Virtual & Augmented Reality and 3D News - Page 141

The fallout has already begun over the acquisition of Oculus VR by Facebook that was announced earlier today. Facebook's stock began to take a hit after the announcement, which closed on the positive side for the day, but has fallen below its opening price of $64.25. This means that Facebook has lost between $1.5 and $1.8 billion in market cap in the hour or so since the acquisition announcement was made.

The fallout does not stop there though, and some developers are announcing their plans to stop development of their games for the Oculus Rift. Most notability is Markus Persson, AKA Notch, the creator of Minecraft, who tweeted that Facebook creeps him out and as a result he would be canceling development of Minecraft for the Oculus Rift. This leaves Minecraft in VR open to just Sony when the Minecraft for PS4 launches later this year. Although there is a mod out there that already enables Minecraft to the Oculus Rift, it is in no way as intuitive as native support would be.

The fallout on social media has been well voiced also with many leaving comments asking why Oculus VR would let Facebook buy it. Others have been predicting the death of Oculus VR as we know it, and very few have spoken positively about the acquisition. Shortly after the announcement I received several messages asking me what my thoughts on the acquisition are, and personally, I am going to withhold judgement until I see what changes will be made. I still plan on buying a Oculus Rift DevKit 2, and will continue to use my DevKit 1.

Facebook has just announced that it will move forward with plans to acquire the virtual reality headset maker, Oculus VR, for a cool $2 billion in cash and stock. This figure includes $400 million in cash and more than $1.6 billion in 23.1 million shares of Facebook's common stock. The agreement also features an additional $300 million in earn-out cash and stock if Oculus VR meets certain milestones Facebook as set for the company.

"Mobile is the platform of today, and now we're also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow," said Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. "Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play and communicate."

"We are excited to work with Mark and the Facebook team to deliver the very best virtual reality platform in the world," said Brendan Iribe, co-founder and CEO of Oculus VR. "We believe virtual reality will be heavily defined by social experiences that connect people in magical, new ways. It is a transformative and disruptive technology, that enables the world to experience the impossible, and it's only just the beginning."

Today Oculus unveiled the second generation of its Rift development kit, and it appears to be a major improvement over its predecessor. The Oculus Rift Devkit 2 is an upgraded, and refreshed version of the company's original virtual reality headset, and boast many new features and improvements over the original Oculus Rift.

The new Oculus Rift DevKit 2 features better latency, better frame rates, and a higher resolution (960x1080 per eye) that is said to greatly reduce the infamous screen-door effect experienced on the original Oculus Rift. Positional head tracking has been greatly improved and is now accurate down to less than a millimeter, and the new screen is a low persistence OLED display that virtually eliminates motion blur and judder.

"DK2 isn't identical to the consumer Rift, but the fundamental building blocks for great VR are there. All the content developed using DK2 will work with the consumer Rift. And while the overall experience still needs to improve before it's consumer-ready, we're getting closer everyday - DK2 is not the Holodeck yet, but it's a major step in the right direction," Oculus said in a press release.

GDC 2014 - After months upon months of teasing the world, Sony has just taken the wraps off of its VR headset for the PlayStation 4, known as Project Morpheus.

Project Morpheus is a VR headset designed for the PlayStation 4, which comes in two pieces: a closed display, and something that resembles the PlayStation Move sensor. The unit unveiled at GDC 2014 is the development kit for Sony VR games, with Shuhei Yoshida, President of Worldwide Studios for Sony saying: "We believe Morpheus will further enhance, with integration with PlayStation Camera and PS Move." Yoshida has said that the prototype of Project Morpheus is "by no means final," so we should expect a change in the final product.

PlayStation R&D Engineer Richard Marks talked about Morpheus, saying that it needed a high-resolution, high-quality screen, great sound, and control - all of which Sony seems to have under control. SCE is working on "binaural tech" for the audio side of things, with Marks making a point of the PS4 camera being "almost custom-built for VR."

Respawn Entertainment has teased that it has been playing Titanfall with Oculus VR's virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift. The developer's Community Manager, Abbie Heppe told Digital Spy: "We've been so busy just trying to get the game out. That is one of those things that we will evaluate post launch. We have them in the office, we've definitely played around with them, but that was more a side project for some of our coders."

