News
Before Your Eyes
Officially being released on April 8th on Steam, this experience is one that is emotional, heartfelt, and allows you to experience the gameplay in a unique way. Each time you blink your eyes, time advances forward. It could advance by seconds, hours, days, or longer, but you will experience a life going by in the blink of an eye.
Space Force uses Facebook Oculus Quest headsets to simulate national security scenarios
The United States Space Force (not that Space Force) uses Oculus Quest in their training simulations. The US Government has contracted with SAIC for current satellite launch simulations and preparing for upcoming missions using virtual models of the real equipment and station.
Poly to Sketchfab
Besides being a good reminder of the Google Poly shutoff coming June 2021, this website helps making the transition to Sketchfab quite easy. If you're interested in Sketchfab and coming from Poly this would be a quick way to test it out without needing to start from an empty project.
Sandbox VR will open VR spot in Las Vegas, bouncing back from bankruptcy | VentureBeat
With global vaccinations moving forward the outlook for VR arcades is looking brighter. Going from zero locations and staff to plans for 15 locations in 2021, this is a great comeback story and hopefully the first of many in-person VR / MR venues reopening this year.
Experiences
Ardens Wake - penrose
It's hard to talk about this experience without giving away spoilers, but we're mentioning it here because this makes our list of things to recommend to someone new to VR. You'll hear that this is moving, incredible, heart-felt, and just gorgeous. All of that is accurate, and you should definitely experience it for yourself.
MultiBrush on Oculus Quest
Multiplayer meets Tilt Brush! Bring your friends into VR to play, create, and enjoy art and experiences together. This is an early release title and available only on App Lab, but it's been pretty stable and a lot of fun to make things with others and go into created worlds together. And with Google's own Tilt Brush being shut down in June this team feels like they will help it live on and grow as new multiplayer experience.
VR/360 Videos, Photos and Experiences, Global VR Content Community
For the second year VeeR will be partnering with CannesXR to host viewings and accept submissions for award consideration. Aside from being a global content hosting platform with over 10,000 experiences to watch on demand, new experiences are continually being added. Check it out if you're looking for inspiration, but if you're also a VR film maker why not submit you film for a best story award or submit your film for best interactive award before the April 23 deadline ?
Gaming
VIVEPORT Infinity | VR Games, Apps, & Videos.
If you find that you're spending more than $9 a month purchasing VR titles, then perhaps the VIVEPORT Infinity subscription may be right for you. With new titles being added every month, it is already saving us a bit of money. Play on some of the more popular VR headsets (HTC VIVE, Valve Index, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest + Link, and Windows Mixed Reality) and enjoy almost 900 titles at any time. And, no, this isn't a sponsored ad. We just like it.
How to Use Your Oculus Quest and Quest 2 with VIVEPORT Infinity
To get started on using VIVEPORT for Oculus users there is a great guide for setting up your Oculus to be able to play games on the platform using Oculus Link. This feature is out of Beta and fully supported by the headset, and with the right cable the games look and play great.
Commentary
There we so many things that made us smile this week, possibly the best being people over 150 million being vaccinated in the US and over 630 million reported vaccinations worldwide. Experiencing VR at home is phenomenal, but knowing that in the not too distant future we'll see a return of communal VR/AR/MR experiences and arcades has us ecstatic. Having visited VRZONE Shijuku, immersive experiences by teamLab, the trippy whole multi-room experiences of Meow Wolf, and projected art in NYC & DC locations for ARTECHOUSE we're very, very happy to know that we'll continue to see more innovation with everything that blurs the lines between worlds.
These experiences aren't "better" than what you can have at home, they are just great in different ways. Being in the same physical location as another person changes how we interpret and respond to any world or simulation. Advancing into a shared metaverse won't always mean we're sitting home in our shipping containers like in Ready Player One. There will always be things that only being close enough to another can make possible.
As more of these do start to appear we'll be sure to feature them in a future newsletter or on our Twitter account. You can actually find in-person experiences in our directory, so be sure to take a look if you haven't recently and consider making a reservation for later this year. If you're really enjoying this newsletter and want to help out consider sharing with someone you know that doesn't realize just yet how AR//VR/MR is already impacting their daily life.
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