Valve chief Gabe Newell is optimistic about the future of VR, considering the studio is in development of three VR titles—not mini-games or experiences, but “full” VR games—but what about the future of VR hardware?
During a recent press briefing reported by Gamasutra, Newell maintains he’s confident that PC-powered room-scale VR will no longer be defined by a single ‘VR capable’ room but rather progress to “house-scale” VR in the near future.
Valve’s Gabe Newell | Photo courtesy Kotaku
Valve’s laser-based Lighthouse tracking system is by design a scalable solution, with Valve hardware designer Alan Yates stating “you can in principle concatenate tracking volumes without limit like cell towers.” But for that to work, you’d need a wireless VR system to take advantage of the multi-room-scale space, a hardware issue Newell says is actually already a “solved problem.”
“My expectation is that [wireless] will be an add-on in 2017, and then it will be an integrated feature in 2018,” said Newell, as reported by Gamasutra.
wireless, room-scale VR made possible with TPCAST
Newell’s “solved problem” might be in reference to KwikVR or TPCAST, two light-weight aftermarket devices that both use a wireless compression and transmission system that effectively let you cut the cord while in VR.
Saying PC VR headsets could come stock with wireless transmitters in 2018 may initially seem trivial coming from any old software company, but Valve has been intimately involved in researching VR hardware and prototyping room-scale headsets since at least 2012 with its QR code-laden VR room. Valve later revealed in 2014 they were collaborating with Oculus “to drive PC VR forward,” consequently the same year that Oculus was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion and attracted key Valve talent such as Michael Abrash and Atman Binstock, both of whom were already working on Valve’s nascent VR hardware. The subsequent falling out would set the stage for Valve’s first SteamVR-capable headset, the HTC Vive.
Valve’s ongoing hardware projects, made public at last year’s Steam Dev Days, delve deeper into controllers, with their ‘hand presence’-inducing grip prototype, and a new single-rotor Lighthouse basestation coming later this year. Just what wireless PC VR tech they have up their sleeves, (or what sort of “house-scale” VR games you could play), we just can’t say, but we’d love to crack a drawer or two at their Bellevue, WA headquarters to find out.
Ubisoft’s upcoming VR multiplayer game Star Trek: Bridge Crew is delayed again, this time to May 30th. The good news? Ubisoft is letting you choose the good ol’ NCC-1701 from ‘The Original Series’ (TOS) so you can play solo as captain, or as an officer in a crew of up to four online players.
Star Trek: Bridge Crew was originally slated for a November 29th, 2016 launch date, and then later pushed back to March 14th, 2017, with Ubisoft studio Red Storm Entertainment citing that the delay was necessary to bring “the best game experience possible at launch.” The game is now slated to release on PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, and Oculus Rift on May 30th. No reason was given for the delay.
Also announced today on Ubisoft’s blog, the Enterprise is going to be available in the game’s ‘Ongoing Voyages’ mode, which features procedurally generated solo and co-op missions.
We had a chance to pilot the Aegis at E3 last year, and while it was a fun co-op experience that requires mastery of your individual station and the ability to communicate, the thought of being able to settle into TOS captain’s chair and melodramatically order Spock to clean up the scotch you spilled is nearly as intoxicating as scotch you just spilled. Role-playing communities, like those that play the unofficial live-action game Artemis, are going to relish in the chance to play in what appears to be a faithful reconstruction of the NCC-1701’s bridge in VR.
Star Trek: Bridge Crew’s Enterprise was developed in close cooperation with CBS Corporation’s worldwide licensing and merchandising unit CBS Consumer Products, the rights holders of the Star Trek franchise.
“The original U.S.S. Enterprise is such an iconic part of the franchise,” says David Votypka, senior creative director at Red Storm Entertainment. “The adventures and relationships that took place on the ship are a special part of Star Trek history, so we were determined to give players the opportunity to create their own adventures and stories on this classic ship.”
With the news that WebVR is now supported in Google’s official Android Chrome browser and Daydream-supported phones have the ability to pop into virtual reality experiences just by clicking on a simple hyperlink, we’re more impatient than ever for WebVR to make its way to the standard Chrome browser for PC. But did you know you can try out the magic of WebVR experiences on HTC Vive right now? Easily one of the coolest VR experiences to date may only be a click away.
Puzzle Rain is a hands-on musical journey where little singing blocks combine to create a beautiful chorus. Awaken all of your little blocky buddies and put them in the correct positions to revive the world’s desolate landscape, and bring rain and happiness back to the Universe.
