Extended Reality (XR) - Page 50

Starting May 7, Best Buy will sell physical Oculus Rift VR headsets and hold in-store demos.

In a move that has a lot of pre-buyers quite bewildered, Oculus announces that it will be selling a "small number" of Oculus Rift headsets in U.S. Best Buy stores. Standalone Rift headsets will also be on sale on the Microsoft Store and Amazon starting May 6.

"A small number of Rifts will be available for purchase at select Best Buy stores starting May 7 and online from Microsoft and Amazon, starting May 6 at 9 am PST. Quantities will be extremely limited while we catch up on Rift pre-orders," reads a post on the Oculus Blog.

Samsung is walking down an interesting path when it comes to VR, with its new Gear VR-powered 'Bedtime VR Stories' for parents. Bedtime VR Stories allows parents to be right there in the VR world with their kids at bedtime, telling them an amazing VR bedtime story.

Not all parents can be with their kids at bedtime, and for traveling parents - this type of system works incredibly well. I have two young daughters (5 and 2) and travel once a month on average for work, so this type of system for someone like me, is transformative. I can be on the other side of the world physically, but in the same room with them during story time.

Samsung's new Bedtime VR Stories uses a combination of VR and VOIP, with each story taking between 6-7 minutes, and requires a Gear VR and Samsung Galaxy smartphone for the parent, and a special cardboard viewer for the child.

The future is VR, with the San Jose Cogswell College announcing its new Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) Certificate Program with the school adding that it's the first of its kind to do so.

Jerome Solomon, Cogswell's Dean of the College & Director of Game Design and Development, explains: "We look forward to helping the industry make sense of the exciting recent developments in virtual reality. We recognize the pain of developing around emerging VR/AR systems while at the same time the gaming industry has always led the way in finding applications for new technologies".

The new program will also cover Perceptual/Cognitive Aspects of VR/AR; HCI Design; Design for VR; and Project-Based Iterative Application. Timothy Duncan, DMA, Professor, Director of Digital Audio Technology said: "VR and AR are quickly emerging as leading areas for content and technology development. In keeping with Cogswell's 130-year tradition of educational excellence, we are offering this brand new set of VR & AR classes to help our students bridge the preparation gap by working with these trending and ground-breaking new technologies today".

One of Facebook's more exciting acquisitions over the years was VR startup Oculus, and with Facebook feeling generous from its recent earnings report, we caught a glimpse of the future of Oculus and Facebook's intentions.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said: "I really want to emphasise that most [Oculus] Rift early adopters are gamers and developers, but eventually we believe that VR is going to be the next big computing platform and we're making the investments necessary to lead the way. We've got a lot of great content with more than 50 games and apps built for Rift. Again, this is very early and we don't expect VR to take of as a mainstream success right away".

The Oculus Rift launched just weeks ago, and the numbers aren't great yet - but the water hasn't even begun to ripple let alone settle in the VR market.

Samsung was one of the first companies to see the future with VR, collaborating with Oculus from nearly the beginning, while building their own Gear VR headset in collaboration with the Rift maker.

At its own Samsung Developers Conference (SDC) the company has teased the future of its plans with its research into VR, and that it thinks a future Gear VR would be an all-in-one headset, without the need of a smartphone, that could reportedly offer a 'Holodeck' experience. Yes, a Holodeck experience - bring it on.

Injong Rhee, Samsung's Executive Vice President, Head of R&D, Software and Services - which is a mouthful of a job title, said it was his personal duty to reveal Samsung's future plans. Rhee teased that Samsung is researching untethered HMD technology, which is an 'all-in-one' device that has a built-in smartphone by the looks of things. Motion tracking and touch sensors are also a big part of Samsung's R&D, which comes as no surprise considering how much better the VR experience is with better, VR-ready controllers.

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey hasn't been shy on Reddit - well, ever - with the flip flop wearing VR startup founder taking to Twitter and Reddit to defend himself from the pitchfork-toting internet public.

