Oculus is announcing today that soon users will be able to login and access their Facebook account and News Feed from inside of the Oculus Home interface on Gear VR.
According to an Oculus spokesperson:
“We are beginning to test a Facebook tab for Oculus Home on Gear VR. We wanted to make it even easier for people to view Facebook within Home, since people were already visiting Facebook in the new Oculus Browser. With Facebook for Oculus Home, people will be able to browse News Feed, check notifications, send & receive messages, and more, all without leaving VR. This is currently a small test, and we will continue to refine the product experience before rolling it out more broadly.”
Currently this is a very small test with Gear VR users globally so not many people will see the functionality yet. You can log in or out at any time so it’s not required to use Oculus Home in any way — it’s optional. And if you don’t use it, the Facebook tab will remain as an option at the bottom. When we asked about Rift support, the spokesperson replied: “Right now this is only for Gear. We will continue to learn from this test and iterate based on our findings.”
When Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire bought Oculus it was unclear what the combination of those two brands meant for the VR landscape. Would your Facebook persona be permanently tied to your Oculus persona? Would you be tracked and watched at all times in VR, similar to how your browsing habits are for targeted ads on the social media site? It raised a lot of questions and over the past few months we’re starting to see some of the answers.
When we asked the Oculus spokesperson if this new “Facebook in Gear VR” feature will impact how user data is being tracked, they responded: “Facebook is not tracking behavior differently with this experience than it does for any other version of its apps, and logging into Facebook for Oculus Home does not link your Facebook and Oculus accounts.”
Back in April of this year Oculus introduced a new sign-up process when using Oculus Home for the first time. Through this process you could opt to link your Facebook account directly to your VR identity. Granted, at the bottom in partially obscured text, there is an option to bypass that if you don’t have a profile on the site, but the actual result is that thousands of people likely have Oculus Home accounts tied to their Facebook now. Currently, there doesn’t seem to be any real reason for anyone to resist that.
In fact, one of the best social VR experiences we’ve seen so far, Facebook Spaces, is only possible because of the social media giant’s support and integration. You can already livestream games to your Facebook account as well and view 360 content that have been uploaded.
What do you think about this news? Let us know down in the comments below!
There really isn’t much new stuff on the Oculus Home store for Oculus Rift and Gear VR users this week. However, there are plenty of new things to check out over on Steam for Rift users. Bigger stuff should be coming soon while the Summer of Rift promotion continues.
If you missed the previous entry of this list you can see those new releases here. UploadVR has launched the ‘UploadVR PS VR Community’ on PlayStation 4! Join up, find other gamers to play with, and engage in discussions with them.
Also, don’t forget to check out our list of the 9 Best PlayStation VR Games if you need any extra inspiration.
New Rift And Gear VR Releases For Oculus Home
Spider-Man: Homecoming VR Experience, from Sony
Price: Free (Rift)
It’s finally time to put on the webs and become Spider-Man for the first time in VR. This tie-in experience to the upcoming Homecoming movie gives you just a taste of what it’s like to be Peter Parker, letting you fire off different types of webs and have a close encounter with the villainous Vulture.
Recommendation: Sadly, the Spider-Man experience isn’t really worth checking out even though it’s free. It’s short and uninspired.
The Lost, from PocketMemory
Price: $2.99 (Gear VR)
If you remember Dead Secret it was basically a murder-mystery style adventure game. The Lost looks very similar, with a crime scene of its own, although with noticeably less Western-focused influence. It appears to be adapted from a previously released Google Cardboard version.
J Sports VR, from JSports
Price: Free (Gear VR)
This is another Gallery app, which means it wasn’t curated as well as the Oculus Home store. The description page isn’t even in English, but basically this is just a lobby for you to hang out and watch sports videos in.
Recommendation: Skip, most of our audience likely won’t understand what this is about or for.
New Oculus Rift Releases On Steam
Block Rocking Beats, from Sander Sneek, Jochem de Klerk
Price: $10.04 (Currently Discounted)
Block Rocking Beats is your virtual sound studio where up to three players can play in a virtual band. You can play, record, and share your creations.
Recommendation: This is a cool and fun social music experience. Grab it if you have interested buddies.
Distant Nightmare, from Field Of Vision
Price: $1.59 (Currently Discounted)
Distant Nightmare pulls you into a dark world of a child’s nightmare. You must ride your bike through the mysterious world to survive the night and wake up.
Recommendation: It’s not expensive and has a solid, creepy atmosphere. Worth a look if you like this genre!
