At Microsoft’s pre-E3 keynote today, we’ve seen plenty of non-VR games coming to the Xbox console family, now including XBox One X (formerly Project Scorpio). But with still no clue of possible VR support to come for the 4K console, the second installment of Lucky’s Tale (2016), called Super Lucky’s Tale, is apparently coming to XBox One as a console exclusive with no clear sign that VR support is in the cards.
First released by Playful Corp as an Oculus Rift launch title back at the headset’s initial release in March 2016, the second installment of the Lucky’s Tale IP is exclusively coming to Xbox One X, Xbox One and Windows 10 PC as a retail and digital title. Whether that includes VR support for the score of Microsoft Mixed Reality headsets from various manufacturers remains to be seen. Although Microsoft has made mention of possible VR support coming to the Xbox One X, including support for Fallout 4 VR, the company made no mention of VR during their entire pre-E3 keynote today.
Lucky’s Tale was bundled with every Oculus Rift purchase, even including access for Oculus Rift DK2 owners. As a classic 3D platformer, the game makes use of the XBox One controller.
Controlling the family-friendly fox Lucky, Super Lucky’s Tale (coming in 2017) follows Lucky on his quest to help his sister rescue the Book of Ages from the nefarious Jinx. The game appears to emphasize a sidescroller-style locomotion system, one that wouldn’t necessarily be the best for VR. The previous VR version launched in 2016 was more of a top-down view that allowed for more comfortable viewing.
We reached out to Playful Corp and have yet to receive comment on possible VR support for Super Lucky’s Tale.
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is here, and today’s keynote saw a number of VR-specific announcements including Apple’s first VR-ready computers to go along with the launch of the company’s newest macOS High Sierra. While the company is finally going ‘VR-native’ for desktop, Apple is also zeroing in on augmented reality for iOS 11 with the entrance of their newly revealed app developer kit ‘ARKit’.
Possibly taking a swipe at Facebook’s latest AR demo at F8 in April, Senior VP of software engineering Craig Federighi said: “We’ve all seen a lot of carefully edited vision videos on this topic recently, but in the case, I’d like to show you something for real.”
Starting up a test application that will be made available to developers, Federighi explains that with the iPhone’s computer visions capabilities it’s able to map surfaces and add digital objects—replete with interactive animations and dynamic lighting. Adding a steaming coffee cup, a lamp and a vase to a bare, marker-less table, the tracking proves to be relatively solid.
Federighi says that ARKit provides fast and stable motion-tracking, plane estimation with basic boundaries, ambient lighting estimation, scale estimation, support for Unity, Unreal, SceneKit and Xcode app templates—all available on “hundred of millions of iPhones and iPads […] making overnight ARKit the largest AR platform in the world.”
Apple says iOS 11 will be made available to iPhone 5s and later, all iPad Air and iPad Pro models, iPad 5th generation, iPad mini 2 and later, and iPod touch 6th generation. iOS 11 will be released this fall, likely in tandem with iPhone 8 and iPhone 7S smartphones. A public beta is coming in June.
image courtesy Apple
Apple is working with third-parties such as IKEA, Lego, and Niantic to use ARKit, with Apple showing an improved Pokémon Go on stage that looks to actually utilize augmented reality to bring the game to life. Because ARKit uses computer vision that relies on the device’s onboard sensors and CPU/GPU, no external equipment is required to run these sorts of AR experiences.
The keynote also revealed a new AR-focused company from critically-acclaimed director and FX guru Peter Jackson called ‘Wingnut AR’. A special demo showed off the graphical and camera-based tracking capabilities of Apple’s hardware featuring a complex, real-time rendered scene digitally placed on a tabletop using an iPad. Wingnut AR is bringing an AR experience to the App Store later this year. Check out the video below to see Wingnut AR’s special Apple demo.
Apple has finally made a commitment to VR, announcing on stage today at Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2017 that not only will they offer an external GPU developer kit for MacBooks capable of meeting the graphical demands of VR, but that both the new 27-inch iMac and the iMac Pro will be VR-ready out of the box.
Senior VP of software engineering Craig Federighi announced today to the WWDC crowd that Metal 2, the company’s updated hardware-accelerated graphics API, will be launching with support for external graphics as well as a set of VR-specific features to the newly revealed High Sierra macOS.