Puzzle Rain is a simple little experience, but it illustrates just how easy it is to inject a little happiness into a dreary day—and all of it just by clicking a link and popping on your VR headset.
There’s really only a few hoops to jump through first if you want to get into WebVR apps like Puzzle Rain or badass laser shooter mini-game A-Blast. It’s as simple as installing either the latest Chromium VR build, or Firefox Nightly. Both include WebVR, but because they’re not official versions, they may not be stable and are generally not suitable for your everyday browsing needs (hence the impatience for official, stable builds).
Save the openvr_api.dll file somewhere on your computer where the user running Firefox can read it (e.g., c:\openvr\).
In Firefox Nightly, navigate to about:config; change the value of dom.vr.openvr.enabled to true and gfx.vr.openvr-runtime to the full path of the openvr_api.dll file (e.g., c:\openvr\openvr_api.dll).
Knockout League (2017) is a single-player, arcade-style boxing game that promises to get your heart pumping as you duck, block, and punch your way to victory. Harking back to NES classic Punch-Out!! (1987), you learn pretty quickly that a storm of punches—the moral equivalent of button-mashing—will get you nothing if you can’t time them correctly to your opponent’s repertoire of moves. So while Knockout League can’t promise what you might call “boxing sim” realism, it definitely delivers a lot of fun along with the stark realization that I clearly don’t get enough exercise.
Knockout League Details:
Developer: Grab Games Available On: Oculus Touch, HTC Vive (Oculus Home & Steam) Reviewed on: HTC Vive Release Date: January 24th, 2017
Note: This game is in Early Access which means the developers have deemed it incomplete and likely to see changes over time. This review is an assessment of the game’s current state, and will not receive a numerical score.
Gameplay
The game starts out with a simple training session that details all of the moves you need to know as you go against the 4 available opponents; Brazilian fighter ‘Tri-Tip’, warrior princess ‘Crimson Fang’, saber-wielding pirate ‘Scurvy Jones’, and posh English octopus ‘Sir Octopunch’.
Each of them has a signature power move that they unleash, oftentimes after you attempt a KO. Of course, taking one of these to the face can mean a near instant game over, but dodging a few punches afterwards thankfully lets you recoup your health automatically. You’ll know when you’re almost down for the count though, as each punch landed on your soft, baby face makes the world a little less colorful and also applies a ‘punch-drunk filter’ to further distort your vision.
The moment you time it just right though, and successfully dodge or block the move and deliver a series of counter blows, you really can’t help but feel like Rocky Balboa (the times he didn’t get beaten, obviously).
Knockout League reallyseems like its ready for prime time with its patently smooth scene modeling and character animations, but the paltry sum of only 4 AI opponents means you can complete the entire game in about an hour. This can be forgiven somewhat since it’s still in Early Access, and the developers have said they’ll be adding more unique opponents and additional game modes in the next 3-5 months. Hopefully it will be enough time to add more features, because as it stands currently, there isn’t any type of spendable in-game currency or any other customization options outside of picking your own name.
That said, this is one of those games you’ll force on your friends and family to try, because while definitely a shorter experience, it’s something that is sure to get plenty of laughs while testing the aerobic ability of everyone involved. Playing through each boss is certainly a workout, one that left me heaving a little more than I rightly should.
Immersion
Since this isn’t a boxing simulator, you should know there’s a few limitations put on you from the very beginning. Firstly, don’t think that you can back away from a punch in Knockout League or use the whole ring’s space to your advantage, because the game only provides you with about a square meter of space to move in—and that’s regardless of how large your room-scale setup can manage. Leaving this pre-set area will pause the game, so this forces you to actively engage your opponent in a few ways that the AI can react to, necessitating ducking and moving either to left or right of punches instead of instinctively backing up.
Fights are forward-facing, so besides ducking and moving out of the way of punches, you’ll have to block too. This wasn’t exactly my strong suit, as I could rarely activate a block in time. I couldn’t really tell if it was my fault, or the fault of the game, because quickly bringing my hands up to cover my face and activating the split-second blocking mechanic usually resulted in a smack to the jaw. I quickly learned to block though on the last boss, Sir Octopunch, because he would toss multiple impossible-to-dodge, boxing-glove clad tentacles at a time.