Heppe continued: "After launch we will have probably a little more time when we are not totally crazy trying to get a game out. I've walked through a couple of the demos and it's pretty neat, especially with the cool stuff we have in Titanfall, there is a lot of possibilities. I'm always a little bit sceptical when it comes to stuff that's wearable because you've seen people attempt to do it in the past and it's never caught on large-scale. But it's so much fun to play with, so we'll see"

So there you have it, we could expect some virtual reality goodness in Titanfall, but I wouldn't hold your breath, it could be a while.

During South by Southwest this year, 3D printing is on full display, with industry supporters handing out 3D-printed food to event attendees. Major tradeshows and conventions, such as CES 2014 and SXSW are helping display 3D technology on a big platform, introducing a new audience to potential for the food industry.

3D printed food should give the 3D printing industry a strong boost in 2014, with a larger number of casual consumers being exposed to the technology. Chocolate maker Hershey's is expected to support 3D printing for the next few years, creating edible chocolate sweets for visitors at its factory in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

3D Systems, which partnered with Hershey's and other select companies, has the ChefJet food printer - though with a price tag still around $5,000, only a small number of bakeries and food makers will be able to afford the niche technology. During SXSW, the ChefJet is using sugar, water and alcohol to print delicious candies that taste sugary and sweet.

Augmented reality isn't a new technology, but its growing emergence has given developers and retailers an innovative manner to approach customers.

Startup companies such as Blippar, Daqri, Layar, Sayduck, and Waygo are developing niche augmented reality apps and services - and bigger companies are dumping more research funds into seeing how to integrate AR into customer offerings.

Moving forward, the regular augmented reality market is expected to grow 30 percent year-over-year during the next four years - and the mobile augmented reality will top $1 billion annually by 2015 - as consumers, developers, and companies willing to try using augmented reality.

Roberts Space Industries has just pushed out Star Citizen Patch 11.1, which has enabled support for Oculus Rift within the Hangar Module. This is quite the surprise, but something that was promised when the game hit its $12 million stretch goal.

All you'll need to do is make sure your game is up-to-date with the latest patch, and then create a file named 'user.cfg' in your Star Citizen/CitizenClient folder, and add the lines 'sys_currentHMDtype=1' and 'r_stereostrength=-8' and voila, you have virtual reality support thanks to the Oculus Rift, in Star Citizen.

There are various issues of course, as this is just early days yet:

An interesting trademark was filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office from Oculus VR, the startup behind the Oculus Rift VR headset. The trademark is for an exhibition dedicated to all things VR called RiftCon.

The company filed for the RiftCon trademark on February 14, while everyone was busy binge watching House of Cards, and includes the following description: "Organizing exhibitions for cultural, educational, or entertainment purposes; organizing exhibitions in the fields of interactive entertainment, virtual reality, consumer electronics and video game entertainment industries for cultural or educational purposes; entertainment services, namely, arranging and conducting of competitions to encourage use and development of interactive entertainment, virtual reality, consumer electronics, and video game entertainment software and hardware".

The idea of VR-focused exhibition is great, as the world of virtual reality hasn't even reached the consumer level yet. Oculus is on the forefront of this, but it'll be more interesting to see this RiftCon event happen as the launch platform for the consumer version of the Rift headset, and continue each year to showcase all things VR.

Technology to bring 3D printing closer to the mass market is accelerating, though most 3D printed items tend to be rather small in size. To help demonstrate the effectiveness of printing larger items, BigRep, a company founded in 2014, opens the door to printing items such as furniture. The device is launching worldwide at large trade shows, and begins shipping in two months, with a $39,000 MSRP.

The BigRep One can print full-scale objects in sizes up to 45x39x47 inches, and has the ability to print plastics, nylons, Laywood (wood fibers mixed with polymers), and Laybrick (something similar to sandstone-type of material).

"We know that the need for 3D prints has increased enormously in the creative industries among architects, artists and inventors, among others," said Lukas Oehmigen, BigRep founder, in a press statement. "We have developed printing technology that lowers costs by about 90%, opening the door to a new dimension. Clients may now affordably produce life-size, three dimensional objects."