Entries in VR (29)

Saturday
May012021

Facebook acquires Downpour Interactive, the studio behind VR shooter 'Onward'

Photo by Maxim Hopman on Unsplash

Facebook continues to grow its Oculus Studios stable with its latest acquisition. The company has just bought Downpour Interactive, the developer behind the virtual reality shooter Onward. Facebook hasn't revealed the deal's financial terms, but it mentioned that it purchased the entire studio.

According to Downpour and Facebook, they plan to support Onward on all the platforms it is currently available, which includes Steam. Downpour intends to work on new projects, but it won't share any details on what these might be. But its team hopes to "bring those experiences to as many people as possible."

Source: Engadget

Friday
Feb232018

Review: Acer Windows Mixed Reality Headset and Controller

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The VR headsets of one or two years ago like the Oculus and the HTC Vive did deliver on the promise of bringing VR to consumers but at a steep price as well as high-end hardware requirements. With the entry of Microsoft into VR, using tech and knowledge coming from its HoloLens solution, makes enjoying VR more affordable.

Microsoft showed off the future of Windows as a holographic OS with HoloLens which put the desktop in virtual and real space. HoloLens was unfortunately too expensive for mass production and while it seems to be making waves in enterprise and special situations, there’s no consumer version available.

Instead, Microsoft created the Windows Mixed Reality VR standard, packaged it as part of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and makes it accessible to anyone running Windows on the minimum specs (8th Intel Generation Core Processor). Hit jump for my immersion into WMR.

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Jan092018

CES 2018: Intel unveils most powerful NUC capable of driving VR

Intel had a lot of things to share during its keynote at the International CES 2018. One of the most interesting developments is an Intel NUC that's capable of driving VR experiences. 

The new Intel NUC (formerly code-named Hades Canyon) brings this powerful new processor and graphics solution into an incredibly tiny 1.20-liter system. Great for VR enthusiasts and workload-heavy content creators, it will be Intel’s smallest premium VR-capable system in the market.

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Friday
Oct202017

Hands on with Canadian Made Apple AR Kit powered Apps

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

I recently had an opportunity to discover some of the latest Canadian-made ARKit apps for iOS. AR or Augmented Reality is a huge part of Apple's iOS 11 and the Apple ecosystem going forward.

I've seen implementations of AR before, around a year or so ago Lenovo and Motorola showed off their Project Tango smartphones. These were large phablets that used special cameras and sensors to 'project' 3D images into reality (as viewed through their screen). While the demos looked impressive, the hardware felt awkward and certainly more cumbersome than a regular smartphone.

With Apple's ARKit, Augmented Reality comes to existing iPhones and iPads, no extra hardware required. More impressive is that Apple's made it possible for existing app programmers to port their apps and enable AR functionality.

Click to read more ...