Zombie Hobby VR, from Pointlight Games
Price: $17.99 (Currently Discounted)
There are plenty zombie shooters in the VR ecosystem, but this one has a different flavor. Zombie Hobby forces you to use affordable objects in your daily life as weapons to take down zombies with a unique design style. It looks a little like zombies invaded Superhot VR.
Recommendation: This zombie shooter brings a unique style worth checking out.
Recommendation: It’s a short, 2-minute experience, but hey nothing to lose!
VRTGO, from VRLive
Price: Free
VRTGO is a platform for artists to share their stories and experiences directly with their fans around the world. Here you’ll find 360-degree concerts and other interactive music experiences.
Recommendation: Add this to your collection of VR content aggregates.
There’s not a whole load of new on either of the Oculus stores this week but there’s a very good reason for that; the Summer Sale is now on and you can get a heck of a lot of games at great prices. Still, if you are in the market for something new we have just a few interesting pieces to highlight.
The Mage’s Tale, from inXile Entertainment
Price: $39.99 (Rift)
If you’ve been looking for a lengthy VR dungeon crawler then The Mage’s Tale has you covered. Over 10 hours of content is on offer in this first-person RPG that will have you crafting your own potions and spells. Huge boss battles and scores of loot await.
Recommendation: We were very fond of The Mage’s Tale, so check it out. Read our review.
Song of the Sea VR, from Cartoon Saloon
Price: Free (Rift, Gear)
You might know Song of the Sea as an Oscar-nominated short film. This new VR adaptation tells the same story from a new perspective, rooting you in one of its environments. It promises a compelling underwater experience you won’t want to miss.
Recommendation: Definitely check this one out.
mindZense De-stress + Sleep, from Minditorium IVS
Price: $2.49 each (Gear)
A pair of relaxation experiences await you here, one of which is designed to help users settle down to get to sleep while the other aims to help users lose stress. Think picturesque scenes, soothing music, and a wistful atmosphere and you’re pretty much there.
Recommendation: We’d seek out other apps like Guided Meditation instead.
New Oculus Rift Releases on Steam
Xion, from Zenz VR
Price: $8.99 (Currently Discounted)
Xion channels the nostalgia of arcade shoot-em-up games with a 90s aesthetic splashed over voxels. The gameplay is kept interesting with randomized levels similar to rogue-likes and you can continue to enhance your ship as you work toward the hardest level.
Recommendation: Check this one out if you like either voxels or top-down shooters. Or both!
Unearthing Mars VR, from Winking Entertainment
Price: $10.49 (Currently Discounted)
Unearthing Mars drops you onto the mysterious red planet for an adventure. There are multiple gameplay mechanics from puzzle solving to shooting and, while short, players will experience quite a bit.
Recommendation: Give this one a look if you’re feeling like a journey through space.
Mocove Arts VR, from Mocove Studio
Price: $2.99 (Currently Discounted)
Mocove Arts VR welcomes you into a virtual museum where you can view legendary works of art that span different time periods. There are over 1,000 paintings and over 50 sculptures for you to view with 14 pieces of classical music accenting your experience.
Recommendation: Pretty solid escape that can serve as a bit of calming, informative tour. Great for art connoisseurs.
Chess Ultra, from Ripstone
Price: $12.99
Chess Ultra is a visual feast with 4K visuals outside of VR and a variety of ways and environments in which to experience chess. You can play against 10 Grandmaster AIs or against online opponents.
Recommendation: This is a must-have for any chess fan.
MultiVR.se, from VRider, Inc.
Price: Free
MultiVR gives you a beautiful virtual space that you can explore, settle down in, and customize with an intuitive toolbox. There are 19 environments, video players, and more to get the most of the virtual space without removing the headset (some elements limited to the paid version at $9.99).
Recommendation: Check out the free version and see if you fall in love with it before diving into the paid version.
Drone Hero, from Neuston AB
Price: $11.69 (Currently Discounted)
In Drone Hero, you must steer a remote-controlled drone through goals and dodge different weapons and obstacles all the while. There are 25 increasingly difficult challenges and grades for each chapter.
Recommendation: Nothing special, probably a pass unless you just love drones.
Deadly Hunter VR, from Leiting Interactive
Price: Free
Deadly Hunter is a wave shooter where you play as an Orc hunter that must utilize the best traps as you take on his enemies. Dodge the enemy attacks as you learn their weakness and expose them.
Recommendation: This is quite the intense experience and its free. Check it out.
Keep Defending, from Faster Time Games Limited
Price: $8.79 (Currently Discounted)
In Keep Defending your task is simple: Just do what the name of the game says and keep defending. You’re an archer that must build up your defenses and take down the enemies before they reach your gate. You earn gold as you progress to improve your defensive constructs.
Recommendation: May be worth a look if you don’t have a ton of defense shooters in your library already.
Das Rennspiel BlazeRush von Targem Games kann dieses Wochenende vom 26.05. – 29.05. kostenlos auf Oculus Home heruntergeladen und gespielt werden. Alle Freunde des Rennspiels und solche, die es noch werden möchten, sollten sich diese Chance nicht entgehen lassen.
Kostenloser Rennspaß für Besitzer der Oculus Rift
Das Arcade-Rennspiel BlazeRush bringt Hot Wheels und andere Spielzeugautos aus der Kindheit in die Virtual Reality. All die Stunts und waghalsigen Manöver, die man aus alten Kindheitserinnerungen kennt, kann man nun erneut dank VR-Support neu aufleben lassen. Und das Beste darin: Es ist an diesem Wochenende komplett kostenlos! Oculus veröffentlichte heute per Twitter, dass alle Besitzer einer Oculus Rift das Spiel dieses Wochenende kostenlos auf Oculus Home herunterladen können.
Das Spiel BlazeRush erinnert an eine Mischung aus Mario Kart und Micro Machines und bietet dank ausgeprägtem Content und verschiedenen Spielmodi Spielspaß für viele Stunden. Während des Wochenendes stehen zudem alle zusätzlichen Spielmodi frei zur Verfügung. Damit kann man sowohl im Singleplayermodus seine Fahrkünste beweisen oder in Multiplayerduellen gegeneinander zeigen, wer der beste Fahrer ist. Zusätzlich kann man hierbei einen Sprachchat nutzen, um mit seinen Mitspielern zu kommunizieren.
Neben den herkömmlichen Spielmodi erschien vor einiger Zeit das BlazeRush Update, welches den Flair von American Football ins Spiel mit einbezog. Innerhalb dieses Add-ons steuert ihr eure Autos über ein Footballfeld und versucht dabei einen Touchdown zu erzielen. Das Ganze erinnert stark an Rocket League, auch wenn die Steuerung, die Perspektive und die Ballkontrolle sich stark davon unterscheiden. Der Fokus des Spiels liegt zudem mehr auf den Geplänkeln und resultierenden Explosionen. Besonders spaßig sind die verschiedenen Waffen, die es dafür auszuprobieren gilt.
Das Sonderangebot zählt allerdings nur für die Oculus Home Version des Spiels, nicht für die Steam-Version, die ohnehin keinen offiziellen VR-Support bietet. Normalerweise ist das Spiel für 9,99 € im Oculus Store erhältlich. Demnach sollte man sich diese einmalige Chance nicht entgehen lassen.
Publisher VRotein sweeps into releases this week with four new experiences for the Gear VR, some of which use its new controller. On the Rift side there is but one single Oculus Home release of a game that’s been on Steam for a while now, as well as a couple other Steam offerings. Slim pickings, then, but there should be something for you here.
Blue Effect VR, from DIVR Labs
Price: $14.99 (Rift)
This is a horror-survival FPS with impressive visual effects and sound. A wave shooter that keeps you on your toes with some jump-scares in a dark warehouse. Already one of the better wave shooters on the market and it’s just in Early Access.
Recommendation: Give it a shot.
Dead and Buried, from Oculus
Price: Free (Gear)
The Oculus Touch launch game makes its way over to Gear VR with support for the new controller. Take part in fast-fire shootouts with friends or fend off waves of — you guessed it — zombies in a single-player mode.
Recommendation: One of the most polished shooters you’ll likely find on Gear VR right now.
Cranga!, from VRotein
Price: $4.99 (Gear)
Fancy a round of Jenga in VR? Cranga! delivers on a different scale, replacing small wooden blocks with giant shipping containers that will cause quite a scene if they tumble over. Compatible with the new Gear VR controller.
Recommendation: Looks like a fun distraction, ported from Touch.
Slice & Dice, from VRotein
Price: Free (Gear)
Use the Gear VR’s new controller as a Dead Space-style gun to chop through cubes to get a dice to a goal zone. The puzzles are pretty smart and inventive.
Recommendation: Check this one out.
Kingdom Watcher, from VRotein
Price: $2.99 (Gear)
VRotein has other VR games out this week too, but this definitely seems like the more polished and enjoyable of the bunch. It’s a tower defense game in which you chip away at enemy health bars before they reach the castle gates. There’s multiplayer too.
Recommendation: Definitely worth a grab.
Shooting Nightmare, from VRotein
Price: $2.99 (Gear)
Wave shooter madness returns to Gear VR in Shooting Nightmare, which looks like a fairly simple addition to the genre with weapon unlocks and survival mechanics. If you love this type of game though, it might be for you.
Recommendation: Only for big fans of the genre. The rest of us are bored of these.
Kill All Orcs, from Maestro Of VR
Price: $2.99 (Gear)
Despite the awesome name Kill All Orcs looks like it hasn’t been designed by the actual Maestro of VR. The environments in this third-person action game look drab and in need of some polish. It might have fun gameplay, though, but hard to really get into right now.
Recommendation: Not looking worth it as is.
Now You See Me: Back to Macau, from Sidekick
Price: Free (Gear)
We’re not exactly sure who was asking for a tie-in to the Now You See Me film series but here you go. This is a hidden object game with six missions. The description calls it the first of its kind, though I’m fairly sure that’s not the case.
Recommendation: It’s free, but seems like a strange tie-in. Something actually magic related would have fit better.
Samsung PhoneCast, from Samsung
Price: Free (Gear)
Want more than Netflix on your Gear VR to watch stuff? PhoneCast delivers, allowing you to access a range of Android Video on Demand apps like Hulu, Crackle, and YouTube from inside a 360 degree environment. Grab the popcorn.
Recommendation: Read more here. If you want to watch 2D content in VR this is essential.
New Oculus Rift Releases On Steam
Pixvana SPIN Play, from Pixvana, Inc.
Price: Free To Play
The SPIN Play app is an end-to-end solution for VR/360 content in multiple formats. Using Pixvana’s OPF format, users can play multiple types of encoded content in spherical form or a tile format.
Recommendation: Keep an eye on this as it evolves and more content becomes available.
Climbtime, from Saluda Systems
Price: $2.99
Climbtime challenges users to climb, fly, and glide around procedurally generated levels. Move quickly and efficiently to destroy cores as you chase leaderboard times. You can also explore real-world based terrain modeled after the Smoky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, and more.
Recommendation: The motion of climbing isn’t the most accurate but there’s fun to be had flying and gliding around.
VRIQ, from 3DIQ
Price: Free
VRIQ is a quick puzzle experience, challenging your problem-solving abilities within 5 minutes. Act quickly and then see how you match up against other users.
Recommendation: A free test of your ingenuity? Sure.
Conductor, from Overflow
Price: $8.99 (Currently Discounted)
Taking place in a post-industrial apocalypse, Conductor is an action-adventure with puzzle elements. You work through the game on a locomotive and must engage in different activities to clear your path to escape the pursuit of Overcorp.
Recommendation: This one is a moody and interesting looking adventure that is worth your gaze. Read our review and give it a go.
VectorWars, from Red Iron Labs
Price: $2.99 (Currently Discounted)
VectorWars is an arcade style shooter that takes place in 2842 when the aliens finally attack. You play as Andy, an asteroid miner, that must defend humanity and continuously upgrade his ship while taking down the alien threat.
Recommendation: Getting this for VR doesn’t add a great deal to the experience. Pass for now.
In his post Carmack writes: “A new version of Oculus Home has started going out to Gear VR users. It is a staged rollout, so everyone won’t necessarily see it for a couple weeks.
“It isn’t obvious, but this is much more than just a rewrite of Home; this is the first application developed for a brand new Oculus runtime system. There are a lot of interesting things to talk about, but the difference in visual quality is the most noticeable change.
“For years now I have lamented that the visual quality gap between what we should be able to do on the Gear VR hardware and what users are actually seeing is very large. Most people think “VR just looks that way (bad)” because that is all they see. I finally have a pretty good example to show what we should get.
“There are a bunch of things that combine to deliver the improvement, but “Cylindrical TimeWarp Layers” is the new buzzword.
“I discussed using a planar TimeWarp layer for another application a couple years ago. I mentioned that with that setup, the center of the screen looked great, but it started aliasing at the edges due to the VR lens distortion compressing the resolution. You had to make a tradeoff: Size for peak resolution in the center, and the edges would have problems. Size for the edges, and you have a blurry center. Using a large fraction of the screen also forces you to read in perspective at the edges, which isn’t ideal.
