Doom Virtual Reality: Vomit

Doom Virtual Reality: Vomit

VR has a problem with making people physically ill, and VR-induced vomit was as much in E3 2016 headlines as virtual reality itself

Virtual reality is one of the most hyped technologies in recent memory. It’s so big that Facebook Inc spent $2 billion to snap up Oculus VR, while both Sony Corp (ADR) andMicrosoft Corporation are scrambling in an unprecedented move to upgrade the hardware in their game consoles mid-cycle to support virtual reality. However, the rush to get VR to market could be derailed by one thing: vomit.

Oculus CEO Hacked Thanks to Terrible Password

Oculus CEO Hacked Thanks to Terrible Password

All right, everyone. Grab your mobile devices, raise your right hands, and repeat after us: I will change my Twitter password. I will not use the same password on every service. I will use features like two-factor authentication, when services provide it, to ensure that my accounts aren’t easily hacked by those who know the single password I use everywhere.

Oculus chief latest social media hack victim

Oculus chief latest social media hack victim

The chief executive of Facebook-owned virtual reality company Oculus, Brendan Iribe, has become the latest in a string of company bosses to have their social media accounts hacked.

Best VR headsets to buy in 2016

Best VR headsets to buy in 2016

The age of virtual reality is upon us (again) with a torrent of devices and content launching throughout 2016.

There has been a buzz around virtual reality (VR) for the past few years. Some of this has come from the lengthy development of devices like Oculus Rift, but also through a growing interest in what we’ll be able to get VR to do in the modern era.

The idea of VR isn’t new. It’s been circulating in the tech space for a number of years, but recently, the technology has broken through some of the long-standing barriers. Enabling access has helped, with devices like Google’s Cardboard opening the door for anyone with a smartphone, right up to demonstrating what a fully-fledged premium system like HTC Vive will be capable of. We now have the power in home computers for lifelike virtual environments and this makes it a much more exciting time for VR.

Google’s Way of Addressing Virtual Reality – Google Daydream VR

Google’s Way of Addressing Virtual Reality – Google Daydream VR

For quite some time many of us have been waiting for the major players in the technology space to reveal their cards in the VR space. We have long known that Apple AAPL +0.87%, Google GOOGL +0.53% and Microsoft MSFT +2.24% were all looking to enter the VR space and had projects in development. Google’s play would very likely build upon their success in Google Cardboard, and based on the announcements at Google IO, it appears that Google’s approach to VR is very…Google. Google knows that they do best when they play an enablement role in whatever ecosystem they participate in, and VR should be no different.

Dimension – The World’s most immersive VR experience

Dimension – The World’s most immersive VR experience

At Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Times Square today, we got to try out one of the world’s most expensive and immersive virtual reality experiences. On July 1st, Sony and a Utah startup called The Void will open Ghostbusters: Dimension, which lets you become a ghostbuster in what The Void likes to call a “hyper-real” world.
Dimension is part of a larger exhibit based on the new Ghostbusters movie, which also includes wax versions of the stars and a walk-through haunted house experience. With two partners, you enter an elaborate stage where the real world is mapped to the virtual one, capturing ghosts by shooting a plastic gun that stands in for a proton pack. You can see and talk to your fellow “ghostbusters” in VR, and you can feel the walls, sit in chairs, and sense being shot with a proton pack or touched by a ghost. It’s all possible because of a high-end headset, a haptic vest, a backpack computer, and a really sophisticated tracking system — all of which so far haven’t been seen outside some limited beta testing and an appearance at TED.
I went through Ghostbusters: Dimension with my colleague Adi Robertson, and what follows is a dialog comparing our thoughts on what was good and bad about The Void’s first big opening.

America Brings Immersive Adult VR to E3 Expo

America Brings Immersive Adult VR to E3 Expo



Naughty America, a major adult film studio and one of the most-visited adult networks on the web, will be in Los Angeles at this year’s E3 Expo (June 14-16) showcasing and demonstrating how VR is revolutionizing the world of adult media. Naughty America is one of the first studios to fully embrace virtual reality (VR) as the most immersive format for adult entertainment.

Twitter is putting together a team focused on VR and AR

Twitter is putting together a team focused on VR and AR



Twitter is beginning to devote resources toward building out a dedicated VR/AR-focused team. The social media company has hired former Apple designer Alessandro Sabatelli to lead the initiative as Twitter’s Director of VR and AR, Will Mason over at UploadVR reports.

Making VR Mainstream An Uphill Journey For Google

Making VR Mainstream An Uphill Journey For Google



Technology is ever-changing and fickle. This nature can be best described by the demise of 3D TVs just a while after its adoption. A new medium has been the subject of interest, for quite a while: Virtual Reality, or VR as it is popularly called. And one of its biggest influencers is the Internet and search giant, Google. Google is confident about the impact Virtual Reality will have on how people experience video, and ever since the launch of Cardboard in Google I/O developer conference in 2014, Google has had high expectations about VR.

VR Is For More Than Just Video Games

VR Is For More Than Just Video Games

Virtual reality, a dream of science fiction writers for decades, is the closest to a true reality than it’s ever been. Multiple headsets are on sale to consumers, and while some aren’t exactly affordable to the common person, such as the HTC Vive or the Oculus Rift, and others work better than others,the upcoming years will only bring more innovation to the industry.

What Celebrity Worship Reveals About Female Sexuality

When I was 7 years old — during that crucial, game-changing summer between second and third grade when you figure out who you are and what you want to be — I spent nearly all my free time watching Grease. I’d profess my love for Danny Zuko and his tight T-shirts and greased up curls to my closest confidantes (read: little sisters barely old enough to speak). 

But, looking back, I was clearly magnetized, almost addicted, more so to Sandy. Not as the goody-goody cheerleader, please. But in her post-makeover, sexed-up cat woman look, carefully crafted to attract the T-Bird of her affections. I’d watch transfixed as Sandy slinked on the scene, pouty and self-assured and apparently rid of her Australian accent. I’d pause and rewind to study the wildly cool way she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, as piercing as a silent, scandalous “checkmate,” and the dumbfounded Hoo boy! expression on Danny’s face. 