Luckey took to Twitter recently, writing: "I prefer production that can keep up with demand, but much prefer shortages to the opposite problem! No burying Rifts in desert landfills". He followed up with: "Which is a very real concern for any hardware company, especially one trying to predict volumes on a totally new market".

Reddit was the next port to call for Luckey, where he had a huge post with a swift quote here of: "Does shit change sometimes? Of course it does. Does that mean I am going to stop speaking my mind because people throw out of context words in my face years later? No, not really. The same people who complain about "lack of transparency" and "sterile, corporate communication" are so very often the same people who berate and hate companies and individuals for anything they ever say that changes at some point".

HTC is well into the VR world with its Vive headset, with the company holding a conference to talk about the planned ecosystem for its Vive headset.

The company revealed a slew of new VR experiences that are on their way to the Vive, with HTC announcing a new Accelerator Program known as Vive X. HTC will invest $100 million into Vive X, so that it will "cultivate the VR industry and the development of the ecological business".

HTC CEO Cher Wang said that the Accelerator Program will launch in three cities: Beijing, Taipei and San Francisco. The company didn't provide anything specific in the way of locations, timelines or development studios. The company did say the program will be base-level administration, something that will include accounting, finance, HR and legal advice, and more for VR developers.

Any gamers who grew up in the 90s (or played Halo on original Xboxes) know about LAN parties. These communal events can be tons of fun, but are also quite chaotic and messy. With the advent of BigScreen, gamers can now hook up with their friends remotely across the globe to do LAN parties in VR environments--or even play games on massive desktop screens.

If you own (or plan to own) an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, then you should definitely check out BigScreen. The free app, which launches on Steam later this week, is a flexible tool that simulates your desktop in VR environments and gives you the freedom to control said environment. With BigScreen you can play games on a curved 65-inch TV or a huge, wall-sized 20-foot display or even an infinite array of monitors that mirror your single physical monitor. You'll also be able to stream your screen to friends in full 1080p, and even talk to them in the virtual space--kind of like VR Skype mixed with a VR movie theater.

"With BigScreen, you can have a Virtual Reality LAN party," reads the app's official Steam page. "Use your Windows desktop on massive screens in a virtual space where you can hangout with friends, watch movies, and even play video games together."

Falcon Northwest is the latest company to join Oculus with its Oculus Ready PC Program, with Oculus featuring eight PCs from various manufacturers like ASUS and Dell ready for VR gaming. Falcon Northwest is the latest member of this club.

Oculus took to a blog to announce two new desktop gaming PCs that have joined the program, with the Falcon Tiki and Falcon Talon. Starting with the Tiki, starting at $2699 and featuring an Intel Core i7-6700K, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 with 4GB of GDDR5, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

The other PC is the Talon, which bumps the price up to $3099 and while it includes the same Core i7-6700K processor, it bumps the GPU power to the GTX 980 Ti with 6GB of GDDR5, 32GB of DDR4 (up from 16GB in the Tiki) and a 512GB PCIe-based SSD joined with a 4TB drive for storage.

Valve has just pushed out another SteamVR beta, with the new update including some fresh work to many parts of the software. Valve still calls SteamVR a beta, so don't expect it to be perfect.

SteamVR's Desktop Game Theater, Keyboard and Dashboard features have all received some work in the new update, with the Desktop Game Theater being a mode where all games can be played in VR, on a virtual screen.

The new SteamVR beta includes an update to make the visual quality of the screen better, with gaze-based controls provided to adjust and realign the image you see, in case of drift. Valve has also included keyboard support that follows your desktop PC and its locale settings, while the Dashboard feature allows you to customize the play area, color, and opacity.

The tech surgeons over at iFixit have determined that HTC's Vive VR headset is surprisingly easy for DIY repairs, scoring an 8 out of 10 on the repairability scale.

While millions of VR fans are frantically biting their nails and spamming F5 for Vive VR shipping confirmations (myself included), iFixit has delivered their official HTC Vive teardown to keep us entertained. As always, the teardown shows you how to disassemble Valve's coveted VR headset and put it all back together again, while disclosing all the fine-tuned chips and bits of technology that are responsible for casting the spell of VR.

