"Father.IO is the world's first real-life, massive multiplayer, first person shooter. Experience the adrenaline, tactics and strategies of gaming in your everyday life. Combining real time geo-localized strategy & first person shooter battles, Father.IO brings a virtual world into your backyard."
Honestly, just shut up and take my money. Read up more on their very exciting campaign over here.
Big things are coming for Oculus Rift.
Epic Games, notable for creation of the Unreal Engine, the Gears of War franchise and more, unveiled their first outing into virtual reality during the keynote of Oculus' second virtual reality conference, Oculus Connect 2.
The first person shooter, which seems to take advantage of a great number of weapons and scenarios, looks kind of incredible. The immersive experience features bullet time and a great deal of enemies.
The Oculus Rift will launch in the first quarter of next year. Oculus has not set a solid date or price on virtual reality device yet.
It wasn't the only news to come out of the keynote. Oculus Founder Palmer Luckey announced that Minecraft is coming to the Oculus Rift next year.
Sony officially unveiled the consumer title for the Project Morpheus during the Tokyo Game Show Sept. 15.
We've known about the virtual reality helmet and even its first quarter 2016 release window for some time, but during their Tokyo Game Show keynote, Sony execs got specific about the intention of the device. They renamed it the Playstation VR.
Forbes provides further details:
First announced back in March 2014 at the Game Developers Conference, Sony's Oculus Rift rival is powered by the Japanese giant's latest console – the PlayStation 4 – so the official moniker makes sense.
"The name 'PlayStation VR' not only directly expresses an entirely new experience from PlayStation that allows players to feel as if they are physically inside the virtual world of a game, but it also reflects our hopes that we want our users to feel a sense of familiarity as they enjoy this amazing experience," said Masayasu Ito, EVP, Division president of PS Product Business and VP, Software Design Division.
"We will continue to refine the hardware from various aspects, while working alongside third party developers and publishers and SCE Worldwide Studios, in order to bring content that deliver exciting experiences only made possible with VR."
Virtual reality is on its way, folks. And there are many, many options between this Playstation VR, the Oculus Rift, HTC/Valve's Vive, Microsoft's Hololens and more. Let's hope this variety of product provide more than disappointment.
As the video game industry prepares for what could possibly be a massive shift in the medium, Time magazine revealed its cover story on virtual reality Aug. 6.
Unfortunately, many proponents of the new technology thought it disgraced the upcoming products and was counterproductive to get mainstream VR success.
The Internet just thought it was funny.
A developer version of HTC's new headset, powered by SteamVR, will be out some time this spring, and the retail version is due out for the holiday season of this year.
From the official site:
THE VISUALS
A 1,200 by 1,080 pixel screen in front of each eye, with refresh rates of a blistering 90 frames per second, displays photorealistic imagery that fills your field of vision in all directions, eliminating the jitter common to previous VR technologies and transporting you to another world.
THE AUDIO
Plug your favorite set of headphones into a jack located on the side of the Developer Edition headset.
TRACKING AND ROOM SCALE
A gyrosensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor combine to precisely track the rotation of your head on both axes to an accuracy of 1/10th of a degree, allowing you to look around the virtual environment naturally. Couple the headset with a pair of Steam VR base stations to track your physical location (in spaces up to 15 feet by 15 feet) – get up and walk around inisde the virtual world!
CUSTOM GAME CONTROLLERErgonomic VR game controllers in each hand allow you to use virtual objects and interact with the virtual world. The position of each controller is tracked in space, allowing developers to simulate a wide range of activities and interactions.
Rescape lets you use advanced computer vision and specialized optics to turn your surroundings into a video game level. Check out their Kickstarter here.
As expected, Sony announced their own virtual reality headset at GDC last night. From the PlayStation Blog:
Our current prototype for Project Morpheus features a head mounted display with 1080p resolution and a 90 degree field of view. Accelerometer and gyroscope sensors built into the head mounted unit as well as PlayStation Camera accurately tracks head orientation and movement, so as your head rotates, the image of the virtual world rotates intuitively in real-time. Project Morpheus also features our new 3D audio technology that re-creates stereoscopic sounds in all directions and changes in real-time depending on your head orientation. In addition to PlayStation Camera, Project Morpheus works with DUALSHOCK 4 Wireless Controller and PlayStation Move to deliver an easy-to-use, plug-and-play VR experience.
"This is a VR clone of The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The gameplay and artwork are virtually identical to the original NES classic, however in this version you see the world through Link's eyes, in all of it's virtual 3D 8-bit glory."
Techradar claims to have a confidential source telling them Sony is going to announce a VR headset good enough to rival the Oculus Rift at GDC, which starts on March 17th. Some suggest the announcement is coming at GDC rather than E3 in order to steal the spotlight away from Titanfall. What do you think, could a virtual reality headset put the PS4 ahead of the Xbone? Let us know in the comments below.
Valve's got a lot of ideas on how to improve virtual reality gaming, but for now, their prototype will remain just that, even though it's said to be the best in the world. Instead of releasing their hardware, Valve is collaborating with Oculus Rift:
