Virtual & Augmented Reality news

Here’s a roundup of news from the second day of our GDC 2018 coverage. We go hands-on with Budget Cuts, Google presents ARCore and Maps API-enabled apps, Squanch Games’ Daydream exclusive title announced, and Magic Leap talks about developing games for a spatial computing platform.
Hands-on with ‘Budget Cuts’
Image courtesy Neat Corp
Developer Neat Corporation has resurfaced with stealth action game Budget Cuts, due for release on May 16th for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. We

It feels like there are lots and lots of VR boxing games. Like, I understand it and it makes sense, but still — there are a lot. From Thrill of the Fight and Soundboxing to Knockout League and now an officially licensed Creed: Rise to Glory VR game in partnership with MGM Interactive, the Sweet Science is in and popping right now.
While I’ve never personally followed boxing as a sport very closely, I absolutely love boxing movies. All six of the mainline Rocky films, Creed, Sout

Oculus has revealed that the standalone, entry-level mobile VR headset Oculus Go will support refresh rates up to 72Hz and will make use of fixed foveated rendering.At GDC 2018 Oculus’s dedicated hour long session was a treasure trove of new and updated information (If you missed it you can re-cap via our live blog coverage right here). One of the many snippets of news was more detail on how the company’s  upcoming mobile, standalone VR headset Oculus Go handles rendering and on

It’s been almost two years since the Rift and Vive launched and to this day Job Simulator is still one of the first things I always stick new VR users in. The combination of a whimsical setting, with simple controls, and quirky gameplay makes it the perfect balance of engaging and accessible.
During the 2017 Game Awards show late last year, Owlchemy Labs officially announced Vacation Simulator as the follow-up to Rick and Morty VR and direct sequel to their smash-hit runaway success first

You’ll soon be able to share your personal Oculus Home designs with other Rift users and even bring your own content into your space.
At its ‘Inside Oculus 2018′ session at GDC today Oculus confirmed that the new version of Home, which launched in beta late last year, is getting social VR support as well as user-generated content.
Social support should arrive on the platform this summer. It will allow users to form parties and even launch into apps together, providing developer

At the Unreal Engine presentation at GDC 2018 today, Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri introduced several projects highlighting the scalability and performance of Unreal technology, including a partnership with ILMxLAB and Nvidia. This was the first live demonstration of interactive, real-time, ray-tracing with Unreal Engine.Nvidia announced RTX on Monday, a real-time ray-tracing solution designed for their latest Volta GPU architecture. Today, we were treated to a live stage demo using Unreal Engine,

The artist group developed an unauthorized AR app that lets you interact with Jackson Pollock’s paintings.
Digital artists David Lobser and Damjanski met at New Inc’s Versions conference and immediately began to collaborate on a new art project. The collaboration between the artists helped give rise to “Hello, we’re from the internet,” an interactive augmented reality (AR) exhibit that allows MOMA museum visitors to experience reinterpretations on top of Jackson Pol

Sketchfab has built a huge library of 3D models. Some of them are available under a Creative Common license, others can be purchased. The startup now wants to help you do stuff with all this content. You can now download and import 3D models into your favorite 3D app.
Behind the scenes, Sketchfabhas built a download API and some integrations with popular 3D tools. After that, you’ll find a Sketchfab search bar in a third-party app. You can type a few keywords, filter by quality, preview an

A permanent Academy Award category meant to honor the year’s best virtual reality filmmaking is only a question of when and not if, according to Mahesh Ramasubramanian, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Loom.ai, the company behind the technology powering Samsung’s AR Emoji. In an interview with AndroidHeadlines, the Hollywood veteran who worked on some of the industry’s most successful 21st-century animated franchises such as Shrek and Madagascar explained that pre

We already knew that Oculus’ upcoming standalone headset, Oculus Go, would be able to perform better than many recent iterations of the Gear VR thanks to the use of dedicated hardware. What we didn’t know, however, is that both Go and the upcoming Santa Cruz will offer a new refresh rate option.
During Oculus’ headlining session at the 2018 Game Developers Conference today the company announced that both Go and Santa Cruz will have 72Hz modes. For the former, this mode will be

Oculus is showing off a lot of hardware at the 2018 Game Developers Conference this week including, somewhat surprisingly, its Santa Cruz standalone prototype for the first time to developers. The kit will largely resemble what was shown at Oculus Connect 4 last year, but updated controllers have been teased, too.
Oculus provided a slight glimpse of redesigned controllers for the six degrees of freedom (6DOF) VR headset at its ‘Inside Oculus 2018’ session at GDC today. The below imag

Oculus’ VP of Content Jason Rubin has come out swinging at the company’s GDC talk today.
Opening up the session, titled ‘Inside Oculus 2018’, Rubin stated that “Oculus is winning in every hardware category it has entered, on PC and mobile,” later adding that “it’s a pretty inarguable statement that Oculus builds the best hardware.”
By ‘winning’, we assume Rubin is referring to sales of the company’s VR headsets, the Oculus R