Basically, I was Jan, who appears to be touching herself in the background of this scene. 

It’s not quite accurate to call Sandy my first crush, because she was something far more powerful. I both idolized her and desired her, but mostly idolized the intensity with which she was desired. She was the first manifestation, for me, of that intense combination of lust, envy and inspiration that makes ladies want to please a man so badly they can’t stop desiring women. I call such objects of desire sex muses, and imagine them as the contemporary feminist response to Socrates and all the young, hot pupils he inspired and banged. Sandy was my Socrates. 

This morning, approximately 20 years later, I scrolled through my Instagram feed, saw a post on one of the many Rihanna fan accounts to which I am but a meager minion. I paused on one, featuring Rihanna and “dat a$$,” as the caption states, moving like a maple syrup ninja to the beat of her hit song “Work.” I watched it about 14 times, put on the song, danced in the mirror, considered doing more butt-toning exercises and buying purple lipstick. I eventually returned to work, ashamed yet invigorated. These are the terms of our relationship. 

The special bond between a woman and her sex muse, however intimate and rapturous it may be, is in part emblematic of a patriarchal culture, one that places male desire as so paramount to a sexual encounter it can supplant, or at least skew, a woman’s own. On the surface, our infatuation with sexualized celebrities stems from the urge to be desirable ourselves. I want to be Sandy to attract Danny, and yet it’s Sandy I can’t look away from. Adoration begins to resemble attraction, and what may appear at first glance as a dearth of women’s sexual agency actually speaks to the complexity of our sexual desires. 

Rihanna is but one of a sea of hot babes women fantasize about fucking, but also fantasize about fucking as. Writer Tess Barker coined the term Bey-Sexual to describe the nearly ubiquitous straight girl syndrome of lusting after the Queen B. “I sometimes refer to myself as a Bey-Sexual,” she writes, “meaning that I’m such a typical straight woman I would absolutely sleep with Beyoncé. When I watch her expertly and confidently gyrate her leotard-clad rear as her perpetually fan-blown hair waves, I am really fantasizing less about having sex with Beyoncé, and more about having sex as her. What she represents is the ultimate combination of autonomy and desirability, which is so appealing to me that it’s barely distinguishable from literal attraction.” 

Women are encouraged to obsess over sexualized celebrities, to a degree that rivals yet remains separate from sexual attraction. Terms like “girl crush“ serve as a distancing mechanism — saying I admire her but not like that. Then why are so many women so damn infatuated? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that women don’t just have sex, they see themselves having sex, and thus their own self-actualized sexualization is folded into the experience of pleasure. 

“A woman must continually watch herself,” John Berger writes in Ways of Seeing. “She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself ... From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman.” 

This holds true, of course, in sex. Women are conditioned to see themselves, and arouse themselves, through the way they look, the way they sound. “One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear,” Berger summarizes. “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object — and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.” 

Although I will never have sex from the perspective of a man, I turn to the hilarious (very NSFW) adolescent fantasy in the band Is Tropical’s “Dancing Anymore” as a guide. In the music video, featured below, a preteen boy masturbates during a housesitting gig, while, in his imagination, he has sex with a variety of computer generated VR partners, ranging from a hot blonde to a redheaded mermaid to a literal giant, the fantasies growing stranger as the video progresses. 

Throughout the video, however, the boy remains clad in his red polo, containing his prepubescent frame. He is not folded into the fantasy, as outlandish and all-engulfing as it becomes. He has no interest in watching himself have sex. 

For women, however, incorporating themselves into the fantasy can be part of the fun. If Berger is correct that women can’t help but see themselves all the time, sex included, then a woman’s sexual persona caters not just to her partner but to herself, as well. After a lifetime of watching music video vixens bump and grind with envy and awe, when a woman feels seductive and in control during sex, it benefits herself as much as her partner. What may have initially started as a desire to please a man — to be sultry, confident, magnetic — has morphed into an authentic point of pride and pleasure. 

Celebrity worship can empower a woman to be her best sexual self, channeling her sex muse to please her partner and herself. Yet as more and more individuals become aware of the fluidity of sexuality, the more terms like “girl crush” seem out of date. Pop culture may not have intended for women to acknowledge their physical attraction to their sex muses, stripped of the male intermediary, but it’s happening. 

In a recent episode of “Broad City,” resident queer queen and Rihanna believer Ilana Glazer expressed her confusion over her feelings for a badass investor visiting her place of work, played by Vanessa Williams. “I don’t know if I wanna be her or be in her,” she says. Eventually, Glazer decides that, actually, she wants to have sex with Williams, tells her so, and is promptly told to go home. With the same casual ease the “Broad City” ladies often employ to subtly shift the expectations young women face today, Ilana acknowledges the ambiguity of her girl crush feelings as well as the reality that, yes, you can have your idols and fuck them, too. 

Perhaps the ubiquitous cultural obsession with feminine sexuality speaks to the fact that the purely straight girl is seeming more and more like a myth, as the satirical Reductress article “Is Everyone Super Attracted to These 6 Female Celebrities or Is This Me Finding Out I’m Bisexual?” playfully suggests.

“25-year-old Australian starlet Margot Robbie has a very symmetrical face and what appears to be very soft skin and I would definitely roll around naked with her. Not sure whether or not this means that I am bisexual. I’d love for someone to rate how normal this is on a scale of 1-10. Anyone?” 

The narrator grows progressively more frantic — “Guys??? A LITTLE HELP HERE????” — speaking to the silence that often surrounds women’s sexual desires. And though celebrities may be the gateway to not so straight fantasies, the widespread adulation of women, teetering between the urge to look and to touch, extends to mere civilians as well. 

A personal essay on Slutever by Misha Scott, about her first time actually sleeping with a woman after years of considering herself bisexual, expresses a similar confusion regarding woman’s sexual urges and where exactly they stem from. “Was I gay enough not to be straight? What if I was just trying to fulfill a taboo manufactured by the porn industry?” Scott asked. “What if I thought I was being a sexually liberated woman but was actually participating in a historically sexist pattern of lesbian eroticism as performance for the male gaze?” 