Dubbed ‘Metal for VR’, the update will include developer features such as a VR-optimized display pipeline, viewport arrays, system trace stereo timelines, GPU queue priorities and frame debugger stereoscopic visualization. The company says Metal 2 will also support Unity, Unreal Engine and the Steam VR SDK, making Apple’s new operating system a true VR-native.
The new external GPU dev kit, available today, is coming with a VR-capable AMD Radeon RX 580, which is somewhere between an NVIDIA GTX 1060 and 1070 in function. While it may not be specifically marketed for VR consumers, instead targeted towards developers, the external GPU enclosure would technically allow you to use a high-quality VR headset like a HTC Vive or Oculus Rift with a MacBook using the Steam VR beta.
image courtesy TIME
Apple VP of hardware engineering John Ternus later presented the new iMac lineup, concluding with the 27-inch iMac that’s finally packing a VR-ready GPU and making it the first out the door to have native VR support. Calling it a “great platform for VR content creation,” Ternus revealed that Lucas Film’s ILMx Lab has been using the 27-inch iMac and Unreal Engine to develop a new Star Wars themed real-time creation with the help of Epic’s Unreal VR Editor.
In the Star Wars-themed creation, Epic’s Lauren Ridge demonstrated by putting on a HTC Vive and building a basic scene by picking assets and resizing them, including an animated Darth Vader.
image courtesy TIME
27-Inch iMac Specs
Intel 7th Gen Core processor (“Kaby Lake”)
Radeon Pro 570, 575 and 580 graphics options with up to 8GB VRAM
New Retina 5K display (up to 500 nits, or 43 percent brighter)
Up to 64GB memory
Fusion drive (up to 50 percent faster, up to 2TB capacity)
iMac Pro, Apple’s high-sec 27-incher with Retina 5K display, is going to be VR-ready too, coming with a Radeon Pro Vega GPU which delivers up to 11 Teraflops of compute power for real-time 3D rendering and high frame rate VR. The iMac Pro is scheduled to ship in December starting at $4,999 (US).
The word ‘surreal’ invariably falls short when it comes to trying to lift the shroud surrounding the VR first-person puzzler FORM. Transporting you to a strange inner universe via an enigmatic black obelisk, you experience what it must feel like to make contact with a higher intelligence, with its intense interlocking geometric constructions and imposing, dream-like architecture—FORM is an unexpected delight for anyone looking for something truly out of the ordinary.
Developer: Charm Games Available On:Steam (HTC Vive), Oculus Touch (Coming Soon) PSVR (Coming 2018) Reviewed On: HTC Vive Release Date: June 1, 2017
Gameplay
It’s another day on the job for Dr. Devin Eli, a brilliant physicist working at a special research facility in the Alaskan
wilderness. Housed at the facility is ‘The Obelisk’, a seemingly alien artifact emanating a mysterious signal. Spiriting you away into an environment like none other on earth, a place where thoughts manifest visually and the machinations of the human mind are displayed as complex machines, it’s your job to uncover the secrets of The Obelisk as you journey further to the center of the human mind and the alternative realities that reside within.
1 of 4
image courtesy Charm Games
image courtesy Charm Games
image courtesy Charm Games
image courtesy Charm Games
FORM shows a command of the medium that few have grasped with such clear intention. Every puzzle is an alien relic that demands your curiosity and experimentation. Every puzzle, while mysterious in its ultimate function, always injects you with the feeling that you’ve actually accomplished something wonderful. It’s like stepping into a machine of pure novelty, and it manages to deliver its intuitive puzzles without the need of a tutorial, i.e. no condescending robot voice guiding you through the world.
Puzzles are mostly spatial in nature, meaning you’ll be slotting glowing geometric shapes into manifolds, opening up mysterious machines and pulling levers. If you’re looking for a super hard puzzler though, FORM may let you down in that aspect. Although it would be hard to walk away without some appreciation for the visual complexity and unique variety of the puzzles displayed before you, there are some moments when I wished for a real stumper.
In the end, the story left me feeling a bit confused, probably necessitating another playthrough altogether to fully grasp. Considering it took about an hour for me to play from start to finish, it’s not unthinkable that even after solving all the puzzles that you’d want to play again to understand the intentionality behind them, and understand exactly what you’re reconnecting and discovering. In any case, I attribute it to the game robbing my attention with all of its strange and fulfilling abstractions.
Immersion and Comfort
Like a lucid dream, or being under the influence of a psychedelic, the visual complexity is really something to behold. The world morphs around you, drawing your gaze further and further, and you have to tell yourself to not give into the awe to complete the puzzles. Its humbling to think it all lives inside the human brain and you can access it (and interact with it) just by putting on a VR headset.
