Wednesday, 31 July 2019

Calling all hardware startups! Apply to Hardware Battlefield @ TC Shenzhen

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Got hardware? Well then, listen up, because our search continues for boundary-pushing, early-stage hardware startups to join us in Shenzhen, China for an epic opportunity; launch your startup on a global stage and compete in Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen on November 11-12.

Apply here to compete in TC Hardware Battlefield 2019. Why? It’s your chance to demo your product to the top investors and technologists in the world. Hardware Battlefield, cousin to Startup Battlefield, focuses exclusively on innovative hardware because, let’s face it, it’s the backbone of technology. From enterprise solutions to agtech advancements, medical devices to consumer product goods — hardware startups are in the international spotlight.

If you make the cut, you’ll compete against 15 of the world’s most innovative hardware makers for bragging rights, plenty of investor love, media exposure and $25,000 in equity-free cash. Just participating in a Battlefield can change the whole trajectory of your business in the best way possible.

We chose to bring our fifth Hardware Battlefield to Shenzhen because of its outstanding track record of supporting hardware startups. The city achieves this through a combination of accelerators, rapid prototyping and world-class manufacturing. What’s more, TC Hardware Battlefield 2019 takes place as part of the larger TechCrunch Shenzhen that runs November 9-12.

Creativity and innovation no know boundaries, and that’s why we’re opening this competition to any early-stage hardware startup from any country. While we’ve seen amazing hardware in previous Battlefields — like robotic armsfood testing devicesmalaria diagnostic tools, smart socks for diabetics and e-motorcycles, we can’t wait to see the next generation of hardware, so bring it on!

Meet the minimum requirements listed below, and we’ll consider your startup:

Here’s how Hardware Battlefield works. TechCrunch editors vet every qualified application and pick 15 startups to compete. Those startups receive six rigorous weeks of free coaching. Forget stage fright. You’ll be prepped and ready to step into the spotlight.

Teams have six minutes to pitch and demo their products, which is immediately followed by an in-depth Q&A with the judges. If you make it to the final round, you’ll repeat the process in front of a new set of judges.

The judges will name one outstanding startup the Hardware Battlefield champion. Hoist the Battlefield Cup, claim those bragging rights and the $25,000. This nerve-wracking thrill-ride takes place in front of a live audience, and we capture the entire event on video and post it to our global audience on TechCrunch.

Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen takes place on November 11-12. Don’t hide your hardware or miss your chance to show us — and the entire tech world — your startup magic. Apply to compete in TC Hardware Battlefield 2019, and join us in Shenzhen!

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.



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The best virtual reality games

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Whether you own a PlayStation VR, and Oculus Rift, or an HTC Vive, you have a ton of different choices when it comes to games. These are 15 of the best virtual reality games available right now.

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Dreading 10x engineers, virtual beings, the fate of Netflix, and Salesforce’s acquisition

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The dreaded 10x, or, how to handle exceptional employees

The reality (myth?) is that there are engineers who are ten times more productive than other engineers (some would argue 100x, but okay). Jon Evans, who is CTO at HappyFunCorp, dives into the strengths and weaknesses of these vaunted people and how to manage them and their relationships with other team members.

The anti-10x squad raises many important and valid — frankly, obvious and inarguable — points. Go down that Twitter thread and you’ll find that 10x engineers are identified as: people who eschew meetings, work alone, rarely look at documentation, don’t write much themselves, are poor mentors, and view process, meetings, or training as reasons to abandon their employer. In short, they are unbelievably terrible team members.

Is software a field like the arts, or sports, in which exceptional performers can exist? Sure. Absolutely. Software is Extremistan, not Mediocristan, as Nassim Taleb puts it.

A guide to Virtual Beings and how they impact our world

If your 10x engineers are too annoying to deal with, maybe consider just getting virtual beings instead. The inaugural Virtual Beings Summit was held recently in San Francisco, a conference designed to bring together storyline editors, virtual reality engineers, influencer marketers and more to consider the future of “virtual beings.”



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Porting To Oculus Quest: How To Optimize And Maximize Your VR Game

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We talk to PolyArc (Moss) and Schell Games (I Expect You to Die) on the technical limitations of the Oculus Quest and what untethered control means for virtual reality.


With the launch of the Oculus Quest several games that were previously on the company’s Rift headset were ported to the new hardware. Unlike games that emphasize standing or moving around such as Beat Saber and Superhot VR, several of these ports were simply stationary, sit-down experiences.

I spoke to the developers behind two of the more critically-acclaimed sit-down games — Polyarc who developed Moss and Schell Games who developed I Expect You to Die (IEYTD) — about what the Oculus Quest brings for their stationary titles and the challenge of facing the Quest’s technical limitations.

Oculus Quest

The Limits Of Oculus Quest

Schell Games had to deal with a variety of specific issues in porting IEYTD to the Quest’s mobile hardware.

“We had a number of issues, GPU issues and CPU issues,” says Mike Lew, the Engineering Director for I Expect You To Die ports. “On the GPU side, the larger issue is something called overdraw. Overdraw is really expensive on a mobile architecture. Overdraw occurs when you have two objects overlap and maybe one is transparent. And so you’re writing to the same pixel more than once. Some of the things we did to reduce this was we had to downsize a lot our particle systems.”

Another issue was the number of draw calls going to the CPU, the number of times in a scene you are instructing the CPU to create something in the game. A typical level in the PC version of IEYTD had 400 to 500 draw calls. For the Quest version, so the game would not bottleneck at the CPU, the team had to reduce this to 130.

To achieve this reduction, they had to use a technique called Atlasing, to combine assets in the game, to reduce the sheer number of things in each puzzling level of the game.

“When you are building an environment, you are building things one piece at a time,” says Lew. “When you look at the Submarine Castle [a level in the game], the whole thing isn’t one piece. There’s the castle walls, and the pipes, and the valves, all the little intricate pieces. When they are created, they are separate. So one of the things, we did is called Atlasing. We can take a lot of these meshes that exist in a scene and combine the textures into a single texture. So they end up resolving in one draw call instead of X number, where X is how many items there are. That really saved us a ton.”

To reduce the load on the GPU, they used some software assistance that Oculus built into the Quest: Fixed Foveated Rendering (FFR). This is when there is a set pattern of areas along the edges of the screen where the game’s resolution is reduced. Less pixels to push means less for the GPU to worry about.

“FFR has a few settings, where it goes from low to high. I think we did medium,” says John Kolencheryl, Project Director of I Expect You To Die ports. “What that gives us is a lesser number of pixels to draw and that ended up being a big win for us. We started off with a High setting and then you can see when you moved up and down you could see the pixelation that’s happening. After several optimizations, we asked ourselves how low can we get with Fixed Foveated Rendering. We were super happy with the result.”

FFR is especially important considering the way VR headsets project an image into your eyes. On the screen for each eye will be an image that has to be warped, to have a bulging center and curved edges. This is called “barreling.” This is done so that once the image goes through the lenses, which warps them the opposite way as they enter your vision, you have a flat image for each eye.

“The pixels don’t have the same density throughout your vision, because the lenses are curved,” says Lew. “So you see the pixels in the center of the screen as being larger than the pixels in your periphery. This means that to produce a high quality image, you want to be pushing more pixels to the screen, because the ones you look at the most, in the center, are larger. So FFR is the counter to that. You can shave off a lot of the really dense pixels in your periphery. It actually ended up affording us about 10 frames per second in our performance. It made a huge difference,” said Lew.

On top of all the CPU and GPU issues Schell Games found, there had to face the memory limitations of the Oculus Quest too.

“Oculus reports that you have around 3.75 GB of memory to work with,” says Lew. “Realistically, it’s closer to 2 GB and that’s because there’s still the operating system and other stuff running in the background.  If you use up too much memory in the game, you will start running into issues with the things running in the background, which includes the software for tracking the controllers. ‘Why is my tracking degrading?’ Because you are hitting a memory cap that came up faster than you’re expecting. We reduced selectively some texture sizes and things like that to make up for those differences. Once you learn the rules of thumb, it’s not too bad.”

The engineers at PolyArc had their own specific issues with the limited performance of the Quest when porting third-person adventure game, Moss.

“We didn’t want to compromise on the design of the game,” says Josh Stiksma, principal designer at PolyArc. “We really wanted it to be the same core experience, the same connection with Quill, the same immersion in the world. But we hit that limitation when we hit the graphic-side of things. We couldn’t push as many verts, we couldn’t have as complex shaders. If you look at the game that Moss is, it’s quite a large world, with a lot of different diorama rooms. We got over 80 of them, by the time we released on Quest with the new content.”

While Moss is known for its lush art featuring a quaint forest world, the developers had to scale back on the graphics of the game for it to work on Oculus Quest. This not only meant simplifying the shaders, much like Superhot and others had to do, but it also meant redrawing all the texture art.

“We had to recreate a second level of all of our artwork to make sure it worked on the Quest. It was a significant amount of work,” says Stiksma. “One of our dedicated technical artists started early on doing the transition, to crack open all the levels and figure out the right way to optimize them. It took maybe 6 to 9 man-months for the art, a considerable amount of time so that we had multiple people working on it. It was a large task.”

But Stiksma stands by the resulting version of Moss that came to Oculus Quest.

“One of the things we are super proud of, that a lot of players feels that we still hit a really high quality bar,” says Stiksma. “For us, that’s really important to the experience. There are similar objects, but they’re running much simpler textures. We were able to stay true to the design of Moss in nearly all the aspects.”

oculus quest

Oculus Quest And Standalone VR

At some point in my discussions with developers about the technical and graphical hurdles to overcome when developing for Quest, the conversations turn to the virtues of the platform.

“We definitely believe in playing to the strength of the hardware,” says Stiksma. That’s how we are going to continue to make amazing VR experiences. I think the Quest is definitely the one pushing that to the forefront.”

One of the big components of how Quest switches up the developers’ games is the freedom to move, even if the original game was not developed with 360-degree movement and room-scale space in mind.

“We initially envisioned Moss as a seated experience, where you can sit down and play with this diorama, go on this meaningful adventure with Quill, and be invited into this world,” says Stiksma. “Where 360 might be more attuned to more room scale, moving around the room, see everything that’s behind you, experience. That’s something for us to explore.”

It was a similar issue with Schell Games, as they brought a seated experience to room-scale hardware.

“We talked about how on the Quest that players will be able to get up and just walk about and go through geometry,” says Kolencheryl. “We decided not to do anything about it. Keeping feature parity [between VR platforms] is something that we want to maintain. There are ways to break our game if you walk around. But in our playtests we have not seen that happen much. And usually it is done by players who are curious to what goes on beyond the level.”

Both companies designed additional content for their games in recent months. Moss includes several new levels called the “Twilight Garden” when it launched on Quest, with those new levels recently moving to other platforms. The team kept Oculus Quest in mind when it came to those new levels.

“What affected how we crafted Twilight Garden, we approached it with a more of an optimized mind set when we were designing the spaces: what would work really well with the hardware of the Quest,” says Stiksma. “We were constrained by other things like space and your range of motion, your freedom of movement, 180-degrees on the PlayStation VR, for example. We can’t go super crazy with some of the things that we think are amazing advantages of having the Quest, but we did really want to focus on stuff that would showcase what was possible with the hardware.”

Similarly, Schell Games recently released a new level for I Expect You to Die, called “Seat of Power.” This level, too, required extra considerations with Oculus Quest finally launched.

“In ‘Seat of Power,’ — this is a minor spoiler — there is a moment where you have X-Ray vision,” says Lew. “That had some challenges to meet our performance. We ended up reducing the resolution of the game to 80%. But you are in X-ray vision mode; you don’t get all the colors. It’s very abstract from a post-processing effect. And so it was really hard to notice the change in resolution. So it was a really hard to notice, so that ended up being a pretty good solve for us without impacting our design of the level too much.”

Until You Fall Schell Games Sword Fighting

Schell Games, on the other hand, has already announced sword fighting game Until You Fall. This game, unlike IEYTD, is a new title in a post-Quest world and supports players being on their feet.

“For Until You Fall, we are supporting sitting and standing,” says said Dave Bennett, Project Director of Until You Fall. “Because Until You Fall is an action game where you are fighting for your life against these dudes with swords, a big thing is, because we need to support the front-facing cameras, is to build reminders and safety features so that if you turn away from the camera for so long, it will let you reset. So you turn in the game world, but not in the real world. So it’s a little weird. You can quick turn toward the enemies without having to turn your physical body. It’s finding ways to let you move within the game environment comfortably,”

And the developer’s process of adapting IEYTD to the less powerful Quest helped them create Until You Fall.

Even for higher-end VR, performance is still super important,” says Bennet. “The way you go about building the levels, the assets, everything is super intentional. Trying to reduce the draw calls, reduce the strain on CPUs, because you drawing everything twice, once for each eyeball. And then if you are going to increase the post-processing, that’s a multiplier on top of that. Especially with Until You Fall, where we are trying to go for this crazy neon, 80s hellscape where we want to get this cool glowing effect in this really specific style, we have to make a bunch of concessions in certain areas to make sure to preserve these post effects. It is really about making choices.”

These decisions made for Until You Fall, and the very existence of both the Moss and IEYTD ports for Quest, offer a view into the strange position developers find themselves in. Do you make games for the innovative new headsets, like Oculus Quest or Index, that have smaller audiences? Or do you go where the players are on other headsets, despite the movement and play area limitations?

“The Quest gives us way more freedom than maybe the other platforms in some areas, but you can’t design for the best part of every platform,” says Lew. “You got to maintain platform parity. So—“

“—the worst part of every platform,” finished Bennett with a laugh.

oculus quest case

But in all seriousness, developers have this awkward push-pull situation while VR goes through its growing pains: make cool games that capitalize on the latest tech, and yet be beholden to legacy platforms.

“Until more headsets out there have the capability of going 360, we are probably going to be a little bit beholden, just because we want to reach as many people as we can with our games,” says Stiksma. “We’re going to start looking at its little bit more, with the Quest pushing that. I think other studios are going to take more notice of it. It’s something for us to evaluate.”

Regardless of where these developers approach these considerations in their games, the way they look at it, it is one step toward the future of VR.

“I was quite impressed with how well it performs,” says Lew. “I know we’ve talked about performance concerns, but it easily is the best standalone device I’ve personally ever tried. I was really impressed with the hardware when we got it…So as a developer we are really excited for this new hardware. It’s really rewarding to find new methods of input or new ways to push presence and immersion in VR.”

The post Porting To Oculus Quest: How To Optimize And Maximize Your VR Game appeared first on UploadVR.



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Jeffrey Epstein, Surrounded by Scientific Luminaries, Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA


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HTC Vive Cosmos Comfort Video

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Time Stall Trailer (Force Field Entertainment) – Quest

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Special Force VR: Infinity War (Reality MagiQ) – Rift, Vive, Windows VR

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SIGGRAPH 2019 Show Floor Walk Through VR Everywhere

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Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker Labo VR Trailer (Nintendo) – Labo VR

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Talking Accurate AR with Scape Technologies

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Undersea: A Magical Deep Sea Magic Leap AR Experience

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Disney’s Bruce Wright Explains A Kite’s Tail Animated Short At SIGGRAPH

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August PlayStation Plus Games Include Wipeout Omega Collection With Free VR Support

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Today Sony announced the next batch of games that will be free to download for all PlayStation Plus subscribers and for the first time in a long time one of them has VR support: Wipeout VR!

Starting on August 6th (PS Plus titles always refresh on the first Tuesday of every month) subscribers can download and play Wipeout Omega Collection (which includes free VR support) and Sniper Elite 4. This is one of the better months in terms of quality in a while for even non-VR gamers, but the inclusion of one of PSVR’s very best games, period, really puts it over the top. Read why in our full Wipeout VR review.

If you’ve never played Wipeout Omega Collection or aren’t a big Wipeout fan to begin with, then you’re in for a real treat. The Wipeout games are all about speed and sleek futuristic settings. You’ll zip around tracks at blistering paces, shoot rockets at your enemies, and get a ton of air-time bounding through the air, around loops, and through corners. It’s mesmerizing visually and absolutely heart-pounding.

Even if you’ve played Wipeout before, you haven’t played it like this. Wipeout VR is a special experience.

Sniper Elite 4 may not have VR support, but Sniper Elite VR is in development and takes place in the exact same universe by the exact same devleopers. We played it at E3 2019 and really enjoyed it, nominating it for Best of Show VR game while we were there. You can watch some gameplay, read impressions, and see an interview with one of the developers right here.

Are you looking forward to downloading Wipeout VR next week? We’ll probably stream it some so maybe we will see you out there.

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HTC Releases 3 Vive Cosmos Trailers Ahead of Confirmed Q3 Launch

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HTC took another step towards launch of its upcoming PC VR headset, Vive Cosmos, by quietly releasing three ‘reveal’ videos featuring some of the system’s claims to fame.

