The writing is on the wall at this point: virtual reality is happening. Enough people have tried early Oculus hardware, there's enough money behind it and there's enough developers for at least one generation of consumer hardware and from there the sky's the limit. The main graphics card players, Nvidia …
Read More »Tobii eye-tracking tech is making its way in to more devices
Eye-tracking company, Tobii announced today that its software and hardware is at the point where it is ready to be implemented with consumer devices, like laptops, or possibly even virtual reality or augmented reality products in the future. Tobii has been well-known in this space for quite some time and …
Read More »Oculus Rift to sell five million units next year
The consumer version of the Oculus Rift is finally coming out next year and it looks like analysts are already predicting big things for the virtual reality headset. According to analytic firm, Suisse, Oculus will sell as many as five million Rift headsets within its first year on the market, …
Read More »Oculus Toybox demo shows how VR may make us kids again
There are lots of things that have people excited about virtual reality. There's the potential for a return of light-gun games, where we spend our time gunning down hordes of enemies with pin point accuracy; horror games where we wet ourselves in fear at a terror that is quite literally …
Read More »Sony buys up company that could track next-gen VR movements
Softkinetic Systems is a company that's been working on an interesting 3D sensing technology for some time now. It uses lasers to track the time of flight of light, much like sonar does with sound waves, and uses it to track people, objects and actions in a 3D space. While that holds …
Read More »Half-Life 3, RPG and VR references found in new Dota 2 update
Some new information regarding the ever elusive Half-Life 3 has been found in a file within the latest update to Dota 2. Steam Database came across several new files, including one titled ‘hl3.txt', along with a few other out of place text files, which detail RPG style quest mechanics, virtual reality …
Read More »Virtual reality set designs help Bollywood film makers
Although commercial grade CGI is incredibly expensive to develop, sets aren't cheap either. Some Bollywood directors have been playing around with a middle ground however, whereby they create sets virtually first, before developing them in the real world and adding in the computer generated effects later. Beyond making 360 degree …
Read More »Sony acquires SoftKinetic tracking sensor company
Sony might be in a tough financial position right now but it still has some cash left to acquire new technology. Today, it was announced that Sony has acquired SoftKinetic, a start up company responsible for body-sensing and image-recognition technology- two things that would be perfect for virtual reality, which …
Read More »Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Walkthrough: Neuro
Virtual reality is easily one of the most exciting frontiers in gaming and technology right now. We stand on the cusp of entering a whole new universe which we can explore not with a mouse and keyboard, but with our eyes, ears and – when the hardware is released – …
Read More »AMD, Dell partner with Oculus for ‘Oculus Ready’ PCs
As if we needed any more indication that we are mere months away from the biggest virtual reality hardware launches ever, AMD and Dell have announced a partnership with Oculus VR, to bring to market “Oculus Ready” desktop and laptop systems, to make it quick and easy for those that …
Read More »Palmer Luckey: Oculus Rift will cost more than $350
As Oculus VR gets closer to release of its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, more details emerge about the hardware itself as well as about its price. According to Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR, the company did not want to make any trade-offs in terms of quality, which …
Read More »Sony: VR entertainment will have great future in the coming 20 years
Shuhei Yoshida, president of worldwide studios at Sony Computer Entertainment, compares PlayStation VR platform to the original PlayStation and claims that in 20 years’ time virtual reality experience will evolve as dramatically as 3D games have evolved since the original PlayStation. “As a developer, I am super-excited about the potential …
Read More »Ideas worth spreading: VR director commentaries, with the director
Not every news story needs to be cutting edge news, but they do need to be interesting. Take the idea of making director and crew commentaries on films and TV shows that bit more exciting, by having them not only record their vocal thoughts on the content, but their visuals …
Read More »Oculus VR: Consumer VR headset will cost ‘at least $300’
Oculus VR finalized specifications and release timeframe of its first Oculus Rift virtual reality headset for consumers back in May, but the company has always deliberately declined to disclose the price of the device. At its Oculus Connect conference earlier this week the firm indicated the low end of the Oculus …
Read More »Oculus VR initiates ‘Oculus Ready’ PC program
It is not a secret that far not all personal computers are able to run video games with virtual reality headsets. At the Oculus Connect 2015 conference, Oculus VR introduced its “Oculus Ready” PC program, which is designed to help those, who want to get a new PC, which can …
Read More »Sony’s PlayStation VR headset will cost like a new game console