Punching, like in Punch-out!! is extremely mechanical, and relies purely on your ability to find out when the AI opponent is vulnerable—usually before a signature powermove, leaving them wide open to a sock right in the kisser. This, again, is another time when you have to abandon your real world expectations of fighting. There was zero reaction because I didn’t punch at the AI’s specified time, even when opponents seemed vulnerable and I clearly landed punches to an unprotected spot like the stomach or the head. Knockout League is an arcade-style game, so you’ll have to train your reptile brain to accept all of that as the punches fly.
Comfort
There is no artificial locomotion in Knockout League, meaning there’s little chance that you’ll feel any different from walking around in the real world. This makes this, and games like this, an exceedingly comfortable experience to play for extended amounts of time.
Through no fault of its own, Knockout League can get your VR headset a little sweaty after a while, so if you’re seriously thinking of playing the game for more than 15 minutes, you should consider some sort of removable cover to protect your headset’s facial interface from absorbing your smelly, bacteria-laced face goo. Both Best Buy and individual sellers on Amazon offer suitable solutions should you want to stop living like a grease-faced ham demon.
Summary
While still in Early Access, and in need of more features, opponents, and general customization to bolster replay value, ‘Knockout League’ is by far the most fun you’ll have getting punched in the face. The game’s art direction and atmosphere is extremely competent and the opponents movements, although necessarily predictable, give you quite a workout. There’s no denying the game’s charm as it harks back to arcade boxing days of old.
Koei Tecmo, the Japan-based publisher that brought you Dynasty Warriors, Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series, have today unveiled a VR arcade cabinet that is more than just an enclosure for a PlayStation VR headset. Called VR Sense, the cabinet is said to embody a few technologies including a motion-simulating seat, a scent function, a wind function, a thermal function, a touch function, and a mist function.
Reported by Japanese publicationGame Watch, Koei Tecmo’s VR Sense doesn’t have a specific launch date or sale price attached yet, but is however confirmed to arrive with three titles; a VR Dynasty Warriors game, a horse racing game called GI Jockey Sense, and a Resident Evil-style game called Horror Sense.
Koei Tecmo says VR Sense is scheduled be released this summer, and that they’ll initially begin selling the cabinet to amusement facilities, however they’re not only interested in games, stating the possibility of creating 360 sightseeing experiences for use in nursing homes and hospitals. It’s unclear if the sense-tickling cabinet will ever land outside of Japan where traditional arcades are apparently still alive and well.
Only Horror Sense and GI Jockey Sense were on show at today’s press conference. Game Watch says however the sense-stimulating unit itself was “hardly in operation” for both demos and that the unit is still undergoing testing. Demos were conducted with both DualShock 4 and PlayStation Move controllers.
Not much else is known about the Dynasty Warriors game unfortunately it seems, as it’s still in pre-production.On the VR Sense website the company however promises the cabinet’s rendition of Dynasty Warriors will offer “new experiences surrounding the battlefield,” and “realistic reproduction of hot flames.”
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image courtesy Koei Tecmo
image courtesy Game Watch
image courtesy Game Watch
image courtesy Game Watch
image courtesy Game Watch
image courtesy Game Watch
The cabinet’s “touch function” supposedly can recreate the feeling that creepy crawlies like insects and rats have landed on your head, although the company did not concretely clarify how this is supposed to function, reports Game Watch. The VR Sense website maintains the touch function will be featured in the studio’s Horror Sense game.
While it’s likely the cabinet will require personnel to run, Koei Tecmo maintains the unit could eventually be operated completely unmanned, and that they could hypothetically integrate a luggage locker in the cabinet so the user doesn’t have to worry about would-be thieves taking advantage of them while blinded to the outside world.
The company will be showing the unit at the Japan Amusement Expo 2017 (JAEPO) at Makuhari Messe in Chiba starting February 10th.
VR Bangers, an adult virtual reality content studio, has announced a new gadget they say will help fans “finally feel like they are getting kissed and caressed, while their favorite girls whisper right into their ears.” While it’s undoubtedly bizarre looking, the camera/microphone mannequin head aims to take the place of a traditional camera or a microphone so that the studio’s actors can act more naturally and therefore give the end user a more immersive experience. If only it didn’t have such lifeless eyes (black eyes, like a doll’s eyes).
VR Bangers CTO Boris Smirnoff says that the rig was especially made for adult VR scenes because they noticed there was “a much warmer and more intimate emotional attachment between the performer and the recording device if the device itself is able to be kissed, caressed and whispered to in the same sort of ways that a real person would sense those subtle communications.”
The rig, reportedly the first of its kind, was custom-built by the studio’s R&D team. It contains binaural sound microphones in each ear and two forward-facing cameras where the user’s eyes would be, delivering “true 4K resolution” at 60fps. The head also includes multiple cameras on the front, back and top to capture a full 360 degree area.
