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Submission + - Google to Reveal "World's Highest Res OLED-on-glass display" for VR Headsets (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last year at SID Display Week 2017, Google's VP of VR/AR teased a "secret project" that the company was working on (https://www.roadtovr.com/google-developing-vr-display-10x-pixels-todays-headsets/)—a VR-optimised OLED panel capable of 20 megapixels per eye—which was being undertaken with "one of the leading OLED manufacturers." This year, the schedule for SID Display Week 2018 indicates that Google plans to reveal its made-for-VR panel, which it calls the "world’s highest resolution (18 megapixel, 1443 ppi) OLED-on-glass display." The company plans to detail the display in a presentation at the event, which will be co-presented with engineers from LG, suggesting the identity of the second partner on the project. Ideal for VR, the 4.3" panel is capable of 120Hz refresh rate and is expected to have a resolution of some 5,500 by 3,000, representing a massive leap over today's leading VR panels which offer 1,600 by 1,440 resolution at 90Hz.

Submission + - Google Launches Earth VR for free on HTC Vive (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google today revealed Earth VR, a virtual reality version of the company's famous Google Earth program that's built for the HTC Vive. The application packs the rich Google Earth dataset — which includes high resolution satellite imagery, elevation data, and detailed 3D modeled cities and landscapes — into a single model of the planet which users can view all the way from space down to the ground, walking among cities like a giant. The company tells Road to VR that "Earth VR is a product, not a demo," and that it's designed to benefit from improvements in the Earth dataset over time automatically, and it will see regular updates post launch.

Submission + - Unreal Engine and Unity to get NVIDIA's New VR Rendering Tech (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NVIDIA has announced that Unreal Engine and Unity will see integrations of its new Simultaneous Multi-projection rendering tech which the company says can yield “a 3x VR graphics performance improvement over previous generation GPUs”. NVIDIA recently introduced the technology as a unique feature of its latest series of GPUs built on the 'Pascal' architecture. According to the company, Simultaneous Multi-projection allows up to 16 views to be rendered from a single point with just one geometry pass, whereas older cards would need to add an additional pass for each additional view. This is especially beneficial for VR rendering which inherently must render two views for each frame (one for each eye). With Simultaneous Multi-projection built into Unreal Engine and Unity, game creators will have much easier access to its performance benefits.

Submission + - PlayStation VR Pre-orders Sell out in Minutes at Amazon (roadtovr.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Once seen as the underdog, Sony's PlayStation VR headset continues to hold it's own against PC-based competitors Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. The company announced last week that they won't ship the PSVR headset until October, but they also announced an attractive $399 price compared to the Rift at $599 and Vive at $799. And it appears the company's existing addressable market of 36 million PS4 owners are ready to get on board; Amazon US opened pre-orders for the PSVR Launch Bundle this morning and sold out of its stock allocation in less than 10 minutes. Walmart befell the same fate quickly thereafter, though several other retailers in the US are still showing pre-order stock.

Submission + - Valve is Bringing Steam's Game Library into VR with Desktop Theater Mode (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: From characters sprinting around levels at inhuman speeds to the player's view being forcibly moved when a game takes control of the camera during a cutscene, it isn't as easy as you might think to make a game work in VR if it wasn't designed for it in the first place. So Valve is striking a compromise that lets players make use of their existing Steam games in VR. SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode, which Valve says is in early beta and will be shown at GDC next week, puts player's games on a huge screen in a virtual home theater setting. Future possibilities for gamers playing together on the same virtual couch are enticing.

Submission + - Former Oculus Co-founder Shows Long Range Virtual Reality Tracking System (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Jack McCauley was among Oculus' founding members and played a seminal role in the development of the Rift DK1 and DK2 VR headsets as the company's VP of Engineering. After departing from the VR firm sometime around the 2014 acquisition by Facebook, McCauley has continued his interest in VR, most recently demonstrating a laser tracking system that makes use of MEMS technology to actively track targets. He says the system's strengths are long range and low cost compared to camera-based tracking solutions, which Oculus currently uses.

Submission + - Valve Announces New Portal Content for Virtual Reality (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Although I'm sure we'd all love to see Half-Life in virtual reality, Valve has been focusing on its Portal universe for SteamVR. The company announced today a “compilation of new VR experiments” called 'The Lab', which will be set inside one of Aperture Science's "pocket universes". One of Valve's earlier VR demos, 'Aperture Robot Repair', had players interact with Atlas, one of the robots from Portal 2 (with a brief GLaDOS cameo). The company says they'll be showing off The Lab at GDC 2016 next week and that they'll release it for free to SteamVR this spring.

