Competition: Defend Against The Hordes Of… Good? Win 1 of 5 copies of Underworld Overlord

Are you the sort of person who wouldn’t mind hanging round a virtual dungeon or two? Does the prospect of joining a band of heroes at a castle gate and ‘dealing with’ not only hordes of monsters but the undead that lay within fill you with excitement? Are you longing to play the hero and defend the land?

If so, this game… isn’t for you. Because here it is the pesky invading heroes you need to deal with. Pesky, do-good, heroes with their stupid sense of honour, their pointy stabby swords and their annoyingly white teeth. It’s enough to make a respectable fiend gag.

Underworld Overlord is an action/strategy game for the Google Daydream where you defend your very own virtual reality (VR) dungeon against an onslaught of righteous goody-goods by any means necessary. Got traps? Set them! Have spells? Cast them! Command monsters? Send them off to battle. You are the leader. So lead them to victory or death! (Preferably the former.)

We’ve teamed up with developers OtherSide Entertainment for a competition where you can win one of five codes for Underworld Overlord. There’s no questions to answer, all you need to do is be a follower of ours, or theirs, on social media. Click the competition app below to follow, or declare that you are a follower of VRFocus or OtherSide Entertainment on our various channels. (The app will check, if you are signed in.) Every follow gets you a vote, and some are even worth extra votes.

The competition will end on Saturday, April 1st 2017 at 00:00 UK Time with winners being chosen at random during the week after. You can find our Competition Terms here: https://www.vrfocus.com/competition-terms/

Good luck!

Win 1 of 5 copies of Underworld Overlord for Google Daydream with VRFocus

Competition: Win A Pair Of VRWC 2017 Tickets With VRFocus

February is almost at an end already and the virtual reality (VR) calendar shows no signs of slowing down. In the UK, VR World Congress (VRWC) is rapidly approaching, bringing over 2000 attendees from across the globe representing all fields of VR and its related industries to Bristol. Running from April 11th to the 13th, VRWC 17 is set to once again be another landmark VR expo crammed full of talks, experience, software and hardware. With representatives from Microsoft, Leap Motion, IBM, AMD, the Royal Opera House, Samsung, Ultrahaptics, Oculus Story Studio, the BBC and many more already confirmed.

It sounds like it will be quite an event – which is why we at VRFocus have teamed up VRWC to offer our followers the opportunity for one lucky winner to win a pair of full conference and expo passes for VR World Congress 2017, worth £600!

thumbnail_Win Tickets for VRWC
These tickets grant the holders access to the vast majority of events at VRWC:

  • An open pass to the huge VRWC expo for the entirety of the 12th and 13th of April

  • Access to all VR World Congress talks across all three days

  • Opportunity to attend official after party – and organise meetings if so desired

VR World Congress has been designed to cater for a wide audience. From those looking to simply try out the latest VR software and hardware to game developers looking for tips, tricks and investment. The event is also focusing on individuals from fields such as healthcare, marketing, education, entertainment and property looking to learn how VR is shaking things up, and how it can be used practically moving forward.

Whatever your interest in VR, be sure to enter the competition via the Gleam tool below. There’s a host of ways you can enter and if you’re a follower of ourselves or VRWC on social media you’re already well on your way. You can even visit the VRWC webpage for an additional entry each day! The competition ends at 11:59:59 PM (GMT) on March 4th 2017.

Win A Pair Of Tickets To VRC 2017 With VRFocus

VRFocus will, of course, be bringing you more updates and stories of all things VR, and indeed VRWC related but you can also sign up for the VR World Congress mailing list, to get updates on the event straight to your inbox.

Competition: Win A Pair Of Tickets To The PC Gamer Weekender

February is here, but what to do? February is so… February. Especially after Valentines Day is over, what is there to do for the virtual reality (VR) and games enthusiast? Well, if you live in the UK we’ve got something just for you to fill the gap.

VRFocus has teamed up with The PC Gamer Weekender to give you a chance to win one of two pairs of ‘Weekender+’ tickets to their event at Olympia London on the 18th to 19th of February 2017. The Weekender+ gets you access to the venue from 9:30AM enabling you to get prime position for the game or talk of your choice or be the first in to grab a deal on PC hardware.