While it’s positive to see that they’ve locked down the headset and controllers’ design, we’re still no closer to understanding some important details about the headset though—namely price and exact release date—however it could signal that HTC is finally getting ready to let the cat out of the bag.

Moreover, the Cosmos reveal video itself boldly claims “the time had come,” so it’s possible we could be looking at some more substantial info soon.

We’ve listed the videos below, but let’s first talk about some of the important info we already knew:

  • Resolution – 1,440 × 1,700 per-eye (2,880 × 1,700 total), an 88% increase in pixel count over the original Vive at 1,080 × 1,200 per-eye
  • Display type – RGB LCD displays
  • Refresh rate – 90Hz
  • Tracking – 6 inside-out sensors
  • Controllers – optically tracked
  • Audio – integrated, flip-up design
  • Input – USB & DisplayPort, Vive Wireless Adapter, teased connectivity with smartphone
  • Price – below $900 (confirmed by HTC in June)
  • Expected Shipping – Q3 2019 (confirmed by HTC in June), Dev kits heading to developers
SEE ALSO
Viveport Has Earned a Second Chance Thanks to Infinity

Outside of price and shipping, a few things are still a mystery, namely field of view (FOV), and further details on the system’s inside-out tracking. Although the video at the very bottom does give us an exact weight, 651g (~1.43 pounds). We’ve listed the video description below each video.

Vive Cosmos Reveal

This is the all-new HTC VIVE COSMOS VR kit. Designed with the lightest weight, best-in-class resolution and ready for you.

Vive Cosmos Controllers

Take a peek at the new HTC VIVE COSMOS controllers. The gamer-friendly controls & seamless tracking on the VIVE COSMOS controllers are designed to give you greater control of your VR experience.

Ergonomic Trailer

The all-new HTC VIVE COSMOS is designed to be sleek & comfortable; allowing for longer VR sessions.

The post HTC Releases 3 Vive Cosmos Trailers Ahead of Confirmed Q3 Launch appeared first on Road to VR.



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New HTC Vive Cosmos Video Focuses On Comfort

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HTC’s Vive Cosmos finally remerged late last month and then swiftly disappeared again. But now it’s back again again with a new video.

This latest look at the headset focuses on comfort. Like the recently-released Oculus Rift S, Vive Cosmos adopts a halo strap similar to the one seen in Sony’s PSVR. You can see one user twisting a knob on the back to adjust the fit too. Cosmos’ screen also flips up (finally!) to allow fast access to the real world.

The video also mentions some interesting stats. Firstly, Cosmos weighs in at 651 grams. HTC says this makes it the lightest Vive headset to date. The face pad is also made of synthetic leather which should make it easier to clean after those marathon Beat Saber sessions.

It all looks pretty promising. Done right, Cosmos could occupy an interesting middle ground between the accessible Oculus Rift S and the higher-spec but more expensive Valve Index. That said, we’re still waiting to try Cosmos for ourselves. The headset now features six cameras for inside-out tracking and will run on HTC’s new Vive Reality platform. Crucially, Cosmos will be a modular headset that HTC says will have scalability. We’re still yet to learn the extent of this feature, but we do know it will be able to run on PCs and likely other devices like smartphones.

For now, we know the kit’s set to launch later this year. Details like pricing are still to come, however. Still, there’s not too many months left in 2019, so expect information sooner rather than later.

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‘Star Trek: Away Mission’ Multiplayer VR Game Coming to Sandbox VR This Fall

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Sandbox VR, the location-based VR facility, today unveiled a new Star Trek multiplayer game that, unlike previous Star Trek VR titles, is a free-roaming experience.

As reported by Variety, Star Trek Discovery: Away Mission is slated to arrive this fall at existing Sandbox VR locations in Hong Kong, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles; the experience will roll out in new locations in New York, Austin, San Diego and Chicago at a later date.

Unlike the franchise’s ship-bound VR games Star Trek Bridge Crew (2017) and Dave & Buster’s exclusive Star Trek: Dark Remnant, Away Mission tasks up to six players with beaming down to the surface of an ice moon to investigate a distress signal from a lost spaceship.

Being on the surface of a presumably hostile moon means phasers are involved, along with series’ iconic tricorders. Game designer Michael Hampden says it will feature some combat situations, however the game’s focus is more on collective problem solving than just single-person shooter scenarios. “We are trying to recreate the Star Trek experience,” he told Variety.

USS Discovery crew member Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman) lends her voice to the experience, which is said to lasts for around 30 minutes.

SEE ALSO
Out-of-home VR Destination Sandbox VR Closes $68M Series A Financing

Sandbox VR takes a different approach to location-based VR pioneer The Void, which features large-scale tracking volumes, interactive sets, and real-time effects. Instead, Sandbox VR focuses more on greater scalablity, owed in part to its reduced complexity and physical footprint.

Star Trek Discovery: Away Mission is the company’s first branded VR experiences, which was built in partnership with CBS Interactive. It comes alongside three in-house developed IPs: a futuristic shooter, a haunted house, and an underwater treasure hunting adventure.

Sandbox VR hasn’t mentioned how it’s going to price the Star Trek experience yet, although the company typically charges around $40 per person for a 30-minute playsession.

The post ‘Star Trek: Away Mission’ Multiplayer VR Game Coming to Sandbox VR This Fall appeared first on Road to VR.



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Tobii Making Foveated Rendering Eye-Tracking Tech Available To New Headsets

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Earlier this year Tobii and HTC Vive partnered to bring foveated rendering tech to the new HTC Vive Pro Eye. Now, Tobii is opening its platform up for others to use.

