Extended Reality (XR) - Page 25

Cybershoes today launched its Kickstarter campaign to help fund the production of Cybershoes for Oculus Quest. The company was looking for $30,000 to get the ball rolling, and it crushed that goal within a matter of hours.

Cybershoes, if you're not aware, is a physical locomotion solution for virtual reality games. The Cybershoes system includes a pedestal seat with a 360-degree swivel rotation, a circular carpet to place under the chair, and a particular sandal-like peripheral with rollers on the bottom. The wireless version also includes a receiver box that mounds to the Quest headset.

The Cybershoes peripheral has existed for a while for PC VR. Still, last month the company announced that it would create a wireless version of Cybershoes for the standalone Oculus Quest. Earlier today, the campaign launched, and in less than 10-hours, it had accumulated the $30,000 needed to fund the project.

The Kratos Aircrew Combat Mission Training (ACMT) system uses Valve Index to teach military personnel how to operate a combat helicopter, and the experience looks wild!

Kratos Defense & Security Solution Inc., which makes solutions for military organizations, this week revealed a combat helicopter simulation training system that uses virtual reality to put soldiers through a simulated battle experience in an attack helicopter.

Kratos's ACMT solution includes the shell of a helicopter, complete with the switches and knobs you would find in the real thing. It also features Valve Index VR headsets for the whole crew, including one for the pilot, another for the co-pilot, and two more for gunners on each side of the cockpit. Kratos calls is a Multi-Position - Aircrew Virtual Environment Trainer (MP-AVET).

There's some exciting new content coming to the Oculus Quest platform in December. Three new games are coming in the first two weeks, including a significant Pistol Whip update, Warhammer 40,000: Battle Sister, and the VR remake of the classic 90's puzzle adventure game, Myst.

When Facebook revealed the Quest 2 at Facebook Connect in September, the company also announced a lineup of new VR titles that would come to the platform later this year. Some of those games are already out, like Population: One and Blair Witch. Some of them are coming at the beginning of next month.

The Pistol Whip 2089 update is first on the docket with a December 1st release date. The new release brings a new adventure to the game, set in a sci-fi future. The 2089 update also features a new set type of enemy to extinguish. Pistol Whip 2089 is coming to Quest, Rift, SteamVR, and PSVR.

Version 23 of the Oculus Quest platform software gives developers the ability to run games at 90Hz on Quest 2, but that might not be the cap for the hardware. John Carmack hinted that there could be a 120Hz mode in the future.

Oculus just started rolling out v23 of its platform software, which introduces a handful of new features, not least the highly-anticipated 90Hz mode for the Quest 2 headset. Once you have the latest version of the OS, you can run the Quest 2 in either 72Hz or 90Hz modes.

Initially, the faster refresh rate is only useful with Oculus Link as no Quest 2 games yet support the new refresh rate. However, developers are free to enable the speedier framerate in their games, and several developers are shipping updates soon.

HP is selling the Reverb G2 way faster than it can build them. The company is trying to keep up with demand, but it already sold out of the entire year's production run. New orders are now expected to ship in January.

HP started shipping the first round of Reverb G2 Windows Mixed Reality headsets to early pre-order holders earlier this month. The company previously said that customers whoordered before October would get their kit in November, while orders placed later than that could be waiting until December for their headset.

An update from Connection, HP's US fulfilment partner, today reveals that orders placed before October 25 would arrive in November or December. The update wasn't clear about orders placed between October 25 and today, but it said that if you place an order now, you likely won't get it this year. Connection expects to begin fulfilling new orders in January 2021.

Google is moving away from it's Google Carboard-based Expeditions education platform. The company announced that it would migrate much of the Expeditions content to Google Arts & Culture.

Google Expeditions was an ambitious education initiative that leveraged the power of the Google Cardboard VR platform. Google Expeditions enabled teachers to take their students on virtual field trips through 360 tours. The program included tablets for teachers and smartphones with Google Cardboard for students.

Last year, Google discontinued the Cardboard VR platform, but it left it open for developers to continue to use it. The company also continued support for the Expeditions platform, although it began migrating away from the VR experiences and more into AR experiences for smartphones.

Bigscreen added a green screen room to its list of virtual environments so you can use your virtual avatar for anything.

Bigscreen was one of the first applications to launch on consumer VR when the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive first hit the market in 2016, and to this day, the company behind it continues to add innovative new features.

Bigscreen started as a virtual-environment that you could use to share your computer screen with up to three other people. These days you can do things like taking in a Hollywood film at a virtual theatre with people from around the world. The latest update adds a green screen room and the freedom to use it creatively.

