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The Weekly Roundup for 03.18.2013
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
The Daily Roundup for 03.22.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Distro Issue 83: Oculus, Valve and a shared vision of virtual reality
Since last August, gamers have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Oculus Rift after a stellar Kickstarter campaign that far exceeded its fundraising goal. Of course, with new hardware comes the need for fresh software, and Valve has partnered with the aforementioned outfit to tackle VR. In this issue of our weekly, we take a look at the story behind the Rift, go heads-up with the final dev unit and visit with Valve to chat about the whole lot. Samsung's Galaxy S 4 gets previewed, Hands-On tackles a slew of new gadgets and the Insert Coin: New Challengers winner floats through the Q&A. A tablet mag full of weekend reading awaits via the download links that follow. Distro Issue 83 PDF Distro in the iTunes App Store Distro in the Google Play Store Distro in the Windows Store Distro APK (for sideloading) Like Distro on Facebook Follow Distro on Twitter
The Daily Roundup for 03.19.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Oculus' Palmer Luckey and Nate Mitchell on the past, present and future of the Rift
As geeks, we have a tendency to let our imaginations run away with us. Science fiction-fueled dreams conjure up images of flying cars, robots and artificial reality. We judge our gadgets by the arbitrary standards of famous speculative works: hoverboards by 2015 and a holodeck in every home. It's a silly and unrealistic way to measure our progress, but it inspires us to build the future we're tired of waiting for. This is the kind of passion we found at Oculus VR headquarters, where founder Palmer Luckey and a platoon of software engineers, hardware gurus and marketing wizards hope to make virtual reality a plausible reality. We sat down with the company's aforementioned founder and VP of Product Nate Mitchell to find out where that passion came from and where Oculus VR is heading.
Virtual Reality now: hands-on with the Oculus Rift final development kit
On a sunny Southern California afternoon, Oculus VR's founder, Palmer Luckey, its VP of Product, Nate Mitchell, its press agent, a film crew, photographers and a pair of Engadget's editors occupy a conference room in the company's Irvine headquarters. While it's the first time that most of the group has met in person, they're all here with a common interest. This assembly is gathered to take a look at what is said to be the final development hardware design of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Outside of this intrigued mash-up of press and corporate executives, Oculus' heads-up headset has managed to generate a lot of buzz in a reasonably short amount of time. The original concept was constructed from leftover parts in the garage of a tinkerer who was trying to create an affordable VR experience. Looking to further the Rift's development, the newborn firm took to crowdfunding and smashed its 30-day Kickstarter goal of $250,000 by raising a colossal $2,437,429 this past August. During its early fundraising days we managed to go hands-on with a crude prototype of the equipment which left us yearning to get our hands on a final development model. A few short months later at CES, the company teased a larger, redesigned 7-inch development model, but only allowed us to try out an updated test unit that featured a 5.6-inch, 1,280 x 800 display wrapped in several layers of black gaffer tape. Fast-forward to today and here I am waiting to test-drive that elusive headset that got away from us back in Las Vegas. With all of the buzz surrounding the company's recent VR efforts, it's time for Oculus to put up or shut up.%Gallery-183179%
The Daily Roundup for 03.18.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Oculus Rift won't come bundled with Doom 3, credit or refund offered instead
This news is likely to be a bit disappointing to some Oculus Rift backers. Project supporters were set to be rewarded with a copy of Doom 3: BFG Edition, which was to arrive bundled with each development kit. Unfortunately, it turns out that the device won't support the game at launch, so the team is offering some alternative compensation instead. You can opt for a $20 Steam Wallet credit, $25 Oculus Store credit or a full refund of your original pledge, if you so desire. Log in to make your pick by April 5th -- if you miss that deadline, you'll automatically receive the $25 credit to the Oculus Store. Kickstarter backers can hit up the source link to make their pick.