At Siggraph this week the company announced Tobii Spotlight Technology. It’s essentially the same tech already utilized in Vive Pro Eye. Tobii’s eye-tracking technology is able to decipher the specific area of a VR display the user is looking at. The headset then only fully renders the direct center of that area. Areas away from the center of your vision aren’t fully rendered. This is imperceptible to your peripheral vision.

This drastically reduces the strain on hardware processing a VR experience. As such, foveated rendering is largely considered to be one of the key components of bringing VR costs down in the future. A Tobii spokesperson told UploadVR that “Spotlight Technology is intended to support a variety of headsets, including both tethered and standalone headsets.” News on software development kits (SDKs) for Spotlight will also be coming “soon.”

Specific partners weren’t announced today. Vive Pro Eye is an enterprise-level headset, though. Hopefully this news means we’ll start to see eye-tracking in other, consumer-focused devices soon.

Tobii did provide its own benchmarking results for using dynamic foveated rendering in Epic’s ShowdownVR app with the Vive Pro Eye running on Nvidia RTX 2070. You can see those results above, though obviously take note that these are company-generated stats and not something we can verify ourselves.

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Facebook is making progress with its plan to let you type with your mind

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Facebook talked a couple of years ago about creating technology that lets you type with your mind. Aimed primarily at patients with speech loss due to paralysis, the company recently offered an update on its ambitious project.

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Star Trek: Away Mission Is A Free Roam VR Arcade Game

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It’s time to boldly go to the final frontier in VR (again); a new Star Trek VR arcade game is in the works.

Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission is in development at Sandbox VR, Variety reports. In this 30 minute experience, up to six friends will investigate the icy surface of a moon in search of a lost ship. You’ll join Starfleet office Sylvia Tilly to solve problems and even engage in a few shootouts. Yes, that means you’ll wield the iconic Phaser in VR.

Sandbox is working closely with CBS on the project. There’s a teaser trailer below, though it doesn’t tell us much.

Speaking to the site, Sandbox Chief Product Officer Siqui Chen called the experience a “0.1 version of the holodeck” that Trek itself made famous. The experience will debut at Sandbox’s Hong Kong and San Francisco locations this fall before coming to new facilities in New York, Austin, San Diego and Chicago.

Sandbox’s VR arcade offering includes full-body motion capture in free-roaming VR locations. You strap markers to your body to bring your hands and feet into VR. We went hands-on with one of its original games last year, and the company’s since raised $68 million in funding.

Of course, this isn’t Star Trek’s first VR mission. A few years back Ubisoft brought us Star Trek: Bridge Crew, a cooperative multiplayer game that let teams pilot iconic vessels. We’re big fans of it, but it only offers a small slice of the wider Star Trek experience. Away Mission certainly seems to be appealing to the other side of the franchise. We’ll be interested to check it out later on in the year.

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Firewall Zero Hour’s Next Operation, Dark Web, Hits This August

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Firewall Zero Hour (review) from First Contact Entertainment is almost a year old and it’s still going strong. For a multiplayer-focused VR game, that’s extremely rare. Now, Operation: Dark Web is only two weeks away with an August 13th launch.

Earlier this year Operation: Nightfall released as a ground-up relaunch of the entire game, for all intents and purposes. The entire UI was overhauled with a brand new look and flow, they added a Season Pass-style system similar to games like Fortnite, PUBG, and Dauntless that unlocks rewards gradually over time, and it delivered new maps, new contractors, and mission to complete. That was Season One. Now, Season Two is about to kick off with Operation: Dark Web.

We don’t know any additional details yet about Firewall Zero Hour’s Operation: Dark Web, but based on what Nightfall included it’s fair to assume lots of new customization options to unlock, new maps to play on, and new missions to focus on.

Firewall Zero Hour is published by Sony and is a PlayStation VR exclusive. It’s still one of the best PSVR games and we awarded it our Game of the Year for 2018. Shortly after the launch of Nightfall earlier this year though, it was slammed by a weeks-long plague of server issues. Thankfully, most of those seem to be resolved now as of the time of this writing.

Are you still playing Firewall Zero Hour? Let us know down in the comments below and if you have any big plans for Operation: Dark Web when it releases in just a couple of weeks.

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OC6 Registration Opens, Respawn’s ‘AAA First-Person Combat’ Game Playable

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Oculus Connect 6 is fast approaching, and registration for the event is now open.

Hopeful attendees can now sign up for a spot at this year’s developer conference. Note that Oculus Connect 6 isn’t a consumer show; it’s specifically designed for people making VR apps. That said, there’s some exciting stuff on the VR gaming front.

Earlier this year Oculus confirmed Respawn Entertainment’s long-anticipated VR game would debut at the show. Now Oculus has confirmed that the ‘AAA first-person combat title’ will be playable at the event.

We’ve been looking forward to this one for a while. Respawn is of course the developer behind Titanfall, Apex Legends and the upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Their Oculus exclusive was first announced back in 2017 and we’ve been asking after it ever since. Further details aren’t yet known but we’ll keep you posted.

Finally, Oculus confirmed the first batch of sessions and panels for this year’s show. Oculus for Business will be taking to the stage to talk about the logistics of running enterprise VR. A group of panelists will also discuss the secrets to success on the Oculus Store. Facebook Tech Comms Manager Lisa Brown Jaloza will also talk about ‘How AR + VR Connects Us to the World’. More sessions will be announced over the coming months.

Oculus Connect 6 runs on September 25 + 26. On top of these sessions you can expect the traditional opening keynote from top Facebook execs and the return of John Carmack’s app reviews. We’ll of course be at the show to bring you all of the latest headlines.

