Been a little while thanks to illness and events but here's a round-up of things this week across VR and some AR as well.
GAMES NEWS:
CREATIVE & NON-GAMING:
HARDWARE:
INDUSTRY:
HEALTH & EDUCATION:
INTERVIEWS:
OTHER FEATURES:
GAMES NEWS:
- ARK Park's first free DLC is out, which revolves around flight.
- Elite Dangerous: Beyond – Chapter Two arrives.
- The developers of Pokémon GO are buying a London based AR company.
- Epic Games are being generous to devs again with their grants scheme.
- Marvel Powers United VR adds Black Panther.
- The Walking Dead's AR game The Walking Dead Our World comes out next month.
- Check out some new Gungrave VR screenshots.
- Wands' latest update, Sanctum of Sahir, is out.
- Pinball FX2 VR gets E.T, Back To The Future and Jaws tables.
- Co-op heist title Covert revealed for Oculus Go.
- And puzzle game Esper is coming to Go too, as well as Vive and PlayStation VR.
- Magic Flight Academy (2/5) - This is on the single-player iteration of a VR arcade multiplayer.
- Gungrave VR left us confused.
- Wanted Killer VR left us excited.
- And charming steampunk adventure Chiaro And The Elixir Of Life shows promise.
CREATIVE & NON-GAMING:
- The BBC have ordered a new property show which will integrate VR technology to view suggested designs.
- Disney are bringing a VR animated short to SIGGRAPH 2018.
- Oculus Medium 2.0 has released with improved performance, Rift Core 2.0 integration and more.
HARDWARE:
- Oculus Go rolled out to retail in Europe.
- Oculus also adjusted their specs and will now be concentrating on Windows 10.
- Leap Motion announces update for Project North Star.
- VRgineers' new pro headset XTAL features AutoEye IPD and Leap Motion.
INDUSTRY:
- The damages awarded to ZeniMax against Oculus have been halved to $250 million by the courts.
- Oculus are expanding their reach and dropping the price for business customers.
- To help the development of the HTC Vive Focus, HTC has teamed with China Mobile for 5G project.
HEALTH & EDUCATION:
- The University of Michigan has invested in Neurable, a start-up with uses brainwaves to control VR.
- A Californian startup is investigating if VR can aid patients suffering chronic pain.
- zSpace unveils its AR/VR laptop designed for education.
INTERVIEWS:
- We spoke to ARia's Legacy developer The Pixel Crushers about their AR escape room game.
- To Cybershoes about their product - which is exactly as it sounds.
- To ZeroLight about haptics and their partnership with Ultrahaptics and Meta.
- To the University of the Arts London which is preparing to recognise and teach virtual reality as a course.
- And to XSEED about how they've brought Gungrave to VR.
OTHER FEATURES:
- The Virtual Arena - After a flurry of announcements, Kevin Williams takes stock of all the location-based VR news of the past month or so.
- VR vs. What’s In A Name? - Is the Oculus brand name doomed?
- As always we've got a regular Sunday feature Something For The Weekend' which gives you a rundown of VR games titles currently in the sales. It rotates each week between Steam, the Oculus Store and the PlayStation Store, but be sure to check it out to see what's currently going cheap.
- And if you are interested in getting into the industry there's Saturday's regular piece The VR Job Hub.