“[T]he more we can help our models get the most out of their play space, the better our content will continue to be and the real winner in this line of advancements is always our fans,” says Smirnoff.
So somehow this bizarre mannequin rig is supposed to get the studio’s actors more into their roles, but what about all this ‘kissing, caressing, and whispering’ business we were told about? While spatial (3D) audio is an essential component of any VR experience, and giving someone a realistic audio experience is fundamental to anchoring their consciousness in another world, this may have more to do with triggering a certain response in users than just giving the actors a prop to smooch on.
Is Sound Sexy?
Some people—ok, a surprisingly large number of people—clearly find certain sounds gratifying, and a fairly recent phenomenon called autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) has made a splash on YouTube to scratch that particular psychological itch with a binaural flair. Triggering the response supposedly gives certain people a low-grade euphoria that so called ‘YouTube ASMRtists’ try to create by using a number perfectly innocent methods; like rustling paper or whispering softly about painting ‘happy trees’ like Bob Ross. It’s mostly about relaxation and generally feeling fuzzy inside.
While it’s uncertain how many people associate ASMR with sexuality, and ASMRtists can of course come in any shape or gender, there’s certainly a grey area here, evidenced by the fact that the highest number of ASMR clicks are going to angelic, soft-speaking girls in their 20s combing puppies, tapping their fingernails on glass, sometimes roleplaying as store clerks, dentists, or sci-fi maidens.
And ASMR’s chief proponent and gold standard on YouTube is unequivocally Ally Maque, otherwise known as the host of ASMRrequestsand the VR-centric vlog PixelWhipt(all of the above examples are from her work). Amassing over 90 million views across her ASMR videos, Maque is far and way the most technologically adept, capturing audio using a number of binaural microphones, at some points even using one of those equally weird-looking 360 microphone rigs.
Omni 2 360 microphone
Check out one of Ally’s more sensual 360 videos to get a better idea of what she’s tapping into. Don’t worry, it’s all wholesome PG fun.
Lastly, there is an entire sub-genre of adult ASMR videos (2D) that can be found on major adult sites, the most popular of which has topped over a million views (we do the research so you don’t have to). So maybe VR Bangers isn’t really so far out with their rubber mannequin-camera-rig-head-thing as we initially thought, because there’s obviously a prospective market in all of this.
We can only hope the studio doesn’t film near mirrors.
Seattle-based VR studio Against Gravity has today announced they have received $5M in seed funding to continue to build Rec Room, the studio’s social VR platform.
Only launching last summer, the app has quickly become a success story, winning over fans on both Steam and Oculus Home with high marks. Rec Room seems to have found a winning formula with its over-the-top, YMCA-style social space, which gives you the ability to do everything from playing leisure sports to fist bumping, letting you create a ‘team’ so you can stay together as you tour the app’s many activities.
Rec Room is markedly more emotive than other social VR platforms, plastering your avatar with a melange of cute emojis that seem to cycle at a nearly human-level. Even if the emotes aren’t tied to your actual facial position though, you really can’t help but smile at them (really, it’s all in your brain).
The studio says that over 100,000 users visited Rec Room in the second half of 2016, having played over 1 million games, exchanging over 1 million high fives, and firing nearly a billion paintballs at each other—just one of their many games including dodgeball, 3D charades, disc golf, and zero-G paddle ball.
Future improvements to the platform include streamlining the UX and refining systems that can help minimize trolling and harassment. “We want to make it easier to find your current friends and to make new ones. We also plan to give you more ways to interact with those friends, both inside VR and out (oh my!).” writes Against Gravity CEO Nick Fajt in a recent blogpost. “With your help, we’ll be improving and extending both active and passive systems that let you manage specific situations based on your personal preferences, and that help us understand broad community trends to minimize bad interactions in general.”
Fajt formed Against Gravity after working as the Principal Program Manager on the HoloLens team at Microsoft, building the studio with previous HoloLens Creative Director turned CCO Cameron Brown. Fajt maintains the company will be keeping Rec Room free to download, “so anyone can join our community.”
Steve Jobs once said to a gathering of senior advisers that when it came to the first iPhone, “we’re going to patent it all,” (New York Times reports). While Apple has certainly changed in the years since Job’s passing, the company has undoubtedly continued to aggressively pursue patents, sometimes racking up hundreds of filings in a single month with inventions spanning everything from touch-sensitive smartwatch bands to 3D environmental mapping. This week however, the company was granted two patents that establish basic hardware and software solutions not only pointing towards a prospective Apple AR device, but marking out some fundamental territory in the process.