Today at GDC, Epic have announced that Unreal Engine 4 will officially support the Magic Leap One. You can read more about it on the Unreal Engine blog, but the basic gist of it is that you can use Epic’s UE4 now, one of the leading game engines on the market, to create content for Magic Leap One.
The news comes on the heels of the announcement earlier this week that Magic Leap launched its Lumin SDK Preview and Creator Portal making this an absolutely great time to get started on any

Study 33 new languages in the first AR language learning app with integrated speech recognition.
It’s a well known fact that learning a second language is an excellent way of strengthening the brain and improving one’s cognitive process. Physiological studies have shown that bilingual individuals show not only an increase in multitasking capabilities and problem-solving, but a decrease in the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia as well.
Unfortunately, all that brain power doesn&rs

HTC had announced the Vive Focus last year, as a stand-alone VR headset with 6DOF (or six degrees of freedom) support, in China. Now the company is looking to bring it to even more markets later this year. HTC has not mentioned which markets will be getting it specifically, other than “international markets” so it’s unclear just how widespread this product will be for HTC later this year. Developer kits for the Vive Focus are also going to be available for registered developers

I’ve demoed a lot of VR games over the years. Some of them never get released, some of them actually get finished, and some of them still wallow in limbo somewhere between Early Access and Completed Project. Regardless of how the game ends up though, it’s very rare that a VR game really impresses me anymore. I’ve seen most of the mechanics people try to use for tricking the brain and I’m seldom surprised. Gargantua from Yomuneco on the other hand is a game that surpr

Airlines International (press release) (blog)
Frederic Leger: VR training is the new normal
Airlines International (press release) (blog)
If you think that Virtual Reality (VR) is simply for gaming enthusiasts, you've got it all wrong. Enterprises, which started to adopt virtual reality initially purely for marketing purposes, have realized the immense potential of the application of the ...

CNET
HTC Vive Focus standalone VR hitting US later this year
CNET
Another VR headset is coming. HTC. You may have no idea if you want a standalone VR headset, but there are going to be plenty of options to choose from. HTC Vive Focus, a mobile standalone VR headset first launched last year in China, is now going ...
VR Enthusiasts Aren't Happy About the Price of the Vive ProRoad to VR
HTC's Vive Focus standalone VR headset is coming to 'global markets'Android Central
Wire-free Vive Focus VR hea

Magic Leap One isn’t the only new device Unity is adding support for at GDC this week.
During the company’s GDC Keynote last night, the company confirmed that it was adding support for two upcoming standalone VR headsets: Oculus Go and the Lenovo Mirage Solo. Brett Bibby, VP of Engineering, confirmed that Unity developers can build Go apps using the exact same workflow that they did for Gear VR, which is something Oculus promised all the way back at its Connect 2018 developer confere

GDC 2018 is in full swing and we kick of Wednesday with a Live Blog of Oculus’ “Inside Oculus 2018” session, which is set to give developers an insight into the Facebook owned VR company’s hardware and software road map for the year.Presented by Ross O’Dwyer (Director of Engineering), Jason Rubin (VP Content), Chris Pruett (Head of Development Engineering), Ruth Bram (Producer, Oculus Studios) this GDC session is described as “an inside look at what&rsquo

HTC is expanding its out-of-home VR entertainment reach with a new deal with gaming giant IGT that will see its Vive hardware and software power a new competitive VR initiative where players compete for real money stakes.The recent reveal (and subsequent pricing controversy) of HTC’s Vive Pro headset underlines the company’s commitment to the corporate market and by extension the out-of-home immersive entertainment sector. The company has been front and centre when it comes to key VR

Last week’s Welcome to Light Fields saw Google give VR users an impressive look into the world of light field capture and the photorealistic environments it can produce. Now a new report suggests Google is looking to acquire another light field capture company to take its work in the area even further.
TechCrunch cites multiple sources in saying the Google is set to purchase Lytro, a light field-focused startup that we’ve covered a number of times on UploadVR. The stage of the deal i

The long awaited standalone VR headset by Google and Lenovo is almost here. While we expected Google and Lenovo to release a big PR statement in regards to the headset at this year’s GDC, the two companies have rather kept it hush around their upcoming product. They have told UploadVR that the headset will be releasing in June for $400, which was around our predicted sale price.
Lenovo Mirage Solo SpecsDimensions: (W x L x H) (mm) : 204.01 x 269.5 x 179.86 (inches) : 8.03″ x 10.

