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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 + - 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 + - Google is Adding a VR Shell to Chrome to Let You Browse the Entire Web in VR (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While it's possible to create and view specially built virtual reality 'WebVR' websites through today's browsers, traversing the web in VR means taking your VR headset on and off as you come across VR websites and non-VR websites. Google is working to fix this by adding a "VR Shell" to the Chrome browser that will render non-VR websites in a virtual environment, and allow seamless transitioning from them to WebVR sites. Recent developer builds of Chrome on Android reveal both the WebVR API and VR Shell directly integrated into the browser. The company is also working on adding support for headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive on desktop.

Submission + - HTC Announces $100 Million Fund for Virtual Reality Investments (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: HTC today announced the Vive X accelerator program through which the company will invest from it's newly created $100 million VR fund. The fund aims to kickstart the VR ecosystem in support of the company's Vive VR headset. Applications for the accelerator program, which will open first in Beijing, Taipei, and San Francisco, are open today. The company says their aim is to "help cultivate, and grow the global VR ecosystem by supporting startups and providing them with expertise, special access to advanced VR technology, financial investment, mentorship and unmatched go-to-market support."

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 + - 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 + - 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 + - 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 + - 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."

Submission + - Nokia's $60,000 Virtual Reality Camera Goes on a Drone Test Flight (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After selling off its phone business to Microsoft in 2013, Nokia began an internal reboot which would see the company focusing on the upcoming virtual reality market. The company announced its new direction in July with the debut of 'OZO', a virtual reality camera made for professional filmmakers. Now set to launch in Q1 2016, the compact 9.3 pound camera can operate untethered thanks to internal power and capture storage, making it drone-capable. To demonstrate, Nokia took OZO on a closed test-flight just a few days ago using an 'Aerigon' cinema drone.

Submission + - Dungeons & Dragons tabletop comes to VR through partnership with AltspaceVR (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Wizards of the Coast (http://bit.ly/1ObQQcd) today announced an official partnership with virtual reality firm AltspaceVR (http://bit.ly/1C9gs5C) to bring the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop roleplaying game to virtual reality. AlspaceVR is a social virtual reality platform which allows groups of users to share a virtual space. "AltspaceVR bridges the gap between Dungeons & Dragons video games and physically sitting around a table with friends,” said Nathan Stewart, brand director for Dungeons & Dragons. “You get the same sense of excitement and drama in the AltspaceVR tavern, from laughing at your buddy’s funny goblin voice to watching the d20 bounce and finally land on the natural 20 you needed to hit the beholder terrorizing your party." Starting today, AltspaceVR users have access to a virtual tavern space and officially licensed character sheets, figurines, and terrain tiles.

Submission + - Studio Behind 'Little Big Planet' Confirms Next Title Coming to PlayStation VR (roadtovr.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As the company's first title, 'Little Big Planet' was a breakout hit for the studio Media Molecule. The franchise saw three major games across the PS3 and PS4, two mobile versions (for PSP and PS Vita), and a number of spinoffs. But now Media Molecule hopes to make lightning strike twice with the forthcoming genre-eluding title, 'Dreams', which enables players to create and animate inside of the game world using the PlayStation Move. After several months of question dodging following the game's initial announcement, the studio has finally confirmed at Paris Games Week that Dreams will support PlayStation VR.

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