The PC Gamer Weekender

It’s not just PC and VR gaming (such as Killing Floor: Incursion) that you can find at the event either. There’s a Tabletop Gaming area and a Fireside Bar where you can chill out and play some Hearthstone on your mobile whilst you relax. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of hardcore tournament play to get stuck into as well.

You can find out more details on the website at http://weekender.pcgamer.com/.

If you want to be in with a chance of winning the tickets all you have to be doing is following VRFocus on social media – and the more you follow us the more chances you have of winning. Enter via the Gleam app below.

Best of luck!

The PC Gamer Weekender Ticket Competition

Competition: Five Chances To Win BlazeRush On Oculus Rift

Earlier today we brought you news of new DLC for BlazeRush, an ‘arcade racing survival game’ that supports four-player local multiplayer and eight-player online with a total of sixteen different cars available for players to use. It originally added Oculus Rift support way back in December 2014 and now has the addition which sees the title from Targem Games add some Rocket League-style action courtesy of the BlazeBowl.

BlazeRush

We’ve teamed up with Targem Games to give you the chance to add the ever developing game to your Oculus Rift library. We’ve five codes to giveaway for BlazeRush and all you need to do to enter is follow us on one of our social media channels. Couldn’t be simpler right? Many of you are already following us via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or are subscribed to our YouTube channel. The best part is you get more entries per channel you’re following us on so you’ve up to four chances to enter.

The contest ends as Friday ends at midnight UK time. You can enter the competition via the widget below.

Win BlazeRush On Oculus Rift With VRFocus

Overclockers UK Wants To Know If Your VR Racing Skills Translate To Real Life

Overclockers UK Wants To Know If Your VR Racing Skills Translate To Real Life

Project Cars, a game that made our list of the 9 best games for Oculus Rift back in August, is one of the premier racing simulations not just in VR, but across gaming in general. Its VR racing is visually outstanding, filled to the brim with car and track content, and offers a wealth of customization options for weather, courses, and the HUD so players can really tailor the experience to their own tastes and skill level.

That customization also translates to the cars, from fuel load down to opening or closing your car’s radiator, so you can prepare down to minute details for each race. Overclockers UK, a company specializing in high-performance PC hardware, is using Project Cars to find the absolute best racers and giving them a chance to earn time behind the wheel of a real race car at the Bedford Autodrome Circuit.

The Overclockers UK Racing Series puts players into an intense VR racing rig and challenges them to set the best time they can. The full rig is powered by an HTC Vive, Thrustmaster racing gear, noblechairs seating, and Overclockers’ own custom VR gaming PC rigs.

The racers that earn top times for the VR races will be able to participate in one of three quarterly qualifiers: October to December 2016, January to March 2017, and April to June 2017. The qualifiers step out of the VR simulations and put the best drivers behind the wheels of real cars, so it’s going to be interesting to see if the skills truly translate. The best driver of each quarter will move on to the finals, which will take place sometime later in 2017, and determine who’s the champion.

A gold medal (and the chance to drive these cars for real) is the only prize currently revealed, but with so many partners contributing to the experience there’s likely to be more. If you’re in the UK and over 21, you can book your racing slot on the Overclockers website.

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U.S. Department of Education Embraces VR/AR With $680K EdSim Challenge

U.S. Department of Education Embraces VR/AR With $680K EdSim Challenge

Just like children, VR and AR are the future, so we should be creating experiences that have both in mind. In fact, the U.S. government wants you to do just that with its new education competition.

The U.S. Department of Education this week announced the EdSim Challenge, looking for new educational simulations that use virtual and augmented reality technology, created by the VR, AR and videogame development communities. That means apps that demonstrate genuine use cases for VR and AR in the classroom, be it through an Oculus Rift or a HoloLens.

The official site notes that simulations must “strengthen academic, technical, and employability skills,” with a particular interest in software that has “clearly defined learning goals” and builds “diverse skill sets.” That means software the goes beyond initiatives like Google Expeditions and helps students to develop skills that they could some day use in the workplace.

