Theo Valich, Author at VR World - Page 2 of 76

Breaking, Entertainment, Event, Gaming, News, Oculus, Virtual Reality (VR)

Powers United VR: Marvel’s Universe to Arrive on Oculus Rift

In 2008, Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) debuted with Robert Downy Jr. playing the role of Tony Star / Iron Man. This action movie started a juggernaut series of movies which took home $11.76 billion after 16 movies. As 2018 will mark full decade of the movie, Oculus joined forces with Walt Disney Pictures and announced their first collaborative title, Powers United VR. This cooperative game puts players in the role of one of dozen heroes or anti-heroes, who must work together to defeat all the opponents in Arena-style levels. In their announcement, Oculus Studios stated the following: “Step inside the Marvel Universe and rage through epic

Business, Entertainment, News, Smartphones, startups, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World, Wearables

French Railways SNCF Adopts SkyLights VR Headsets

French railway operator SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français), known worldwide for its TGV bullet trains announced today that it is adding Virtual Reality on its Paris – Milan route. This 877 kilometer, 545 mile route, which takes seven hours to complete is now enabling travelers to spend a part of the journey in an IMAX-sized theater, enjoying dozens of movies. According to the press release, “this all-in-one entertainment solution is developed by Franco-American company SkyLights to transform the on board customer experience. It includes lightweight and comfortable VR headsets, noise cancelling headphones and a Hollywood content catalog to ensure total passenger immersion. Hidden

Augmented Reality (AR), Breaking, Business, Education, Event, News, press releases, startups, Virtual Reality (VR)

VRX 2017 Conference Brings an All Star Cast

VRX 2017, one of world’s premier conferences on the subject of business and technology needed for Virtual Reality, announced the first speakers for a two day event. The conference takes place on December 7th and 8th in San Francisco Marriott Marquis. There’s no doubt that the announcements made on this conference might be the clearest direction where VR/MR/AR are heading as an industry, as it will happen after Microsoft Windows 10 Mixed Reality launches, as well as seeing the first sales results of next generation Oculus Rift headset. The conference is organized by VR Intelligence, London-based firm whose leaders don’t hide that there’s an inflation of

Breaking, Gaming, Hardware, HTC, News, Oculus, Virtual Reality (VR)

Oculus Rift VR and Touch Drops in Price by 33% to $399

Oculus announced probably the biggesr announcement of its “The Summer of Rift” event today, bringing the price of the Rift VR headset and Touch controllers to mere $399. To bring this into perspective, for the price of single HTC Vive VR package you can buy no less than two Oculus Rifts. There’s no doubt in our mind that Oculus is reacting to sales results, which sees both platforms lagging behind PlayStation VR, but also seeing that HTC Vive significantly outsells Rift – the difference was 2-to-1 in January 2017, and there’s no doubt the chasm increased. “Summer of Rift is all about celebrating the VR community and encouraging

Augmented Reality (AR), Breaking, Business, Hardware, News, Oculus, startups, Virtual Reality (VR), Wearables

Could Varjo’s Human Eye Technology be a Breakthrough for VR?

While I am an enthusiast for VR and all associated technologies, one major issue that’s really breaking my immersion into different VR environments is – resolution. More sharp eyed readers of this post can see the pixel grid on both HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets, and this is where Varjo hopes to make the difference. Most companies we talk to continuously focus on cables as being the biggest major immersion-breaking problem, but we believe the real problem lies elsewhere – as humans, we’re continuously experiencing restricted motion for different experiences; driving a car requires a seatbelt; flying a plane or being a passenger – seatbelt; roller coaster

Breaking, E3, Entertainment, Event, Gaming, HTC, News, Oculus, Sony, Virtual Reality (VR)

Bethesda’s VR World: DOOM VFR, Fallout 4 VR and Skyrim PSVR

Bethesda is one of rare AAA-publishers that announced its full support for the VR technology, and invested heavily in creating VR-versions of its popular franchises. At the 2017 edition of E3 conference, Bethesda announced several titles which are coming for Steam VR / HTC Vive (visible from the moment the VR trailer starts). Given the legal situation between Bethesda and Oculus, we were not surprised to see icy relations and no mention of supporting the Oculus Rift VR headset. While the game development teams are working behind the scenes on new IP which wasn’t ready to be shown, the B-teams are working on re-working the

