VRTV Weekly Round-Up: Faliszek leaves, SUPERHOT teases, Riccitiello dreams big and more.

It’s been a busy week with a lot of interesting stories for Nina to recap in today’s VRTV weekly round-up. There’s trouble in the US where thanks to Pokemon GO you need an AR permit in Milwaukee, Unity Chief John Riccitiello’s remarks raised eyebrows, there’s AR drone software, Sony releasing a new advert for the PlayStation VR featuring Farpoint, new games, new investment, new and renewed interest in the technology as well as comings and goings.

In fact there’s been so much it’s well worth your while watching just to make sure you didn’t miss anything of note. As usual you can find links to all the stories mentioned in the show below if you want to find out more in detail.

And don’t forget you can also check out this week’s VRTV game preview for Island 359 here.

T-Rex Gets a Kicking in Island 359 Preview

VRTV’s roving reporter Nina has been to several events over the past few months including Mobile World Congress (MWC) and the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2017. At both events she got to tryout CloudGate Studio’s Steam Early Access title Island 359, a dinosaur hunting experience for HTC Vive – the developer also recently launched Oculus Touch support.

For today’s video preview, Nina not only got to experience lots of dinosaur killing, with guns aplenty, she also managed to tryout CloudGate Studio’s experimental Vive Tracker system for the videogame. CloudGate Studio’s President, Steve Bowler showcased a short video of the project back in January when it featured just HTC Vive sensors and four controllers. Nina got the more advanced version with two Vive Trackers on her feet and one on her waist for a full body motion tracked experience.

With this system in place not only can you shoot dinosaurs as normal, you can bring your whole body into the mix, being able to boot the smaller Compy’s to death, or if you’re feeling really brave – or as Nina found a nice sweet spot – you can kick the T-Rex to death.

Checkout the full preview video below, and stay tuned for more news, reviews, previews and more from VRFocus.

VRTV’s Week In Recap: Tech Wizards, Space Wizards And Wizard Wizards

Life as a chestbursting alien, a world record, Oculus launches a contest to find the best wizard, Palmer Luckey returns from the social media wilderness and Nokia getting set to take you to a galaxy far, far away are just some of the virtual reality (VR) related technology, experiences and stories that have come out all within the last week.

As usual, Nina is here to guide you through all the stories of the last seven days with VRTV. What stories really caught your eye this week? Let us know in the comments.

This week’s stories, click here for more information on each:

VRTV Goes Social with Facebook Spaces

Last week Facebook held its 10th annual F8 developer conference where the company makes most of its major announcements. There was a big focus on virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and AI, with one of the big reveals being Facebook Spaces, a dedicated VR social app for Oculus Rift and Touch. VRFocus attended the event and VRTV’s Nina got to try the app first hand.

Facebook Spaces is still in early beta, with the announcement being followed by the app’s launch for users to play with. As Nina found out, this initial version still has a long way to go until its can be considered fully stable.

Even though she was at Facebook not everything went according to plan in the demo, with the PC needing several restarts due to software crashes, sound dropping out and several other issues. When things were working Nina managed to create an avatar and start experimenting with some of the features like contacting people with Facebook Messenger. This again was fraught with complications.

Checkout the video below to see what Nina’s thought’s were on this whole process and whether it’s truly the future Facebook imagines it to be. As always come back to VRFocus everyday for a slice of the latest VR news from around the world.

VRTV: War comes to PlayStation VR and big Hollywood Names Embrace VR.

VRFocus correspondent Nina returns to your screen with the weekly news recap. As usual all the hottest news will be examined, from Nokia’s updating of the OZO content platform, the new features available in Google Earth VR, and the announcement about Ridley Scott’s new virtual reality (VR) studio along with much more.

Scroll down to watch the full VRTV news round up.

VRTV: Nina Heads into the Snow for the Arktika.1 Preview

Nina heads into the frozen wastelands of Arktika.1 in order to give her verdict on the current version of the game.

Arktika 1 is set in a dystopian future where climate change has wrecked the world and reduced the available habitable areas down to a few strips of land by the equator. The player character is located in a colony somewhere in Russia called Arktika.1, which must be defended from enemies and wild beasts.

Movement is handled with a fixed-point teleportation system and the various different types of guns can be reloaded by twisting the controller sideways. 4A Games also worked on the Metro franchise, so much of Arktika.1 will feel familiar to players of those titles.