The process is quite involved with twenty-five steps in total, but all in all, it's not too difficult to slice open a Vive and swap out its guts. That being said, the Vive has a massive array of components that are extremely delicate, so any repairs or fixes need to be handled with the utmost care. The most daunting roadblock that iFixit faced with the Vive teardown is adhesive, which binds the lenses, Lighthouse base station covers, and the 32-sensor array.

While early Oculus Rift adopters wait in uncertain limbo for shipping confirmations, retailers have ample supplies of Oculus Rift PC bundles and have started to ship orders.

Even if you bought an Oculus Rift just minutes after pre-orders went live, everyday consumers can actually get a Rift before you. Since retailers like the Microsoft Store and BestBuy secured their Rift stock early on, buyers can completely circumvent the massive line of frustrated early adopters by purchasing an Oculus Rift PC bundle.

"Placed order for Oculus Rift ASUS G11CD-WS51 bundle at Microsoft Store today morning. Received shipping notification about two hours later," reads a post on the Oculus Reddit. This isn't an isolated incident; the subreddit is full of similar cases, with early adopters chiming in on how they feel completely betrayed by the company. Some first-day pre-buyers have yet to be charged or given any kind of order updates on their Rifts.

Rather than have its own exclusive games library, Sony's new PlayStation Neo (PS4.5/PS4K) will instead use regular PlayStation 4 games and upscale them to 4K.

Instead of moving on to the PlayStation 5, reports indicate that Sony will change the console cycle with a mid-cycle PS4 upgrade called the PlayStation Neo. The PS4 Neo won't be replacing existing PS4s, and will instead co-exist with the console and share a unified library of games that can be traded back and forth. The trick is that every PS4 game will have to support the PS4 Neo's new features, including 1080p to 4K upscaling functionality as well as increased frame-rate performance.

The way it'll work is that every PlayStation 4 game released after October 2016 will have two versions: a "Base Mode" for play on the regular PS4, and a "Neo Mode". Neo Mode allows developers to leverage the console's upgraded hardware to push 1080p 60FPS and upscale to 4K. All in-game content will be the same across PS4 Neo and PS4. All existing PS4 games will be compatible and playable on the PS4 Neo. Existing PS4's will only play games in Base Mode.

Hotel rooms on the Las Vegas strip are getting outfitted with next-gen adult video rentals--VR porn.

Seedy porno and hotel rooms are pretty much peas in a pod--and that goes double for Las Vegas hotel rooms. Now this harmonious union has been "erected" to the most realistic level outside of actual sex--virtual reality. A production company called VR Bangers (yes, that's really the name) is teaming up with VR headset maker Auravisor to bring full 360-degree VR porn as an on-demand service in Las Vegas hotels.

To get access to a porn-loaded Auravisor--a self-contained 1080p VR headset with a 5.1-inch screen--you have to drop $20, and you get the headset for a period of time. VR Bangers says that users will "see your hotel room replicated in the VR headset," and the experience will allow users to participate in an actual first-person sex simulation rather than...well...traditional porn-watching. Given how disgusting publicly-used VR headsets can be without...uhm..."handling" oneself, I can only imagine how funky these headsets will get.

Peter Jackson is incredibly excited about the prospect of bringing, mixed or augmented reality into the cinema sphere. He thinks it's going to be a huge market and add a lot of value to content. The problem is that it's also virgin territory, he says, which comes with its own set of challenges when trying to make it into something we actually want to watch, or play with. There's a lot of trial and error first before it's done right, and that's kind of scary for a filmmaker.

When you're the pioneers of any industry, whether it be in the form of genetically modifying snakes to develop the necessary organs to speak English or through exploring new computing options like quantum computing, there's always some type of resistance to the change you're trying to bring about. That might not be so with something like AR. It's a natural extension and one that we've been exposed to in various science fiction guises for decades now. "This mixed reality is not an extension of 3-D movies. It's something completely different," Jackson told Wired. "Once you can create the illusion of solid objects anywhere you want, you create new entertainment opportunities."