“Many people have independently found that putting UI on a floating cylinder surrounding the user in VR feels good, since you have everything facing directly towards you so there is no reading in perspective. It turns out that there is a very happy coincidence here: when directly sampled by Time Warp (as opposed to just drawing to an eye buffer) the cylinder curvature almost perfectly counteracts the lens compression!
“This means that you can have an almost constant pixel density in a ring all the way around the view without any compromises. You still have the tradeoff in the other axis, so a short cylinder could have a higher alias-free density than a taller one, but we settled on a fairly conservative 13 pixels per degree for the UI, because avoiding aliasing was more important to me than absolutely maximizing pixel count. Static images with mip maps or proper prefiltering can go up to around 18 pixels per degree if you really want the most detail in the center.
“If a texture is copied pixel-for-pixel perfectly to a layer (be careful not to be off by a half texel!), it will only be resampled once by TimeWarp, instead of the normal two times that rendering to eye buffers, then TimeWarping gets you. How much this matters is very content dependent; it won’t make any difference on blurry imagery, but if there are crisp edges and narrow lines, it can be significant. This matters for text.
“The one sampling that needs to happen is done in sRGB color space when possible. The details are very graphics-geeky, but the takeaway is that this also helps with crisp, high contrast edges, especially under slight head motion. This matters for text, again. I am sad to report that Android N has broken sRGB framebuffers on Snapdragon for us, so this result isn’t universal.
“These techniques enable a quality that you couldn’t get with traditional Gear VR rendering, but you still need to put good pixels into the layer texture.
“The layer texture is measured in pixels, not abstract floating point units, and designers should think about it in those terms. Every pixel will contribute to four or more pixels on the screen due to filtering, so every pixel matters. While the hardware can obviously do it, I do not allow the designers to just scale the layer up and down to adjust the size, because that would give you either aliased or blurry pixels. The pixels are sized correctly. If you want something bigger or smaller, you need to draw it with more or less pixels. Ideally everything is mastered at very high resolution offline, then resized appropriately with a high quality filter to exactly the pixel size it will occupy on the layer, which will turn out much better than GPU only filtering. We still haven’t done this for most of the imagery yet!
“Then there are the design best practices that everyone should have always been doing, like not making the text too small, sticking the gaze cursor depth directly on the UI surface instead of floating above it, putting backgrounds behind almost everything instead of floating text in thin air, etc.”
So if you got all that, Gear VR users are about to get a much improved virtual reality (VR) experience.
Oculus Home has been totally rebuilt from the ground up to reduce the load on Mobile devices. In addition, Oculus Avatars are being introduced into Gear VR.
Oculus Avatars were originally introduced to the Oculus Rift when the Touch was introduced. Now those Avatars are being introduced to the Gear VR, so the same Avatar can follow a user from Oculus to Gear VR and vice-versa. The following Gear VR titles are introducing Oculus Avatar support:
Oculus Rooms, Hulu, Fusion Wars, vTime, Hologrid, The Guidance Team and Drop Dead.
The support for Avatars comes alongside a total rebuild of Oculus Home for the Gear VR that allows for much higher graphical fidelity in the application, while still decreasing the load on the mobile device, thus reducing overheating and increasing battery life.
The Samsung Unpacked event is still going on, so expect new announcements regarding the Gear VR. VRFocus will continue to keep you informed.
Last week’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) is officially in the books. We saw a lot of great games last week that we’re having trouble waiting to play, but alas, that’s the nature of big industry events. Many of the games we saw are several weeks or months away from release, so in the mean time, we’ve got our standard pool of new weekly Oculus Rift and Gear VR releases to sift through instead.
In this team-based action game, you shoot, dodge, and defend while coordinating with your teammates to take down the enemy team. Requires Oculus Touch, but the action is intense.
Recommendation: Simple and fun game with a structure that encourages actual tactical gameplay in conjunction with your team.
AirMech Command, from Carbon Games
Price: $19.99 (Rift, Currently Discounted)
AirMech Command aims to provide players with a definitive action/RTS experience on virtual platforms with tactical room scale control and up close flight controls if you need to jump into the fight yourself. The game includes a solo, co-op, and pvp mode. It’s been out almost a year, but now it has wonderful Touch support, making it one of, if not the, best VR strategy games around.
Recommendation: We reviewed this game on UploadVR previously, giving it an 8 out of 10. With Touch, it’s even better, making this a must-play for RTS fans.