HTC’s standalone, untethered VR headset the Vive Focus, will come to western markets later this year, HTC announced today. The company also announced that developers can register for Dev-Kit units from today.With the VR market still in an early state of flux, companies producing virtual reality hardware are experimenting with different types of immersive consumer products with different capabilities, form factors and price points in an effort to find ways into the mainstream by addressing

HTC plans to start selling the Vive Focus standalone VR system globally “later this year.”
The headset already sells in China for around $635, including local taxes, and offers full freedom of movement for your head paired with a controller that works kind of like a laser pointer. Vive Focus runs apps from HTC’s Viveport store rather than Google’s Play, which runs on the $400 Lenovo Mirage Solo. Both headsets offer the freedom to move around a room, but Facebook&rsqu

HTC has just announced that the Vive Focus standalone headset will be coming to the international markets later this year. When it was first announced, the Focus was solely exclusive to the China region. Now, fans all over the world will have a chance to experience this 6DoF headset in person.
Vive Focus Specs:TRACKING TECHNOLOGY & SENSORS:
WORLD-SCALE SIX-DOF SPACE-TRACKING TECHNOLOGY, HIGH-PRECISION NINE-AXIS SENSOR, DISTANCE SENSOR
screen:
3K AMOLED, resolution 2880 x 1600
Refresh rate:
7

Qualcomm on Wednesday took to this year’s iteration of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to announce a new virtual reality development kit meant to support next-generation VR experiences. The solution consists of the Snapdragon 845 Mobile VR Platform, i.e. a specifically optimized version of the company’s latest and most capable chip to date, backed by a standalone head-mounted display and a new software development kit. Besides non-tethered headsets, parts of the new t

Lenovo’s Mirage Solo standalone VR headset, which was announced last year and fully revealed back in January, is set to launch on May 5th, priced at $400, Lenovo tells Road to VR. The standalone headset is set to compete with the likes of the Oculus Go and Pico Neo.Update (3/21/18, 12:10PM GMT): UploadVR reports confirmation with Lenovo that the UK launch for the Mirage Solo will happen in June. No specific UK price or more precise dates were cited.
Update (3/16/18, 1:26PM PT): L

HTC’s virtual reality unit and Sixense Studios took to the latest iteration of San Francisco-based Game Developers Conference to announce the immediate release of SiegeVR, a medieval archery game launching exclusively for the Vive VR headset. Much like its name suggests, SiegeVR will test your sharpshooting skills during a virtual siege, with the game itself being envisioned as an eSports title. Details of HTC and Sisense’s plans for nurturing a competitive gaming scene around SiegeV

Disney Research’s latest experiments with VR can turn a written script into a VR experience with the help of its new Cardinal system.
Revealed at this week’s GDC event in a session attended by Variety, Cardinal is able to take natural language scripts and turn them into pre-visualizations in VR. The software can detect actions and characters and turn them into animations in scenes that filmmakers can enter with VR, as if attending a virtual rehearsal on set. This gives them a feel fo

CNET
I wore tomorrow's vision of your next VR headset
CNET
Giving Qualcomm's next-gen VR dev kit a spin at GDC. Scott Stein/CNET. I'm standing in front of a mirror, looking at an avatar of a woman that isn't me. "Blink," I'm told. But it's not working for me. One eye is permanently shut. Maybe it's my glasses ...
Qualcomm's new headset with eye tracking ships to developers later this yearThe Verge
Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 VR dev kit: no beacons, no wires, all eyesSlashGear
Here's How Qualcomm is

Qualcomm today announced their Snapdragon 845 Virtual Reality Development Kit (VRDK) reference headset will have support for Vive Wave, HTC’s open API which allows a large range of third-party headsets and peripherals access to a common platform. The move to integrate Vive Wave into Qualcomm’s latest VRDK will essentially give prospective manufactures turn-key access to HTC’s mobile version of its Viveport app store.Just like the company’s previous 835

The Guardian
Strap on your sleep pack! The trippy VR show that takes you to dreamland
The Guardian
After a bedtime story with a giant teddy, you fly with geese and cross rickety rope bridges. Our writer steps into Somnai. Ryan Gilbey. Wed 21 Mar 2018 04.21 EDT Last modified on Wed 21 Mar 2018 04.22 EDT. Share on Facebook · Share on Twitter · Share ...
Somnai review – ambitious VR show that needs to get realTelegraph.co.ukall 3 news articles »

When revealing the HTC Vive Pro back in January, HTC left one salient piece of information out of the announcement: the price. After letting impression of the headset’s higher resolution, improved ergonomics, and other changes simmer for a few months, the company this week finally revealed the price: $800 for the headset alone (not including controllers or tracking base stations). For many of HTC’s most loyal fans, the price was far higher than anticipated.In what seems like a case o

The INQUIRER
Google reportedly acquiring VR camera company Lytro for its light field technology
9to5Google
Just last week, Google unveiled an experiment with light fields to realistically capture reflections and depth. There is possibly more behind this virtual reality project as Google is now reportedly acquiring Lytro — a company whose long running ...
Google reportedly snaps up imaging startup Lytro for $40m to bolster VR techThe INQUIRER
Google Reportedly Acquires Lytro for $40 Millio