from stores using its platform while remaining strictly in Messenger. You don't have to visit a website just to pick an item or check out. You'll likely have to start the conversation from a company's Facebook page, but it's entirely possible that you could stick to chat from then onward.
Facebook didn't mean to let you sell guns and hedgehogs
Facebook's newly launched Marketplace is meant to help you sell all kinds of goods, but it turns out the service has been a little too permissive in its early days. The company has apologized after a "technical issue" with its screening system let Marketplace users sell items that either violate its policies or are downright illegal, including babies, drugs, guns and... baby hedgehogs. Really. It's promising to "fix the problem" and will make sure that it's correctly removing forbidden listings before expanding access.
How to watch the US vice presidential debate
In this US election, the vice presidential debate matters more than ever -- both the Democrats' Tim Kaine and the Republicans' Mike Pence have had relatively little time in the limelight beyond their home states. You may want to watch just to see where they stand, not to mention how they handle themselves on the national stage. But how to do that online? Never fear: we've rounded up the major streaming options that you'll have when the VP debate starts at 9PM Eastern.
Facebook Messenger now lets you toggle end-to-end encryption
With the flick of a switch back in April, the popular international messaging service WhatsApp turned on end-to-end encryption for every conversation in its system, dramatically boosting security for its 1 billion-person userbase. At long last, parent company Facebook has finally rolled out the same protections for users of its standard Messenger service. Today, users can toggle the "Secret Conversations" feature on in settings to enable end-to-end encryption, ensuring that nobody can pry into chat content but the participants.
WhatsApp lets you doodle on photos and videos
Even a straightforward messaging service like WhatsApp isn't immune to the allure of adding Snapchat-style features. The Facebook-owned app is introducing the option to draw on photos and videos, including emoji. If you don't think that puppy photo is charming enough by itself, you can easily doodle on it to make your point. More interested in improving the quality of the shots themselves? Don't worry, you're getting a couple of upgrades as well.
Facebook opens Marketplace to take on eBay and Craigslist
If you visit Facebook today, the chances are that you'll come across someone trying to sell something. It could be a friend looking to make some money from an old smartphone or a thousand-strong parenting group looking to trade items for their little ones. Facebook has slowly introduced features to make it easier for people to list their items, but today the company has launched Marketplace, a new way for users to "discover, buy and sell items" with other people in their area.
Facebook introduces Messenger 'Lite' for Android
Facebook has announced a "Lite" version of its Android Messenger app. The new bare-bones Messenger app is designed for older phones with less memory and less powerful processors. Messenger Lite will initially launch in Kenya, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, and Venezuela, but will hit other regions at a later, unspecified date.
Facebook gives select Pages the power to tag their products
Someday, you might see products tagged in Facebook images and videos the same way people are today. Facebook has begun testing an experimental feature that allows businesses running Pages to tag their products, according to Business Insider. The publication has spotted the option in their account and confirmed the ongoing test with the social network. What does it mean for buyers like us? Well, when you click on a tagged product, you'll be taken straight to a dedicated page where you can read more information about it.
Facebook tests feature similar to Snapchat Stories for Messenger
Facebook has been keen on borrowing features from Snapchat as of late and it's testing yet another one in Poland. The so-called "Messenger Day" tool allows Facebook Messenger users to share a collection of photos and videos with friends that will disappear in 24 hours. And yes, they can be decorated with text, scribbles, stickers and more just like you can do with Snapchat Stories. If you'll recall, Facebook reportedly tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion before getting turned down in 2013.
Google opens up its machine learning tricks to all
There may now be an easier way to implement advanced machine learning models in your projects. Google has opened up its Cloud Machine Learning to all businesses in a public beta, after a few months of testing it in private alpha. The tool makes it easier to train models at a much faster rate, and is integrated with the Google Cloud Platform. This has applications for businesses in areas such as customer support (learning how to automate responses to a variety of queries and complaints) or any kind of repetition-heavy task.
Google, Facebook and other tech titans form 'Partnership on AI'
Five of the biggest tech companies have launched a collaboration to help the public understand the benefits of artificial intelligence. The New York Times reported in early September that Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon had been meeting to discuss an AI-related project. Now, the cat's finally out of the bag. Their collaboration is officially called "Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society," and it has a few goals other than to make sure people know that AI research isn't all about creating killer robots.
WhatsApp won't comply with India's order to delete user data (updated)
WhatsApp's decision to share user data with Facebook has provoked the ire of yet another foreign government. Last week, India's Delhi High Court ordered WhatsApp to delete any data collected from users who opted out of the company's new privacy policy before September 25th. According to Mashable, however, WhatsApp has no plan to comply with the court order and it will have "no impact on the planned policy and terms of service updates." (Note: see update below.)
