GUEST: Despite the ambitious portrayals of the future in TV shows and movies predating it, few of the gadgets that imaginative writers dreamed of exist. However, some of the fantastical, and more pertinent, innovations from entertainment media do exist in some form or another. Inventions like autonomous vehicles, nanorobots with applications in medicine, and specifically,...
Tag: #VR #AR
SpecialEffect charity raises $621,777 to help disabled people play games
The U.K.-based charity SpecialEffect received $621,777 (£446,000) in donations from game companies during its annual One Special Day event in September. The charity focuses on making games more accessible to folks with disabilities. It runs other fundraisers throughout the year, and this one particular is structured so that developers and publishers can contribute 100 percent...
Epic acquires Cloudgine so Unreal devs can offload game processing to servers
Epic is unlocking the power of the cloud for its Unreal Engine 4 game-development tools. The company has acquired Cloudgine, a startup that enables Unreal Engine 4 to run certain game computations in the cloud, for an undisclosed amount. Cloudgine’s tech uses cloud servers to enable console, PC, and virtual reality games to render content...
Telefónica will bring 5G to Spain this year, kicking off EU’s next-gen cellular race
Telefónica, Spain’s largest mobile carrier, announced today that it will begin the 5G rollout process this year by transforming two Spanish cities into “5G living laboratories.” Under the 5G Technological Cities Project, Nokia and Ericsson will work with Telefónica from 2018 through 2020 to develop initial 5G capacity, deployments, and use cases to benefit both citizens...
Oculus VR spinoff Fable Studio makes big debut at Sundance
Fable Studio debuted its new virtual reality experience Wolves in the Walls this weekend at the Sundance Film Festival, and it also took the lid off its other projects that combine interactivity, VR, and cinema. Fable Studio was born after Facebook closed its Oculus Story Studio in May, and it received funding for Wolves in...
Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire — a step inside The Void’s new VR experience
Before I went to Disneyland this week, I made it to what is a far more interesting attraction for Star Wars geeks. In the Downtown Disney retail area, I went to The Void and awaited my turn at the Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire virtual reality experience. The location is one of just three in...
Hollywood’s Skydance Interactive doubles down on VR for the long term
David Ellison, son of Oracle founder and billionaire Larry Ellison, started his own Hollywood entertainment studio in 2010. Skydance has made feature films including Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation, Terminator Genisys, World War Z, and Star Trek Into Darkness. Now, the company is branching out into games with Skydance Interactive, and virtual reality is its entry...
Augmented reality is no longer a novelty
GUEST: Analysts project mobile augmented reality to become the primary driver of the global AR and VR market. In 2017 Digi-Capital projected the AR market got even stronger than expected. AR is one of the hottest technology developments in the mobile industry, but it’s is still far from being a major platform. Ultimately, AR has five...
HTC: Vive Pro ‘will require a better machine’
This month at CES 2018 in Las Vegas, we saw the near-future of VR hardware when HTC unveiled the Vive Pro at its press conference. The 3K resolution is improved over its current model predecessor, and it also features an improved fit, embedded audio solution, and the promise of improved base station tracking sensors to arrive later this year....
Let’s talk about the 2017 NPD numbers
On this week’s GamesBeat Decides podcast, we spent some time diving into some of the tidbits of news from The NPD Group’s annual report. We run down the list of the best-selling games in the United States and more. The NPD report revealed that, once again, Call of Duty was the best-selling game of the...