The title is planned for release on the Oculus Rift with Touch some time in Q3 of 2017.

You can watch Nina’s preview video below.

VRFocus will bring you further information on Arktika 1 when it becomes available.

VRTV: Cyber Tanks, Traditional Tales and… Bill Gates?

Thursday means it’s time once again for your scheduled update of the headlines from the last week courtesy of VRTV, and this on this episode there’s quite the mix of stories for Nina to go through. With everything from new Betas and multiplayer updates for established game titles. To a new party game, a new virtual reality (VR) rendition of a traditional story and one of computing’s biggest names is getting into the Gear VR in a big way.

Click the video below for Nina’s round-up. You can find out more information about the stories mentioned via the links below.

On this week’s VRTV:

VRTV will back on VRFocus at the same time next week, and also on Tuesday where you can catch Nina’s VR review. Check out this week’s review of Lone Echo here.

VRTV: Be The Batman. Use The Force. And… Feel The Bullets?

It’s been a busy week for virtual reality (VR) and a bit of a party week as well. VRFocus video correspondent Nina Salomons steps out of the ongoing EVE Fanfest to bring you the lowdown on all the big stories of the last seven days for this week’s edition of VRTV. Which includes details of a certain brooding billionaire playboy slipping the confines of the PlayStation VR to bring vigilante justice to PC VR.

Both Star Wars and Star Trek fans have had something VR to celebrate this week as well, although one is decidedly more official than the other. PlayStation VR has had a number of releases confirmed and there’s also a new haptic vest is being released for VR player from D&E Tech. How comfortable would you be with being able to feel bullets and explosions though?

Find out more about the stories concerned here:

VRFocus will be back on Tuesday with a VRTV review and will return with another weekly round-up on Thursday.

VRTV: Catching The Ghost Train At Thorpe Park

Last week VRFocus sent our resident video reporter Nina Salomons off to the UK’s Thorpe Park to catch a train. Not just any ordinary train, mind you, but the reworked Derren Brown’s Ghost Train ride.

Originally launched in July last year the multi-sensory experience which features #VR scares provided by the HTC Vive as well as live action, 4D special effects, grand illusion and physical transit in both a Victorian train carriage and more modern London Underground-style train. Sees riders undergoing a number of trials during their journey after a drilling company unleashes a mysterious gas from below the surface of London with a sinister side effect.

Put together in partnership with Brown, a well known UK mentalist and illusionist the ride from beginning to end sees the ride play with your expectations and you’re never quite sure where the queue ends and the ride begins… or even ends. VRFocus tried out the ride at its launch, but found that it failed to “push the right buttons”. Now, newly remodelled to make it even more scary, it’s Nina’s turn to face the underground terrors. What does she make of the new Rise Of The Demon update?

Mind the gap…

 

VRTV Weekly Recap: Gear VR Controller, Oculus Anniversary and The Justice League in VR

It’s that time of the week again as VRFocus correspondent Nina goes over the biggest news from the virtual reality (VR) industry.

Stories include:

  • HTC Vive tracker puck is now available in Europe and is expected t retail for £99.99 (plus tax). The trackers can be added to limbs for controlling virtual reality experiences with your whole body.
  • There is a release date for Summer Lesson, the Japan-only VR experience where the player plays a teacher who is teaching English to a Japanese girl. There are expected to be English subtitle options.
  • The PlayStation VR PS4 pro is now able to play content in 4K.
  • Fallout 4 VR is returning to E3. There will be a Bethesda press conference at the event, but what will be discussed there is not currently known.
  • IMAX and Warner Bros are teaming up to bring out a series of VR experiences tied in to blockbuster Warner Bros movies. The first experience to be released will be The Justice League.
  • MyDream interactive have announced that their VR Toolbox is now available as a free demo for Windows 8 and Windows 10.
  • Michael Hilman has moved from Apple to Oculus and has been appointed head of hardware. He has been hired to help push the Oculus Rift into the mainstream.
  • Oculus are celebrating their 1 Year anniversary with a big sale. A special bundle is available with 11 titles that come with a 66% discount.
  • Samsung have announced a new version of the Gear 360 camera. The new version can shoot 4K images for stills and video. It supports Android and recent iOS devices.
  • The new Samsung Gear VR controller has also been unveiled. There are 70 titles in development for it, with some titles such as Drop Dead and SingSpace already providing full support for the controller.

For future episodes of VRTV and all the latest VR news, keep watching VRFocus.