Breaking, Business, News, VR World

Key News Around the Globe

Two key breakthroughs are enabling next-generation semiconductor future https://www.wired.com/2017/06/ibm-silicon-nanosheets-transistors/ “IBM, its Research Alliance partners GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung, and equipment suppliers have developed an industry-first process to build silicon nanosheet transistors that will enable 5 nanometer (nm) chips. The details of the process will be presented at the 2017 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits conference in Kyoto, Japan. In less than two years since developing a 7 nm test node chip with 20 billion transistors, scientists have paved the way for 30 billion switches on a fingernail-sized chip.” http://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-have-found-a-metal-that-conducts-electricity-but-not-heat “a team in the US has shown that this isn’t the case for metallic vanadium dioxide(VO2) –

AMD, Apple, Breaking, Business, Entertainment, Intel, News, Nvidia

News Roundup

In today’s roundup, we look at the most interesting news around the world. AMD’s Financial Analyst Day PDFs Available for Download http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-analystday AMD’s Financial Analyst Day was marked with the stock shooting for the stars one day, and then crashing down the other, as investors didn’t got the expected Intel announcement. Intel is currently operating in dangerous territory with a month-to-month agreement with NVIDIA, after the original contract expired on March 31st, 2017. Intel has to sign either with AMD or NVIDIA, or face the (legal) music again. But forgetting about the legal wranglings, if you’re an enthusiast or want to see what AMD is cooking for

Analysis, Breaking, Entertainment, Gaming, Opinion, Promoted, Virtual Reality (VR)

Learning to Run Again: Why VR Isn’t a Natural Companion to eSports

Much like social media, virtual reality (VR) is a trend term that is suddenly appearing everywhere. There’s applications for the technology in fields as disparate as healthcare (training surgeons, distracting people in pain), motoring (Ford lets prospective buyers test drive in VR, you can now configure an Audi or even a Pagani hypercar in VR), and tourism, in which holidaymakers can view their destination in its full glory before they even get there. Perhaps inevitably, the debate around what VR can do next has also touched on eSports, a new, highly popular breed of competitive video gaming. The International First, there’s an obvious rebuttal to

Breaking, Entertainment, Gaming, Hardware, HTC, News, Nvidia, startups, Virtual Reality (VR)

HTC VIVE Evolves to a Subscription Model

Since its launch, VR gear makers struggled to gain mainstream acceptance. It is normal to buy or lease a car for a few hundred dollars a month, to own a thousand dollar phone with a monthly pay-off plan, but such clever price-reducing strategies were not the part of HTC or Oculus strategies and we all know what happened afterwards. Both HTC and Oculus were grilled for being too expensive, instead of being an “iPhone” of the VR industry. HTC (finally) understood that its success in the smartphone space relied on the subscription options, and as such started to push. Let’s mention and that since January,

AMD, Breaking, Business, Entertainment, Event, Gaming, startups, Virtual Reality (VR)

Can Baahubali and its VR Experience Break Bollywood into Mainstream?

There’s no denying that the Indian movie industry is one of world’s leading cinemas, and one of most productive industries in the world. The amount of Bollywood movies that are coming out is just staggering, and easily beats Chinese or the American production capabilities. However, the need to support multiple languages (Hindu, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu – barely any English) caused strain on the budgets, limiting the directors vision. Enter Baahubali Series, with the second movie breaking all the domestic and global records for an Indian-made movie. Baahubali 2: The Conclusion opened on a record number of theaters in India, numbering more than 7,000 screens. That is

AMD, Breaking, Gaming, Graphics, Hardware, News, VR World

AMD Launches Polaris Refresh, Wants to Make World VR Ready

After a series of leaks, AMD finally launched a refresh – or a rebrand – or their Polaris GPU product family. Some minor tweaks enabled Polaris 10 became Polaris 20, and so on, and so forth. The products launching today are Radeon RX 550, 560, 570 and 580. As AMD states, the new line-up is designed to further reduce the barrier of entry to VR capable i.e. “VR Ready” hardware, enable performance at higher resolutions such as 2560×1440 or 3440×1440 etc. Gamers should be able to stream their titles, and achieve great frame rate in the most played titles of today and hopefully tomorrow. According to AMD,

Audio/Video, Breaking, Entertainment, News, Software Programs, Virtual Reality (VR)

CyberLink Enters VR with the New PowerDVD 17

CyberLink is one of first software companies coming out of Taiwan that succeeded in becoming a major international player. From the dawn of multi-media and first DVD-ROM drives, PowerDVD software was there to play the content (and yes, we’ll never forget the ability to change the regional lock through software). Just like everything changes with time, PowerDVD gained tens of millions of users. With PowerDVD 17, their flagship movie and media player is bringing native support for 360 and 3D-360 video for VR headsets, Ultra HD Blu-ray video, as well as HDR10 format support. PowerDVD 17 adds support for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive VR headsets to bring