We’re constantly fed images of women we’re meant to worship but not want, and then left in the dark if the two start to become confused. Of course, we’re confused. It’s as if the patriarchal machine designed to make women hate themselves has somehow malfunctioned. Instead of minimizing female desires, it ends up awakening a more fluid understanding of sexual attraction. And now, more than ever, women are understanding that they both want to be and be in their celebrity dream girls. As explained in a recent Broadly piece, 48 percent of Gen Zs identify as exclusively heterosexual, compared to 65 percent of millennials aged 21 to 34. 

I am not trying to say that a teenage girl saying “I’d tooootally do Beyonce” qualifies as coming out, or conflate the queer experience with celebrity worship. Nor do I believe that any celebrity, however sexy she may be, has the power to “turn anyone gay.” As Ruby Rose said around the time everyone in the world was falling in love with Ruby Rose: “When people say to me that I turned them gay, I just laugh, because that’s not really even a possibility. It sounds like I did something against their will in the middle of the night, as if I crept into their brain and pushed the gay button.” 

I am interested in how fluid and complex our sexual desires always already have been. That since we were single-digit girls, flipping through magazine pages and ogling the pop stars plastered on their glossy spreads, forces of attraction, fear, desire, insecurity, aspiration, envy and lust are at play. A sexual spectrum where a relationship as intimate, deranged and totally delusional as a sex muse is commonplace for women who identify as straight in a world too convoluted for such a simplistic label. 

So cheers to the sex muses of the world, the sexualized pop culture knockouts who sneak their way into our fantasies, top our celebrity would-fuck lists, and inspire hours of booty shaking in our bedrooms. May they make us more confident and adventurous in the bedroom as well as in the giant bedroom of life. And may we all be so lucky as the audience member in the video below and feel the gentle bump and grind of Rihanna in the flesh.

Deep in the virtual world: A newbie's first brush with VR

NEW YORK -- My descent from the boat, gliding through schools of fish and clouds of phosphorescent jellyfish, seemed to be going pretty smoothly. At least until the shark emerged from the deeper gloom and tried to tear its way into my protective cage. 

Of course, it wasn't really a shark. And I wasn't really in a cage -- or underwater or even anywhere near the ocean. But it sure felt like I was. 

At its best, this is exactly what you can expect from the much-hyped technology of virtual reality. All you have to do is put on a headset that blocks out the surrounding world and replaces it with one that's fake -- but often utterly realistic. Suddenly it's like you've stepped out of your life and into someone else's. 

With the debut of new VR headsets from Facebook's Oculus unit, Samsung and Sony over the past few months, virtual reality hype has been off the charts. To its proponents, it's the Next Great Thing, a whole new way of "immersing" (a word you'll be hearing a lot) yourself in games, movies, even live music or sports. 

Until a few weeks ago, though, the prospect left me cold. The first wave of VR entertainment consists largely of video games, which have never much interested me. Reports that VR can make you nauseous also put me off. Eventually, though, I had to try it, and my first brush with the technology was intriguing enough to keep me exploring. 

Just not enough to plunk down more than a thousand dollars for a full-fledged VR system anytime soon. Current VR offerings have a lot of room for improvement; many of them get old quickly once the initial "wow" factor wears off. It's also hard not to feel self-conscious wearing goofy-looking headgear, especially when surrounded by strangers you can't see. 

The experience, though, had its moments. Zombies and sharks pushed me uncomfortably close to real terror; a few contemplative moments lost in a blind man's virtual diary, by contrast, proved unexpectedly affecting. And there was another big plus: no queasiness. (For me, at least. Your experience may differ.) 

Rollin' rollin' rollin' 

My first plunge into VR involved a virtual roller coaster. Which is funny only because the real things scare me to death. If I ride them at all, I get on somewhere near the back and keep my eyes shut tight. 

This Samsung demo, featuring the company's Gear VR system, got extra points for realism. Its VR video, shot at a Six Flags park, was synced to mechanical chairs that jerked around in time with the coaster's virtual movements. And of course, the video put me right in the first car. 

For all that, the virtual ride proved sort of tame, at least for a coasterphobe like me. For once, I could keep my eyes open and enjoy gawking at fellow passengers or the trees below me. It may not have matched the adrenaline rush of the real thing, but that was just fine. 

Going deep into Zombieland 

A demo of Sony's PlayStation VR headset, due out in October, was mostly devoted to games ranging from space shoot-em-ups to family puzzle games. A lot of them were enjoyable, but few were as dramatic as "The Deep," which had me shaking alone in a dimly lit shark cage while what felt like the real thing circled outside. 

I had a similar moment playing "Until Dawn: Rush of Blood," a horror game set in a zombie-infested amusement park. (Yes, it was a lot like the finale to "Zombieland," just like "The Deep" bore more than a passing resemblance to an up-close-and-personal version of "Jaws.") I knew the zombies weren't really rushing at me through the darkness, but I couldn't help ducking anyway. 

A virtual film festival 

Film festivals are starting to showcase VR films as directors explore the new medium. At New York's Tribeca Film Festival, which opened Wednesday, I watched "Allumette," a dreamy short based on the fairy tale "The Little Match Girl." 

For 20 minutes, the story took me around a dollhouse-like town built in the clouds. It was charming to crane my neck to look at houses from different angles; at one point, I even stuck my head into a flying boat to see what was going on. 

"Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness," meanwhile, translates the audio diary of man who'd gone blind into a virtual representation of his world. I found myself in a minimalist landscape in which sounds from a park formed ephemeral images -- laughing children, barking dogs -- that dissipated as their echoes faded. 

Virtual conclusion 

Bottom line: My VR experiences to date have mostly been interesting, but still not entirely compelling. It's clearly a medium in its infancy, and creators are still devising new storytelling techniques that can exploit the technology's power. But it's impossible to deny the technology's underlying potential. 

Maybe it'll even help me lose my fear of roller coasters one day. 

For your consideration at Tribeca Film Festival: VR

 


The Tribeca Film Festival is known as a showcase for upcoming independent movies. But, as we move towards an increasingly digital world, it's opening its doors to other forms of storytelling, including virtual reality (VR) technology. 

