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Items tagged with Virtual Reality
While companies left and right have been jumping on the virtual reality bandwagon that was created in large part by the Oculus Rift, one firm has been curiously absent—Apple. That changed yesterday when Apple announced at its annual developer conference (WWDC) an external graphics enclosure that will enable developers to develop and test graphically demanding apps, including VR content. The "External Graphics Development Kit," as it is called, can attach to any Mac with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. Support for the enclosure is added through macOS High Sierra, the latest version of Apple's operating...
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Google just pulled off a major VR coup by scooping up Owlchemy Labs, a game development studio based in Austin, Texas that is best known for its VR title Job Simulator. The company's latest game, Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-ality, has also helped put Owlchemy Labs on the map, though it is Job Simulator that has racked up multiple awards and was named as an official launch title for the HTC Vive, Oculus Touch, and PlayStation VR. Now Owlchemy Labs is a Google property, though what exactly the sultan of search plans to do with its new development studio is not yet clear. In a short blog...
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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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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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In the VR space for the PC, it is largely a two-horse race between Facebook-owned Oculus and its Rift headset and the HTC Vive, the latter of which has the backing of Valve. Interestingly enough, it appears that Valve is also working with LG Electronics on yet another VR headset solution, one that will utilize SteamVR Tracking and the OpenVR platform. Perhaps a price war is not too far off.That is getting a bit ahead of ourselves. It remains to be seen how pricing for VR hardware will shake out in 2017, but in terms of available solutions, LG is going to be joining Oculus and HTC. The company is...
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Anticipating demand is not easy. Just ask Nintendo, which grossly underestimated how many gamers would be interested in its NES Classic Edition console. And then there is Sony with its PlayStation VR. Not only did Sony have to anticipate demand for a new product, but it had to factor in how popular VR gaming would be at this early stage. It turns out that Sony was a bit conservative in its thinking as well.Andrew House, global chief executive of Sony Interactive Entertainment, told The New York Times that he had doubts about the VR market catching on so quickly and being a draw in the mass market....
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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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Consumers at large do not seem to be ready to embrace the concept of virtual reality, at least not at today's asking price—a high-end headset costs $599 to $799, plus there is the cost of a PC with sufficient hardware to support VR experiences. Due to low sales of Oculus Rift in Best Buy, Facebook has decided to close 200 of its 500 VR demo stations at Best Buy locations across the United States. Facebook acquired Oculus three years ago for $2 billion, or closer to $3 billion if you factor in the cost to retain employees and bonuses for reaching certain milestones. Either way you slice it, Facebook...
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Co-Founder Palmer Luckey And CEO Iribe To Pay $50M And $150M Respectively ZeniMax on Wednesday won a $500 million award in its lawsuit against Oculus. Mark Zuckerberg's testimony was not enough to fully sway the jury, which sided with ZeniMax and found that Oculus executives broke a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) when the Oculus Rift was in its beginning stages. However, the jury also decided that Oculus did not misappropriate trade secrets as ZeniMax alleged in its lawsuit. Oculus is on the hook for more than half of the $500 million award—it owes ZeniMax $200 million for breaking the NDA, $50...
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A new dynamic duo is forming in Silicon Valley. Hugo Barra, the former Android executive who left Google and took a position at Chinese firm Xiaomi around three and a half years ago, is returning to U.S. soil to team up with Mark Zuckerberg on his virtual reality efforts. Barra joins Zuckerberg and the rest of Facebook as the new Vice President of Virtual Reality, or VPVR for short, and will lead the Oculus team. It has been an interesting journey for Barra. He surprised many in the tech industry when he traded his job at Google to go overseas to work for a mobile device firm. Barra viewed it as...
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One of the perks of being the billionaire co-founder of Facebook is being able to show up at work in t-shirt. Of course, there are times when Mark Zuckerberg chooses to dress up. Such was the case when he took the stand in a federal courtroom earlier this week to defend against allegations that Oculus stole technical information that went into the creation of the Rift headset. "We are highly confident that Oculus products are built on Oculus technology. The idea that Oculus products are based on someone else’s technology is just wrong," Zuckerberg said according to The New York Times, which noted...
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Early adopters who pounced on the Daydream View VR headset at launch for $79 should hightail it out of here, you will not want to read this next bit. Now just over a month later, Google has taken a chainsaw to the price of the Daydream View and shredded it down to $49. That's roughly a not-so-insignificant 38 percent price reduction, though for existing Daydream View who disregarded our warning, at least the initial selling price was far from being a king's ransom, especially in the VR space. By comparison (and this is by no means apples to apples, it's more like apples to a field of apple trees),...
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There has been a ton of buzz surrounding virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality hardware and software. The truth of the matter is, nobody really knows if any of these technologies have legs, and if so what field they will thrive in. Developers have largely focused on gaming early on, though what about social? Oculus just launched something called "Oculus Rooms and Parties" for Gear VR owners, and it reminds me of a time when services such as America On-Line and CompuServe brought users together. "The first wave of VR was all about the magic of presence, the immersive sense of actually...
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Nintendo of America CEO Reggis Fils-Aime was pretty lukewarm on the idea of bringing virtual reality gaming to the masses when he lasted addressed the topic, saying last June that VR technology is too expensive and the audience too small at this point in time. That might be true, but don't rule out VR gaming on the Nintendo's upcoming Switch console that is slated for release in a few months. Around the same time Fils-Aime was making those remarks, Nintendo was busy filing a patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that shows the Switch being paired with what looks to be a VR headset of...
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