Extended Reality (XR) - Page 58

Valve writer Chet Faliszek has stated on Twitter that virtual reality (VR) means a sales boom for high-end computers in 2016.

"Thanks to VR," he says, "In this coming year we will see a resurgence of high-end PCs in the home."

This comes just after NVIDIA stated VR requires seven times more powerful computers.

NVIDIA is excited about VR moving into 2016, but in order to actually run games comfortably without getting sick and at acceptable framerates, they say that we'll need PC's to be 7 times more powerful than they are now. Pascal might not be up to the task all on its own.

VR is going to put demands on our systems like we've never before, especially if we want a VR headset to have a resolution high enough that we can't see individual pixels. In some instances this is higher than 2K in each eye, or higher than 4K across the entire screen. And with Unreal Engine 4, Unity 5.x and the future of CryEngine, that'll be no easy feat.

NVIDIA spoke with VentureBeat about the challenges of VR and what they're doing to help provide the best experience possible. The bigest and most obvious answer is that they're building ultra-fast GPU's to help handle the workload. But it'd be a stretch to say that even Pascal, with HBM2 will be 7x faster than big Maxwell is. The next piece is GameWorks VR, tools similar to AMD's VR initiative that'll decrease latency and optimize for VR.

With the release of the Oculus Rift just around the corner in early 2016, Oculus has announced that each Rift will include a copy of Lucky's Tale.

Lucky's Tale is a VR platformer, with it being an Oculus Studios title. The made-for-VR platformer lets you take control of Lucky, a fun-loving fox, where you'll venture into a "charming new world, with dozens of locales and lush environments".

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said that playing Lucky's Tale, was one of the defining experiences in VR for him. Luckey said: "We always believed there was an opportunity for platformers in VR, but it wasn't until playing Lucky's Tale and working with the Playful team that we truly realized its potential to change how people view this genre of gaming forever. Lucky's Tale delivers on everything you want in a next-generation VR game - it's thrilling, full of adventure, and incredibly fun to play".

HTC and Valve will be celebrating on NYE, as their Vive headset has just been certified by the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC needs to put its regulatory stamp of approval on products before their consumer release, with HTC aiming for an April launch window. Road to VR reports that the FCC's certification was expected to hit some roadblocks, courtesy of its laser tracking and possibly safety issues, but it seems to be A-OK.

HTC also has lofty plans for its Vive headset, which could hit hundreds of millions of Internet cafe users in China if HTC can play its cards right.

With two Development Kits under their belt, Oculus is close to the Consumer Version of the Oculus Rift - coming in early 2016. Well, 'Chaoss86' has posted on the Oculus reddit, saying that he has tried out the Oculus Rift Consumer Beta (ECV7) headset - and had lots of positive things to say in his analysis of the headset.

When it comes to the screen inside of the Rift, the DK1 and DK2 had a very visible 'screen door' effect - but with the Consumer Beta (ECV7) headset "there is no pixel pattern of 'screen door' effect", according to Chaoss86. He added that the field of view is "considerably wider than the DK2" headset, adding that while the vertical field of view is "shorter at the top edge", it's "significantly wider horizontally".

Chaoss86 noted that the headset "rests very comfortably" on the head, with the front faceplate capable of moving away, and it's replaceable. This is a big deal, as Chaoss86 notes that "there was no issue with lenses fogging up", and that the Rift is "very light and feels very well built, the "material" seems to be made of some sort of dirt/water retardent and does not get dirty and it does NOT collect dandruff or other dirt".

Japanese researchers at the University of Tokyo's Department of Complexity Science and Engineering have developed a new type of hologram that can be touched. While there are limitations (a handshake, for example, is impossible), you could "stroke the hand of the other side and lightly touch each other freely at arbitrary parts of the hand, sharing the haptic sensation." You could also send someone an image of your face and let them touch it as though it's real.

The technology behind it is named Haptoclone, which employs "telehaptics". Essentially, a Kinect sensor captures the motion while ultrasound arrays emit ultrasonic radiation pressure, providing the desired result.

It looks like HTC is set to dominate the gigantic Chinese market with its Vive headset, with the Taiwanese giant inking a deal with Hangzhou-based ShunWang Technology, Inc - one of China's biggest Internet cafe software companies.

HTC and ShunWang have established a pilot program in Hangzhou, which lets players buy 10 minutes in a Vive-powered VR room for $2 to $5. Chairman of ShunWang, Hua Yong, explains: "The sustainable development of VR gaming needs hardcore gaming, which is mainly supported by Internet café platforms. As the biggest Internet café platform service provider in China, Shunwang will make full use of its existing network and operation capacity in the industry to bring the best VR experience to hundreds of millions of Internet café game players".