The 15th annual New York film festival, which will run from the April 13 through 24, will feature 28 VR experiences. While most of them require the solitary activity of putting on a headset and watching the 360-degree film, much of the VR content will experiment with techniques that filmmakers hope will catch on with the mainstream. 

"I don't think it's necessary for VR to become a mass participatory event, but I think it is definitely expanding to be more palatable to the masses," said Loren Hammons, an interactive programmer at the Tribeca Film Festival. 


As the popularity of virtual reality technology grows, more artists and filmmakers are experimenting with the medium's potential for interactive storytelling. Still, for it to be a game changer, it needs to be adopted by a broad audience. 

A new report from Greenlight VR and Road to VR estimated that 2.3 million VR headset will sell this year in the U.S., which is less than 1 percent of the population. The companies do expect sales to grow to 136 million in 2025. The Wall Street Journal reported that another firm, SuperData Research, recently readjusted its global VR sales projections to $2.86 billion, down 22 percent from figures released in early March. 

Nick DiCarlo, vice president and general manager of immersive products and virtual reality at Samsung Electronics America, said it sees a lot of potential in VR given consumer response, but understands its still not there. 

"Our vision is that VR can become a mainstream technology," DiCarlo said. 

To further bolster adoption, the technology company is actively working to introduce VR to more people through events at places like South by Southwest, the NBA all-star weekend and the Tribeca Film Festival. It also kept its Samsung Gear VR headset price at $99, and made it compatible with six of its Samsung Galaxy phones. 

"VR is in early days, but products like Gear VR are ideally suited because they are simple to use, and self-contained, and powered by a smartphone millions of people already have," DiCarlo said. 



At Tribeca's Virtual Arcade, 13 VR exhibitors have booths where attendees can chat with the filmmakers and view their VR work, as well as head to two lounge areas to chat with other festivalgoers about what they saw. The experience mimics going to a movie theater, except instead of sitting for one movie people can bounce around to a bunch of short films. 

VR content ranges from Penrose Studio's "Allumette," a 20-minute story about an orphan girl living in a cloud city, to Wevr's "Old Friend," where the viewer stands in the middle of an animated psychedelic dance party. Creator Tyler Hurd said he was trying to capture the experience of going to a dance party with friends. 

Hurd added that while the experience is for one person right now, the team may make it "multiplayer" in the future. That said, there's also something for people standing around waiting for their turn with the headset — viewing the person doing the VR experience themselves. 

"It's basically a music video, and you're in the center of it, and there are lot of fun characters that come and go and do these synchronized dance routines," Hurd said. "It's more of a linear experience that is trying to get the viewer dance… When (the user) gets in there and does it themselves, people can watch from the outside." 

Other experiences include Félix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphaël of Felix and Paul Studios hosting a simultaneous VR viewing, where everyone in the audience will be able to watch the content at the same time. Lajeunesse and Raphaël will "tour" them through the worlds they have created by talking them through the experience. 

Chris Milk, co-founder and CEO of VR production company Vrse, said that VR is still in its nascent stages, but there's no reason why it won't evolve in the future. Vrse will have several projects at Tribeca this year, including "The Click Effect," an immersive journalism project about click communication between dolphins and sperm whales as well as "My Mother's Wing," which documents a mother coping with the death of her two children during Gaza war. 

Milk, who started his career as a director working with artists like Kanye West, The Chemical Brothers and Arcade Fire, compared the potential development of VR to the emergence of moving picture and sound in the 1800s. From that technology came movies, radio, television and even the telephone, he pointed out. 

"I think that with enough people having regular access to the technology, and there being experiences that people want to engage with, (it can be adopted by the masses)," Milk said. 

At Tribeca, this little VR match girl put Penrose on the map

"Our initial idea is that it's not just Allumette; it's about her town," says Penrose studio founder, Eugene Chung. "It's about this big, expansive space. ... And that's actually part of what's coming." 

The 20-minute experience, which follows the titular character to her eventual demise, hews closely to the studio's recent tradition of mining inspiration from literature's past. For its first VR short, The Rose and I, the San Francisco-based studio lifted elements from The Little Prince. But a reinterpretation of classic short stories isn't quite Penrose's aim. Those truncated tales simply fit the bite-sized, serialized format of current VR experiences. In fact, the small studio -- which is made up of Oculus VR, Dreamworks and Pixar veterans, among others -- is intent on building "persistent worlds" that viewers can revisit to eavesdrop on the drama of inhabitants. It's a way for Penrose to successively build out a story's larger narrative in VR. It's also a clever content play. 


The little prince of Penrose Studios' first VR project, The Rose and I. 

"We definitely have other projects in the pipeline that [are] not living in Allumette's world," says Chung. "But we definitely think ofAllumette's world as a much bigger thing; a much bigger platform to do a lot more." 

While the Tribeca Film Festival in New York serves as Allumette's official long-form premiere -- prior to this, it'd been demo-ed in preview form -- work on the project is still underway. Chung was able to demo only a portion of its planned interactivity, which puts the "matchstick" (via the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive controllers), in the viewer's hand as a sort of torchlight with which to explore the town and light up nearby clouds. 

That said, a preview version, Allumette - Chapter 1, will be released "in coming days" to Steam VR and the Oculus storefront as a free limited-time preview. Its final 20-minute festival form, however, won't be made available until later this year. A version for PlayStation VR is also on deck. 

"We definitely think of Allumette's world as a much bigger thing; a much bigger platform to do a lot more." 

Eugene Chung, Penrose Studios 

WIth its Tribeca debut barely under Penrose's belt, already the studio is considering ways to expand upon Allumette's world of "Wake," a codename that pays homage to James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake. 

"The way we categorize our projects internally is by worlds, [rather] than by stories within those worlds," says Chung. The idea behind this thinking is that it'll allow Penrose to get VR viewers familiar with its characters and worlds, and then invite them back to experience new installments featuring characters old and new. 

The floating world of Allumette's cloud city.