Submission + - Goldman Sachs: AR/VR is "The next computing platform", Worth $80 Billion by 2025 (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As consumer VR headsets from major players like Facebook, Sony, and HTC/Valve head to market this year, the mainstream is beginning to catch sigh of the technology's potential. Prestigious investment bank Goldman Sachs calls AR and VR "the next generation computing platform" and forecasts an $80 billion market by 2025. “We think this technology has the potential to transform how we interact with almost every industry today, and we think it will be equally transformative both from a consumer and an enterprise perspective,” says Heather Bellini, Business Unit Leader in Telecomm, Media, & Technology at Goldman Sachs. “At the end of the day we think VR and AR will be as transformation as the smartphone market.”

Submission + - Unreal Engine Will Soon Allow Developers to Build Games Inside of VR (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Epic Games, the creators of Unreal Engine, has been a longstanding supporter of VR. They were on board way back when Oculus sparked the VR industry in 2012 with a Kickstarter that would snowball into a rekindling of consumer virtual reality. Having been one of the first major game engines to support VR headsets like the Rift, the company has been aggressively positioning Unreal Engine as the go-to tool for VR developers. Now they're taking a massive next step, showing the first look at bringing developers themselves inside of virtual reality to craft games with the full set of UE4 tools at their fingertips.

Submission + - Magic Leap Raises $794 Million to Accelerate Adoption of Secretive AR Tech (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A massive new $794 million Series C investment in secretive AR startup Magic Leap puts the company among the world's most valuable startups, now reportedly valued at $4.5 billion. The company has aggressively teased what they believe to be revolutionary augmented reality display technology, allowing a mixture of the real and virtual dimensions in a way previously not achieved. Although they've played coy to the public, offering little more than bold claims, investors like Alibaba, Google Ventures, and Qualcomm Ventures have bought into the company's vision to the tune of $1.39 billion in total raised by Magic Leap thus far.

Submission + - Creator of Minecraft Develops Experimental VR Project (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Despite his on-again off-again relationship with VR headset maker Oculus, the creator of Minecraft, Markus “Notch” Persson, has developed an experimental virtual reality project that leverages WebVR technology to run directly within a browser using a Rift DK2 headset. Notch contributed $10,000 to Oculus' 2012 Kickstarter, and even traveled from Europe to visit the company in its early days. After Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of Oculus in 2014, his enthusiasm dwindled, saying "I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook." One month before selling his own company to Microsoft for a similar sum, he said he was "officially over being upset about Facebook buying Oculus."

Submission + - Google May Be Developing Consumer Virtual Reality Hardware (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google's 'Cardboard' virtual reality initiative has put low-cost smartphone VR viewers in the hands of millions, but the experience provided by these simple phone holders doesn't compare with dedicated mobile VR hardware like Samsung's Gear VR. Now it seems that Google may be ready to move from Cardboard viewers to dedicated VR hardware. Four new full-time job listings at the company's Mountain View, CA headquarters seek candidates for the company's virtual reality group who are experienced with designing and manufacturing "high-volume" consumer electronics devices. Road to VR suggests that Google could be creating a mobile VR headset under its flagship Nexus brand. The postings come just as the company's Clay Bavor dropped other responsibilities to fully dedicate his time as Google's VP of Virtual Reality (http://bit.ly/23kT8xU).

Submission + - HTC Wants to Bring Vive VR Headset to 100M+ Chinese Internet Café Users (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While the Western vision of an internet café includes a shoddy WiFi hotspot and a few old desktops running Windows XP, the Chinese counterpart is more closely related to LAN gaming centers, offering up not only high speed internet access but also high performance gaming systems. In an effort to expose this quite massive population of gamers to virtual reality, HTC announced a partnership with ShunWang Technology, the software provider behind some 70% of China's internet café market. ShunWang plans to roll out arcade-like Vive VR systems to partner internet café's across China.

Submission + - NASA is Creating a Virtual Reality mission to Mars (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: 'The Mars 2030 Experience' is part of NASA's ongoing efforts to build public support in a real manned mission to the Red Planet. Partnering with FUSION to produce the experience, NASA wants the mission to simulate life as one of the first astronauts on Mars. Incorporating research directly from NASA and MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics PhD candidate Sydney Do, the VR experience will take users on an ‘extravehicular activity’ and put them in the Z-2 spacesuit, a real prototype currently in development at NASA. There are also plans to add multiplayer functionality to the game and launch with support for the Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard in 2016.

Submission + - Oculus Founder Says Rift Can Match Valve's 'Room-scale' VR (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Valve and HTC have touted 'room-scale' VR—a large tracking volume for virtual reality experiences—as a major advantage of SteamVR and the Vive headset. But Oculus says that their choice to focus on seated and standing VR experiences in smaller spaces is one of practicality, not technological limitations. To hush the haters, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey says he arranged the Rift tracking sensors in the same orientation of Valve's 'Lighthouse' trackers and concluded that tracking in a ~15x11 space "works fine."

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