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Time Stall Is A Time-Bending VR Oculus Quest Exclusive From Force Field

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Landfall developer Force Field Entertainment is back with its latest Oculus Quest exclusive, Time Stall.

Time Stall cropped up on Quest’s coming soon section today, but the trailer below confirms it’s coming August 15. Oculus Studios is publishing the game so don’t expect to see it anywhere else.

It’s a puzzle game in which humanity has abandoned Earth and taken to the stars in a luxury escape craft (crowdfunded of course). The ship’s crew is mostly comprised of robots, but you take on the role of a human that looks after the vessel’s safety.

To do this, you use a safe protocol named Time Stall. It’s pretty much what it says on the tin; it temporarily freezes time so that you can rearrange hazards and avoid disaster. Judging by trailer, you can expect to solve catastrophes in the ship’s kitchen, accidentally head to outer space and more. Think Wall-E meets… some superhero that can pause time.

It sounds a little like a sci-fi take on Just In Time Inc, a likeable puzzle game that cast you as client’s bodyguard. Time Stall looks a little more physics-based, though.

For now the game’s only confirmed for Oculus Quest. We wouldn’t be surprised to see it carry over to Oculus Rift at some point, but no confirmation on that for now. There’s no listed price, either.

Force Field is actually behind a good number of experiences on Quest now. A few weeks back it launched a port of its Anne Frank’s House VR experience and it also developed the National Geographic Explore VR experience for Quest launch.

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Community Download: What Should Be Someone’s First VR Experience?

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Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today, we want to know what you think everyone’s first VR experience should be.


Alright, full disclosure: I totally forgot to post a Community Download this past Monday. And then I forgot again on Tuesday. I don’t really have an excuse. But we’re back finally today!

SIGGRAPH is going on this week and I considered making the topic focused on that, but instead I decided to go a bit more broad. If you’re a big fan of VR then chances are you can trace that all back to a singular moment. Maybe it was watching Star Trek as a kid and seeing the Holodeck or maybe there was a movie or anime or game that really sold you on the idea. Or maybe you just tried on a VR headset for the first time and that initial, first VR experience just totally blew you away.

Whatever the case may be, something turned you into a true believer of VR technology and if you’re anything like me, you love introducing it to people for the first time to spread the wonder. As a result, you probably have a short list of must-try first VR experiences, apps, videos, or games that you always show someone whether that be on your Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, or even a higher-end wired device like a Rift, Vive, Index, or PSVR.

So when that time arises: What should be someone’s first VR experience? Which games, apps, or experiences are crucial for newcomers to try?

Let us know your picks down in the comments below! Our favorite answers will be featured in this Friday’s weekly VRecap news show.

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Tuesday, 30 July 2019

Virtual reality to solve minor personal problems


A new study shows that conversation with oneself embodied as Dr. Sigmund Freud works better to improve people's mood, compared to just talking about your problems in a virtual conversation with pre-scripted comments. Researchers claimed that the method could be used by clinicians to help people dealing with minor personal problems. via Latest Science News -- ScienceDaily https://ift.tt/2ZmUdYP

Exploring An AR Coral Reef Bursting With Life In Magic Leap’s ‘Undersea’, Available Now

HP Reverb Still ‘Sold Out’ as Reports of Display Issues Continue

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After several weeks of delays from the May 6th launch date, HP said that their new Reverb VR headset should be restocked at their official website and major retailers in July, though it seems only a small number of were made available before the headset returned to being ‘sold out’. The bumpy launch continues to be plagued by reports of display issues.

Update (July 30th, 2019): HP had expected that new stock of the Pro and Consumer Edition Reverb headset would be available in July, though it appears that only a very limited number of headsets became available for sale. Users over at the WindowsVR subreddit spotted some stock at Best Buy earlier this month but said it was gone within 30 minutes. Presently the headset remains ‘sold out’ at HP.com, Amazon, and Best Buy, with no estimates for stock replenishment.

A spokesperson for HP tells Road to VR that the company is still working on the shortage, but doesn’t have a firm timeline at present. HP maintains that the near unavailability of the headset is due to “incredibly high demand,” but a surprising number of user reported display issues, and a purported HP insider, tell a different story.

Throughout July reports of display issues have continued, similar to those seen in June. A user on Reddit who claims to work for HP and be directly involved with Reverb said at the end of June that the company is actively testing returned headsets in an effort uncover the display issues.

At present we are capturing DOA units to get an handle on all the symptoms reported and we’re plowing through any stock we have here to see if we can repro what is being seen. (I’m testing units at my desk as we speak.)

Luckily, we found on[e] in the office that was having the dimmed LCD issue so we have a bit of a head start.

The fixes will be implemented as soon as we discover what is driving them. (The ‘cable issue’ is the easy one had has been fixed already.)

We hope to hear from HP when they have fully solved Reverb’s issues and the headset becomes readily available for purchase.


Update (June 12th, 2019): HP today told Road to VR that an initial supply of the Reverb headset was recently offered and quickly sold out at HP.com. The company says that more stock of both the Reverb Pro Edition and Reverb Consumer Edition is expected in July, and will be available from HP, Amazon, and Best Buy.

Some early adopters who have received retail Reverb headsets a reporting a range of display issues from dimming and flickering to mis-mapped pixels and blank screens. Users over at the Windows VR section of Reddit are pooling reports of Reverb display problems in an effort to determine the root cause. We didn’t encounter any such issues in our Reverb review.

We’ve reached out to HP for comment on the display issues, which some suspect were related to the headset’s delayed launch.


Update (May 26th, 2019): We’ve checked in with HP for an update on Reverb availability at several points since the May 6th launch date, but the company has declined to offer an update on when they expect the headset to be available, or what has caused the delay. We’re told they’ll be in touch when more information is available.