At some moments, when the world was whirring around me and dozens of tiny puzzle pieces were floating in front of my face, I did feel my computer choke a bit (reviewed on i7-6700, GTX 1080, 16 GB RAM). This may be helped somewhat by turning down the graphical intensity in the settings, although the pre-release copy didn’t include access to the settings menu, so we can’t say for sure. These moments were few and far between though, as most of the time things went by smoothly.
There isn’t any artificial locomotion to speak of besides the times when you teleport into puzzles, and that’s not a user-controlled mechanic anyway. Everything is basically presented to you in forward-facing position within a square meter area, making it an exceedingly comfortable standing experience with no risk to the first time VR player.
Today at Computex 2017, the annual IT expo held in Taipei, Taiwan, Microsoft revealed more from their line-up of affordable Windows ‘Mixed Reality’ headsets, including Asus’ headset and an updated design from Dell.
While solid specs or pricing information aren’t available for either headset just yet, the company today revealed Asus’ headset which sports an interesting low-poly front cover panel. Microsoft says in their blogpost that the headset was designed with an ergonomically adjustable strap that can be adjusted with a single hand. The company further says that Asus is working with Microsoft to make the headset “fast, powerful, and ultra-light with a six degrees of freedom (DOF) tracked motion controller, for an incredible, immersive MR experience.”
The Windows 6 DOF motion controller was first announced at the company’s annual Build dev conference, and utilizes the headsets’ inside-out, positional tracking sensor tech.
Dell’s headset has undergone a noticeable change from when it was first publicly shown back at CES earlier this year, now featuring a remodeled front cover panel with indented sensor mounts and black head strap accents. Microsoft says the headset is designed by the same team that creates their premium XPS and Alienware PCs. The headset features cable routing, replaceable cushions and a halo-style headband with flip-up visor.
Microsoft’s Windows Mixed Reality (formerly called ‘Windows Holographic’) is the company’s immersive platform built on the foundation laid by their HoloLens AR headset. The platform features an operating environment—native to Windows 10 devices—that essentially allows compatible headsets to run any Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app. Microsoft says that a staggering 20,000 UWP apps are already available for Mixed Reality headsets. Compatible devices, first announced last December, include headsets from Asus, Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Chinese firm 3Glasses.
As for computer hardware specs, Microsoft and Intel have partnered on a platform specification for these headsets so they’ll be able to “scale across mainstream Intel architecture platforms natively on [Intel’s CPU-integrated] HD Graphics,” by the end of 2017. That means there’s no need for a high-end dedicated GPU like with the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
Microsoft maintains that its Mixed Reality headsets will be available as early as holiday season. Acer ($299) and HP ($329) are now available for pre-order through the Microsoft Store for developers in the US (Acer, HP) and Canada (Acer, HP).
No concrete specifications have been published by either Dell or Asus regarding their respective headsets, although we wouldn’t be surprised if they look something like Acer and HP’s.
HP Headset Specs
Two high-resolution liquid crystal displays at 1440 x 1440
2.89” diagonal display size (x2)
Front hinged display
Double padded headband and easy adjustment knob for all day comfort
95 degrees horizontal field of view
Display refresh rate up to 90 Hz (native)
Built-in audio out and microphone support through 3.5mm jack
Single cable with HDMI 2.0 (display) and USB 3.0 (data) for connectivity
4.00m/0.60m removable cable
Inside-out tracking
Acer Headset Specs
Two high-resolution liquid crystal displays at 1440 x 1440
2.89” diagonal display size (x2)
Front hinged display
95 degrees horizontal field of view
Display refresh rate up to 90 Hz (native)
Built-in audio out and microphone support through 3.5mm jack
Single cable with HDMI 2.0 (display) and USB 3.0 (data) for connectivity
Inside-out tracking
4.00m cable
Update 31/05/17 18:00ET:updated to include specs of HP and Acer headsets.
Ubisoft’s long-awaited Star Trek: Bridge Crew, the co-op space sim that puts you at the bridge of your very own Federation vessel, is nearly here (coming out May 30th), but we’ve had our mitts all over a pre-release copy for a few days now. Wherever you may fall on the spectrum of Trek fandom, Bridge Crew promises more than just a genuine Trek experience with its exciting gameplay and a social component that is sure to immerse.