It also doesn't hurt that this approach builds upon existing assets -- much of which were created within VR -- and dispenses with the time-intensive effort of creating entirely new worlds and engines from scratch each time. Of the five planned "worlds" on Penrose's slate, Allumette's world of Wake counts as the third. The studio's next project will focus on world five, the details of which Chung wouldn't reveal except to say it'd stray from the classic short story format. 

It's not by accident that Penrose parallels Oculus VR's own animated VR storytelling studio. Chung, who previously worked in venture capital, and as a producer at Pixar before that, most recently hails from Oculus VR. In 2014, after an enthusiastic visit to the company's headquarters for a VR demo, Chung was asked to join in the newly created role of head of film and media. That role led to the creation of Story Studio, the company's in-house animation department. There, with a cherry-picked group of eager animators, artists, programmers and developers, Chung set the vision for Story Studio and executive produced its first VR short,Lost, which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. The Oculus stint, however, was short-lived, as Chung departed a year later to form Penrose. 

Despite the studio's current public focus on VR, Chung's ambitions for Penrose extend beyond the medium. Its recent round ofseed funding, totaling $8.5 million, is proof. He prefers to describe the studio as more of a "tech company" than VR animation house. And rightly so, as augmented reality is listed as one of the studio's main areas of focus. It's still early days for those in-development holographic projects, and Chung isn't willing to discuss specifics, but he does highlight proprietary VR creation tools similar to the ones used to create Allumette, and extensions of existing VR projects as possibilities. 

"Some of the next things you're going to see from us are going to be quite a bit different," he says.Image credits: Penrose Studios 

COULD HIGH VOLTAGE SOFTWARE BE PLANNING A GEAR VR VERSION OF DRAGON FRONT?

On Friday last week VRFocus reported on Oculus VR and High Voltage Software announcing a collectible card game (CCG) built for virtual reality (VR) called Dragon Front. The videogame is an exclusive for the Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD), but a recent listing of the title on the developers website initially indicated a possible Samsung Gear VR version as well

Spotted by eagle eyed Reddit users, the description read as follows: “Available only in virtual reality on Oculus Rift and GearVR, Dragon Front is an immersive collectible card game battler running at 90 frames per second (60 fps on GearVR) with a full 360-degree stereoscopic view. Construct your deck and challenge online opponents. The entire 4×4 grid battlefield is alive with mobile squads, rampaging giants, intimidating war machines, soaring projectiles, and fire-breathing bombing runs. Mobilize atop your stronghold and launch your forces across the frontlines — history is about to won!”

This has now been amended on High Voltages website, deleting the sections which list the Gear VR. Now it could have been a typing error, but that fact that the mobile HMD was mentioned twice really negates that idea. It’s more possible that a separate version is being worked on but the studio isn’t yet ready to make an announcement regarding it. This is all conjecture at this point until High Voltage or Oculus VR confirm or deny the rumour.

Dragon Front is a fantasy strategic card game where players create a deck of 30 cards before battling on a 4 x 4 grid in both single and multiplayer matches. Players will be able to choose a faction out of a reported four, each with its own unique card attributes, gameplay mechanics, and strategies. The title will feature 280 characters, 80 different encampments, and more than 100 spells for players to battle with.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Dragon Front, reporting back with any further updates to the title.

PlayStation VR price and compatibility to trump over Oculus Rift, HTC Vive?

The virtual reality war in the gaming industry is heating up, with a number of big-name players already lining up their VR devices for release this year. Among the top-tier VR devices, it is said that the PlayStation VR will emerge as one of the top products in the VR headset category. 

According to DualShockers, in terms of pricing, fans are looking forward to the PlayStation VR offering a competitive price tag. Reportedly, a poll taken by Japanese gaming magazine Weekly Famitsu showed that fans expect the PlayStation VR to be within the $353-$441 price range, evidently a lower price range compared to other big-name VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. While there is still no confirmed price tag for Sony's rebranded Project Morpheus gear, the mid-range price expectation among gamers and developers will be one key point for the PlayStation VR. 

Meanwhile, Inquisitr places the PlayStation VR as a popular choice among gamers when it comes to compatibility requirements. While it can be said that the VR experiences with the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift are top-notch, gamers will need to shell out more cash in order to make their computers compatible with the VR products and optimize their VR experience. On the other hand, the industry follower said that players will only need a PS4 and the PlayStation VR – no other hardware and software updates required – in order to maximize VR gaming with the console. 

Since there are only a few requirements to optimize virtual reality gaming with the PlayStation VR, Venture Beat reported that as many as 36 million players can already take advantage of VR gaming once PlayStation VR launches. As for its release date, rumor has it that gamers might see the PlayStation VR in April 2016.

Sony PlayStation VR won’t be out until fall, says GameStop CEO Paul Raines

An attendee demonstrates the Sony Corp. PlayStation virtual reality (VR) gaming headset during the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016. CES is expected to bring a range of announcements from major names in tech showcasing new developments in virtual reality, self-driving cars, drones, wearables, and the Internet of Things. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg 
An attendee demonstrates the Sony Corp. PlayStation virtual reality (VR) gaming headset during the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016. CES is expected to bring a range of announcements from major names in tech showcasing new developments in virtual reality, self-driving cars, drones, wearables, and the Internet of Things. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg 

(UPDATED AT 4:06 p.m.) 
GameStop could use something new about now, but it will have to wait until this fall before Sony’s PlayStation VR hits its stores. 

GameStop CEO Paul Raines was on Fox Business News today and mentioned that the Grapevine-based retailer is getting ready to start selling virtual reality head sets, but it won’t be this summer. 

Raines said the company is preparing to sell Sony PlayStation VR this fall. VR Scout first picked up on the comment from the Fox News interview. 

Asked about the size of the business, Raines said, the market size is hard to measure, “but all the estimates start with a “b” as in billions.” 

Raines quoted a Goldman Sachs report that said virtual reality will be an $80 billion business by 2025. 

GameStop didn’t stock Samsung Gear VR powered by Oculus during the holiday season. But Best Buy did and couldn’t keep it in stock. The Gear VR worked with Samsung smartphones. 

Best Buy said on its blog today that it’s taking pre-orders for the Oculus Rift. To pre-order the Oculus Rift headset through Best Buy, you’ll need to choose one of seven Oculus-ready PCs to go with it. 

