Road to VR

MAY 12, 2017

A job listing for a Senior Design Manager position on Microsoft’s “Xbox Mixed Reality team” says that the company is “looking to build a massively social gaming and entertainment experience for both the PC and the console.” Starting with the HoloLens AR headset and moving toward Windows VR headsets coming soon from PC hardware makers , Microsoft has been laying the groundwork for a broad AR/VR play (which the company collectively calls “Mixed Reality”) o

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MAY 12, 2017

Virtual reality is great at bringing two of our senses into the digital world: sight and sound. That VR tech is already well-established and improving rapidly. However, we still aren’t at a point where we can touch, smell, or taste things inside of a VR headset. Obviously taste is the most important of these to solve (can you imagine VR Pac Man?

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Road to VR

MAY 12, 2017

WalkinVR is an upcoming driver for SteamVR designed to assist physical movement in a VR by moving or even resizing the virtual space relative to the user. It is currently in beta testing, with an initial release due at the end of May. Artificial locomotion techniques, such as the widely-adopted teleport, or the traditional ‘left stick’ style of VR movement, are effective at enhancing standard VR movement, but they fail to adequately meet the needs of disabled people.

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MAY 12, 2017

There are a handful of apps in the VR software ecosystem that serve as escapist experiences by whisking the user away into calm environments like serene forests or a private island. The interactive elements in some of these are minimal, instead getting the user to embrace a sort of virtual trance inspired by the sights and sounds of these places. Fisher Wallace Labs , a company known for their stimulator that is used to combat insomnia and depression, is taking the isolated nature of VR and magn

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Speaker: Chris Paxton McMillin, President of D3 Training Solutions

To avoid awkward and sometimes disastrous learning content, instructional designers must use authentic translation in the right context to get optimal results. For example, even a simple phrase like “got milk” translates to “are you lactating” in Mexico. Can you imagine what a straight translation might do to your course? With over 317 million people in the US and over 6.7 billion potential customers in the world, personalizing training seems logical.

Mexico

Road to VR

MAY 12, 2017

As of the upcoming version 1.15, Oculus software will “fully support” the three-sensor room-scale configuration, giving VR players a large 360 degree playspace to roam, similar to the experience the Vive offered out of the gate. The update was revealed by Oculus staff on the community forum , and is now available in pre-release form for testing, available in the Public Test Channel of the Oculus software.

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VRScout

MAY 12, 2017

VR and holograms come together in this unique music experience. This week Viacom NEXT , the growing VR division of the Viacom media conglomerate, premiered its latest venture into the world of immersive entertainment: A hypnotic music video hybrid that combines holographic imagery with a virtual reality environment. The intuitive project was announced at this year’s Microsoft Build Developer Conference which officially kicked-off Wednesday in Seattle.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 12, 2017

When we first reported on The Wizards, the latest VR game from Carbon Studios (creators of Alice VR) we were excited to see what it would be like to dive into the richly detailed fantasy world. Whereas in Alice everything was controlled with a traditional gamepad, The Wizards takes full advantage of motion controls. Other spell-based games like The Unspoken pit two battling mages against one another, but in The Wizards, you get to be the star of the show.

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Road to VR

MAY 12, 2017

Announced on Vertigo Games’ social media channels and via the PlayStation Blog , VR zombie shooter Arizona Sunshine has been confirmed for a June release on PlayStation VR, along with support for the new PSVR Aim controller. The zombie wave-based shooter initially launched on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift in December 2016, becoming one of the fastest-selling VR games on PC.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 12, 2017

The Oculus Rift gets a long-anticipated game this week, but it’s Gear VR that’s the real star of the show. There are several interesting projects for Samsung’s headset that have appeared from out of nowhere, many of which use the new motion controller. Dive in. If you missed last week, you can see those new releases here. And don’t forget that UploadVR has a Steam community group complete with a curated list of recommendations so that you don’t have to waste any money finding

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With a rapidly changing economy, Avangrid Renewables looked to virtual reality to develop a standardized form of immersive training in order to onboard and upskill technicians faster than ever before.

Virtual Reality

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MAY 12, 2017

Monetization is high on the list of priorities for VR. While tech companies and brands have started investing more in content creation, making money from that content remains an uphill battle. But that monetization issue may now be on its way to being addressed. Vertebrae , which emerged from stealth in September 2016 with its $10 million Series A funding , has released a new SDK allowing developers to quickly unlock VR advertising opportunities.