When Sony Corp. unveiled its project Morpheus early last year, it was clear that the company was very serious about equipping its PlayStation 4 video game console with a virtual reality head-mounted display. The PlayStation VR device will finally hit the market in 2016 and will be accompanied by a …
Read More »Sales of VR headsets to hit three million in 2016, 30 million by 2020
Being designed primarily for video games, virtual reality headsets will unlikely become popular overnight after they hit the market in 2016, but several years down the road their installed base will approach that of certain game consoles, according to a study from Juniper Research. Analysts from Juniper Research predict that …
Read More »Insomnia i55 – the games, the booths, the rigs
Insomnia i55 might make you walk a long way to get there, but i55 is, like most Multiplay events, packed with interesting things to look at and do. There's a few new games to try, a lot of hardware on show and plenty of desktop PCs that will make you …
Read More »Microsoft: Windows is the best platform for virtual reality
Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Corp. and the head of Microsoft Game Studios, said in an interview that the company is not trying to bring virtual reality games to its Xbox One game console because Windows is a better platform for VR while the technology is still at …
Read More »Palmer Luckey: Virtual reality needs unlimited GPU horsepower
In the early days of virtual reality gaming various limitations and trade-offs are inevitable because early hardware and software are never perfect. However, the main challenge for VR games will be performance of graphics adapters. Not all high-end graphics cards will be able to deliver 90 frames per second required …
Read More »AMD: Virtual reality could mean rebirth for PC industry
Sales of personal computers have been stagnating for a couple of years now for various reasons. Many industry executives and market observers believe that to revive the PC market, new programs that demand more resources than contemporary computers can provide are needed. Mark Papermaster, chief technology officer of Advanced Micro …
Read More »Now there’s a VR experience for garlic cheese spread
As much as there is plenty going for virtual reality at the moment, there are many key experiences that the communities of fans have been clamouring for since the Oculus Rift DK1 was first unveiled: a fly through of a fridge, focused on garlic cheese spread isn't one of them. …
Read More »The Zenimax VS Oculus lawsuit is still going ahead
Last year it was revealed that Zenimax would be launching a lawsuit at Oculus VR, which had recently been acquired by Facebook at the time. The lawsuit seemed to be based around the accusation that Oculus stole trade secrets from Zenimax. As you would imagine, Oculus immediately appealed to have …
Read More »TrendForce: 14 million virtual reality headsets will be shipped in 2016
Virtual reality hardware will finally enter the market next year. A number of companies plan to offer their VR headsets and even more companies pin a lot of hopes on the rise of virtual reality next year since this will catalyze many people to buy new PCs. However, nobody knows …
Read More »Nokia unveils Ozo: Virtual reality camera for content creators
Nokia Corp. on Wednesday introduced its first virtual reality project, which is not a headset. Instead of targeting consumers with its VR hardware, Nokia targets content creators with its Ozo, a special camera with eight sensors developed specifically to create virtual reality movies. The Nokia Ozo is a spherical device …
Read More »Nokia preps its own virtual reality device, plans to debut it next week
Nokia Corp. has developed thousands of various technologies useful for portable consumer electronics gadgets, but at present it cannot use them to build its own mobile devices due to agreement with Microsoft. However, the company, which used to be the world’s largest maker of mobile phones, plans to introduce its …
Read More »Oculus VR: For now, virtual reality gaming is for hardcore gamers only
Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR, claims that while virtual reality gaming will make it to the mainstream market in the future, for a couple of years down the road it will remain a prerogative of hardcore and enthusiast gamers. The VR pioneer confirms that high prices of hardware …
Read More »Not everyone is convinced of VR’s future
Since Palmer Luckey first unveiled his dodgy virtual reality prototype to John Carmack and a few other industry leaders, VR has been a hot topic for discussion and speculation. As the various versions have been released and we edge ever closer to a commercial iteration of hardware and software, even …
Read More »Crytek’s first VR game will be an ‘exploration experience’
Building a game in VR is quite different to traditional development. It needs to take into consideration that a high frame rate is required at all times. It can't be too jarring or require too much fast movement, which means that makers of shooters and similarly twitch-based combat games have …
Read More »VR headsets could boost GPU sales, bring billions to AMD, Nvidia – analyst
Virtual reality hardware market is something that does not really exist today. Oculus VR sells its virtual reality headsets to game developers, Samsung supplies Gear VR to hardcore enthusiasts, other VR gear just cannot be bought for money. But many believe that already next year sales of virtual reality headsets …
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