Original Article (May 14th, 2019): HP’s new Reverb headset boasts high resolution displays and a new design. Though it’s primarily aimed toward enterprise customers, HP is also planning to sell direct to consumers.

In fact the $600 HP Reverb Consumer Edition can already be seen listed on Amazon and Best Buy in the US, but both stores list ‘Out of Stock’. The $650 Reverb Professional Edition is also listed as ‘Out of Stock’ on HP’s store.

“We’re waiting on an update for expected availability to purchase and will let you know as we have a new date confirmed,” an HP spokesperson told Road to VR on May 6th; we’ve reached out in the interim but still haven’t received an update on availability of the headset.

SEE ALSO
HP Reverb Review – An Impressive Headset Stuck with Windows VR Controllers

In our review of the HP Reverb we found it to be a meaningful upgrade from the original HP headset, but the headset is held back from its true potential by an issue impacting display clarity and the same controllers flaws shared by other Windows VR headsets.

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Disney’s Latest VR Film ‘A Kite’s Tale’ Is Adorable, Albeit Very Short

Facebook wants its augmented reality glasses to read your mind

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It turns out Facebook's research into brain-reading computers is still very much alive, and the work could have significant implications for another one of the company's ambitious projects: augmented reality glasses. 

On Tuesday, Facebook gave its first significant update on its brain-computer interface research since it first introduced the project onstage at F8 in 2017. The ultimate goal of the work, as Facebook has described it, is to create a system that can "decode silent speech" without the need for implanting electrodes into the brain. 

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, who have been collaborating with Facebook, say they have taken an important step toward that goal in a new paper published in Nature. The researchers, who were working with people already having brain surgery for epilepsy, created an algorithm that was able to "decode a small set of full, spoken words and phrases from brain activity in real time." Read more...

More about Tech, Facebook, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Tech

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VR massages: Like 'Black Mirror,' but actually enjoyable

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Esqapes virtual reality massage
$$45
The Good
Unexpectedly relaxing • Affordable • Immersive elements are creative and effective
The Bad
It's not a real massage • Dystopian future vibes
The Bottom Line
The VR massage relaxes you by engaging your curiosity and giving you an affordable, any time escape.
⚡ Mashable Score 4.0
😎 Cool Factor 3.0
📘Learning Curve 4.5
💪Performance 4.0
💵 Bang for the Buck 4.5

I'm sitting in a shallow pool, with palm trees in my view, and the sun warming me from above — but my feet aren't getting wet. That's because I'm inhabiting a Virtual Reality paradise (courtesy of an Oculus Rift S headset), while a massage chair squeezes my calves and forearms, and a fan and sun lamp warm me and keep me cool at the same time.  Read more...

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Facebook Is Researching Brain Scanning As The Input Device For AR Glasses

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Facebook’s AR/VR research division is developing a non-invasive brain scanning technology as a potential input device for its future consumer AR glasses.

While Facebook hasn’t yet announced AR glasses as a specific product, the company has confirmed it is developing them. A Business Insider report early this year quoted a source as stating that it “resembled traditional glasses”.

In today’s blog post, Facebook describes its end goal as “the ultimate form factor of a pair of stylish, augmented reality (AR) glasses.”

A major challenge in shipping consumer AR glasses however is the input method. A traditional controller, such as those used with many VR devices, would not be practical for glasses you want to wear out and about on the street. Similarly, while voice recognition is now a mature technology, people tend to not want to give potentially private commands out loud in front of strangers.

A brain computer interface (BCI) could allow users to control their glasses, and even type words and sentences, by just thinking.

“A decade from now, the ability to type directly from our brains may be accepted as a given,” states the blog post. “Not long ago, it sounded like science fiction. Now, it feels within plausible reach.”

Invasive Is Not An Option

Almost all high-quality BCI options today are invasive, meaning they place electrodes against the brain which require surgery for insertion. Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink is planning to use a robot to insert tiny “threads” into the brain, but this is obviously still impractical for a mass market product.

Mark Chevillet

Facebook’s BCI program is directed by Mark Chevillet. Chevillet holds a PhD in Neuroscience and was previously a professor and program manager at Johns Hopkins University’s neuroscience department. There he worked on a project to build a communications device for people who could not speak.

Invasive Proof Of Concept

Before figuring out how to read thoughts non-invasively, Chevillet needed to figure out whether it was possible in the first place. He reached out to Edward Chang, a colleague and neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

To prove that the concept is possible, the UCSF researchers used invasive ECoG (electrocorticography) and were able to get up to 76% accuracy in detecting utterances the subjects were thinking of.

Previous research projects have achieved this with offline processing, but this result was achieved in real time. The system can currently only detect a limited vocabulary of words and phrases, but the researchers are working to improve that.

Near Infrared Imaging

To achieve similar results without brain implants, new technologies and breakthroughs will be required. Facebook has partnered with Washington University and Johns Hopkins to research near-infrared light imaging.

If you’ve ever shined a red light against your finger you’ll notice that the light passes through. The researchers are using this concept to sense “shifts in oxygen levels within the brain” caused by neurons consuming oxygen when active- an indirect measure of brain activity.

This is similar to the techniques used by Mary Lou Jepsen’s startup Openwater. Jepsen worked at Facebook in 2015 as an executive for Oculus, researching advanced technologies for AR and VR. While Openwater’s goal is to replace MRI and CT scanners, Facebook is clear that it has no interest in developing medical devices.

FRL BCI

The current prototype is described as “bulky, slow, and unreliable”, but Facebook hopes that if it can one day recognize even a handful of phrases like “home” “select” and “delete” it could, combined with other technologies like eye tracking, be a compelling input solution for its future AR glasses.

