Experiences
Inside COVID19 | Oculus
Follow the director of an emergency room as he prepares his department and patients for treating and responding to COVID-19 in this VR 360° documentary. You can find free this on Oculus TV, with support for multiple headsets.
Business
Telehealth: A quarter-trillion-dollar post-COVID-19 reality?
McKinsey examines how virtualized healthcare has grown to fill in for in-person doctor visits and emergency consultations, and how it will play a significant role in post-COVID healthcare. This article's roadmap for how to take advantage of this opportunity goes deep into the benefits and in laying the foundation for a future industry. If you would like to go even deeper into examining the financial side there is also a follow-up article you can read: Virtual health: A look at the next frontier of care delivery
Research
Salary and Satisfaction Survey for 2020/21
If you make games or interactive experiences you should consider taking this survey on salaries and job satisfaction. This will ultimately get perspective that is based on individual experiences instead of relying on statistics published by companies, and could lead to highlighting where changes are needed in the industry.
Gear
Virtual Reality Fitness Experiences | ICAROS
Have you ever wanted to add a physical sensation of flying to VR flight experiences? ICAROS elevates immersive experiences by adding physical sensation that a headset alone cannot produce.
KAT VR Official Site - Virtual Reality Locomotion Technologies
KAT VR enhances at-home immersive experiences with their product line that lets user's movements (walk, run, dip, and dodge) be translated into the VR world. Their motion controllers and low friction treadmill work across just about all of the platforms that support VR, and also are supported by the majority of games currently for sale. You aren't limited by your headset if you're looking to add more physical activity into your VR sessions.
Development
Unity’s support plans for OpenXR in 2020- Unity Forum
Unity is committing to full OpenXR support by the end of 2020, ensuring that it comes a step closer to avoiding proprietary formats and locking Developers into a non-standard industry format. I hope that more software adopts the format by year's end so we can get closer to publishing experiences that can be published across platforms.
Schell Games Shares the Developer Process Behind 'Until You Fall,' Now Available on Oculus Quest
On the heels of the release of their new game Until You Fall the team at Schell Games answer a few questions and give a bit of insight into challenges and their thoughts on developing for the Oculus Quest.
A Wake Inn | VR | Official Gameplay (ft. Dev Commentary) - YouTube
A Wake Inn is an interesting game with gameplay mechanics that I've not seen done well in any other game, and this Developer commentary talks about one sequence early in the game. Hearing how their decisions to embrace a wheelchair experience mapping to player's already seated position lead to making interesting challenges is definitely worth a listen.
Commentary
In issue 5 of Other Realities we mentioned the concerns around Facebook and anti-competitive behavior. It turns out that this was just barely ahead of FTC lawsuits for monopolistic practices. It's made significant news so we aren't featuring that in this issue, but certainly hope that however things land that we don't see Oculus being shelved due to the Facebook login requirements. A reversal back to individual login accounts may save the platform from being wrapped up into the larger problems the company is facing.
In this issue we’re not adopting an overall theme to the issue and broadening our view to topics and gear that we found interesting this week. If you would like to suggest links or topics for future issues then please tweet me with suggestions or reply to this mail.
Other Realities