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Oculus is bringing VR to lower-end PCs today
The term "asynchronous spacewarp" might sound like a meaningless jumble of techno-jargon, but it's a big deal if you're into virtual reality. It's the new technology from Oculus, which is officially launching today, that'll let you run the Rift VR headset on much lower-specced hardware than before. Typically, you'd need a beefy rig to run games at 90 frames per second, which is necessary for ensuring a smooth VR experience. Using frame interpolation techniques, aysnchronous spacewarp is able to deliver similarly smooth gameplay when you're running at just 45 frames per second.
VRMark will tell you if your PC is ready for Virtual Reality
Oculus and Valve's own virtual reality compatibility tests will tell you if your PC is VR-ready, but how ready is a bit of a specification guessing game. Will you be able to run games at their maximum settings, or are you just going to scrape past virtual reality's minimum requirements? Futuremark's trying to make that question easier to answer with a new benchmarking suite designed specifically for virtual reality.
'EVE: Valkyrie' blasts onto HTC Vive this month
EVE: Valkyrie might have started life as an Oculus Rift tech demo, but this month the space-shooter will arrive on Steam for HTC Vive owners. The exact release date is coming "soon," according to developer CCP Games. "We've also got some big celebrations planned for that weekend; all pilots on all platforms are invited," the blog post teases. Oh, and there's an announcement of some kind coming during the PlayStation Experience keynote this December 4th. Intriguing.
'I Expect You To Die' will come to PlayStation VR this year
Schell Games has announced that its forthcoming title I Expect You To Die will arrive on PlayStation VR in time for the holidays. Previously the game was announced for the Oculus Rift, and was designed to work with that platform's touch controls. I Expect You To Die is a locked room mystery, wth a spy trying to escape capture by solving a series of puzzles and avoiding death-defying traps. The company hasn't issued a specific launch date for PlayStation support, but given that the game launches for PCs on December 6th, it's not hard to assume it'll be around there.
VR helped me grasp the life of a transgender wheelchair user
Playing The Circle is quite literally a transformative experience. Designed by Manos Agianniotakis, a student at the National Film and Television School (NFTS) in Buckinghamshire, England, it's a game that uses the Oculus Rift and Touch controllers to put you in the body of a wheelchair user suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In The Circle, you play as a Alex, a transgender woman who is attacked and ends up in a wheelchair. The game picks up Alex's story around a month after the incident. She's out of the hospital, but traumatized and unable to leave her apartment. Isolated and withdrawn, her relationships with friends and family, many of whom are unaware of the transphobic nature of the attack, are strained. She begins reading her father's diaries, and becomes obsessed with a subject he was fascinated with toward the end of his life: Toynbee Tiles, mysterious plaques that are placed around North America.
VR model of Auschwitz helps convict Nazi war criminal
German police have used VR forensics tech to prosecute a Nazi war criminal who worked at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The team from the Bavarian state crime office (LKA), led by investigator Ralf Breker, created highly detailed digital models of the facility using maps from a Warsaw surveyor's office and over a thousand period photos. Using an HTC Vive headset, they were then able to see exactly what the accused would have seen at the time.
'Superhot VR' feels like a time bending, action-packed puzzle
Earlier this year, Superhot launched on PC and consoles with a fresh gameplay gimmick: Time only moves when you move. This simple idea turned the fast-paced action of an FPS shooter into an odd, methodical, and tense puzzle game where players could stop in their tracks to think their way around a barrage of incoming bullets. It's incredibly fun on traditional gaming platforms -- but it's even better in virtual reality.
Oculus' prototype headset points to VR's wireless future
Tucked away inside the dark hallways of the San Jose Convention Center is a meeting room with signs that read "No photos" and "No food or drink." I shook the hands of the Oculus spokespeople who were there to greet me and proceeded to try to get in the door. But before I could do that, I was instructed to leave my backpack, my purse and my phone behind. When I was finally allowed in, I was surprised to see that the room was decorated to look like a giant living space, with a large sofa and chaise in one corner and pillows, books and paintings placed throughout. But I wasn't there to judge the interior design. No, I was there to try the prototype of Oculus' newly announced standalone VR headset. Its name is Santa Cruz.