Augmented Reality (AR), Breaking, Business, Military, News, startups, Virtual Reality (VR), VR World, Wearables, Wearables

ODG Launches Heavy Duty Mixed Reality, VR AR Combo Glasses

Osterhaut Design Group, or ODG for short is expanding its lineup of combined AR/VR glasses targeting the heavy duty use in industrial markets. After a successful launch of R-7, the company is expanding the product family with R-7HL, short for Hazardous Location. This headset comes with a complete eye protection, shielding its wearers from the most hazardous environments. “ODG built the R-7HL to answer the demands and needs of customers who operate in extreme environments,” said Ralph Osterhout, ODG CEO. “R-7HL brings a durable, hands-free, wearable computing platform to professionals in oil exploration and production, energy, mining, utilities, chemical production and pharmaceuticals and enables heads-up, hands-free checklists, guided

Business, Event, GPU Technology Conference, News, Nvidia, startups

NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference Officially Announced

With the conference being over a month away, NVIDIA sent out a press release announcing the conference. The conference starts on Monday, May 8th, and lasts until Thursday, May 11th. This year, NVIDIA reshuffled the conference format in a bid to ensure continuous coverage of the conference. What used to be opening keynote with Jensen Huang, co-founder and the CEO is now being shifted to the penultimate day. The expectations for the conference are quite big, with the focus on A.I. and deep learning, virtual reality and self driving vehicles. We will cover the conference extensively. NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), a world leader in AI computing technology, will

Breaking, Business, Event, News, press releases

CeBIT Pushes a Hard Reset Button, Relaunching June 2018

Ever since Mobile World Congress slotted in between GDC in San Francisco and CeBIT in Hannover, CeBIT as a show started to loose its shine. This was also largely helped by the fact that Hannover is not so easy to get to, sold-out hotel capacity created an AirBnB industry more than a decade before actual AirBnB came to its existence and suger comes in the end – the conference was often marred by German pre-spring weather, leading us to call CeBIT – SnoBIT. With the number of visitors dropping from 700,000 in early years of 21st century to as low as 200,000 in 2016, the conference

Breaking, Business, Consumer Electronics Show (CES), CPU, Event, Hardware, News

EKWB Celebrates 10th Anniversary with an Impressive Collectable

EKWB, one of first liquid cooling manufacturers just celebrated its first decade as a company. Originally started as a project from Edvard Koenig, it grew to a 70 employees company once it was backed by a business angel Matjaz Krc. The company proudly manufacturers majority of their products in Europe, with the majority of suppliers coming from the automotive, avionics and medical industry in the Austria-Italy-Hungary-Croatia-Slovenia basin. Predator line of AIO (all-in-one) products carries same components as used in hypercars or submarines. Thus, when the first decade “dinged”, company founders decided to share the success by releasing a special, limited edition product. EK Supremacy EVO

Analysis, Breaking, Business, Gaming, News, Opinion, VR World

eSports Degree Launched in China, VR Degrees Approaching

Winter time. Heavy snow should have already been on all of the hills around. Rain was falling all night, tapping on improvised canopy above me. Everything is damp. Rain is drizzling from above and from below, the steam is rising up. Black bark of trees is in contrast to white mist. Every now and then some of the old branches gives in to the time and knocks on to the ground. Starting a new phase of its existence. Dawn is short and inevitable. The world is driven by desire and the same world is a small place. A new day, a new beginning and a new

VR World

Happy New Year!

We wish to congratulate a Happy New Year 2017 to all of our readers. These lines are being typed at 36,000 feet over the Continental U.S. as a small team is en route towards Las Vegas, Nevada. CES being pushed to the first week of January means our New Year celebrations were cut short in order to make it to the plane in time. We started our journey as Bright Side of News* in March 2009, and witnessed many changes in the industry. The arrival of mixed realities such as Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Reality brought forward an idea to re-invent ourselves and take a

Breaking, Entertainment, Gaming, Hardware, News, Nvidia, Smart Home

New Nintendo Switch Packs NVIDIA Tegra Processor

Today, Nintendo unveiled their next generation console, more known under the codename “NX”. The rumors of NVIDIA’s involvement turned very much true, as Tegra SoC was the only mobile processor deemed to have enough graphics horsepower to fulfill Nintendo’s mission of “gaming everywhere”. All we can say is watch the three-and-half minute video, enjoy in every second of it. In my personal view, Nintendo has done it again: This tablet-console-mobile gaming enables you to play high-resolution (even in Ultra HD quality thanks to upscaling) games on the TV, or on the go as a gaming ‘tablet’. Perhaps the key to Nintendo’s Switch is the logo, which symbolizes