The 4th annual International VR Awards took place on November 12, and 12 games were competing for the prestigious VR Game of the Year title. That's a full dozen games that you need to try if you haven't already.

For a long time, the biggest critique about the VR industry's state was the lack of top-tier titles. Since the early days of VR, there have always been experiences that would blow you away. But they used to come few and far between, and more often than not, they were too short to get excited about.

The consumer VR market is now four years old, and the tired excuse of a lack of content just doesn't hold up anymore. There are some fantastic experiences available, and these 12 are some of the best that came out in the last year.

If you have an Oculus Quest, you're probably getting regular exercise without even realizing it. Starting next week, your Quest headset will be able to keep track of that for you.

In September, during the Facebook Connect conference, Facebook announced that it would soon launch a fitness tracking solution for the Oculus Quest platform. The software, dubbed Oculus Move, is an upcoming system-level feature for Quest that will give you a rundown of just how active you are in VR.

Oculus Move works in the background, keeping track of your activity while you play your favorite games, and gives you an estimated breakdown of how much energy you're burning. The software provides you with a dashboard to report your fitness stats, including an estimated tally of your calorie burn, how many moves you make per minute, and a breakdown of how many calories you burned per active hour.

Oculus is now rolling out v23 of the Oculus Quest software platform, which finally introduces 90Hz support for Quest 2. The new update also coincides with Oculus Link, the USB tethering system that enables Quest on your PC, leaving beta status.

When Oculus revealed the Quest 2 VR headset in September, the company said the new headset would operate at 72Hz or 90Hz, depending on the software you run. At launch, Quest 2 didn't have full support for the 90Hz mode. You could enable it, but the faster refresh only worked in platform environments such as Home, but not in games.

With the v23 software update, 90Hz now works with all features, including the Guardian and camera passthrough. Oculus is also now extending the option to support 90Hz to game developers.

It looks like that Oculus Quest 2 jailbreak that everyone got excited about last month isn't happening. It turns out the "successful" bootloader might actually be fake.

The day after Oculus started shipping the Quest 2 VR headset, Robert Long, a developer at Mozilla who's not a fan of Facebook's policies, put up a $5,000 bounty for a proven jailbreak for the headset. Palmer Luckey, the ousted founder of Oculus, matched that offer, bringing the prize to $10,000 for a verified root access jailbreak.

Less than a week later, someone laid claim to the prize, and the VR community has been waiting with bated breath ever since. Within days of the bounty announcement, the XR Safety Initiative (XRSI), which offered to help Long verify the claims, announced that someone had stepped forward with root access to the Quest 2 and the ability to bypass the Facebook login requirement and that their researchers had "validated this jailbreak."

Valve released an update for Half-Life: Alyx, but this one's probably not for everyone. If you're interested in game development, you're probably in for a treat, though. Valve added 3-hours of developer commentary as a narration for the game.

The developer commentary update for Half-Life: Alyx is long overdue. Valve said that it intended to complete this content before shipping the game; the Covid-19 pandemic forced the team to put the commentary aside to focus on shipping the game on time.

The Half-Life: Alyx development team spent the summer and recent months reflecting on the development process, and they recorded over 3-hours of discussion covering "147 points of interest" and "every aspect of development." The developers talk about the design, art, animation, rendering and sound production for the game.

HP's long-awaited Reverb G2 Windows Mixed Reality headsetsare finallymaking their way to customers' doors. And some people have reported breaking part of their headsets right after getting them.

The part in question is a plastic clip that guides the tether cable to the headset's rear. There aren't many people who have yet received their Reverb G2 pre-order, but already a handful of them have snapped the cable guide clip in half.

HP chose to ship the Reverb G2 without pre-installing the tether cable, which means that customers must install the cable before using the headset. To do so, you must remove a small plastic clip from the back of the head strap and then snap it back into place around the cable. It seems some people are breaking the clips during this procedure, and enough people have done it that a 3D printable replacement has already been shared with the community.

Magic Leap and PTC announced that the Vuforia AR Enterprise Suite is coming to Magic Leap 1 next year, giving industrial enterprises access to productivity-boosting AR tools.

PTC's Vuforia is one of the most widely used augmented reality platforms, especially in industrial business sectors. Magic Leap already supports the Vuforia Engine, enabling businesses to author custom AR software using Vuforia technology. In 2021, PTC plans to bring its entire Vuforia AR Enterprise Suite to Magic Leap's spatial computing platform.