'Rock Band VR' is a completely different kind of guitar game
When Oculus first teased Rock Band for virtual reality, it sounded like kind of a stupid idea. A guitar game? In 2016? In virtual reality? How passe. It was hard to imagine how the series' iconic stream of colored notes would translate to VR, and I immediately dismissed the idea. It turns out I was right -- Rock Band's classic game mode didn't make a smooth transition to VR, so the team at Harmonix had to come up with something completely different -- and it's so much better than awkward rhythm game I was expecting.
You don't need a ridiculous PC to run Oculus Rift anymore
Back when we reviewed the consumer-ready Oculus Rift in March, we found its minimum specs requiring an Intel Core i5 4590 (or equivalent) processor and an NVIDIA GTX 970 graphics card to be in line with a typical midrange gaming PC. Below that, a computer won't just fail to run VR smoothly: It'll drop frames and make you sick. But without changing any of the headset's hardware, Oculus has lowered the Rift's minimum spec to a Nvidia 960 graphics card and an intel i3-6100 or AMD FX4350 processor. That's all thanks to its new framerate-fixing tech, "asynchronous spacewarp," which they announced at today's Connect keynote.
'Blade Runner 2049' and Disney will come to VR via Oculus
Oculus is working on a handful of new VR content projects, but the biggest names dropped at its Oculus Connect 3 conference this afternoon were Blade Runner and Disney. The coming film Blade Runner 2049 and a series of experiences about classic Disney characters are heading to Oculus platforms. Blade Runner 2049 is the sequel to 1982's cult sci-fi hit and it was just announced today; it's due in theaters on October 6th, 2017. Oculus didn't delve into details about either project.
Oculus brings VR gameplay streams to your Facebook news feed
Facebook has been experimenting with livestreaming gaming for a bit, and now Oculus is coming into the fold. You'll be able to broadcast your Gear VR gameplay to the world's largest social network. From the stage presentation, perhaps unsurprisingly it resembles how the current streams work. Basically, it looks like a status update, and you can tag friends, comment and talk smack. Or, ill-timed words of encouragement from your family members as you blast away enemies. Because that's how Facebook works.
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.
An extra $79 turns the Oculus into a room-scale VR system
At Oculus Connect 3, the VR company announced room-scale support for its upcoming Touch controllers. To enable the feature users will need a third sensor in the room for an additional $79.
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 is building a VR web browser, codenamed 'Carmel'
Today at Oculus Connect, co-founder Nate Mitchell announced that the company is working on a fully VR web browser. It's dubbed "Carmel," emphasis on the "mel," and is "fully optimized for VR." This follows the likes of Google making aspects of Chrome on mobile, for instance, browsable in virtual reality. On top of that, Oculus is working toward more web-based VR stuff in general with tech called React. React is the framework for making web experiences more VR ready, all without the need to download huge program files. One of the demos on stage, for instance, was a car configurator from Renault. Developing...
Roam the Valve HQ reception in VR and find the cake already
When the folks at Valve aren't fiddling with Steam, updating popular first-party franchises or working on wacky projects, they like to have a little fun. Or, at least the team working on Valve's Destinations VR title does. Destinations is a casual, multiplayer experience for exploring community-created worlds and playing simple games with friends. And now, as of the title's most recent update, anyone with a Vive or Rift can feel what it's like to venture inside the hallowed ground that is Valve HQ.
'Minecraft' October updates are big deals for tweakers and VR
Minecraft is close to some updates that could seriously alter how you play if you like to mess with game mechanics... or simply immerse yourself in a virtual world. An upgrade arriving October 18th for Minecraft's Windows 10, Pocket and Gear VR editions will introduce Add-Ons, which let you change how characters and objects behave by tweaking text files. Want giant chickens, or Creepers that trigger huge explosions? It's now relatively trivial. Think of it as an entry point into the world of game mods without having to learn programming.
Oculus' Touch controllers priced at £190 in the UK
If you still haven't figured out why the Oculus Rift sells for a solid $200 less than HTC's Vive, let this be the final word: it's the motion controllers. According to a display in a GAME store in the UK (found by our very own Nick Summers), Oculus' virtual reality motion controllers will retail for £190, or just over $200 after deducting local UK taxes. That's expensive, but not at all unexpected -- if that price holds across the pond, it puts the cost of a room-scale Oculus Rift kit on equal ground with HTC's $800 Vive.