The big deal here is that ShunWang's software is used in over 100,000 Internet cafes across China, accounting for around 70% of Internet cafes. ShunWang says that their software is used by over 100 million Internet cafe users, so with over 100,000 cafes, how many Vive-powered VR rooms will they make? This deal has thrown HTC into an entire new ballgame, as when the Vive launches in April 2016, it could see a very bright future in China, too.

With Oculus all-hands-on-deck for the launch of the Rift VR headset, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey took to Twitter on Christmas Eve saying some huge things about VR and its future.

Luckey said in his tweet "Reminder of something I have talked about before: VR will become something everyone wants before it becomes something everyone can afford". Luckey's tweet would be a way of talking about the price concerns around the Rift, with Luckey tweeting afterwards "there are a lot of people who expect to spend a couple hundred bucks and use their existing low-end laptops" to play VR content.

Luckey continued his tweet rampage, adding "we are taking some big steps to make sure people know what they are getting into - we don't want to sell to people who don't".

Shuhei Yoshida, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment, wants PlayStation VR to expand into more segments of VR than just gaming, and this means movies and even photographic experiences.

There are a lot of possibilities that come with virtual reality, including creating visceral second life experiences. Shuhei Yoshida sees a lot of opportunity in other types of media, and making it accessible through the PS4 and the PlayStation VR. Fox and and other companies are already looking at making true 3D 360 degree movie experiences that can only be truly enjoyed with a proper headset. Oculus has their Cinema App and even Samsung has an app to watch movies in 3D on their Gear VR.

But Sony knows that in order to truly break into the scene, they have to offer something that no-one else actually does. The advent of 360-degree video is an attractive new medium that could help to attract even more attention. If, say, Sony were to have a VR-content channel that's easily accessed and easily populated by indie and professional, quality, content, and it was actually enjoyable, then VR, and especially PSVR could become a household name. Yoshida says that these new markets are "going to be very important," because he himself is a big fan. "The power of these mediums can be communicated in nongaming form," which means that the PS4 could become a prime mechanism for doing just that.

The team over at University of Washington has been playing around with real-time tracking of fingers in the VR world, thanks to the power of magnets.

Oculus is working with the University of Washington to develop a magnet and sensor combination that will allow natural use of your hands in the VR world, instead of using sticks or gloves that requires line of site. The project is called Finexus, which uses magnets that are the size of fingernails, which are placed on top of a user's fingertips.

From there, they can determine the exact location of your fingers in the 3D space. The magnets claim to be accurate up to just 1.3mm, too. They don't require a line of sight with a camera, so they can be used for nearly anything, and in endless positions or body orientation. If the Finexus project ends up becoming real, which I think it will, it could be a very natural input device for VR, and especially the Oculus Rift, since the Facebook-owned VR startup is involved.

Second live developer, Linden Labs, is working on a new product, called Project Sansar, that wants to integrate a more natural and social experience with upcoming VR solutions.

If there's one thing about the incoming VR revolution, it's that not everyone is necessarily convinced that it's here to stay. Is this stereoscopic 3DTV all over again? That's a fair question, because to some it seems just a bit gimmicky at first glance.

But the makers of Second Life want to make VR a social activity, so that it can potentially become a lot more appealing to a much wider audience. Speaking with PSFK, the CEO of Linden Labs, Ebbe Altberg spoke a little on what they see as the future of VR. Second Life already has Oculus Rift support as of 2014, which lets you immerse yourself like never before, but they want to significantly expand upon that.

We know that the Oculus Rift would be released in early 2016, with pre-orders opening up "soon after New Year", but now the Oculus founder himself, Palmer Luckey, is providing more concrete details on the VR headset.

Luckey took to Twitter, where he said that preorders "are coming soon after new year. Enjoy a stress-free holiday, we won't launch preorders without warning!" Luckey said in another tweet "thrilled to share some news: Manufacturing continues to go well, and we are still on-target for an awesome Rift launch in Q1!"

The first Oculus Rift rolled off of the production line earlier this year during the Oculus Connect developer conference in September, which you can see in the above image. Oculus Hardware Project Manager, Stephanie Lue, said on stage at Oculus Connect: "We set a date out for ourselves for when we wanted to build the first product and we hit that date on the nose. Our hardware teams are pouring our hearts and souls to get it just right for the experience and for manufacturability so that we can get this out to as many people as possible. It's definitely worth the wait".

There seems to be some chatter among Taiwanese supply-chain suppliers that GIGABYTE is also going to attempt to enter the VR headset market, along with ASUS.

But we already knew ASUS was interested in their own solution for use with their gaming notebooks, because that would allow for a first party solution to their products that would let consumers use an ASUS only ecosystem.

According to DigiTimes GIGABYTE is going to work with VR developer 3Glasses, which already have a few interesting and competitive VR solutions in their product lineup. The above is their flagship D2 Vanguard Edition with a 2K screen and latency that's less than 13ms, something needed for a good VR experience.

