VrBackupper is a free Windows software designed specifically for the Oculus Rift virtual reality device.
It allows you to migrate the Oculus installation to another location, or to back up or restore the Oculus installation directory.
The program is dead easy to use. It detects the Oculus directory automatically on start, and lists the two options migrate or backup/restore in the main interface.
While there is usually no need to back up virtual reality data, the migration option may prove useful.
You never know what you’re going to get on a visit to Jerusalem. The latest addition to the Holy City is -- I kid you not -- a virtual-reality experience at the foot of the Western Wall. Tackiness aside, the virtual tour of an imaginatively reconstructed ancient Israelite temple does carry a worrisome message for the future of peace in the Middle East: The once-radical idea of rebuilding the temple on the site is gradually getting mainstreamed.
I was at first taken aback by the numerous signs advertising the virtual-reality tour near the heavily guarded entrances to the Western Wall plaza. As my VR-consultant (aka my 11-year old son) put it, “Isn’t it a little strange to have virtual reality when you’re actually at the real thing?”
As part of Dubai’s National Innovation Strategy, an initiative launched by HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to make the UAE one of the most innovative countries in the world, the project combines autonomous robots from SAP’s VR and Internet of Things (IoT) to remotely inspect DEWA’s electricity and water networks.
Cydalion surveys areas in front of an array of sensors and emits a series of tones corresponding to the location and distance of obstacles, with different tones for objects to the right, left or center, high-pitch sounds for head-height barriers, and low-pitch emissions for tripping hazards. The tones vary in frequency according to the distance of the objects from the device.
The app’s sounds can be customized, and a display on the screen visually represents warning areas with options for color-blind individuals. Float recommends using a vest or lanyard to hold the device perpendicular to the ground at chest level and bone conduction headphones that emit tones without blocking ambient sound.
Matt Forcum, Float’s lead designer of the app, said early iterations of the program included spoken feedback, but the verbal warnings proved less intuitive than tones in stereo sound.
“We were really kind of surprised to find that when we took that out completely, people picked up on it really quickly,” Forcum said.
Float partnered with Illinois State University’s College of Education and Student Access and Accommodation Services, as well as the student organization Braille Birds, to test the app and receive feedback.
A hardware system, called Tango, with two camera lenses, an infrared sensor and supporting software developed by Google gives apps such as Cydalion the ability to detect distances between devices and objects in the environment in real time as the device moves.
“The tools really haven’t changed in 100 years,” Forcum said. “It’s a cane and a dog, essentially.”
"1600" will give viewers a three-dimensional tour of the White house by using a dollar bill as a canvass for the virtual mansion, and using the smartphone's camera, viewers will be able to move around the virtual mansion to see it at any angle the wish. Also, audiences will find certain Easter eggs when they tap around the virtual mansion. One Easter egg includes seeing U.S Presidents as tiny characters.
Audiences can also view the different yearly events that happen on the White House, like the Easter Egg Roll or a State Arrival Ceremony, according to the White House blog. The whole viewing experience will also have an audio narration by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.
In order to get the "1600" AR application running, the White House product team led by current White House product director Joshua Miller, teamed up with the White House Historical Association for the content and London-based Nexus Production for the Augmented reality experience.
Nexus production, according to Gizmodo, did the work for free. The "1600" AR application is free to download for Android and iOS devices and is available in the int the Google and Apple stores.
If the VR game you picked is developed by Ubisoft, you won’t need to worry: the company’s VR titles will support cross-play between all three platforms.
The recently released competitive game Eagle Flight, as well as the upcoming games Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Werewolves Within will all feature support for multiplayer between PlayStation VR, Vive, and Rift. Red Storm senior creative director David Votypka said that this was necessary due to the emphasis Ubisoft has put on social VR.
“Our games feature strong multiplayer experiences, so letting friends play together regardless of which headset they own will enhance the social nature of our games and let them be played the way we envisioned,” Votypka said in a post on the UbiBlog.
