Virtual & Augmented Reality and 3D News - Page 148

PAX Australia 2013 - I have been waiting since Oculus first reached Kickstarter to try out their Rift VR headset, and today my day came. We first went to another booth and tried out the 720p Developer Kit version, which we'll have a video uploaded shortly on.

The first story I wanted to write from PAX AU was about Oculus. We had a 2:30PM meeting but turned up 30 minutes early by mistake, but the Oculus guys were happy to accommodate us. We were sitting there, in one of the smallest booths at PAX AU and while it's small, it had heart and soul, and most of all: passion. We were introduced to Joseph Chen, who is head of Product at Oculus, who mentioned that Nate (the Vice President of Product at Oculus VR) would be on-hand soon.

We were been greeted with the Full HD 1920x1080 version of the Oculus Rift, which is different to the HD 1280x720 version of Rift which is found in the form of the Kickstarter backed Developer Kits. These devices are much higher resolution, but as we were told, are more like 'alpha' units.

I'll be attending PAX AU on Friday, where I'll finally get some hands-on (or is that heads- and soul-on) with Oculus' Rift VR headset. I'll be using the Full HD version, which I'm quite excited about.

But, for now, the company have said that they're going to be releasing Rift to consumers at $300. Most people will look at that and think it's expensive, but consider the price of a Full HD 27-inch monitor, which is around the same price, and it doesn't seem so bad. Moving onto multi-monitor setups, which are even more expensive, it makes Oculus' Rift look like a much better alternative.

During an interview with Edge Online, Oculus' CEO, Brandon Iribe noted how he hopes it would influence how we play games in a better way than next-gen consoles. He talked about the way that Rift will reach the market, acknowledging that "the lower the price point, the wider the audience." It's true, but getting it cheaper than $300 will be hard.

I've expressed my thoughts on next-gen games countless times, with my latest piece here. I truly believe Oculus Rift is the future of gaming, and so do the Game Critics Awards, who chose Oculus Rift as the Best Hardware/Peripheral of E3 2013.

This means that the Oculus Rift beat out both the next-gen consoles, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. This speaks volumes about the next-generation of games, with the consoles yet another evolution and not a complete revolution which is what we need. Oculus Rift turns the entire industry upside down, offering the game in virtual reality.

I'm glad that Oculus Rift took the award home, they obviously deserved it. Well done, Oculus VR!

E3 2013 - Oculus VR is kicking off their E3 experience with a major upgrade to the Oculus Rift, which now is able to display the virtual-reality world in full 1080p glory. The company has upgraded the virtual-reality headset not by creating a custom display but switching out the original non-HD display developer units received to an off-the-shelf 1080p HD display used in cell phones.

Early reports are stating that the new display makes a huge difference and the immersive world created actually feels like you're really there. The 1080p screen is actually split in half and each eye sees a 960x1080 portrait display.

Word is that the company was worried about how the switch from landscape to portrait mode might affect games but he said that there have been no issues reported. Additionally they have not noticed any issues in with the existing games created by the 10,000 developers who now have Oculus Rift development kits.

The co-founder and developer of Oculus VR, Andrew Scott Reisse, has been killed in a police chase in California. Reisse was not part of the police chase, but was unfortunately hit by a car at a crosswalk when police stopped to investigate suspicious activity a couple of blocks away, which lead to his death.

After the police pulled three suspects over, including 21-year-old Victor Sanchez, who fired at police and then fled in a white Dodge Charger. Their car hit several other cars and went through multiple red lights, with one of the red lights being where Reisse was unfortunately crossing, and he was hit. All of the suspects were eventually apprehended and are currently in police custody with an investigation ongoing.

Oculus VR released an official statement, which is below:

I wish this were me doing the video, but I'll continue to dream for now. The team at Oculus have received their first Rift off the production line, and have done a nice unboxing video for the world.

They've also taken the time to announce through the Oculus blog that developer kits will begin shipping to the earliest Kickstarter backers by March 29. Once the dev kit ships to the backer, they'll receive an e-mail confirmation so that they can track their Rift as it is shipping to their door. Oculus expect to deliver between 1000-1500 units per week until they've fulfilled all of their orders.