When asked for an interview about PlayStation VR, GameStop backed off of Raines’ fall timing. 

Joey Mooring responded in an email: “There is certainly a lot of excitement around virtual reality. To clarify, Sony has not officially announced a release date for PlayStation VR. Whenever it launches, we are excited about how the technology will change gaming.” 

Twitter: @MariaHalkias 

FILE - In this Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016 file photo, Matthew Taylor paints in 3D virtual reality at the Intel booth using HTC Vive virtual reality goggles at CES International, in Las Vegas. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and other pioneers of modern virtual reality technology from such companies as Google and Sony are gathering for a summit on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016, about the immersive medium in Hollywood. (AP Photo/John Locher, File) 
FILE – In this Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016 file photo, Matthew Taylor paints in 3D virtual reality at the Intel booth using HTC Vive virtual reality goggles at CES International, in Las Vegas. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey and other pioneers of modern virtual reality technology from such companies as Google and Sony are gathering for a summit on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016, about the immersive medium in Hollywood. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

GAMESTOP CEO SAYS PLAYSTATION VR COMING THIS FALL

GAMESTOP CEO SAYS PLAYSTATION VR COMING THIS FALL 

By Alex Osborn Update: GameStop has since replied to our request for comment, telling IGN: "To clarify, Sony has not officially announced a release date for PlayStation VR. Whenever it launches, we are excited about how the technology will change gaming." 

Contrary to prior reports, it appears PlayStation VR may not launch within the first half of 2016, as a recent comment by GameStop CEO Paul Raines suggests the device will instead release this fall. 

"We will launch the Sony product this fall," Raines said of PlayStation VR in an interview with Fox News, noting the company is also "in discussions with the other two players," those being Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. 

We've reached out to GameStop for further details, and will update the story as soon as we receive a response. 

In addition to remaining tight-lipped on PlayStation VR's launch date, Sony has yet to announce a price for its upcoming virtual reality device. According to Sony exec Andrew House, the headset will be priced as "new gaming platform." 

Earlier this month, Sony VR studio head Dave Ranyard announced his departure from the company in order to pursue independent ventures.

Dangerous is still coming to the Oculus Rift

Those following virtual reality developments woke up to some surprising news this morning, with headlines blaring that Frontier's high-profile space sim Elite: Dangerous was dropping Oculus Rift support in favor of the SteamVR-powered HTC Vive. Those headlines were especially surprising considering that Elite: Dangerous had been one of the best showcases for the Oculus Rift development kits so far (just ask our own Lee Hutchinson).
It turns out that those initial headlines were wrong—or at the very least misleading. Elite: Dangerous is still planned for the Oculus Rift, as it has been all along. "This is not true. I wish people would check their facts," Elite CEO David Braben tweeted in response to one of those early headlines.

The source of the confusion seems to be a statement Frontier gave to Eurogamer, saying that "right now, we've chosen to focus on SteamVR. We haven't cut an exclusivity deal with any VR manufacturer, and we're still working with Oculus on Rift support."

Even though Frontier mentions the lack of exclusivity and continued work on Oculus support right there in the statement, Eurogamer's headline somehow became "Elite: Dangerous doesn’t officially support Oculus Rift..." That take was quickly parroted by numerous other outlets.

Frontier did stop supporting new versions of Oculus' dev kit SDK in October. At the time, though, the company said it was waiting for a final, stable development environment from Oculus rather than continually reworking the game for frequent pre-release revisions to the SDK. That final environment was released by Oculus in late December. Frontier reiterated this position today in posts on the Elite forums. "In case people are alarmed by the headline or confused on the details, we thought it best to reiterate what we've been saying since the release of the Oculus 0.6 SDK," Frontier Head of Community Management Zac Antonaci writes. "As quoted in the story, we are actively working with Oculus and will keep the community updated as soon as we are able to do so."

Further Reading

"I can confirm that there is no deal to release Elite on HTC first," Antonacci continues. "Valve released a stable driver before Oculus but we remain in close contact with Oculus."
Translation: Frontier is working on versions of Elite: Dangerous for both the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift. Valve's headset is getting Frontier's immediate focus because it was the first to give the developer a finalized development platform to work on.

That's news in and of itself; it's surprising that the Rift version isn't a central concern for Frontier just over two months before the Rift will begin shipping to early-bird buyers. But it's not the potentially market-fragmenting news that was originally reported.

Asked for further comment on the story, a Frontier spokesperson told Ars "we’re not offering direct comment because the story isn’t true."

Oculus “Quill” Turns VR Painting Into Performance Art

Art doesn’t have to be an end product. Thanks to Oculus’ new internal creation tool, Quill, illustrators can draw in virtual reality and let audiences see their creations come to life stroke by stroke around them.

Quill works much like Tilt Brush, the VR painting app Google acquired. Using Oculus’ Touch controllers and motion cameras, Quill users can select different brushes and colors, swing their hands through the air, and each flourish appears instantly within the 3D canvas. Oculus has no plans to make Quill available to the public like Tilt Brush or its own sculpting tool Medium, at least not yet, and is reserving it for its own illustrators.

Oculus Story Studio built Quill to make its new VR short film Dear Angelica, where hazy watercolor drawings let a daughter explore the fantastical memories of her movie star mother. Oculus announced the film’s production at Sundance 2015 and it will be released later this year, but it’s now showing off a few scenes. Dear Angelica lets you watch flying fish, dragons, and a child’s bedroom be birthed into being one line at a time, reacting to where you look.

Even if Oculus doesn’t publicly release Quill, it could inspire a whole new medium of VR performance art by showing how to add dimensions of time and 3D space to live illustration. The order and cadence of Quill brushstrokes could let artists infuse suspense, humor, or crescendo into the journey of creation.

I sat down with the Oculus Story Studio team, including Wesley Allsbrook, the illustrator for Dear Angelica. She told me why Quill is such a leap forward for VR, and even gave me a crash course so I could paint a derpy little shark onto her 3D masterpiece.