If you need a clearer picture, the department has put together the above video, though we’ll warn you in advance that it’s more than a little cheesy. An Informational Webinar will also be hosted on November 16th for those hoping to find out more.

The deadline for submissions is January 17th 2017. Five finalists will be announced later that winter. Following that, they’ll experience a virtual accelerator and innovator’s boot camp in the spring to enhance their projects before a winner is announced next summer.

Official criteria for the finalists selection includes content that considers learning outcomes, engagement, commitment, implementation strategy, and scalability and expansion. Five finalists will be selected, each winning a $50,000 cash prize, with one grand winner then getting $430,000. Samsung is also offering up a bunch of products to each finalist, including a Galaxy S7 edge and a Gear VR. Along with the Korean electronics giant, Oculus, Microsoft, and IBM are sponsoring the competition.

It’s a great chance to demonstrate the educational value of VR, something that companies are only just beginning to tap into.

Competition: Win A Copy Of Waddle Home For PlayStation VR With VRFocus

If you’re a fan of saving cute animals, we may very well have a competition just for you. October of course saw the launch of the PlayStation VR, which brought the second generation of virtual reality (VR) back to console gamers. The launch line-up was impressive and varied, we at VRFocus even produced a guide that you may want to look at to see just what types of experiences are out there.

WaddleHome_Poster

One game that is out is Waddle Home. Waddle Home sees players set out to save a group of trapped penguins. The title is played from a third-person isometric view from which players guide penguins down a path to safety while also collecting eggs. Obstacles include traps and patrolling guards that the penguins must avoid in order to get off out of the area safely. Players will be scored based on their completion times and the amount of eggs that they collect in each level.

Originally a 2015 Samsung Gear VR title, it made the leap from mobile VR to PC with a HTC Vive edition back in July. It’s now available for Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE’s) headset and we’ve teamed up with Waddle Home‘s creators Archiact Interactive to offer you the chance to take some VR penguins into your home.

We’re giving away PlayStation VR codes to three VRFocus readers in North America and Europe. All you have to do is enter via one or more of the ways included in the app below. You have until November midnight (UK time) on November 8th to enter. Winners will be notified within 7 days and asked to nominate their PlayStation Store region, North America or Europe.

Win Waddle Home On PlayStation VR with VRFocus

VRFocus will continue to bring you the latest updates and releases for the PlayStation VR HMD as they’re announced.

HTC Is Amassing Vive Content That Will ‘Thrill and Delight VR Fans’

HTC Is Amassing Vive Content That Will ‘Thrill and Delight VR Fans’

The HTC Vive is a marvel of modern engineering, but it is sometimes critiqued for having a library filled with demo-like content. Despite having over 500 VR options for customers to chose from on Steam, the Vive still only possesses a handful of truly memorable experiences. That may be changing, and changing soon, according to one HTC executive.

In an interview with HTC’s VP of content, Joel Bretton, the following exchange took place:

UploadVR: Do you think it would be safe to say that within the next 6 months we’ll see an experience coming out on the Vive that is at the scope of what people want from this generation of VR?

Joel Bretton: Yes, absolutely. I’m confident that’s going to happen within the next 6 months. Hopefully we’ll be far enough along here in the next couple of months to let people know what’s being worked on but it’s absolutely going to thrill and delight VR fans when they get to know what’s actually being developed for them right now.

Bretton’s remarks indicate that HTC is actively working to cultivate top-tier VR content for its platform. This may seem like an obvious statement, but the truth is the industry at large has heard very few comments from either HTC or its partner company Valve on the subject of content compared to Sony and Facebook.

Both Oculus (Rift) and Sony (Playstation VR) have never missed an opportunity to point out the robust lineups on their platforms and, more importantly, the time and money they’ve spent to cultivate these titles.

Earlier this month Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, stood on a stage and revealed to the world that Oculus and Facebook had already spent $250 million on VR content development, and that it would be spending at least another $250 million in the future. Sony recently released the Playstation VR with 50 games of its own, many of which were produced by experienced development studios.

HTC and Valve, however, have taken what looked like a more hands off approach. Many of the titles available for Vive are either partially unfinished, limited in their scope, or created by small teams.