Stepping back a bit from my affection of the many iterations of Star Trek universes—explored in the recent re-boot films and older TV series spanning back to Star Trek (1966), aka “The Original Series” (ToS)—what I experienced in the last few days with Bridge Crew was a profound realization that I am not a Federation captain, not yet anyway.
Piloting the fictional vessel, dubbed the U.S.S. Aegis, on an exploratory mission to the uncharted sector ‘The Trench’ in efforts to find a new planet for the Vulcan race after the Romulans destroyed their home-world, I quickly found out that when the Klingon Empire is breathing down your neck and real people are counting on you to make the right decision, that I still need a lot more time with Bridge Crew before I can put on the well-deserved swagger of a Kirk, Piccard, or Janeway. That’s not to say you can’t have your ‘captain-y moments’ in the beginning campaign with your friends though, but when the goings get tough, role-playing that Starfleet swagger quickly deflates in front of the very real barrier of 2 Klingon warships and 4 scouts coming in for the kill.
And even though the game promises only 5 ‘episodes’ that range from 20-30 minutes of gameplay a piece, the difficulty level spikes significantly around the last two missions, so be prepared for the likelihood of an entire play session getting scrapped because you didn’t get a critical instrument back on-line while taking heavy fire. Despite some hypothetically quick mission times, you can easily invest several hours alone trying to beat the last two campaign missions.
flying high at Helm, image captured by Road to VR
I found the campaign mode, which can be completed with or without a fully-manned, live crew (AI can fill in the gaps), to be much more difficult as a lone player. Because AI can’t really take on detailed orders like, “avoid that gravitic mine while running away from that anomaly while shooting at the upcoming Bird-of-Prey,” you sometimes have to jump into the AI’s position to get what you want out it. You can also issue crew-wide orders to the AI from your captain’s chair that make some things a bit quicker, like aligning warp vectors and repairing critical ship functions, but that’s not really what Star Trek: Bridge Crew is all about.
When playing alone, I found that micromanaging a ship’s AI effectively photon-torpedoes the fun right out of the sky. Instead, the soul of the game is more about becoming an effective communicator with like-minded players and having those deeply surreal moments when your ego jumps into the shoes of a bridge officer commanding, responding, and caring about the world around you. Those are the deeply satisfying moments of the game, when you can cheer for victory and bond—even with perfect strangers.
at the Captain’s chair, image captured by Road to VR
Without going too deep into each station’s duties (you can a video of the full explanation here), the intensity of the enemy and the various objectives flying your way can quickly overwhelm any station. Besides requiring effective communication between players, the game hinges on your ability to keep systems repaired, and correctly balanced for the task at hand. At engineering, you can overcharge engines, phasers, shields at the expense of all other systems, or lower your output entirely to maintain a low profile radar signature for moments of stealth, a requirement for some missions. Engineers can repair everything except your hull, meaning once your shields go down, you’ll be accruing permanent damage.
As a captain in the co-op mode, you keep an eye on mission objectives, and also the game’s three maps; a local map, an impulse map for farther objects of interest, and a warp map displaying far-flung locations. Only mission-relevant locations can be accessed during the campaign mode, so exploring is a bit ‘on rails’ as it were. Here it’s your job to efficiently order the crew according to their roles and keep an eye on everyone as they go about their individual jobs.
Tactical can fire torpedoes in limited supply, phasers that need charging, and subsystem intrusions that let you knock out the enemy’s engines, phasers, etc.
Helm’s job is to maneuver the ship from point A-B, keep targets in sight, and be on point when it comes to aligning impulse and warp vectors for quick getaways.
Outside of campaign mode, Bridge Crew also offers ‘ongoing missions’, which serves up a selection of procedurally generated challenges available in both solo and co-op mode. These entail rescue, defend, attack, and exploratory missions. To add another level of difficulty, you can also fly the original Enterprise (NCC 1701) during ‘ongoing missions’, which is more powerful but less stealthy. To my surprise, the old Enterprise is fairly dead-on with screen accuracy, replete with a charming array of unlabeled flashing lights and buttons (you can toggle labels on if you need help).
Aboard the Enterprise, NCC-1701, image captured by Road to VR
In the end, Bridge Crew is more about ‘pew pew pew’ and less about peaceful exploration than I personally care for, but that’s probably better for everyone’s enjoyment in the long run.
Cross-play between Vive, Rift and PSVR was switched off in the pre-release version, but Ubisoft says it will be ready at launch.
