In my previous post I mentioned Virtuix, the company behind the virtual reality treadmill Omni. The founder is the Belgian Jan Goetgeluk. The Omni allows you to exercise and game at the same time, it’s exergaming. Have a look: http://youtu.be/ZC2Tvhaz9n4 In 2013 the project was launched on Kickstarter and 2.500… Continue reading
In case you still have any doubts: virtual reality is hot. News from the Digits blog (The Wall Street Journal) by Timothy Hay: Oculus/Facebook bought two start-ups: Nimble VR, which was formerly known as 3Gear Systems (San Francisco), they are specialized in skeletal hand-tracking using tiny cameras, and Swedish start-up 13th Lab which… Continue reading
Connectivism guru Stephen Downes is right to point out alternatives for Oculus Rift such as Google Cardboard. You can buy these things (which allow to convert smartphones into VR devices) from others or build it yourself. I never tried it out myself so I cannot compare with Oculus Rift, but I… Continue reading
People don’t get ideas, they make them. That’s the pedagogy of constructionism explained in the shortest possible way, I guess, and Colin Lewis at RobotEnomics is very good at that. He posted about why employees should be playing with Lego Robots – because it makes it so more obvious what… Continue reading
Last week a colleague at my newspaper told me about Oculus Rift experiments by data visualization experts. It seems logical to use virtual reality for data visualization – after all that’s what people also did and I guess still do in virtual environments such as Second Life and OpenSim. Personally… Continue reading
Vyuu is a start-up with lofty ambitions: creating a YouTube for surround media content. The company is based in Antwerp, Belgium, and will soon invite 5,000 people to test the platform, so my newspaper, De Tijd, learned. The founder, Guillaume de Sadeleer, at first developed a VR-headset which would use… Continue reading
“Performance philosopher” Jason Silva brings us yet another interesting video, talking about the The Revered Gaze, explaining how immersive technologies are linked to our need to experience transcendence. As such the gothic cathedral and the Oculus Rift are very similar technologies. I do admit there is the very real possibility… Continue reading
I had some very nice Oculus Rift experiences. I tried Titans of Space, an exploration of our solar system. The head tracker of the DK2 proved very useful: I could use the dashboard of my small spacecraft by nudging and tilting my head. Here you find a video by VR… Continue reading
This is the Berlin 1920 area in Second Life is testing for Oculus Rift. They scaled part of the environment to fit the Oculus Rift immersive environment. It also implies one should downsize one’s avatar (avatars are typically unrealistically big in Second Life) – but one can use the Oculus… Continue reading
My next investment will be a Leap Motion. Have a look at this, and notice how the Leap Motion makes building in an Oculus Rift enabled environment possible. However, don’t forget that Oculus and Leap Motion are still rather early phase – it all seems very slick in this video,… Continue reading