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MAY 12, 2017

This week’s ResearchVR episode is a little more crowded than usual. During this year’s Cebit we met three experts working on the use of AR to improve surgery. Thomas Bedenk studied Human Factors. After studies, he joins the software development wave working as a freelancer. That led him to start his game studio. After seven years in the gaming industry, he joined another wave, this time VR and AR.

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MAY 12, 2017

This new week of HTC Vive releases welcomes a few deviations from the usual formula. There aren’t as many new games as usual, but this week signals the launch of the Steam 360 library. Give it a go and you can check out Lego Batman, the Amazon rain-forest, and more. A highlight game for the week is the critically well received Battlezone. It released on PS VR last year as one of its best launch titles and is now available for HTC Vive (and Rift), giving PC players a high-octane tank shoote

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 12, 2017

On March 1st of this year, we reviewed Oculus’ and Epic Games’ Robo Recall on the Rift with a score of 7.5. We defined it as a fun and frantic shooter that expertly showcases the potential of the Oculus Touch controllers (the game comes free with their purchase) only truly hindered by a high degree of repetition. It continues to receive support since launch and, in a pretty big move, Epic Games is adding localization for other non-English speaking markets.

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Speaker: Richard Goring, Director at BrightCarbon

Remote meetings are here to stay - and many are BORING. If you are trying to engage your learners (or any audience), compelling content is critical. But trying to create stimulating content with the same tools you’ve always had is hard, right? Thankfully, wrong! Terrific tools in PowerPoint along with visual assets help you create the kind of dynamic content you need to capture your remote audience’s attention, with functions that allow for interactive sequences and navigation.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 12, 2017

Microsoft is shuffling the Studio Head behind its top gaming franchise, Halo, to come and work on its growing mixed reality team. Dan Ayoub had been working with 343 Industries, the developer behind the last two Halo games, as Studio Head of External development since November 2014. This week, though, a blog post on the Halo Waypoint portal noted that Ayoub was leaving the studio to go and work on another important area of Microsoft: mixed reality. “Today we’re sad to be saying bon v

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 12, 2017

PlayStation VR (PSVR) gets something of an overhaul next week when the long-anticipated Aim Controller finally arrives on shelves alongside first-person shooter, Farpoint. Until then, though, we have a pretty decent week of new releases for VR fans. Nothing ground-breaking, but enough to keep you going until bigger and better things hit. If you missed last week, you can see those new releases here.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 12, 2017

When Brainseed Factory, the developers of Typoman, told me they were making a VR game, I’ll admit Squishies isn’t what I envisioned. The team’s previous game was a devilishly smart 2D platformer that played on words to create unique mechanics. Find a spare O lying around, for example, and you could role it up to an N to turn a machine on.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 12, 2017

The first rule of JammJam is that you can absolutely talk about JammJam, otherwise this new 360 video from inside the LA-based center would just be a blank video. JammJam has teamed up with VR video Arcturus to record clips from its popular sessions, in which musicians gather in a room and make a heck of a lot of excellent noise, in 360 degrees. These events are usually invite only, gathering some of the top musicians in the industry, but thanks to VR you can feel like you’re standing righ

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Speaker: Nik Gowing, Brenda Laurel, Sheridan Tatsuno, Archie Kasnet, and Bruce Armstrong Taylor

With 191 country signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement now hard at work in the race to zero carbon by 2050, much of the heavy lifting in ecosystem sustainability falls on the shoulders of the world's densely populated urban centers. This conversation considers how today's AI-enabled simulation media, such as AR/VR, can be effectively applied to accelerate learning, understanding, training, and solutions-modeling to sustainability planning and design.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 12, 2017

Farpoint from Impulse Gear is set to release next week on May 16th exclusively for Sony’s PlayStation VR (PSVR) headset on PS4. It’s the first title to use the new PSVR Aim controller, which is included as a bundle option along with Farpoint, with more games coming soon to feature support. In Farpoint you play as an astronaut set out to rescue two survivors from a crash-landing on a strange alien world.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 12, 2017

The first time I played The Unspoken by Insomniac Games, I knew I’d just done something really special. The act of reaching out with my hand to cast a fireball in VR felt so satisfying I found it hard to imagine playing an RPG again outside of VR; that’s how powerful the feeling was. And for everything The Unspoken got right in terms of PvP gameplay it was sorely lacking a single player narrative-driven campaign mode.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

MAY 12, 2017

We’ve all heard it said; porn will help the VR industry succeed, much like it did VHS and the internet itself. It’s a point people have made ad nauseum at this point, but now leading site Pornhub has revealed some stats to back it up. The site’s new infographics confirm that it gets around a massive 500,000 daily views of its 360 videos, which you can watch with mobile VR headsets like Google Cardboard.

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