Former teacher turned tech entrepreneur, Kai Fraizer, creates virtual field trips for children through the use of virtual reality.
Category: virtual reality – Page 38
This ‘Half-Life: Alyx’ Mod is the John Wick VR Game We Always Wanted
Half-Life: Alyx (2020) has been in the wild for a little under two years now, and modders have been busy using it to make cool stuff—just like they did with the original Half-Life (1998). Enter ‘Gunman Contracts’, a multi-chapter mod that scores some serious style points while smartly leveraging Valve’s Source 2 for some John Wick-style action.
Gunman Contracts is set of free mods for Half-Life: Alyx created by Germany-based graphics designer ‘ANB_Seth’.
There’s already two individual chapters available on the Steam, ‘Chapter 1 – The Extraction’, which came out last September, and now ‘Chapter 2 – Art of War’, which released late last month.
VR’s Biggest Ad Yet Pushed ‘Meta Quest’ to a National Audience During the Super Bowl
It’s hard to find a single event with a bigger audience than the Super Bowl, which has made it one of the hottest pieces of advertising real estate anywhere. Meta went big this year with a 60 second ad spot that served to both promote VR to a national audience and solidify its rebranding from Oculus Quest 2 to Meta Quest 2.
If you were watching the Rams and Bengals duke it out during Super Bowl 56 on Sunday, you will also have been introduced to ‘Questy’s’ in an ad during the first quarter. The 60 second spot, which centered around a personified animatronic band that once played at a restaurant called Questy’s, was likely the single most expensive VR-related ad ever shown on TV to date.
The risks and rewards of investing in the metaverse real estate boom
There’s a land rush happening — and it’s not in New York City or Beverly Hills.
Early speculators, professional real estate agents, and celebrities are buying up land that doesn’t even exist in the real world. They are investing in metaverse real estate, a concept mind-boggling to most people.
So, what exactly is the metaverse? Technologists say the metaverse is the next level of the internet. It’s a virtual reality platform where people can play games, connect with friends, attend meetings, and even go to virtual concerts. Ever since Facebook announced it would change its name to Meta and focus on building its own digital world, interest in metaverse real estate skyrocketed.
Report: Microsoft HoloLens 3 is dead as its mixed-reality vision implodes
A report by Business Insider says Microsoft has scrapped plans for its own HoloLens 3 and has instead partnered with Samsung—but that no one really knows what’s going on.
Microsoft has reportedly scrapped its third-generation HoloLens, leaving the company’s “metaverse” plans in disarray.
According to a report from Business Insider, Microsoft killed off the HoloLens 3 in 2021, shifting to a planned device with Samsung instead. The problem? According to the publication, the company’s mixed-reality/augmented reality/virtual-reality division isn’t sure what it plans to do. That’s resulted in employees leaving for Meta and other companies instead.
The company told BI that it remains committed to HoloLens and future HoloLens development. It said the same to PCWorld in a statement. “Microsoft HoloLens remains a critical part of our plans for emerging categories like mixed reality and the metaverse,” the company said. “We remain committed to HoloLens and future HoloLens development.”
Pluto VR debuts tech that lets you stream virtual reality to a headset without a computer
Seattle-based software company Pluto VR has brought its virtual reality streaming platform PlutoSphere into Early Access.
Initially announced in February 2021, PlutoSphere allows its users to stream VR applications to a headset without the need for a local computer, in order to dramatically reduce the cost of entry for virtual reality. Instead of building a new rig around VR compatibility, you can theoretically just get a headset, then run everything from every library you own via data streaming.
PlutoSphere is currently compatible with the Oculus Quest and Quest 2, with plans to support other headsets and mobile devices in the future. It also requires a 5 Ghz WiFi 6 Internet connection, 50 Mbps of bandwidth, a Steam account, and less than 100ms ping to an Amazon Web Services region.
Apple Embraces VR: Every Virtual Reality Announcement From the WWDC 2017 Keynote
At Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference today, the company made a major shift in their embrace of virtual reality with several new VR announcements during the event’s opening keynote.
Though well loved, Apple’s computer lineup got somewhat left in the dust at the launch of the Rift and Vive, both of which had hardware requirements that exceeded what Apple had on offer. To that end, the company largely steered clear of talking about VR publicly.
Today marks a major shift in Apple’s public support for virtual reality. VR was a recurrent theme throughout the keynote today, highlighting their belief in the importance of the medium. Here’s an overview of everything they announced: