Items tagged with Oculus
Brendan Iribe, co-founder and former CEO of Oculus, is leaving the company to embark on whatever the next chapter in his life holds. His departure from the company that started the modern VR push (or at least gave it a major boost) creates a murky future for Oculus. Why did he leave, and how does this impact Facebook, which owns Oculus? Those are both questions he did not answer in his farewell post on Facebook. Instead, he spent most of words on praise for the team effort that "started a revolution that will change the world in ways we can't even envision." He ended the post by saying "this will...
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Oculus is moving swiftly along with the development of its virtual reality (VR) headsets. The company announced today that its next-generation, all-in-one VR headset will ship in Spring 2019 priced at just $399. Called the Oculus Quest, this VR headset will provide six degrees of freedom and will come with Oculus Touch wireless controllers. Oculus Quest represents the production release of the Project Santa Cruz that was first teased nearly a year ago by Facebook. The VR system supports inside-out tracking, and makes use of four ultra wide-angle sensors for real-time positioning in a...
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Facebook has been fighting a legal battle with its Oculus arm against ZeniMax for a while now. In February 2017, Facebook's Oculus was ordered to pay ZeniMax $500 million for patent infringement. With that sort of money on the line, Facebook and Oculus appealed the decision. A new ruling in the case has been handed down and Facebook came out on top this time. The ruling sees the $500 million award given to ZeniMax halved to $250 million. U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade in Dallas, TX also rejected a request by ZeniMax that sales of Oculus VR headsets be banned in the U.S. The ZeniMax and Oculus...
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There are many components to a fully realized virtual reality experience. The visual aspect is obviously the most important piece of the puzzle, but it's far from the only one. Accurate hand tracking is key as well. While hand tracking is pretty good in its current form on systems like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, there is room for improvement, and Oculus believes it's come up with a breakthrough of sorts. At Facebook's F8 conference this week, Maria Fernandez Guajardo, head of product management on Core Tech at Oculus, talked about a computer-vision based hand tracking system that uses a self-optimizing...
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First announced back in October, Facebook today announced that it is now shipping the Oculus Go standalone wireless VR headset. Unlike the original Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive/Vive Pro, the Oculus Go doesn't require a PC and won’t limit your freedom of movement with bulky cables. The Oculus Go is also different from solutions like the Samsung Gear VR in that it doesn't require you to strap in your smartphone. Powering everything is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, which was hot stuff in the flagship smartphone world in late 2016. Paired with the SoC is 3GB of RAM and either 32GB...
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Back in late July, Plex tiptoed into the world of virtual reality with the support for Google's Daydream VR platform via the Plex VR app. For those with a supported smartphone and a Daydream View VR headset, you could experience your movies and TV shows in immersive virtual reality -- complete with the "effect" of watching content in a drive-in theater environment. Now, Plex is extending its embrace of all things virtual reality to Gear VR headsets and the Oculus VR software platform. As it turns out, Plex likely intended to offer support for the Gear VR all along, but it was prompted to speed...
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Oculus has made a big announcement at CES 2018 with the unveiling of details on its partnership with Xiaomi and Qualcomm Technologies for the Chinese market. Oculus says that the deal will "deliver the next generation of VR products at accessible prices to people worldwide." One of the fruits of that partnership won’t be for the people of the world. It will be for a standalone VR headset based on Oculus technology that is exclusive for the Chinese market. The headset is called the Mi VR Standalone, which happens to look very much like the Oculus Go that will be launched globally. There is...
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Earlier this week, Facebook made a huge step forward in making virtual reality headsets more adorable for the enthusiast community. For the rest of the summer, the Oculus Rift and Touch bundle will cost just $399, which is a $200 discount from the usual price. However, according to a new report, Oculus is looking to drive the price down even further in the future and provide a “cord-free” VR experience. Oculus is looking to bridge the gap between cord-free headsets that rely on your smartphone to power the VR experience (a la Samsung Gear VR) and more powerful corded systems like the Rift and HTC...
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ZeniMax scored a big payday as a result of its lawsuit against Oculus, ultimately winning a $500 million award from the Facebook-owned VR company and its co-founders Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe. Now ZeniMax is turning its attention to Samsung and its Gear VR headset, claiming that the company is profiting from Oculus technology that was first developed at ZeniMax. Samsung often advertises its Gear VR as being powered by Oculus, and therein lies the trouble. According to the lawsuit, Samsung either knew or should have known that the technology used in its Gear VR headset was developed at ZeniMax...
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Critics had a lot of good things to say about Henry, a short film based around the first original character designed for virtual reality. The protagonist is a less-than-cuddly hedgehog who is lonely and in search of friendship, and he captured the hearts of viewers. Henry ended up winning an Emmy award for Outstanding Original Interactive Program, though despite its success and that of other projects, Oculus has decided to shut down the studio that was pioneering these efforts. This will not happen overnight. Oculus said it is amidst a shift in which it is "winding down Story Studio," which it...
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Palmer Luckey is leaving Facebook. The Oculus co-founder came up with the Rift and is largely responsible for popularizing VR. Now he departs the world's largest social network three years after selling his company to Facebook. Today will be his last day on the job. Publicly, the parting of ways between Luckey and Facebook is amicable, with Facebook putting out a statement wishing him well. "Palmer will be dearly missed," Facebook said in a statement. "Palmer’s legacy extends far beyond Oculus. His inventive spirit helped kickstart the modern VR revolution and build an industry. We’re thankful...
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Apple may look to the field of augmented reality to help set its upcoming iPhone 8 device apart from the competition. Perhaps just as importantly, infusing AR into the iPhone 8 would set its next flagship phone apart from previous iPhone models, a not unimportant goal after Apple faced criticism for the lack of innovation that went into designing the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. That is not to say the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are bad phones. Far from it—they're the best iPhones to date, and some would consider them the best smartphones available. But compared to previous models, Apple's latest...
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It seems hard to fathom, but it has been nearly a year since Oculus started shipping finalized Rift headsets to the public. The Oculus Rift debuted at $599, a bit more than consumers were expecting, and it did not help matters that Oculus ran into some delays due to component shortages. Nevertheless, it marked the beginning stage of getting VR gaming into the mainstream. Now a year later, a price cut makes the cost of entry a bit more palatable. More on that in a moment. The headset was not the only thing that got delayed. Oculus originally intended to launch motion sensitive Touch controllers...
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(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.8"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Waving around motion controllers is cool and all, but for virtual reality to offer an deeper level of immersion, recognizing hand and finger movements would go a long way. That seems to the be the direction Oculus is headed. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a handful of pictures taken from the Oculus Research lab...
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