Playing an actual game with Oculus Rift: hands-on with Valve's Team Fortress 2 'VR Mode'
Valve's free-to-play first-person shooter, Team Fortress 2, is getting Oculus Rift support with its VR Mode update in the coming weeks. Think of it as a large beta test -- Oculus Rift dev kits ship to Kickstarter backers and Team Fortress 2 players on PC can snag a free update, thus feeding Valve valuable feedback on how people play TF2 with VR. The only thing left to know is perhaps the most important: how does it play? We found out just that on a recent visit to Valve's Bellevue, Wash., offices, where Valve programmer Joe Ludwig lead us through a hands-on demo of the game's VR Mode update on a near-final build of the Oculus Rift dev kit (not quite the one shipping to backers, but far more advanced than the previous Oculus prototypes we've used). Follow us beyond the break for detailed impressions of playing an actual game (read: not just tech demos) with the Oculus Rift VR headset.%Gallery-183116%
Valve's Joe Ludwig on the uncertain future of virtual reality and partnering with Oculus
It's a beautiful late winter day in Bellevue, Wash. Instead of enjoying the outdoors, I'm sitting in a rectangular white room with three programmers, surrounded by three walls covered in augmented reality markers. Not that I'm complaining: Valve Software's Joe Ludwig, the programmer in the room who most resembles a member of Anthrax, is walking me through his company's latest work in the world of virtual reality. It's the first anyone outside of Valve will see of the company's VR efforts thus far. As it turns out, the software company is working with Oculus VR to port the tremendously popular free-to-play first-person shooter, Team Fortress 2, to the upcoming Rift development kit. The free update, dubbed "VR Mode," is the latest benchmark in Valve's ongoing hardware initiative. "We think that both augmented and virtual reality are going to be a huge deal over the next several years," Ludwig tells us.%Gallery-183116%
Valve's Team Fortress 2 is Oculus Rift's first game, free 'VR Mode' update coming soon
We've known for some time now that Valve was working on virtual reality support for its perpetually updated free-to-play shooter, Team Fortress 2. The company's even giving a duo of talks at the upcoming Game Developer's Conference on the difficulties of game development for virtual reality. What we didn't know, however, is that said support is also headed to consumers as "VR Mode," and it'll get pushed to PC Team Fortress 2 players "sometime within the next couple of weeks." But how will you play it? Simple: Team Fortress 2 is the Oculus Rift's first official game. Valve programmer Joe Ludwig revealed as much during a recent visit Engadget paid to the Bellevue, Wash.-based game company. "This is a mode that everybody who has a Rift dev kit and access to Team Fortress 2 will be able to play, just on public and in the same servers that everybody else is playing in," Ludwig said. Of course, "everybody" doesn't include Mac or Linux TF2 players just yet. "We don't have a Mac or Linux SDK from Oculus quite yet, but once we get those, we'll get it ported over to those other platforms," he explained. Oculus tells us those SDKs are coming. "The Oculus SDK will only support Windows at launch, but we plan to add support for OS X and Linux as quickly as possible. It's just a matter of time," Oculus VP of product Nate Mitchell says. We'll have more from our visit to Valve in the coming hours, so keep an eye out! [Image credit: Michael Clinard]
Oculus VR's Nate Mitchell backstage at Expand (video)
Nate Mitchell, vice president of product for Oculus VR, was in the spotlight here at Expand discussing gaming hardware, such as the firm's VR headset, and what it means for the future with folks from NVIDIA and Razer. Mitchell found his way backstage and we asked him about the largest challenges the headset is facing, how Oculus is supporting developers and creating standards for VR games and when an immersive holodeck experience might finally arrive. Take a leap past the break to catch the full interview footage. Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from San Francisco right here
Gaming's New Frontiers liveblog
Want to know what the future of gaming will be? Odds are that the panel we're hosting now at Engadget Expand has the answer. Our very own Ben Gilbert is sitting down with NVIDIA Product Marketing VP Ujesh Desai, Oculus VR Product VP Nate Mitchell and Razer Systems Product Group VP John Wilson to see their latest hardware and how it will impact the way we play. Hop past the break for a vision of gaming's new frontiers as it unfolds. March 17, 2013 5:30 PM EDT Follow all of Engadget's Expand coverage live from San Francisco right here!
Oculus, Cliff Bleszinski and more talk VR at SXSW, watch live here at 7PM ET
Virtual Reality is one of this year's big would-be comeback stories, led largely by the runaway success of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and Valve's recent rumblings on the matter. Not surprisingly, that talk is set to continue at South by Southwest Interactive this week, where Oculus Rift vice president of product Nate Mitchell will be moderating a panel discussing virtual reality as the "holy grail of gaming." The panelists? Oculus VR's Palmer Luckey, as well as former Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski and Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts. We'd say this is one worth watching, and you'll be able to do just that today at 7PM Eastern (4PM Pacific) courtesy of the livestream after the break. We're also live at SXSW ourselves, and will of course bring you any news that may come out of the event if you happen to miss it. Update: Please excuse us, as we were misinformed of the panelists participating (this piece originally stated that John Carmack and Gabe Newell would both be involved). We've updated the post above to reflect the actual lineup.
