News
Clubhouse adds spatial audio to create more immersive audio chats | Engadget
Augmented Reality is not just limited to what we can see. So the news that Clubhouse now supports spatial audio being a type of AR shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Chats within the app have been great but felt very teleconference due to all of the audio coming in all together. Adding spatial audio, where different people will sound like they are in different parts of a room, adds immersion to the experience and feels more like being in a panel discussion with interesting people you really want to hear.
UNCONTAINED Hopes To Fill The Void Left In LBVR With Hyper-Immersive Plug-And-Play Modular Units | Medium
VR Arcades have certainly suffered during the pandemic, and it’s great to see someone helping bring them back as travel and distancing restrictions become less prohibitive. Uncontained offers self-contained VR experiences for groups that can be added outside existing venues, adding VR in an easy to manage and COVID safe way.
Experiences
Goodbye Mr. Octopus
A true artist embraces the medium as a vehicle for telling a story and this coming-of-age short film entirely hand-animated in VR with Quill demonstrates a great use of VR for storytelling. Though featured in the Venice VR Expanded Festival we'd bet that many of our readers haven't seen it. It's currently available for free on the Oculus store, and we recommend giving it a try.
Hockey VR on Oculus Quest
Currently available via App Lab this hockey shooting practice simulator looks a like lot of fun. In a move we would like to see more of, the creators also sell a 3D printed controller mount that attaches to a real hockey stick. Virtually nothing adds more to an immersive simulation more than using a physical prop. If you pick this up this week you’ll save 25%, but we’d still by this for the full price of $3.99.
Gaming
Desert Bus VR | Steam
Desert Bus has been called the worst video game ever, but for those that enjoy it and use it for charity events it’s a sign of endurance and commitment to the 8 hour journey to earn one point. Seeing a VR version finally getting released isn’t something that we’re recommending you run and get, but we’d be interested in hearing how many points you can earn in one sitting. Only the truly dedicated will earn all 15 Steam achievements, which probably won’t be us.
People To Watch
Immersive Video | Avatar Dimension | Washington D.C.
Avatar Dimension recently caught our eye due to their very advanced volumetric capture stage and studio. Volumetric capture is something we've featured before and truly is an underappreciated part of AR/XR content creation. We're hoping to get an opportunity to tour their facilities and share more about what this team does, and what is at the cutting edge of digital capture technology, soon.
Learning
VR Training: Features, Benefits and Scenarios
Public speaking is scarier than dying to a lot of people. Having a safe place to encounter and overcome stage fright is at the heart of Virtual Speech’s soft skills VR training platform. Providing lessons that demonstrate the desired skills coupled with practice scenarios that provide instant feedback sound like a great combination to rapidly address performance anxiety and correcting bad habits. Adding in certificates that can be shared via social media is a nice touch, and feels inline with people looking to share with their broader social network just how comfortable they’ve worked to become addressing groups of people.
One More Thing
Grocery Shopping in Virtual Reality
Case studies can be fascinating deep dives into a topic that gives you all of the knowledge and insights that went into coming up with a satisfying and intuitive experience. In this case they are examining what an experience could be to do grocery shopping in VR. This article is a fairly thorough case study that takes you from initial ideation, to design decisions, to prototyping, to user testing. We don’t want to spoil the conclusion, but we do recommend giving this a read.
Commentary
If we said that this issue was late because we were playing one of our featured VR games, would you hold it against us? Well, hopefully when you get your hands on them you won't lose entire evenings like we did. There are actually a few experiences we're featuring, but if you want to know which one dominated the weekend ask us on Twitter and we'll share.
This week we have a broad set of experiences, a step toward the return of VR arcades, news, something to help with the worst phobia, and a case study in creating a VR experiences as our One More Thing. Lots of good content and info to start the week.
Also, be on the lookout later this week for our next Journal article on VR in the workplace. We'll explain how companies have an opportunity to get ahead of the curve as well as some of the risks in working in VR.
Thank you for reading and subscribing, and we'll see you next week!
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