GoPro’s Odyssey Camera, Google Jump and History of 360-Degree Video

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Jan 18, 2016

GoPro-Odyssey — Go-Pro's Odyssey - a Google 'Jump' Camera Rig

Jim Geduldick is the Professional Marketing Manager at GoPro, which includes all of the ways GoPro cameras are used within cinema, virtual reality, broadcast television & photography. Jim talks about how the history of spherical video at GoPro goes back to 2011, and how virtual reality provided a platform to actually watch these immersive videos. He also talks about GoPro’s Odyssey camera, which is created in collaboration with Google’s Jump camera platform. He alludes that Google is doing some highly advanced post-processing with the information from the 16 cameras, but wasn’t able to provide many more official details yet.

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HTC Considering Separating Vive VR into Standalone Business, Report Suggests

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Paul James

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Jan 18, 2016

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HTC Chairwoman Cher Wang may be considering spinning off the VR side of the business into a separate entity, causing stock prices in the Taiwanese company to rise sharply today.

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Preview: ‘Arnswalde VR’ is a Memorial to Life as it Was Before WW2

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Scott Hayden

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Jan 18, 2016

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It’s nothing short of amazing when you can take a tour of a town that doesn’t exist anymore, and Arnswalde VR takes you back to the once-West Pomeranian city to see just what it was like before the turbidity of WW2.

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UnTethered eSports VR with Atomic VR

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Kent Bye

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Jan 18, 2016

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Michael Lenzi is the CEO & co-founder of Atomic VR, and they’ve spent the last couple of years experimenting with untethered VR experiences. They’ve created a backpack with custom hardware that can run a desktop GPU for up to an hour, and they’ve also created a Star Wars-inspired Lightsword Experience that can be played in a space up to 20 feet by 20 feet with a Vive. They’re currently not interested in mass producing their hardware solution, but are interested in enabling and developing eSports VR experiences that give you a more active workout.

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New Gear VR Games and Apps – January Week #2

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Paul James

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Jan 17, 2016

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Got a Samsung Gear VR? Hungry for new games and experiences? We’re rounding up recent Oculus Store releases for fans of the mobile VR platform. A Quiet roundup this week: train your brain with Cerevrum, test your reflexes with PolyRunner and read your e-books in VR with Chimera Reader.

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‘Spellbound’ Lets You Cast Virtual Magic with your Real Hands

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Paul James

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Jan 17, 2016

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Spellbound is a new made-for-VR game which uses Leap Motion and the Oculus Rift DK2 to allow your actual hands to perform some nifty spell-casting in the virtual world, amongst other things.

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Hands On: The Martian VR Experience is a Triumph in Motion

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Paul James

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Jan 17, 2016

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We went hands on with the new, real-time, VR experience inspired by the Ridley Scott movie ‘The Martian’ and found its mix of high production values, motion controllers combined with motion chairs seriously compelling.

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Room-scale to Warehouse-scale: Full-Motion VR Gaming with VRCade

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Kent Bye

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Jan 16, 2016

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Jamie Kelly is a co-founder and president of VR Studios & VRCade. They’re creating a series of out-of-home VR gaming experiences that can be played in spaces as small as 15’x15′ and as large as 150’x75′.

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Leap Motion Gesture Tech to Ship in Hardware from “Major” OEMs This Year

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Ben Lang

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Jan 16, 2016

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Catching up with Leap Motion at CES 2016 last week, CEO Michael Buckwald tells us about the company’s latest work like the Interaction Engine and newly reprojected hands. Buckwald also says that Leap Motion tech will ship in hardware from “major” OEMs this year.

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On Expectations: What Our Audience Thinks About Rift, Vive, and PlayStation VR Prices

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Ben Lang

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Jan 16, 2016

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After a negative outcry about the $600 price of the Oculus Rift, founder Palmer Luckey admits that he “handled the messaging poorly” on setting the price expectation. The loudest voices may not be the majority however, so we set out to see what people thought about pricing for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR.

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The Oculus Rift is Now 4 Months Backordered

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Ben Lang

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Jan 16, 2016

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Oculus Rift pre-orders opened on January 6th and were met with both excitement and resentment over the $600 price tag. That doesn’t seem to have stopped excited early-adopters from getting in line.

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WEARVR Weekly Top Ten VR Downloads – January #2

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Paul James

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Jan 15, 2016

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Looking for something fun to play in VR? We’ve got the top 10 downloads from the last week on the WEARVR app marketplace, a cross-platform repository of virtual reality experiences.

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Using Your Body as an Input Controller with OBE Immersive

By

Kent Bye

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Jan 15, 2016

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Linda Lobato is the CEO and co-founder of OBE Immersive, which is a wearable tech start-up that is part of the current Rothenberg River Program. She previously raised $77,000 to kickstart a MIDI Controller Jacket, and after seeing an early Oculus prototype in Korea she decided that VR was the next frontier for wearable technology. I caught up with Linda at a Rothenberg demo day where she talks their progress for creating a jacket that turns your body into an immersive input controller within a first-person shooter. It’s still within the early stages of development, but they hope to launch a Kickstarter later this year.

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This Co-op HTC Vive Game Uses Kinect to Project Players into VR

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Paul James

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Jan 15, 2016

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This experimental game not only allows two players, both immersed in VR via an HTC Vive headset, to share the same virtual space, it also projects their real world image into the application. And, it’s all possible over an Internet connection.

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Chandana Ekanayake on Unlearning Game Design for VR

By

Kent Bye

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Jan 14, 2016

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Chandana Ekanayake is a game director & art director at Uber Entertainment where he’s working on a VR adventure game for the PlayStation VR titled Wayward Sky. I caught up with Chandana at the Seattle VR Expo where he shared with me some of the highlights from his presentation about “Unlearning Game Design for VR.” He talks about his lessons learned from creating a third-person, single player adventure game focusing on atmosphere and storytelling and why they decided to focus on the PlayStation VR as their initial platform.

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Road to VR

GoPro’s Odyssey Camera, Google Jump and History of 360-Degree Video

HTC Considering Separating Vive VR into Standalone Business, Report Suggests

Preview: ‘Arnswalde VR’ is a Memorial to Life as it Was Before WW2

UnTethered eSports VR with Atomic VR

New Gear VR Games and Apps – January Week #2

‘Spellbound’ Lets You Cast Virtual Magic with your Real Hands

Hands On: The Martian VR Experience is a Triumph in Motion

Room-scale to Warehouse-scale: Full-Motion VR Gaming with VRCade

Leap Motion Gesture Tech to Ship in Hardware from “Major” OEMs This Year

On Expectations: What Our Audience Thinks About Rift, Vive, and PlayStation VR Prices

The Oculus Rift is Now 4 Months Backordered

WEARVR Weekly Top Ten VR Downloads – January #2

Using Your Body as an Input Controller with OBE Immersive

This Co-op HTC Vive Game Uses Kinect to Project Players into VR

Chandana Ekanayake on Unlearning Game Design for VR

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