Drawing Through Space And Time

“He made this tool for me to paint in space and time — something I’ve dreamt about all of my life” Allsbrook tells me. She’s referring to Inigo Quilez, a VFX supervisor for Oculus.

Allsbrook was tasked with drawing up the memories explored in Dear Angelica, but was frustrated trying to translate her 2D illustrations into VR. Over barbecue chicken wings one night, Quilez decided to build what Allsbrook needed as a hackathon project, and she named the tool after him. Here’s a video of her using it:

Oculus Story Studio’s technical founder Maxwell Planck explains Quill could assist with storyboarding, concepts, production design, and more. “Coming from computer animation at Pixar, we’d use a lot of illustrations to inform what we’d eventually build in 3D, but there were as a lot lost in translation.” He hints that after illustration, Oculus is trying to figure out the best way to handle cinematography elements like lighting and camera angles in VR. It might end up building an in-VR editing tool like Visionary VR.

Unfolding Around You

The experience of watching the Dear Angelica teaser and then drawing with Quill is overwhelming. The moment I stepped out of it, this was the stream of consciousness I typed out.

On Dear Angelica:

The genesis of image. Taking a journey to the output rather than simply arriving there. It feels participatory, responding to fill your gaze with motion. You choose whether to marvel at what’s already appeared or follow the brush strokes. You become spaceless and bodiless, as images spawn underneath and looking up at you while simultaneously inhabiting the more common planes. 

On Quill:

Creation becomes performance. It’s VR watercolor. There’s suddenly a relevance to what order I draw. jokes and feelings can emerge from the order, and you can build suspense through quickening the pace of visualization.

They’re both jaw-dropping. Imagine the infinite white construct of The Matrix. But in Dear Angelica, rather than filling with racks of guns, dainty streaks of color materialize around you. You can walk around and through the art as it emerges. If you want to inspect the tiny riders upon the dreamy dragon, you simply lean in close. Otherwise, you can spin in circles to see the latest brushstrokes emerge. While not overtly interactive like a video game, Dear Angelica adapts to your field of vision, dynamically moving the brushstroke action in front of you.

Director Saschka Unseld says Quill “makes sense with Dear Angelica on a story level because the main character is recalling memories. When I remember things, it usually starts with small, fuzzy details and then it grows.” That’s exactly how a few wisps of color evolve into drawings like this:

A drawing within Dear Angelica

In the second scene, the strokes start slow, filling in the desk and dresser around the bedroom, creating suspense. But as the music builds to a glorious crescendo, the strokes appear faster. The whole rooms springs to life as the bed and the main character Jessica are drawn into being in the center.

This is how Quill enables performance art. The artist’s choices of what to draw first impact the emotion that’s conveyed. Quill could produce humor by showing one figure character’s reaction to something you don’t see yet, then slowly drawing it in as a punchline. Or an artist could create tension or release by speeding up or slowing down the pace of their strokes.

Quill relies on Oculus’ Touch controllers

Creating In VR For VR

When it’s my turn to paint, I quickly discover the pallete, a cube that spawns from your left hand. Turning your wrist reveals the different sides, that include a color selector, brush sizes, opacity controls and more. It’s simple to select them with your right hand on the fly as you draw, giving a distinct feeling of dexterity. You can also grab whole portions of your drawing to re-angle or move them.

Dear Angelica illustrator Wesley Allsbrook

I draw the gray outline of my shark with a ribbon-esque brush with little depth. Then I switch to a sphere and enlarge it to fill in between the lines like a kid in a VR coloring book. Holding the cursor on any color on the canvas lets me instantly sample it. Drawing an exterior on the 3D figure is a bit tricky, as it’s easy to press too far and end up painting on the inside rather than the outside. It takes a few tries to get sharky’s toothy grin right.

I’m no artist, yet Quill was instantly intuitive. Making something worthy of a VR film will take skill and practice, but blunt sketches were easy just minutes after strapping in.

That’s why I see the rapid-prototyping potential of Quill as even more important that Dear Angelica. VR producers are constantly plagued with trying to develop scenes, characters, or action in 2D and then port them into 3D where everything works different. But with Quill, they could simply draw rough concepts of what they want, when and where. Finally, artists will be able to create in VR for VR.

Allsbrook has certainly become attached to the idea. She says she’s already asked Inigo, “If they fire me, do you think that I could have a build?”

Oculus VR Brings A New Reality To The Gaming Industry

After walking the floor of the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, many gaming industry participants saw the virtual reality (VR) writing on the wall for the first time — and in a very realistic way. Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) gaming has arrived, or gotten extremely close, with the official ship date for the Oculus Rift VR viewer set for March 28 and current pre-order acceptance now taking place.

Some issues remain in the technology and user experience, not to mention the price point. However, barring a major misstep by the Oculus unit of Facebook, none of these remain permanent obstacles to prevent a long-term VR trend from taking effect in 2016 (according to aJanuary 2016 report from SUPERDATA forecasting an install base of about 38 million VR gaming consumers by the end of the year and a July 2015 Business Insider estimate of VR headset shipments growing at a 99 percent CAGR between 2015 and 2020, reaching $30 billion by that end date).

Game console makers feel the heat from PC VR

While the Oculus Rift VR viewer existed in the purview of developers alone since June 2015, with this January’s announcement, the mainstream gaming public will now have an opportunity to experience VR firsthand. However, most of these potential gamers could remain on the sidelines unless they upgrade from Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox consoles to a fully decked-out PC. That’s unless the console makers get in the PC VR game.

“Nintendo either needs to adapt or be left behind,” Tim Lynch, CEO of Psychsoftpc, tells me. “Microsoft already has its own VR/AR HoloLens in beta now for developers. And since Xbox is essentially a PC-based system, it is better equipped to meet this.”

Actually, Nintendo is playing a wait-and-see game, according to Joanan Hernandez, CEO and founder of Mollejuo, an augmented reality (AR) company with a mobile app called Terra Icons.

“Microsoft is betting heavily on AR with HoloLens,” he says. “Thus, the only direct competition for Oculus is PlayStation VR and HTC Steam VR. There’s space for the three of them — Oculus, HTC, PlayStation — at least initially.”

