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Your next trip to the library could include an Oculus Rift
Public libraries aren't just for books anymore. These days, you can grab an e-book, movie or video game (not to mention learn how to code) at your local branch with nothing more than a free library card. Libraries are also the last bastion of internet access for those who can't afford it on their own, making the library an essential democratic tool. Oculus, the Facebook-owned virtual reality company, is taking it upon themselves to enhance public libraries with its own educational initiative that will place 100 VR head-mounted displays in 90 California libraries.
Apple is the perfect anti-VR test case
Apple shined a dull spotlight on virtual reality during its WWDC keynote yesterday, introducing VR support for macOS and a beefed-up, VR-capable version of the new iMac. This marks Apple's first real dive into VR, and, honestly, it's too little, too late. The potential of modern VR has been looming over the technology industry for nearly five years now, exciting consumers and prompting plenty of companies to develop their own support systems and hardware for this strange new virtual world. But until yesterday, it was impossible to natively develop or even run VR experiences on an Apple machine. The first instance of built-in VR support for macOS developers comes about a year after Google, Facebook, Samsung, HTC and Sony actually put their VR headsets on stores shelves, and Apple hasn't hinted that it's working on any proprietary hardware. Apple's nod to VR, one year late, feels like a lackluster reaction to an evolving industry rather than a prescient foray into a new and thrilling technological landscape. It feels a lot like Apple doesn't believe in VR.
Oculus Rift officially supports the HTC Vive’s best feature
The Oculus Rift has technically supported room-scale VR since the system's Touch motion controllers first went on sale last December. But purchasing an additional sensor didn't guarantee foolproof 3D tracking for greater immersion right off the bat. Oculus labelled the feature "experimental," alerting early adopters to the likelihood of bugs and other gremlins you might expect from in-development functionality. Six months and several updates later, however, Oculus has decided room-scale support is robust enough in its latest software release that it can ditch the beta tag and be called a bona fide Rift feature.
'Alien: Covenant' VR experience emerges on April 26th (updated)
Both Fox and director Ridley Scott have made bit commitments to virtual reality, and you're about to see just how those commitments are evolving... in an unsettling way. Fox has revealed that Alien: Covenant's VR experience, In Utero, will be available for Oculus Rift wearers on April 26th. As the name implies, the production shows the terror from the baby alien's (that is, neomorph's) perspective as it's born. The teaser clip doesn't show much, but it's already disconcerting -- you can hear muffled screams as the humans realize something is about to go very, very wrong.
'A Moment in Time' shows the charming potential of art in VR
Quill, like Google's Tilt Brush, is an artistic tool that lets you paint in virtual reality. Designed for the Oculus Rift, it's a liberating way to draw and view art in 3D space. The next step? Animation. Goro Fujita, art director at Oculus Story Studio, has created a small but beautifully detailed street which you can explore with the Rift. It's all hand-drawn, and positional audio means you can hear birds chirping in the trees, as well as cars rushing by and a nutty engineer building robots in his store. He's uploaded a guided tour to YouTube, which I highly recommend checking out.
'Arden's Wake' paves the way for never-ending VR stories
Making movies in virtual reality is easy. Making good animated movies in virtual reality is hard. There's no "mise en scène" to play with, and even the basic 180-degree rule is washed away with a head turn. The limitations of a cinema screen make storytelling easier, linear, comfortable. Penrose Studios doesn't care much for comfort, it seems. The same studio that gave us the haunting Allumette and infantile captivation of The Rose and I is back at the Tribeca Film Festival this year with its third VR story -- Arden's Wake -- and it promises to be bigger, more detailed and more technically improbable than anything we've seen from the studio so far.
Facebook's plans for Oculus are finally taking shape
When Facebook bought Oculus VR for $2 billion in early 2014, it wasn't entirely clear what Mark Zuckerberg planned to do with all of the virtual reality hardware suddenly at his fingertips. Hell, it wasn't even clear that VR was going to be a legitimate industry: Sony hadn't revealed the PlayStation VR yet, Google Cardboard didn't exist, and Valve was a year away from announcing the HTC Vive headset. VR was truly in its infancy when the world's largest social networking site strode in, promising to deliver video games and "many other experiences" on the Oculus Rift.