Immersion
The look and feel of the game is nothing short of amazing, and fans are sure to appreciate the attention to detail. The ship’s interior, although taking after the J.J. Abrams re-boot films (love it or hate it), it thankfully lacks the director’s penchant for lens flares and dramatic camera angles, instead putting you in a very real, very well-crafted ship’s bridge.
Space exteriors are graphically less involved however, and seem too cartoonish to be believed. Science enthusiasts will undoubtedly shake their heads in anguish when they see the game’s lumpy-looking stars with equally lumpy-looking planets far too close to each other. That’s not a big concern, but it does detract a bit from the game’s wow-factor.
image courtesy Ubisoft
As for the interior, controls are logically represented and well-labeled for each station. Some buttons become unresponsive during and a bit after impulse and warp travel is concluded though, which isn’t exactly helpful when you’re trying to get a jump on your respective duty. This leaves you effectively tapping a button until the game decides you’re allowed to use it; annoying, but you get used to it.
image captured by Road to VR
Avatar creation falls slightly flat because its done via a collection of very rough presets, letting you choose between man or woman, Human or Vulcan, and a number of ethnicities via a slider so you try to create something unique. You can also make them stockier, older, and cycle through a few hairstyles and colors. I never really found an avatar that fit me though.
Thankfully the game lets you play either with gamepad or hand controllers, which means anyone with a high-quality VR headset can join in. Players with hand controllers will notice that console screens stop your virtual hands, which is helpful when it comes to accurately hitting a button. While this technically screws with your body’s proprioception, or the ability to innately understand where your body parts are without looking, it didn’t really bother me after hours of play time.
Comfort
As a seated game, Star Trek: Bridge Crew is an exceedingly comfortable experience. With the bridge and consoles acting as physical anchors, and the ship’s slower turning radius and speed, you likely to have minimal problems if you’re usually averse to artificial locomotion-induced nausea.
sitting never felt so exciting, image captured by Road to VR
The developers at Red Storm Entertainment are well-studied when it comes to VR game design, and offer plenty of near-field space debris and particles to give you the sense that you’re moving in space without the discomfort of artificial locomotion.
Conclusion
The big question remains whether Star Trek: Bridge Crew will be a flash in the pan with an initial period of hype, or a long-lived success with a steady player-base. I can see myself logging on and playing through the campaign with buddies and maybe even making the procedural missions a weekly addition to my routine amongst friends (as long as everyone is having fun). Even playing with random people was a blast, but the fact remains that fresh content like new campaign missions, ship types, and greater multiplayer-driven game modes, are all needed to keep users interested and coming back to have what I would consider one of the funnest social gaming experiences I’ve had to date.
A special thanks goes out to social VR industry pro Shawn Whiting, Road to VR exec. editor Ben Lang, and a random English guy by the moniker ‘the_weird’ for helping with the review of this game.
Daydream’s 2.0 software update, called Daydream Euphrates, is going to bring along with it some major changes that are set to reach down to the core of the upcoming Android ‘O’ operating system. In a AR/VR press briefing, Google told us there are a number of new systems the update will add across all Daydream headsets, regardless of whether they’re standalone or smartphone-based.
The Android operating system was primarily designed to work on devices with a touchscreen, but with the addition of standalone headsets, this is about to change in a big way. To make the upcoming Android ‘O’ OS more VR-friendly, Google is integrating some things you might think are pretty basic, but in the end are intended to give VR users the tools they need to manage the ‘always in VR’ nature of standalone headsets.
Daydream Home
2.0 will add a dashboard on top of any VR experience so you can check notifications, change settings, pause experiences, and most importantly switch from app-to-app like on a smartphone. This includes support for 2D system UI.
As for the store itself, Google says they want to put content front and center of the Daydream Home experience with an update to the Daydream UI.
image courtesy Google
While the company contends that 360 video is the most popular type of content people are consuming in VR right now, they’re adding more ways to categorize so that users can easily browse the store for all types of content, bringing Daydream Home more in line with digital marketplaces like Oculus Home and Valve’s SteamVR UI.
Daydream Cast
Google Cast-support is also coming to Daydream devices so people outside of VR can see what you’re doing.
image courtesy Google
This also means app developers can create cooperative games that involve people outside the headset like VR party game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (2015).
Daydream Sharing
Daydream Sharing adds the ability to capture screenshots and screencaptures, and then share them via social media.
“This worked really well in Tiltbrush,” a Google spokesperson remarked. “It’s actually one of the number one ways people discover and learn about Tiltbrush – is their friends who are in it post something about it.”