Vuforia's AR Enterprise Suite includes five AR tools for businesses, including Vuforia Chalk, a collaborative remote assistance tool. Vuforia Expert Capture for recording work instruction tutorials. Vuforia Studio, which enables you to create 3D training and work instructions. And Vuforia Spatial Toolbox for prototyping spatial computing projects.

Microsoft revealed that as part of its partnership with HP to develop the HP Reverb G2 Windows Mixed Reality headset, the company spent time improving the Windows Mixed Reality platform's overall visual quality.

Microsoft added two specific image correction features to the latest Windows Mixed Reality; Chromatic Aberration Correction and Light Leak Correction.

Microsoft's engineers improved Windows MR's method for reducing chromatic aberration (the refraction effect caused by white light hitting a Fresnel lens). Microsoft's Chromatic Aberration Correction pre-warps the image such that a single white pixel would appear as a single white pixel in the lens, not a white pixel with red, green, and blue refractions.

It looks like Sony might not be giving up on PSVR as quickly as we thought. Sony just confirmed that the PS Camera adapter for PlayStation 5 would soon come packaged in the PSVR Marvel's Iron Man VR bundle.

Sony's PlayStation 5 drops on November 12, and gamers will be able to enjoy next-gen games as well as their PS4 games, some with enhancements and better loading times. PSVR games are also playable on PS5, but the new PlayStation camera doesn't work with the headset.

Sony's solution is the offer afree adapter to anyone who has a PSVR headset and wants to use it on a new PS5. PS5 PSVR games don't yet exist, and we're not sure that they ever will, but Sony's not abandoning the headset. The company just revealed that the adapter you need would soon come with PSVR kits, which should encourage newcomers to consider a PSVR headset.

Deca released more information about its upcoming DecaGear 1 VR headset today. To convince people the headset is real, Deca released the Bill of Materials for the headset, including model numbers and rough pricing.

Deca stirred up a lot of buzz in late October when it revealed the existence of its upcoming VR headset, DecaGear 1. The new headset boasts a wild array of specifications, including inside-out tracking, facial expression tracking, eye tracking, and dual 2160 x 2160 RGB LCDs. This headset's specifications are scarcely believable, but the $450 price tag puts the DecaGear 1 into "something seems fishy" territory.

Facing a lot of skepticism, Deca's founders are trying to be as transparent about the product as possible. Today, they revealed the DecaGear 1's Bill of Materials, a complete breakdown of the components needed to build the headset and their associated costs. Deca said the prices listed are an approximate range because of NDA obligations with some companies and because the prices depend on purchase volume.

Split Light Studios dropped a teaser trailer for its upcoming game Pirate VR: Jolly Roger, and it looks fantastic. It almost seems too good to be real.

The Pirate VR: Jolly Roger Steam page describes that game as a Robinson Crusoe-style story, in which you find yourself on an island in the Caribbean Sea. The developer said that Pirates VR: Jolly Roger is a linear game, which implies that you won't get to wander freely throughout the island. Still, the trailer depicts a wide range of environments that you'll encounter, such as jungle scenes, dark caves, and a sunken ship.

The trailer also shows off impressive graphics, although it's unclear if the visuals were dressed up for the video. The clip appears highly scripted, so it remains to be seen if the final game looks this good.

GodView Tech is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the production of its GodView 5K AR/MR smart glasses, which are compatible with any device that supports HDMI or video of USB Type-C.

GodView Tech launched its Kickstarter campaign on October 28, and within 30 minutes, the company had pulled in the $5000 it needed to complete the project. The campaign has since gone on to raise more than $160,000, so it's fair to say people are excited about the GodView smart glasses. Given the specifications, it's not hard to see why.

The GodView Smartglasses offer an extremely high resolution for an augmented reality device. Top-end hardware like the Microsoft Hololens 2 and Magic Leap One offer 2K and 2.5K resolution, respectively. GodView Tech claims its headset produces a 5K resolution projected display.

bHaptics today revealed a pair of haptic feedback vests that are sure to bring an extra level of immersion to your VR gaming experience. The company is taking pre-orders now, with delivery expected before the holidays.

bHaptics' TactSuit X series comes in two flavours. The TactSuit X16 is the entry-level option. It features 16 ERM vibration motors, with eight on the back and eight on the vest's front. The X16 comes equipped with a 4900mAh battery, which gives it a claimed 22hrs of playtime.

The higher-end TactSuit X40 is packed with 40 ERM motors to add more realism to the haptic response. The extra vibration motors come at a high cost on power. The battery in the X40 has twice the capacity at 9800mAh, which gets you 18hrs of playtime.