In fact, HTC does a great job with physical-digital interactions, according to J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, a global research and advisory firm. “And it might have some advantages over Oculus in the features department,” he tells me. “For example, by tracking your movement throughout a room using base stations.”

Demand for VR technology looks good for console and mobile gaming platforms.

Expectations for VR exist at a high level. And with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets scheduled to hit retail in Q1 2016 and Sony PlayStation VR in Q2, demand for VR technology looks good for console and mobile gaming platforms. “This is positive for both our video game and tech brand businesses,” Eric Bright, senior director of merchandising at GameStop, tells me. “During our GameStop EXPO September 2015, we saw customers wait in long lines to experience the virtual reality demos Sony and HTC had with positive feedback.”

Price point and immersion

Some industry observers have questioned the $599 price point that Oculus chose for the formal introduction of the Rift, such as Mike Goodman, director of digital media strategies at Strategy Analytics, a consumer-focused business consulting firm.

“Oculus views the Rift as a ‘premium’ product and has priced it accordingly; however, there is ‘premium pricing’ and then there is pricing yourself out of the market,” Goodman tells me. “While there is a small segment of PC gamers who think nothing of dropping $2,300 on a high-end PC, $600 for the Oculus Rift plus an additional $1,500 for a PC capable of running Oculus VR games and entertainment is just too much for most of us. Considering Facebook spent roughly $2 billion to acquire Oculus VR, they might want to rethink their premium price point.”

Rather than price, immersion will be the key factor in VR’s success.

— Olli Sinerma

However, others have seen that earlier breakthrough consumer electronics with elevated acquisition costs have gone on to perform well in the marketplace. It comes down to the value proposition of immersion VR versus price point.

“The future of VR will not be determined by its current cost,” Olli Sinerma, co-founder and project lead at Mindfield Games, developer of the forthcoming VR game P.O.L.L.L.E.N, tells me. “What Oculus can ship, it will sell, and others will develop cheaper alternatives like the already available Google Cardboard. Rather than price, immersion will be the key factor in VR’s success.”

Install base barrier

But immersion alone may not ensure that Oculus will surmount its seemingly lofty sales tag. Other barriers beside the console makers represent plausible pitfalls for Facebook’s VR gear maker. The install base of VR-capable PCs presents the largest hedgerow for Oculus to jump over.

“Oculus’s $599 price point was higher than many expected, but that’s not the core inhibitor for adoption — it’s having a PC that’s Oculus-ready,” says Gownder. “Aside from PC gamers — and not even all of them — very few people have PCs with the needed specifications. Most people would have to buy the Rift and a $1,000-plus PC to use the device.”

Concurring with that perspective, Goodman opines that the vast majority don’t have PCs that meet Oculus Rift’s minimum PC requirements to run VR games and entertainment. Overall, Gownder estimates that only 13 million PCs globally are currently compatible with the Oculus Rift.

Which comes first, VR hardware or software?

Seeing that the install base for VR-capable PCs remains at a low level, the market might not yet exist. The classic chicken-or-the-egg scenario pops into view. Without a critical mass of hardware to run VR software, who will write the games? And with a lack of first-person shooters, etc., who will build PCs and consoles with VR compatibility?

“When it comes to consumer entertainment, the content dilemma poses a significant hurdle for adoption,” Maurice Patel, industry strategist, media and entertainment at Autodesk, developer of 3D design software, tells me. “Many VR headset manufacturers try to kick-start content creation by funding their own productions through initiatives like Oculus Studio. However, it will take several iterations of hardware and successful production projects before the technology is mature enough to warrant generalized, large-scale production of VR content.”

Today, VR is an exciting, bleeding-edge technology for exploring new ways of telling stories, driving gameplay and communicating ideas. Where it will go from here is yours to dream.

Oculus Rift getting the most support from VR game developers

It's hard to make someone wearing VR goggles look cool, but this person pulls it off. 

Kyle Orland 

Further ReadingAs new, high-end virtual reality headsets from the likes of Oculus, Valve/HTC, and Sony prepare to hit the market in the coming months, potential buyers may rightly wonder which VR solution is most likely to get a critical mass of support from the game development community. A new survey released ahead of March's Game Developers Conference suggests that, so far, the Oculus Rift is drawing outsized interest from those developers. 



GDC's 2016 State of the Industry Report surveyed 2,000 professional developers who attended the popular annual trade show during the past three years, asking about their current work and interest in various virtual reality and augmented reality technologies (among other things). The Oculus Rift was by far the most popular VR headset among the surveyed developers, with 19 percent of respondents saying they were currently working on a game for the device. A number of Rift competitors were well behind in a statistical dead heat for second place among active VR developers: Samsung's GearVR at 8 percent of respondents, Google Cardboard at 7 percent, and HTC Vive and PlayStation VR at 6 percent each. 



The Rift's lead extends to respondents' thoughts about the platform for their next VR game project; 20 percent say it will be on the Rift, compared to 9 percent for PlayStation VR and 8 percent for the HTC Vive. 

Before Oculus backers get too excited, it's worth pointing out that the Rift was still beaten out in the survey by the 25 percent of respondents who said they "are not currently interested in developing for VR/AR headsets." A further 44 percent said they weren't currently working on VR or AR games at the moment but were at least open to the idea of working on VR games. 

The Rift's lead in active VR game development might also merely be an outgrowth of developers' generally larger familiarity with Oculus' headset. A full 77 percent of developers in the survey said they had tried the Oculus Rift, compared to just 46 percent for Google Cardboard, 31 percent for GearVR, 21 percent for PlayStation VR, and 19 percent for the HTC Vive. As developers become more aware of the Rift's competition, those platforms may begin to see more developers actively working on them. 

Overall, the survey shows increasing numbers of game developers think consumer-grade virtual reality is more than a quickly passing fad this time around. A full 75 percent of respondents said that VR/AR "is a long-term sustainable business to be in," and 86 percent said such headsets will be in at least 10 percent of US households by 2030. That doesn't mean those developers see VR taking over the entire gaming world, though: only 27 percent of respondents said they thought virtual reality headsets would ever surpass the roughly 40 percent of US households that currently have a traditional video game console.