Developer Updates
Developers creating apps for the Daydream platform should take note; there’s also a number of graphics, audio and general performance updates as well.
Daydream-compatible standalone headsets are coming, revealed on stage at Google I/O yesterday, but the big question remains: how much is one of these inside-out positional tracking headsets going to cost? Google tells that although prices are dependent on the individual manufacturers, they expect it to cost about as much as a PC VR headset like Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
Being able to pull a singular, bespoke VR headset out of a backpack—with no added wires or sensors—is pretty awesome, but the addition of inside-out positional tracking, or the ability to physically move your head forward, backward and side-to-side, is an even bigger step for mobile VR.
We sat down with Google’s VR team at a press briefing to learn more about how much the convenience (and immersion) was going to cost.
“It will vary by OEM, depending on what screens they decide to go with and so on,” a Google spokersperson told us. “I would expect the price-point to be around the same as you have with the desktop VR headsets today – minus the cost of the PC, drilling holes in your wall, and all that kind of stuff.”
This falls in line with what we’d expect, considering the guts of a standalone headset need to pack as much as (if not more than) the graphical horsepower of a VR-ready flagship smartphone like those already taking part in the smartphone-focused Daydream program. In any case, running acceptable frame rates while tracking the world around you in real-time didn’t exactly sound cheap to begin with.
For reference, the Oculus Rift when bundled with Touch costs just under $600. HTC prices the Vive at the higher end of the spectrum at $799 for their PC VR system. There’s no telling which end of the price spectrum the first two headsets, made by Lenovo and HTC, will take. HTC maintains their standalone headset will launch sometime later this year, so we’re sure to get a better idea closer to launch.
This of course doesn’t include the startup cost of a VR-capable PC, which although cheaper than ever thanks to software updates and cheaper GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA, is still a pretty large investment.
Google I/O has begun, the company’s annual developer conference, and amidst expectations of a new all-in-one VR headset, the company announced that Samsung’s Galaxy S8/S8 plus and LG’s next flagship phone will be officially receiving Google Daydream support.
Taking the stage at I/O, Clay Bavor, the head of Google’s VR team, announced that Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus phones will finally be receiving Daydream support via a software update this summer. This is the first mention of a specific Samsung device supporting the Daydream VR platform.
LG’s next flagship phone, a yet unrevealed model, will also be supporting Daydream at launch later this year.
When first announced at last year’s Google I/O, Daydream-compatible phones were supposed to come from several manufacturers including Samsung, HTC, LG, Mi, Huawei, ZTE, Asus, and Alcatel.
Because of the lack of onboard electronics, Daydream-compatible phones require highly-tuned inertial measurement units (IMUs) which determine head-tracking latency, not to mention the graphical guts to make the cut. Google Cardboard, the company’s wide-reaching VR initiative that supports a multitude of mid-to-low end devices, delivers a basic but serviceable mobile VR experience. Daydream however, with it’s hand controller and beefier specs, that necessarily push frame rates to 60 fps, delivers what most consider a high-quality VR experience on par with Samsung’s Gear VR mobile headset.
This story is breaking. Check back for more information soon.
According to a Varietyexclusive, Google may be gearing up to show off a brand new mobile VR headset at Google I/O developer conference this week, one that not only delivers VR in an all-in-one device, but could likely offer inside-out positional tracking as well.
The Variety report maintains information of the alleged all-in-one mobile VR headset—which won’t require a phone or PC to use—was gathered from “multiple sources with knowledge of the project.” Predictably, a Google spokesperson declined to comment.
The report posits that the headset is likely to debut this week in similar fashion to Google Daydream, which was introduced at last year’s Google I/O. Daydream is the company’s high-quality mobile VR platform designed to work with several flagship devices including the company’s own Pixel phone.
image courtesy Google
It’s unsure at this time exactly what a Google-made, all-in-one headset will look like, and whether it will incorporate the company’s augmented reality initiative Tango’s computer vision capabilities or not. Google’s interest in room-scale, interactive experiences is clear however, as evidenced by their early acquisition of VR studio Skillman and Hackett, known for creating Tiltbrush (2016), and more recently their acquisition of VR studio Owlchemy Labs, the minds behind Job Simulator (2016) and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality (2017).
The conference takes place today, May 17th, and goes until the 19th. The opening keynote will be livestreamed on the company’s developer channel on YouTube at 10 am PDT today.
