With day two of CES 2018 behind us, we take a look at some of the bigger news to come out of the show in today’s news roundup: Pimax 8K impressions, Pico Neo brings Viveport mobile out of China, Blade Runner: Revelations to include 6DoF tracking for Daydream, and a hands-on with Survios’ upcoming music tool Electronauts.

Pimax ‘8K’ Hands-on

We take a fresh look at the progress of the Pimax 8K, which was expected to ship this month, but was recently delayed. While its “8K” name is questionable, the promise of high resolution panels and a wide field of view has generated significant interest, having recently confirmed a $15 million post-Kickstarter investment round. Road to VR tested the latest Pimax 8K prototype at CES 2018, and came away with mixed feelings. The field of view continues to impress, but issues remain in the areas of optics, displays, tracking, and ergonomics.

Pico Neo to Bring Viveport Mobile out of China

Photo by Road to VR

The 6DoF Pico Neo VR headset and 6DoF controllers are coming to the West, and the Chinese company has announced its intentions to ship the system globally with Viveport mobile, HTC’s mobile app store that once looked like it might be a China-only operation. Road to VR took a brief hands-on with the Pico Neo, noting good ergonomics and visual clarity, but also some tracking issues with both the headset and controllers.\

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‘Blade Runner: Revelations’ Coming to Daydream with 6DoF Tracking

image courtesy Seismic Games

Announced alongside the Lenovo Mirage Solo standalone Daydream VR headset, which features WorldSense, Google’s SLAM-based positional tracking technology, Blade Runner: Revelations is the first Daydream app with confirmed support for 6DoF. The new adventure game will be playable on all Daydream devices, but is said to be “best experienced” on the Mirage Solo due to the enhanced gameplay and immersion that comes from positional tracking.

‘Electronauts’ Makes You Suck Less at Music Creation

image courtesy Survios

Road to VR’s self-entitled ‘non-musician’ Scott Hayden checks out Electronauts, and comes away impressed with the ‘good-sounding’ music he generated using the streamlined creation tools. The system caters to beginners with the magic of quantization, essentially a musical autocorrect, which ensures beat-matched sounds. Electronauts is the latest project from Survios, the studio behind action game Raw Data (2017), and is due to launch this year.

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Check back tomorrow for our ‘day three’ round-up off all things augmented and virtual at this year’s CES.

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Dominic Brennan
The trial version of Microsoft’s Monster Truck Madness probably had something to do with it. And certainly the original Super Mario Kart and Gran Turismo. A car nut from an early age, Dominic was always drawn to racing games above all other genres. Now a seasoned driving simulation enthusiast, and former editor of Sim Racer magazine, Dominic has followed virtual reality developments with keen interest, as cockpit-based simulation is a perfect match for the technology. Conditions could hardly be more ideal, a scientist once said. Writing about simulators lead him to Road to VR, whose broad coverage of the industry revealed the bigger picture and limitless potential of the medium. Passionate about technology and a lifelong PC gamer, Dominic suffers from the ‘tweak for days’ PC gaming condition, where he plays the same section over and over at every possible combination of visual settings to find the right balance between fidelity and performance. Based within The Fens of Lincolnshire (it’s very flat), Dominic can sometimes be found marvelling at the real world’s ‘draw distance’, wishing virtual technologies would catch up.