In another comment, Bretton revealed  HTC is working with at least 30 development teams to bring this content to market. These quotes from Bretton could indicate that HTC has begun to take big steps toward software parity with Oculus and Sony.

This has never been more important now that the Vive’s two most significant weapons, its hand tracked controllers and “room-scale” capabilities, are being matched in part by the PS VR and will be met by the Rift once Oculus Touch launches in December.

Time will tell just how delightful these yet-to-be-revealed experiences actually are. Fortunately, it seems we will know more in less than six months.

7 Weird And Wonderful HTC Vive Accessory Ideas From The Viveport Community

7 Weird And Wonderful HTC Vive Accessory Ideas From The Viveport Community

HTC wants you to accessorize the Vive. At the beginning of the month the company kicked off a new competition over on Viveport, asking fans to design new additions for its VR headset, no matter how silly of infeasible. Over the past week there have been a flood of submissions that the community will vote on. The top three will each earn an HTC Vive, and the overall winner will have their design 3D printed (though not actually functioning).

As you might expect, there are already a lot of gun controllers and a lot of hooks to hang wires from. We’ve looked for some of the most unusual submissions we could actually see using ourselves. In our quest, we also found some of the strangest, funniest designs out there that we had to share with you.

We’ve got everything from haptic feedback controller covers to, uh, cup and ball accessories. Who knows, maybe the next big VR innovation is on this list? See anything that inspires you to make your own design? There’s still just under three weeks to submit a design.

Vive Hoverboard, from GabeMan

Back to the Future may have been a bit ambitious about the future of the hoverboard, but we can still use VR to step into the role of Marty McFly. GabeMan’s sleek board has a rubber balance disc in the middle that raises you off the ground, while built-in sensors mean you can actually direct and drive in-game. Tony Hawks’ RIDE board was “full of technology” and still failed, but with accurate lighthouse tracking we could see this being a pretty heavy addition to the Vive line-up.

Rating: Wonderful

Vive Pet Collar, from katie_tripixels

In concept, putting a collar on your cat so that you can track it in VR, and not the real world where you might actually need to find it sometimes, sounds silly. Still, it’s a very valid point that Mittens doesn’t know you’re experiencing room-scale VR and can’t actually see her when you’ve got a clump of plastic over your face. We certainly wouldn’t forgive ourselves if anything painful were to happen, so maybe this one’s a good idea after all.

Rating: Weird and Wonderful

Haptic Feedback Case for Controller, from MaxieGast

Vive’s vibration feedback goes a long way to adding immersion to certain actions like batting a ball, but it only gets you so far. Until a second or third generation of controller implements better haptics, we really like the idea of this add-on cover that you slide your wands into. It would enhance the feedback you get from your games to make every shot feel more realistic or every button give you resistance.

Rating: Wonderful

Player Tracking Camera Robot, from BOLL

Want to make your VR livestreams a little more cinematic? This awesome user-tracking robot will keep you in the center of the action as you run around your room-scale play area. The designer has other ideas to get the camera on a moving track too. Imagine making mixed reality videos that actually moved with this setup.

Rating: Wonderful

Lighthouse mounting on a Lampster body, from notadecoy

We’re more pointing this one out because of just how adorable it makes the Lighthouse sensor, rather than actually being that practical. As the name suggests, Lampster bodies are actually designed for lights, not high-tech pieces of tracking hardware. Look at the little dude though! If only he was several feet taller, so he could efficiently track where you were moving to, and not just look cute.

Rating: Werid

Immersive Floor, from Sander_Cohen

Have you ever walked over the virtual cracks in a dry desert floor or perhaps the flaky bridge boards in EVEREST VR and wondered “Why can’t I feel that?” Immersive Floor wants to bring you that bit further into your experience with electrically-charged modular mats that will change shape based on the surface you’re walking on. It’s a pretty interesting idea, though it adds to all the setup you’re already going through to get room-scale support.

Rating: Weird and Wonderful

Analogous Cup-and-Ball for HTC Vive Controllers, from Kaibear

Who needs VR when you’ve got cup-and-ball? Spent $799 on the high-tech Vive and start using it straight away with this addictive game that’s fun for all the family. No expensive PC required!

Rating: Best invention ever