While inexpensive head mounted displays and virtual reality locomotion platforms promise to bring VR to the mainstream in the near future, you might be surprised to find that extremely immersive and interactive virtual reality environments already exist today. We talked about VIRTSIM the other week, and now we’d like to show you the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, also known as a CAVE.
Once again it’s time for an update on the latest Oculus Rift news. First of all, Oculus LLC is now Oculus Inc., according to the company’s official website. This morning they’ve dropped an update to Kickstarter backers which includes photo of both an early model of the Oculus Rift housing and the head tracker that the company has been developing. The company is also teasing that they’re working on squeezing in some unnamed “key features” prior to shipping the first batch of developer kits.
Today Carl Zeiss is announcing that the Cinemizer head mounted display is available in the US and Canada for $749. The Carl Zeiss Cinemizer has technically been available for a few months, though it would seem that the company is ramping up production slowly as the initial batch quickly sold out. Previously you couldn’t find the Cinemizer HMD anywhere but Europe. Now Total 3D Solutions has been named as the distributor of the Cinemizer in the US and Canada.
Montas is an upcoming indie horror game with support for the Oculus Rift. We heard about Montas a few months back and now the creators, Organic Humans, have begun a crowd-funding campaign to help them raise money to get the game to market. “Montas is a first person survival horror adventure game focused on exploration, immersion, atmosphere, story and interactivity,” according to the creators. A copy of the game for be yours for $10 through the crowd-funding campaign which is hosted on Indiegogo.
VIRTSIM is a highly immersive virtual reality system which can pit squads of players against each other in a realistic virtual reality combat environment. The system utilizes full-motion body capture, VR headsets, gun props, and even shock-feedback. Unfortunately, the rather amazing-looking experience is not available in any sort of consumer capacity. Instead, VIRTSIM is relegated to non-entertainment purposes like military and emergency personnel training. Why can’t those that want to play virtual reality games get in on the fun?
Augmented reality (AR) seems an inevitable part of our future. The possibilities are easy to see but realizing the necessary technology is incredibly complex. Researchers, experimenters, and tech folk are slowly advancing what can be done with augmented reality. And yet it is a magician that can show you the future of augmented reality, today.
Sony quietly announced the HMZ-T2 head mounted display / VR headset back at the end of August. The unit is now available in several regions (though notably still not in the US). In the UK you can buy the HMZ-T2 for a rather absurdly expensive £999 (~$1610 USD). Elsewhere the HMZ-T2 can be found cheaper but not by much.
Palmer Luckey, the creator of the Oculus Rift, has confirmed that Oculus LLC is dropping the Hillcrest tracker that was originally being used as the Oculus Rift headtracker. Now it seems the Rift will use the Adjacent Reality tracker, developed by a former Apple software engineer, which has much enhanced capabilities. Oculus LLC plans to make the Adjacent Reality tracker available to developers separately for those who need a high fidelity wireless tracker for other projects.
Star Citizen is an ambitious new game which will feature Oculus Rift support. But it’s also much more than that — this is an opportunity to help realize a new generation of space combat simulator, a genre which once upon a time set the PC platform apart from its less auspicious console brethren.
Palmer Luckey, who also goes by PalmerTech online, is the creator of the forthcoming Oculus Rift head mounted display and genuine VR nerd (I use that term endearingly). Luckey, who claims to have the largest private HMD collection in the world, remains humble even after his Oculus Rift HMD project spawned a Kickstarter which reeled in $2.4 million. For the most part Luckey has been somewhat reclusive, buried under important work as Oculus LLC approaches the launch of the Oculus Rift developer kit. While I’m very interested in the Oculus Rift, I also wanted to learn more about Luckey himself. Join me for a Q&A with the creator of the Oculus Rift.