Both patents, spotted byApple Insider, were first filed by Metaio GmbH in 2014, a German AR firm later acquired by Apple just a year later.
Patent number 9,560,273, entitled Wearable information system having at least one camera, details a wearable device with a “display attached to his head in front of his eyes” that can use either an onboard SoC or in a wirelessly connected smartphone. The patent goes on to detail the invention’s reactive power mode, letting it switch between a battery-saving low-power mode and an active high-power mode that automatically reacts when a real-world object is matched with a reference object.
Apple AR patent detailing methods for computing 3D coordinates, image courtesy USPTO
In the figure below, the patent shows off a Google Glass-style configuration that is “especially well suited to be used with head mounted displays and a camera pointed at the space in front of the user.”
Patent 9,558,581, entitled Method for representing virtual information in a real environment, delves into the software side of AR, and is centered around virtual info overlays and proper occlusion perception.
The setup proposed in the patent paves way for a device that creates a 3D geometry model of the real environment and shows virtual information in both an occlusion mode and a non-occlusion mode, meaning objects are correctly presented to the user even if they’re hiding behind real-world obstacles. And to that, patent ‘581’ focuses on different ways of making virtual information distinct from the real world so users can quickly differentiate the real environment from the superimposed images. The patent proposes a few ways of doing this, including showing real-world objects as semi-transparent when they’re occluded by virtual info (great for driving) and using dashed lines to indicate a separation from the real and virtual.
Apple’s method of creating “proper occlusion perception,” image courtesy USPTO
While this all seems fairly basic, these sorts of patents help lay an important defensive framework that can help against future disputes from other manufacturers working in the sector; eg. Apple v. Samsung, Apple v. Microsoft, Apple v. Nokia, the list goes on. And if the recent ZeniMax v. Facebook lawsuit has taught us anything, you don’t ever want to be the one writing that half-billion dollar check after you already shelled out $2 billion for the intellectual property in the first place.
So while not giant revelations on their own, this, alongside Apple’s ever-growing library of AR patents, certainly lends credence to the idea that Apple is investing serious time and money in the field, and it doesn’t look to be ‘just in case’.
Apple’s AR Investments
Just one year after the launch of the iPhone, Apple started patenting head mounted displays with features not unlike the VR headsets of today. Of course, at the time it wasn’t feasible to produce such a unit, but again, patents aren’t really for that purpose anyway.
The company has since patented various AR/VR headset designs, like it’s Gear VR-esque phone-based headset, or the most recent patent in summer 2016 outlining a high FOV AR display.
Apple’s recent acquisitions have also pointed towards a heightened interest in AR. Besides acquiring Metaio, Apple has also taken on marker-less facial mapping and animation firm Faceshift, facial expression recognition & analysis company Emotient, and Flyby Media, a large-scale SLAM, indoor navigation, sensor fusion, image recognition, and 3D tracking company.
Another nail in the coffin: around 2014, Apple started hiring specifically for AR/VR software experts at their Cupertino HQ, first for an ‘App Engineer’ who was tasked to “create high performance apps that integrate with Virtual Reality systems for prototyping and user testing,” and then a month later four additional hires with immersive tech talent, including a ‘VR/AR Programmer’.
As we know it, Apple is a perennial ‘johnny-come-lately’ to established tech, preferring to see markets mature before they enter in with a big bet like the iPhone or Apple Watch, and the company seems famously stand-offish when it comes to VR. According to a report by Vanity Fair, Apple CEO Tim Cook says that virtual reality isn’t actually the way to go in his opinion. “Virtual reality sort of encloses and immerses the person into an experience that can be really cool but probably has a lower commercial interest over time,” said Cook.
So if VR isn’t in Apple’s commercial interest currently, the evidence thus far suggests that the company is heading eye balls-first into augmented reality. And we can’t wait to see what the world renowned electronics giant has in store.
Sword Art Online (SAO), the VR-centric manga and anime series, will soon be gracing the eyeballs of Fove 0 owners in a new VR experience featuring the series’ female protagonist, Asuna. The SAO experience was created to welcome new users and teach them how to use Fove 0, the first commercially available VR headset with integrated eye-tracking.