The Oculus Rift developer kit comes with a plethora of goodies, including:

Valve have quite the announcement today, telling the world that Team Fortress 2 will get a new mode this week - "VR Mode" for Oculus Rift, the superstar VR headset. This means that people who own the development kit of Oculus' VR headset can play Team Fortress in virtual reality.

Engadget have an interview with Joe Ludwig, one of the engineers in Valve working with Team Fortress 2's VR Mode. The interview can be seen here. The good news doesn't stop there! What good is a new mode if we don't have a new exclusive had in the game? The Oculus Rift development kit is now a wearable item within the game! Valve has been even more generous, donating Rift hats to the Oculus developer community - so if you backed the Kickstarter campaign at any level at all, or pre-ordered one of the Rift developer kits from Oculus' website before April 1, 2013, you'll receive a code to redeem your own TF2 Oculus dev kit hat.

Now the big question - how long until we see Rift support added to other games? In Engadget's interview with Joe Ludwig, he says that TF2's VR Mode is a big test, to see how the community accepts it. Obviously Oculus' Rift headset won't be available to the consumer market until later in the year, so hopefully we see some Steam Box support, and maybe some Half-Life 3 launch at E3 with Rift support? Or am I asking too much there?

If there's one bit of technology kit I'm the most excited for, it would be a huge tie between Google Glass, and Oculus' Rift VR headset. News is leaking out now that head of DICE's Frostbite creative team, Frank Vitz, is eager to get his hands on Oculus Rift, and test it out on the powerful graphics engine.

All of this started when an MTBS3D (Meant to be Seen) forum member found an intern job posting by EA's DICE, which was looking for someone to work on next-generation VR technology. The job posting specifically talked about investigating and building support into the Frostbite engine for the Oculus Rift headset. MTBS3D president, Neil Schneider, e-mailed Vitz as he thought he might have something to do with the job posting.

He was right, with Vitz admitting so in an e-mail reply. Vitz gave Schneider permission to post the e-mail exchange on his site with details about what DICE would like to do with the Oculus Rift headset. Vitz also said that he has one of the very first Rift developer kits heading to him later this month, and is aware of at least four kits on order within their internal community. Vitz added that there are multiple titles being worked on that would be great for Rift, but noted that it would be up to each individually team to make sure their project works in stereoscopic 3D, and with Oculus' Rift VR headset.

CES 2013 - Our own Trace Hagan and Chad Sebring had the idea earlier today to drop a new Corsair Survivor 16GB pen drive from their hotel room in Las Vegas at CES 2013 to see if the drive would actually survive. What else do you do when CES is over? Have some fun!

As you can see in the video above, it was a big drop for the fairly weighty device, but it did indeed survive. Chris Ramseyer was on the ground clearing the area for safety. He straight away plugged in the drive to test it, and it popped up in Windows and showed the data which was saved on it before the drop.

Tomorrow Trace Hagan is going to attempt to take the test a little more extreme - stay tuned for another video if all goes to plan!

Verizon has just filed a very creepy patent, which is for a DVR that would be capable of recording what happens in your living room. Not just audio, but video, too. Verizon say that the technology could help provide targeted ads for whatever you might be doing in your living room.

So, if you were jumping around doing Zumba for example, the DVR would provide ads for fitness. If you were sitting down talking to a friend about your latest Johnnie Walker Blue Label, it would serve up ads on alcohol or other related areas. The other problem is that Verizon aren't the only ones who are looking at doing this, or who have already filed patents for this type of creepy DVR tech.

Comcast patented a similar technology back in 2008, which recommended content based on people that it recognized in the room, and Google proposed a patent for Google TV that would feature audio and video recorders that would work out how many people were in the room watching TV. Verizon's patent was published just last week, but was filed in May 2011. It gets worse: Verizon provides two examples of the context-sensitive DVR's use in a couple's living room - where sounds of an argument would throw up ads for marriage counselling, while sounds of "cuddling" would provide ads for contraceptives.