CJ 4DPlex, the Seoul-headquartered provider of 4D cinema systems with moving seats and environmental effects such as wind and water, has announced plans to "merge" with Simuline, a Seoul-based business that develops motion simulators for entertainment venues.
The combined company, which will operate under the CJ 4DPlex moniker, plans to expand its business to include virtual reality and other areas of the attraction industry. Additional details of the planned transaction were not immediately provided.
CJ's 4DX 4D cinema system is currently installed in 314 auditoriums in 42 countries. In the U.S., that includes a site at L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles. Simuline was founded in 1996 and has supplied motion chairs to 4DX since CJ's inception in 2009.
“The merger between CJ 4DPlex and Simuline is to lay the groundwork to strengthen 4DX’s global business," CJ CEO Byung-Hwan Choi said Thursday in a statement. "We will accelerate our pace towards global expansion and broaden our business to include the theme park and attraction entertainment industry, going beyond the 4D cinema market.”
Santa Monica, Calif.-based Vrideo wanted to be the YouTube of virtual reality. But on Monday, Vrideo founder Alex Rosenfeld admitted that it may have bit off more than it could chew: “We’re sad to announce that Vrideo is shutting down as of today,” Rosenfeld announced on Vrideo’s blog.
Vrideo launched in March of 2015 as a platform for 360 video and immersive content, which it published on both the web as well as on apps for all the major VR headsets, inlcuding Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR.
The startup had raised around $2 million in funding in early 2015 from investors including Machinima co-founder Allen DeBevoise, Betaworks and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. Vrideo was apparently unable to raise any additional funding since, and simply ran out of money. “We’ve now stretched this modest funding as far as it could take us, especially in light of the rising costs associated with our growth,” Rosenfeld said Monday.
Vrideo was not only competing with YouTube itself, which has put a lot of resources behind becoming a platform for 360 video, but also a number of other companies building their own destinations for cinematic VR content. These include WEVR, which features its own and select other films on its Transport app, Disney and A+E Networks-backed Littlstar and Jaunt, which has raised around $100 million from Disney and others.
“We often joke about the fact that we have more apps than we do team members,” Rosenberg wrote on Monday. He ended his sign-off with a conciliatory note to Vrideo’s competitors: “It’s been a privilege to play a role, however small, in the emergence of this new medium. We’ll be rooting for all of you who continue to carry it forward.”
But this new form of entertainment is dangerous. The impact of immersive virtual violence must be questioned, studied and controlled. Before it becomes possible to realistically simulate the experience of killing someone, murder in VR should be made illegal.
The problem of what entertainment does to us isn’t new. The morality of art has been a matter of debate since Plato. ...But now, for the first time, technology promises to explode the boundary between the world we create through artifice and performance, and the real world as we perceive it, flickering on the wall of Plato’s cave.
By hijacking our capacity for proprioception – that is, our ability to discern states of the body and perceive it as our own – VR can increase our identification with the character we’re playing. The ‘rubber hand illusion’ showed that, in the right conditions, it’s possible to feel like an inert prosthetic appendage is a real hand; more recently, a 2012 study found that people perceived a distorted virtual arm, stretched up to three times its ordinary length, to still be a part of their body.
We must study the psychological impacts, consider the moral and legal implications, even establish a code of conduct. Virtual reality promises to expand the range of forms we can inhabit and what we can do with those bodies. But what we physically feel shapes our minds. Until we understand the consequences of how violence in virtual reality might change us, virtual murder should be illegal.
The concept is actually really neat as it mixes tabletop with digital play. By use of innovative augmented reality and a selection of smart objects, you'll merge the physical and digital as you stack the pieces together. Check out the advert below – it makes the object of the game pretty clear. Think Buckaroo feat Jenga and you're on the right path.
If you can stack the 24 pieces to create the best world AND avoid your tower tumbling chaotically back to its foundations, you win!
Beasts of Balance will be available November 24th in John Lewis, Harrods, and on the official website for £69. The app will be free to download through Google Play or the Apple/Amazon App Stores.
