Virtual & Augmented Reality News - Page 1

DeadEyeVR'S "Ultimate Boxing Gloves" might be the perfect accessory for VR boxing fans. These gloves work with Oculus Touch controllers to deepen the immersion in your favourite boxing games.

DeadEyeVR said it created the Ultimate Boxing Gloves because they weren't satisfied with the standard VR boxing experience. These gloves are supposed to enhance the simulation to make it feel more realistic.

The gloves' creator wanted them to be as realistic as possible, so they used authentic boxing gloves as the foundation. To hold the Oculus Touch controller, DeadEyeVR created a cup that straps to the palm of the gloves, which holds the controller in place while you're gaming. The gloves are thumbless so that you can use the buttons on the controllers.

Gravity Lab appears to be the first Quest game to get a Quest 2-specific update. The game developer pushed a graphics update for the game over the weekend, and the difference is impressive.

Gravity Lab is a 6DoF physics-based puzzle game for virtual reality. The title has been available for some time on PC VR, and it recently debuted on the Oculus Quest platform. In porting the game to Quest, the developer had to reduce the graphics fidelity of the game. Things like multiple light sources and reflective surfaces had to be removed to meet the performance needs.

Quest 2 is much more potent than the original Quest, allowing developers to push their titles even further than before. Mark Schramm, the creator of Gravity Lab, is lucky enough to have a Quest 2 ahead of launch, allowing him to prepare an update for his game before the hardware ships to consumer next month.

HP today revealed the Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition, a virtual reality headset for businesses that captures biometric data for various uses. The Omnicept headset can track your pupil movement, mouth movement, and your heart rate.

The HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition is based on the upcoming Reverb G2 VR headset and shares most of the core features, including the display resolution, speakers, and general form factor. The Omnicept Edition has a few upgrades that the basic model doesn't offer, including a wipeable PU leather cushion and a ratcheting adjustment system for the head strap.

The Omnicept Edtion includes eye-tracking sensors from Tobii, which enable gaze-based interactions. The headset is also compatible with NVIDIA's foveated rendering technology, improving rendering performance while enhancing localized image fidelity with supersampling.

Pimax recently revealed that it's building a virtual environment called Pimax VR Experience that would allow you to control headset settings and launch VR content without taking the headset off. The software just entered public beta, and if you have a Pimax 5K or 8K headset, you can try it today.

The Pimax VR Experience is a virtual environment that allows you to control the PiTool headset driver settings and launch content from any VR platform from within VR. The software is reminiscent of the SteamVR when you disable the SteamVR home environment.

Pimax VR Experience gives you instant access to many of the headset's settings, such as FOV adjustment, refresh rate, resolution supersampling, and display brightness. It also gives you access to your entire VR content library. Pimax VR Experience taps into SteamVR, Oculus, VivePort and ReVive libraries to bring all your content into one easy-to-access location.

The latest version of Microsoft's Insider Preview for HoloLens enables a feature that makes sharing HoloLens 2 much simpler. The headset can now calibrate your eye position automatically and in the background.

HoloLens 2 produces impressive holographic images that allow you to compute in 3D space, but the magic only works when you calibrate the headset for your specific eye position. The existing method for calibration requires going through a manual process that takes many steps and a few minutes. It's not exactly easy to share the headset with other users.

The latest Insider Preview for HoloLens adds a new feature for HoloLens 2 called Auto Eye Position (AEP), which eliminates the friction that comes with sharing a HoloLens 2 headset. With AEP enabled, users no longer go through a manual calibration process. When you put the headset on and begin to use it, AEP works in the background to automatically align the holographic output with your eye position.

Pimax VR this week released more details about its long-awaited Sword motion controllers, including pictures of the most recent pre-production sample. The company said that it is entering the "final development stage," and the team is working 7-days a week to complete the project.

The wait for the Pimax Sword controllers has been long. Pimax promised these controllers to Kickstarter backers three years ago, but the company put their development on the back burner while it focused on building its ultrawide VR headset lineup.

In the latest update about the Sword controllers, Pimax sheds light on a few of the controllers' technical details. Each Pimax Sword controller will include a status indicator light strip along the front edge. The Sword controllers have a sensor halo that resembles a fencing sword's hilt, hence the name for the controllers. Pimax said the controllers offer full 360-degree tracking coverage with no dead coverage angles thanks to 26 embedded tracking sensors.

A patent uncovered by Dutch tech publication LetsGoDigital reveals that Sony is experimenting with inside out tracking and new controllers for a future iteration of its PlayStation VR HMD.

Sony is gearing up for the launch of the next PlayStation console, which is due to launch in less than two months. The new console is supposed to support the company's PSVR headset, but there have long been rumors of a new PlayStation headset coming down the pipeline. The newly published patent gives even more fuel to that rumor.

Sony filed for patent WO2020189691 - Input Device with the World Intelectual Property Organization (WIPO) in April 2020 and WIPO published it on September 24. The translated patent document describes a method of tracking controllers with "a plurality of light-emitting portions" with a headset-mounted camera.

A mysterious company called Photon Lens recently started dropping hints about its upcoming augmented reality smart glasses for the fitness industry. We've only a few details about the device, but what we know so far has us very intrigued.

Photon Lens appears to be a very new company or, at the very least, a secretive company. Photon Lens doesn't seem to have a website, and the company's LinkedIn and Twitter pages are just a few weeks old. During that time, Photon Lens has dropped several hints about the specifications of the device.

According to Photon Lens' social media posts, the new smart glasses will be the first "true augmented reality" device designed for the fitness industry. The headset offers a 50-degree field of view, which is comparable to HoloLens and Magic Leap. And the image should be crisp, thanks to 2 million pixels of resolution per eye. All in a package that weighs just 85 grams.

HP is gearing up to release the Reverb G2 VR headset finally. Today, the company announced that it would begin shipping Reverb G2 VR headsets to pre-order customers this coming November. Demand is high so new orders will see a delay.

HP's highly-anticipated Reverb G2 VR headset is just around the corner. The new device takes the dual 2160x2160 per eye displays from the original Reverb headset and combines them with technology derived from Valve's Index VR headset. Valve contributed the lenses, head strap, and the speakers that come equipped on the Reverb 2.

Along with the shipping windows announcement, HP revealed that the final version of the Reverb 2 would come with a few changes from the pre-production versions that some influencers have reviewed. HP said the retail Reverb G2 would include updated lenses that "reduce the Fresnel ring reflections and improve clarity." In other words, you should see fewer "godrays" through the new lenses compared to other headsets.

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey reportedly invested some of his money in SideQuest. This marketplace sells Oculus Quest apps that aren't approved for sale on Facebook's official Oculus Store.

Facebook treats the Oculus Quest as somewhat of a gaming console. It's a self-contained gaming device that's tethered to a platform-specific marketplace, just like an Xbox or PlayStation console. Facebook would prefer that Quest owners buy all their content through the Oculus Store, and the company goes through great lengths to ensure that every title on its store offers a high-quality experience.

Not every app meets Facebook's requirements, and when that happens, developers don't have much recourse. That happened to the founder of SideQuest, Shane Harris, when he submitted his title to the Oculus Store. The rejection inspired Harris to create the SideQuest marketplace as an alternative distribution solution for content that Facebook doesn't want to sell.