Explore the world with Google Earth VR on Oculus Rift
The Google Earth revamp isn't just focused on the web and mobile crowds -- there are a few perks for virtual reality fans as well. Google has updated Earth's free VR experience to support the Oculus Rift headset and its Oculus Touch controllers. You no longer need HTC's Vive to fly over landscapes, including 27 new ones like Germany's Neuschwanstein Castle or South Africa's Table Mountain. It'll no doubt seem familiar if you've tried it before, but there is big interface update to go along with the widened hardware support.
Facebook Spaces VR parties are available for Rift owners today
Facebook teased how it would create social experiences in virtual reality, and now it's ready to take things one step further. It just launched a Facebook Spaces beta that lets Oculus Rift owners hang out together (up to four at once) in VR. The experience will be familiar if you saw Facebook's preview at Oculus Connect, but it's clearly more refined with its actual launch. You can create an avatar that's as realistic or fanciful as you want, draw 3D objects and show off your personal videos and use 360-degree video backgrounds to liven up your chats. There's even a selfie stick to take virtual self-portraits. And if a friend can't use VR, you can bring them into the conversation using Facebook Messenger video calls.
Google hires Vive and Oculus developer to bolster its VR team
If you want to see the potential of virtual reality, check out SoundStage: a virtual reality music sandbox app for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Google just snapped up developer Logan Olson for its VR team, further proving the company's continued interest in becoming a true player in the space.
'EVE: Valkyrie' takes space battles to the ground in new update
CCP has revealed that it's bringing ground-level skirmishes to EVE: Valkyrie for the first time. Announced during a Keynote at CCP's annual EVE Fanfest, new map Solitude sees players battling it out on a remote planet as they weave their way through tight-knit passageways. Thankfully, the new map won't cost players a penny, coming as a part of the game's fifth free update : 'Groundrush'. Aside from Solitude, the patch will also add more variety to Valkyrie's Weekly Wormhole events as well as making previously competitive-only modes Carrier Assault and Control, co-op. PC owners will be pleased to hear that the patch also adds in Steam Controller support.
'Batman Arkham VR' finally comes to Oculus Rift and Vive
Your chance to don Batman's suit in the comfort of your own home is coming very soon. That is, if you have the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive VR headset hooked up to a PC. Batman Arkham VR, previously available on PlayStation VR since October 2016, will be available for PC players on April 25th, and pre-ordering via the game's official website is "coming soon."
Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey leaves Facebook
Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Oculus VR and creator of the Rift headset, is no longer with the company. Following the news that he'd donated $10,000 to a group spreading pro-Trump memes, the 24-year old had increasingly shied away from the public eye. That even went as far as skipping last October's Oculus Connect event so as not to be a "distraction" to the news coming out of the conference.
'Rock Band VR' is the dorkiest game ever and I love it
Rock Band VR will make you feel like a rock star. But from the outside, you'll look like a crazy person with an Oculus Rift on your head and a plastic guitar in your hands, strumming along in silence. Basically, you'll look like a huge dork while playing it. But the embarrassment is worth it: Rock Band VR successfully captures the feeling of actually playing music in front of a crowd. Even though it's Harmonix's first stab at virtual reality, the end result is immersive and, most importantly, fun.
'Trinity' will be the first interactive VR sci-fi TV show
Virtual reality production studio UNLTD today revealed that it's working on the world's first interactive sci-fi TV show. Speaking at SXSW, the company announced the premise for Trinity- a show set in a future where humanity has long become extinct. With only a few surviving androids left on Earth, the story follows the robotic resistance as they take a stand against the all-powerful singularity threatening to destroy them. After speaking about the challenges of filming in VR, producer John Hamilton promises that Trinity will be an experience which allows 'viewers to move around an episode in a way that hasn't been seen before'. The live-action series will be split into five fifteen minute episodes and is to be released on all available virtual reality platforms.