According to Anime News Network, Fove 0 users will be able to meet the series’ female protagonist Asuna, who acts as a sort of concierge to new users. The experience leverages the headset’s eye-tracking capabilities to give Asuna the ability to recognize when you’re looking at her—but more importantly where your eye drifts when she speaks. Looking at her right in the eye will elicit a smile, but ignore her and she’ll get upset. Haruka Tomatsu, Asuna’s Japanese-language voice actor, says in a video presenting the headset (Japanese only) that Asuna will even get angry if you ogle her for too long.
The experience was created in honor of the upcoming Sword Art Online The Movie: Ordinal Scale (2017) film, and will be first made available in Japan and Korea starting January 31 with availability ending July 31, 2017. If you’re in either Japan or Korea, you can download the experience here or visit. There’s still no word on when or if the SAO ‘welcome experience’ will be made available to Western audiences.
Fove, the product of a successful Kickstarter campaign and hailed as the first of the ‘next generation of VR headsets’, launched Fove 0 worldwide late last year at $599. The San Francisco-based company has since secured over $11m across 3 funding rounds with investors including Samsung Ventures, Colopl VR Fund, and Foxconn Technology Group.
Sporting a single WQHD OLED 2560×1440 display (1280×1440 per eye), 70Hz refresh rate, and about a 100° field-of-view (FOV), Fove 0 is a modest offering specs-wise in comparison to current PC VR headsets like the Rift and Vive, which both have higher refresh rates, slightly higher FOV and dual displays for better interpupillary distance (IPD) fit, but makes up for it by packing an accurate and reliable infrared eye-tracking system that not only lets you use your eyes as an input device, but introduces a bevy of possibilities when it comes to making VR seem more real to users. Road to VR Executive Editor maintains a later prototype of the Fove 0 “serves as a solid proof of concept of what eye-tracking can add to virtual reality, and they’ve so far got an impressive headset to boot.” Check out the full hands-on article here.
Fove 0 is compatible with Valve’s OpenVR API, giving it basic access to a swath of SteamVR-compatible content. The company has since released their SDK which allows developers to integrate Fove support for projects built-in Unity, Unreal Engine, and CryEngine.
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has tapped Hugo Barra, Xiaomi’s current Global VP, for the position of CEO at Oculus VR. Barra will be tasked with not only leading Oculus, Facebook’s subsidiary, but all of Facebook’s VR projects. Barra will be replacing Brendan Iribe who stepped down from the position last month to head the company’s PC VR group.
Hugo Barra [image courtesy NDTV Gadgets 360]Before his time at Xiaomi, Brazillian entrepreneur Barra was also VP of Android product management, often taking to the stage at major events to introduce new versions of the mobile operating system and the company’s flagship phones. Later, Barra left Google for chinese mobile manufacturer Xiaomi becoming VP of International, again taking on front-of-house duties for the company’s major announcements.
“I’ve known Hugo for a long time, starting when he helped develop the Android operating system, to the last few years he’s worked at Xiaomi in Beijing bringing innovative devices to millions of people,” writes Zuckerberg in a Facebook blogpost.
“Hugo shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform. They’ll enable us to experience completely new things and be more creative than ever before. Hugo is going to help build that future, and I’m looking forward to having him on our team.”
“It’s been a dream of mine to work in virtual reality even back when AR/VR were just figments of science fiction; now we’re taking selfies in virtual worlds,” writes Barra. “I learned from Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun that there’s no greater calling in our industry than taking breakthrough tech and making it available to the greatest number of people. Really looking forward to doing just that at Facebook — taking VR mainstream — working with you, Brendan, Mike Schroepfer, and the Oculus team!”
It’s been a tumultuous few months at Oculus, with the surprise announcement that its original CEO, Brendan Iribe, was to step down and the ongoing $2Bn legal battle with game publisher Zenimax over alleged IP theft by their former employee and now Oculus CTO, John Carmack. That legal case is due to reach its conclusion on Monday, with any potential ramifications likely falling to Barra to deal with. On top of that,
The appointment of Barra hopefully now provides Oculus with the leadership it needs as it continues to try to built its VR empire in the face of strong competition from Valve and HTC in the PC VR Market and Google’s Daydream VR offering rivalry for its Samsung Gear VR partnership. But despite suffering a number of setbacks in 2016, with the strong public support from its parent company Facebook and the universally well received recent launch of its motion controllers Oculus Touch, Barra has reasons to be positive heading into 2017 in his new role.
![Hugo Barra [image courtesy NDTV Gadgets 360]](https://i0.wp.com/www.roadtovr.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/hugo_barra_google_xiaomi.jpg)