With all of the VR attention firmly sitting with HTC and the Vive right now, with headlines like HTC and Valve have made a "very, very big technological breakthrough" with the Vive - Oculus has been sitting the corner, until now.

Oculus has announced that it is shipping final Rift hardware to some developers, with the Rift SDK 1.0 and runtime features "tied to the consumer product". Oculus also notes that it's shipping "more Rift hardware out to developers every week in the run up to launch. In the meantime, DK2 and SDK 0.8 continue to be the right platform for early Rift development -- you only need SDK 1.0 if you're imminently shipping".

The Khronos Groups's upcoming low-level graphics API is almost finished. Today they reported that they're on the "home stretch" when it comes to development and that we should see it in early 2016.

According to their blog post, the actual specification itself has been finished but they're putting on a few extra layers of polish and an extensive legal review to ensure that there are no holes. The SDK's that developers will have access to to make their games compatible are also almost done, but rely on the specification itself before they can be finished. In the end, we'll see SDK's for Windows, Linux and Android.

The successor to the aging OpenGL standard will finally be coming to us, months after DirectX 12 has already been released. The Khronos Group has said that "Vulkan will set the foundation for graphics and compute APIs for years to come and so Khronos is taking the time needed to do this right."

During the PlayStation Experience event in San Francisco, California recently, Sony showed off the latest build of their PS4 exclusive, Driveclub.

The latest build is in an experimental form for the PlayStation VR, Sony's VR headset for the PS4. Attendees got the change to try out a single track with one car to drive, all from the in-car view. Sony has now released a 360-degree video recorded from the front of a Mercedes-AMG S65 Coupe.

The 360-degree video is a first from Driveclub developer Evolution Studios, showing off the Mercedes-AMG S65 Coupe driving through some tracks, including some snow capped mountains, forest regions, and sunny desert settings. There's some impressive graphics to be enjoyed in the video, too. If you want to get the full experience, check out the 360-degree video above on your smartphone in the YouTube app - as you'll be able to physically turn your smartphone around and enjoy the world in 360 degrees.

Futuremark is feeling festive by the looks of things, with the Finnish benchmark giant releasing the VRMark beta for 3DMark, which is a tease of things to come in 2016.

In order to download VRMark you obviously need to own 3DMark, and have it on Steam. The beta is open to anyone who owns 3DMark on Steam, with a few steps needed to jump into the VRMark beta. One of the big requirements is that it does not run under Windows 7. Here's what you have to do:

Once you've done this, you'll need to download the VRMark beta as separate DLC, which weighs in at 662MB. You'll need to follow these steps:

Oculus is getting the mobile version of its platform in better shape for developers, with its newly released v1.0 SDK, something it released last month.

The new v1.0 SDK for the Gear VR includes an audio kit that allows for immersive sound in VR, and much more. One of the only things missing in the SDK are the upcoming social tools, something that will make it much easier for developers to create shared VR experiences. In a blog post, Oculus explained that starting on January 1 "we've decided to start requiring Mobile SDK 1.0 or higher for all new updates and store submissions".

This is because that version of the SDK "marked the transition from an experimental interface to a more mature, stable API focused on maximum performance". On a post on Twitter, the legendary John Carmark (who is the Chief Technology Officer of Oculus) said that there is now screen recording abilities in the Gear VR v1.0 SDK. The screen recording functions have to be baked into the VR apps and software that developers are creating, in order for them to make use of it.

If you want to have one of the more unique experiences on your VR headset, Bible VRX is now available, and works with Google Cardboard.

Bible VRX is also available for the iPhone, showing scenes in 3D that were described in the Bible - something that includes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Even, and Moses parting the Red Sea. When Moses is parting the Red Sea, you can turn around on the spot, checking things out - like the Red Sea parting, of course.

Derek Ham, who developed Bible VRX, explained: "What if we could use virtual reality to re-live scenes from the Bible? I thought it's time to use technology to disrupt traditional methods of Bible based media". The "lite" version of Bible VRX looks to be one of, if not the first religious app for modern VR technology. Ham continued: "Bible VRX has a mission to use advanced technology to communicate the stories of the Bible, stories of faith, hope, and love".

While the new HTC Vive headset and controller look incredibly awesome, one of the best demos we've seen so far is of the new finger-tracking demo shown off at the HTC developer event being held in Beijing, China.

At the event, HTC said it was developing a new VR content platform, with Valve open to the plan. On Reddit's Oculus forum, some commenters noticed the digital rights management technology being offered on the HTC developer website. This technology would restrict users from modifying the content, but how HTC and Valve will differ in their take on DRM will be interesting.

HTC has our attention in so many ways right now, especially with this new "very, very big technological breakthrough" it has worked out with Valve on the Vive VR headset.