Direct Cellular Imaging

If near infrared imaging of blood oxygenation isn’t sufficient, Facebook is looking into direct imaging of blood vessels and even neurons:

Thanks to the commercialization of optical technologies for smartphones and LiDAR, we think we can create small, convenient BCI devices that will let us measure neural signals closer to those we currently record with implanted electrodes — and maybe even decode silent speech one day.

It could take a decade, but we think we can close the gap.”

Privacy & Responsibility

Of course, the idea of Facebook literally reading your brain may bring major privacy concerns to mind. Such data could be used for targeted advertising with unprecedented fidelity, or more nefarious purposes.

“We’ve already learned a lot,” says Chevillet. “For example, early in the program, we asked our collaborators to share some de-identified electrode recordings from epilepsy patients with us so we could validate how their software worked. While this is very common in the research community and is now required by some journals, as an added layer of protection, we no longer have electrode data delivered to us at all.”

He goes on:

“We can’t anticipate or solve all of the ethical issues associated with this technology on our own,” Chevillet says. “What we can do is recognize when the technology has advanced beyond what people know is possible, and make sure that information is delivered back to the community. Neuroethical design is one of our program’s key pillars — we want to be transparent about what we’re working on so that people can tell us their concerns about this technology.”

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How BigScreen Can Help Make Traditional Gaming Feel Less Lonely

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BigScreen VR is a free application with the power to foster connection and social connection.

It’s fascinating to me that when the topic of VR is brought into conversation, oftentimes the first (and sometimes, only) thing that speculators want to address about the technology is that it’s fundamentally ‘isolating’.

Other times, speculators simply fail to recognize that VR hosts anything of meaningful social value.

Before I begin unpacking why I disagree on both counts, I’d like to mention that I was a gamer before I discovered VR. And while the term ‘gamer’ is loaded with competing social and antisocial connotations, in my own personal usage the term means that I’ve spent the better part of 25 years alone, silently boxed in a room, sat in front of a panel screen with a controller in my hands.

If VR is inherently isolating and lacks social value, then BigScreen VR is a discreet exception to the rule. As a quick rundown, BigScreen is an app (available for free on SteamVR, Windows MR, and across every Oculus headset) that places up to 12 users into designated ‘rooms’ resembling familiar locales like a movie theater or a penthouse apartment where they can chat, create 3D artwork, take photos, and livestream their own media content to massive virtual displays.

It may not sound like much to somebody who’s never experienced it, but there’s an intense feeling of liveliness that comes about when I sit next to, wave to, and bump fists with somebody who’s sitting across the planet in Australia while I curl up in my humble bedroom in Oregon.

Bigscreen TV

BigScreen champions social VR media consumption by focusing its ongoing development on providing the best virtual television screen available. Between the app’s inclusion of dynamic lighting effects that bounce off of the walls and furniture to its notably smooth optimization for content streaming between headsets, the final product delivered by BigScreen is convincing enough to feel as though it’s a screening space that does exist.

When I first explored the app back in late 2017, I found that 8-bit and 16-bit content was easy to stream from my computer while running my Oculus Rift CV1. Likewise, lower resolution on the video feed meant increased visibility inside of the headset. I scanned through my Steam backlog for games I’d been avoiding and picked out Undertale, a highly personal, overtly emotional singleplayer roleplaying game that often questions the player’s sense of choice and consequence throughout.

Whereas I would have felt isolated in my own mind as I burned through the nine-hour campaign while staring at my computer screen—instead, BigScreen empowered the narrative-driven title to bloom into a collaborative experience from which I and three former strangers bonded over the course of a few memorable nights. We laughed, we cried, and yes, we all reeled over that one jump scare near the end. Whenever I got stuck, one of my guests would search up a walkthrough and dictate the page’s contents while I continued scrambling through the game.

undertale switch

I didn’t stop at Undertale.

Instead, I leveraged BigScreen as an excuse to play Chrono Trigger, Hyper Light Drifter, and emulated versions of NES classics like The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. 3 that I’d only dust off occasionally in modern times. I hosted remote LAN parties with other players of Stardew Valley, Nidhogg, and Brawlhalla. I also discovered and streamed a few heavily stylized but visually simple games including The Stanley Parable, Firewatch, and Inside.

To my surprise, each time I hosted a gaming room, it’d quickly hit capacity and then continue to retain a high visitor count. Every so often, people would join having already played the game in question, ready to hold a conversation about their own personal experiences with it. But more often than not, visitors came in to keep me company as I played simply because they didn’t feel like haphazardly scrolling through the half-finished movies and television show episodes commonly hosted in other BigScreen rooms.

Sure, donning a VR headset took me away from everything happening in my physical vicinity. That’s how VR isolates in the most literal sense.

But the intended way to enjoy any of those titles, without a VR headset strapped to my face, would have involved me slinking into the corner of my bedroom and staring at a box. No conversation, no laughter. No banter to share around. Nobody sitting on my left or right sides, lying down on their couch and watching the virtual 100-foot screen intently. Instead I’d be hunched over, quiet, listening to the fan blow on the back of my head as I stared at the very screen I’m staring at now.

At the same time, BigScreen VR allowed those simpler games to function as social catalysts, and I might not have connected so easily with others had I not made traditional gaming the focal point of my socializing efforts.

Nevertheless, when speculators associate VR with isolation, remember that ‘isolating’ technologies have existed for a very long time. Multiple forms of media that society has embraced for decades can certainly lead to isolation. Traditional, single player gaming is a potent example of isolating technology in that very sense.

But social VR apps like BigScreen do provide a clear alternative to playing video games alone. And for some, that’s the sweet spot for social connection that only VR can enable.


What are some of your favorite social VR memories? Let us know down in the comments below!

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