Judge dismisses lawsuit accusing Oculus of using confidential info
While Oculus is still tied up in legal wrangling (in more than one direction) with Zenimax, a California judge just dismissed a different lawsuit against the company. Total Recall Technologies sued the Facebook subsidiary in 2015, claiming that Palmer Luckey violated a confidentiality agreement he'd signed when the company was working with him to develop a VR headset in 2010. The two parties eventually stopped communicating, and later Luckey crowdfunded development of the Oculus Rift, which TRT claimed used info covered by its agreement.
NVIDIA's upcoming tool will analyze your VR setup
The setup for your HTC Vive or Oculus Rift VR headset can make the difference between soaring or puking, but how can you tell if it's good? NVIDIA is going to release a new tool called the FCAT VR that will take some of the guesswork out of system testing. It tracks four key metrics that can lead to high latency, stuttering and other issues: frame time, dropped frames, warp misses and synthesized frames.
'#Archery' is a quirky VR party game for the HTC Vive
I wasn't expecting to start my day using a bow and arrow to shoot ice cream cones at kids, or riding on the back of a pickup truck slinging newspapers in a suburban neighborhood. But thanks to #Archery, a virtual reality game from indie studio VRUnicorns, I was able to do just that using an HTC Vive headset. The title, which hits Steam Early Access on March 30th for $10, features a handful of main levels and mini games within each one of those. My experience consisted of scenarios like what I mentioned above, where I took charge of a digital bow and arrow to fire different objects at characters around the environment.
'Brass Tactics' is a VR RTS that puts you in a clockwork battlefield
Real-time strategy and VR don't seem like they would go together. After all, the key attraction to virtual reality is feeling like you're in someone else's shoes in a faraway land of make believe. The top-down view of typical RTS games doesn't quite lend itself to that level of immersion. Or does it? After a few minutes playing with Hidden Path Entertainment's Brass Tactics at an Oculus demo event, I found myself so engrossed in a cutthroat tabletop battle that I almost forgot I had a headset on at all. Now, there have been other real-time strategy games in VR -- Tactera and AirMech come to mind -- but Brass Tactics has a decidedly more medieval feel. The developers describe it as a "clockwork battlefield," as your buildings and minions appear to be built out of parts of a clock, gears and all. Yet, the design of Brass Tactics reminds me very much of tabletop war games -- living soldiers take the place of miniature figures while 3D-modeled landscapes replace plastic terrain. Gameplay itself should be pretty familiar to anyone who's played a real-time strategy. You start out with just your warriors and your archers, but you can upgrade them over time. To attack, you simply direct your battalion to a spot on the table with the Touch controllers. As you capture more regions, you can build more towers to create even more units like a flying squad or cavalry tanks. If you like, you can also use catapults to launch fire balls at your opponent. With Brass Tactics, you can also actually move "through" the landscape like an omniscient god, so you can get up close and get a better idea of how to manage your resources. You also need to move from region to region in order to build and maintain towers. It was pretty cool to be directly in the middle of everything, sending off troop after troop to capture or defend regions. I felt a little bit like an orchestra conductor, except instead of cueing violins, I was deploying archers. As engrossing as it was though, I'll admit it can be a little chaotic. It seems like it would be easier to hotkey or mouse your way through a battlefield than it is to figure out where to flail your arms. That said, it's probably a matter of getting used to it, and I can see improving my skills over time. If you're an RTS fan who also likes a bit of tabletop gaming from time to time and you happen to have a Rift, then definitely take a look at Brass Tactics when it comes to the Oculus Store later this year. Click here to catch up on the latest news from GDC 2017!
'From Other Suns' lets players move in VR however they want
When I boot up a new VR game for the first time, the same question always hangs in my mind. "So," I think, "how do you teleport in this game?" It's become a standard in virtual reality, the go-to movement system that lets players explore the digital realm without contracting simulator sickness. It works, but not perfectly. Warping from place to place avoids the disparity between vision and physical movement that causes nausea, but teleporting across a tiny walkable distance feels a little weird. From Other Suns doesn't change the basic function of the teleport mechanic but adds a nice twist: It lets you see your character actually walk to the teleport location.