And really, AR is not necessarily new from a practical standpoint either. Games and other apps are already making use of the fact that modern phones and tablets have cameras and using those to display novel information or bring things to life. Ingress is a more modern game made in conjunction with Google by Niantic. It uses geolocation and AR to for its primary story-telling mechanism. PulzAR is a game fro the PS Vita that uses the built-in camera to create custom puzzles on top of real-life objects.

Netflix isn't convinced that VR will see enough mainstream adoption to warrant the production of exclusive VR movies and TV. So don't expect to see Orange is the New Black or Trailer Park Boys in 360-degree video anytime soon.

Although Netflix released a VR app that allows users to watch shows and movies in virtual reality living rooms, the streaming titan currently has no exclusive VR projects in the pipeline.

"We're really focused on movies and TV shows and doing more of those, which you can watch in a virtual reality headset if you want to," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings told Mashable, "but we think most people will watch Netflix on a smartphone or a smart TV."

VR is a hard sell to anyone who has never tried it - imagine being told what music sounds like, without ever listening to it. Yeah, I thought so. Well, Sony will begin pushing its PlayStation VR system into retail stores in June, so that consumers and gamers can begin trying it out.

GameStop has announced that they will be hosting demo stations for the HTC Vive at some of its stores, and now added to that news with PlayStation VR units hitting some of their stores in June. Sony Interactive Entertainment VP of Marketing, John Koller, told GameStop executives and investors that Sony plans to give consumers over 500,000 in-store demos across retailers between June and December.

We don't know how many GameStop locations will have PlayStation VR, but there should be a fair amount of places with PSVR in the coming months. GameStop CEO Paul Raines added: "We've played all the VR that's come through our office, and the setup time for PlayStation VR is significantly easier and the space required to demo is small, so I expect we'll have a lot of demos in stores, unlike the Oculus or HTC".

Of course it wouldn't take long for Oculus to stomp down on the software hacks that allow Rift exclusives to work on the HTC Vive, with the company warning users that it's not happy with the move, and future updates will stop this from happening.

Oculus spoke with GamesIndustry.biz, where they said: "This is a hack, and we don't condone it. Users should expect that hacked games won't work indefinitely, as regular software updates to games, apps, and our platform are likely to break hacked software".

Previously, Reddit user 'CrossVR' posted up some software that allowed Lucky's Tale (an Oculus Rift exclusive) as well as the Rift exclusive Oculus Dreamdeck, to both work on the HTC Vive. CrossVR explained: "It may work with plenty of other games, but that hasn't been tested by myself. It's still early days for this project, since it's only been in development for a few weeks. In the future more games will be supported, but I'm glad to see such swift progress already".

With the Oculus Rift CV1 now out in the wild (and my unit in my hands) as well as the HTC Vive (where is my Vive, HTC?!) gamers are now discovering some very cool things with VR gaming.

One of those is LibreVR, which is in an alpha state, and is "a proof-of-concept compatibility layer between the Oculus SDK and OpenVR". This means that any game that is exclusive to the Oculus Rift and is made by the Unity engine or Unreal Engine 4, can work on the Vive. In the words of Neo: "whoa".

Right now, LibreVR works with Rift exclusive Lucky's Tale (which comes in the box of the Oculus Rift) and Oculus Dreamdeck. The performance isn't perfect yet, but it'll improve as time goes on. We don't have our Vive headset yet, but when we do we'll be testing the hell out of this.

Shipments of early Oculus Rift pre-orders could be delayed by as much as two months, with some users having estimated shipping windows as far back as June.

The Oculus Rift's launch is an utter mess. Due to "unexpected component shortages", Oculus has delayed the shipments of its Rift virtual reality headsets across the board. Oculus promised that revised order updates would go out starting April 12--today.

Now that order shipment updates have started to roll out, we know just how bad the delays are. Users who grabbed a Rift just minutes after pre-orders opened up could be waiting until June (over two months after the original launch) to get their headsets. A user who ordered their Rift just 33 minutes after pre-orders went live has a shipping window of May 23 to June 2. That's a pretty big jump from March 28, isn't it?