The Daily Roundup for 01.15.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Stay seated: Valve's Team Fortress 2 ported to virtual reality
If Valve Software's Team Fortress 2 is anything, it's versatile. The company's demonstrating that versatility once more in porting the game to virtual reality goggles, which could result in some serious psychological trauma. Kidding aside, a Game Developers Conference blurb today revealed the internal project -- part of Valve's ongoing wearable computing efforts -- which says the talk, "will describe lessons learned from Valve's porting experience." In another talk, Valve hardware man Michael Abrash is diving into the possibilities he sees in the future of VR, as viewed through his own company's experience. It isn't clear whether Valve is using the much-loved Oculus Rift technology (seen above); the notes of the second talk only detail a general exploration of VR's weaknesses and strengths as they pertain to current technology. One thing is clear: both talks aim to educate game developers on what some Valve employees see as a burgeoning new frontier in game development. We welcome this bizarrely sci-fi future with open arms.
How hardware startups changed the face of CES
It was all bad timing, really. Just ahead of CES 2012, Microsoft announced that year's event would be its last, blaming product schedules that just didn't match up with the annual show. There was no question that the tech giant's absence would be felt the following year, the first time in recent memory the Consumer Electronics Show wasn't kicked off by a Microsoft keynote. It signaled, perhaps, a slight shift away from the days of huge companies dominating the event's headlines -- a phenomenon helped along by the recent attention-grabbing successes of a number of crowdfunded projects, many of which were present at the show. The move from Bill Gates to Steve Ballmer was one thing, but a CES without Redmond? That was just unheard of, a specter that loomed over the show, even as the CEA happily announced it had sold out the company's floor space in "record time." In the end, of course, Microsoft was still at the show, albeit in a less overt form, by way of third-party machines from Sony, Samsung and the like, and in the form of a cameo by none other than Ballmer himself -- a sort of spiritual baton-passing to the company's keynote successor, Qualcomm. Heck, even the Surface Pro reared its head backstage at the show.
CES 2013: Gaming roundup
Ultra High Definition TV and -- surprisingly -- gaming took the spotlight at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. Who'da thunk it? Certainly not me, Engadget's resident gaming dude. But here we are, with NVIDIA's first game console, Razer's modular PC rig, Valve's Steambox prototypes and Xi3's first example of third-party, Valve-backed Steambox hardware and, and ... maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's look back to January 3rd, before NVIDIA's press conference, before Razer's Project Fiona unveiling and before Valve surprised us with hardware prototypes. Those were simpler times -- times when Valve hadn't yet launched its multi-front attack on what we're still calling console gaming. It seemed unlikely that we'd see such a concerted effort to move PC games from the exclusionary world of desks and home offices into living rooms this early in the year. Yet, again, here we are.
Live from the Engadget CES Stage: an interview with Oculus's Palmer Luckey and Nate Mitchell (update: speaker change)
Is 2013 the year of the wearable here at CES? It's certainly shaping up to be one of the bigger trends of the show, thanks in no small part to the folks at Oculus. We've already spent some time with the company's Rift prototype this week, and now we'll be joined by Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe, the company's co-founder and CEO. Update: In lieu of Brendan Iribe, we'll be speaking to Palmer Luckey and VP Nate Mitchell. January 11, 2013 1:00 PM EST Check out our full CES 2013 stage schedule here!
Epic Citadel and other 'development showcases' for Oculus Rift available with dev kits in March
The impressive Epic Citadel demo we got to explore using Oculus Rift's incredible virtual reality development kit will ship alongside the headset this March, the company tells Engadget. "Any content you can load into UDK [Unreal Development Kit] and Unity, you can load and explore with the Oculus dev kit," we were told, in addition to the Citadel confirmation. And beyond that, Oculus is providing, "development showcases" alongside the dev kits, though it's unclear exactly what that means. We'll no doubt hear more about said showcases as we draw closer to the headset's March dev kit launch.