Mission: ISS, from Magnopus
Price: Free (Rift)
Have you ever wanted to become an astronaut? Chances are that at some point in your life you’ve dreamed of going to space, floating weightlessly above Earth, and exploring a space station. That’s exactly what this free experience lets you do on board the actual International Space Station (ISS).
Recommendation: Absolutely check this one out.
Heroes: A Duet in Virtual Reality, from Map Design Lab
Price: Free (Gear VR)
Heroes was previously shown at Sundance and features dancers that perform throughout a variety of striking environments.
Recommendation: Creative and provocative. Worth a watch.
Affected: The Manor, from Fallen Planet Studios
Price: $7.99 (Rift)
It’s not often that a mobile Gear VR game makes the jump to its younger, but much more powerful, Oculus Rift brother, but that’s the case with Affected: The Manor. It’s a short, atmospheric horror experience that really shows how immersive and terrifying the realm of VR can be for scary games. This is one of the first prototype horror games that was in development before Rift even launched.
Recommendation: If you’re a horror addict, then you need to check this one out. At least worth it to watch other people play.
Superhot VR: Forever Update, from Superhot Team
Price: Free with Superhot, which costs $19.99 (Rift)
How do you make a great game even better? Add a bunch of new game modes, an endless mode, and give it all away fro free to anyone that already bought the game. That’s exactly what happened with Superhot and its Forever Update.
Recommendation: If you have an Oculus Rift with Touch then you should play this game, no exceptions.
New Oculus Rift Steam Releases
SoundStage, from Hard Light Labs
Price: $9.99 (Rift)
SoundStage is a music sandbox that can serve as your room scale audio canvas. From drums to synthesizers, this app gives you a ton of ways to create the sound you desire as a professional DJ or just a hobbyist.
Recommendation: Very robust program. If music is your thing, grab it.
Discovery Space 2, from Discovering VR
Price: $9.99 (Rift)
Discovering Space 2 is a visually engaging exploration experience that simply wants you to take in all of the sights space offers. You can either follow a tour or take control of a vessel so that you can explore the solar system.
Recommendation: Of the space exploration titles released this week for roughly the same price, this one really makes you feel like a pilot exploring the solar system.
Dreadhalls, from White Door Games
Price: $8.49 (Rift, Currently Discounted)
In Dreadhalls, you’re trapped inside of a massive dungeon you must explore to escape. You’ll also have to survive the creatures that seek you out and the hazardous environment. The levels are procedurally generated so you’ll never know what’s around the corner.
Recommendation: A solid fright-fest from that’s absolutely worth your cash. It’s already out on Home for both Rift and Gear VR, but grab it on sale if you haven’t already.
Pinball Inside: A VR Arcade Game, from Reality Reflection
Price: Free
Pinball Inside wants to give you the timeless classic experience the pinball machine provides with crisp visuals and an awesome machine.
Recommendation: Free and solid. Give it a go.
Spacetours VR – Ep1 The Solar System, from Vibrant Visuals – Christian Klötzel
Price: $9.59 (Rift, Currently Discounted)
Spacetours VR lives up to its name, taking you around our solar system and giving you a visually stimulating look at outer space. Asteroids and satellites will pass by as you take in the sights and sounds of the greatest mystery our solar system holds.
Recommendation: Pricey but certainly beautiful. If you’re enamored with space, it’s worth checking out.
Freedom Locomotion VR, from Huge Robot
Price: Free
Freedom Locomotion is essentially a movement tech demo with visually diverse and impactful settings for you to walk, jog, run, climb, and crawl across. The system gives you many choices for how you traverse, but isn’t really a proper “game” in the traditional sense.
Recommendation: Try it out for sure. Your feedback could be instrumental for VR devs solving many of the concerns with VR locomotion.
Recommendation: Steep price for something that’s just an integrated local browser. It’s definitely cool, though. Something like this will likely be standard in the future.
Mountain Mind, from Nebuch, Arligan
Price: $9.99
Mountain Mind turns the “stoner rock music” and abstract weirdness up to 11 and has you headbanging like never before. When you play, just be mindful of your actual surroundings as well.
Recommendation: An incredibly niche experience. No matter what we say, you’ll get it if you want it and you won’t if you have zero interest.
LightStrike, from Groove Jones LLC
Price: $3.99
Lightstrike drops you into a Tron-like VR arena where you stand on a floating pad while using a shield to defend yourself or a disc to inflict damage.
Recommendation: A cool spin on Tron-influenced VR experiences. Give this one a shot while you keep waiting for Sparc.
