Exploring The Month Of May In VR

Each month Valve collects info from Steam users to determine some baseline statistics about what kind of hardware and software is used by the platform’s population, and to see how things are changing over time, and with the launch of Half-Life Alyx, the platform saw nearly an addition of nearly 1million monthly connected headset over the prior month, the largest single-month leap, nearly threetimes the prior record held by December–January. Read MoreGood news for developers, because the process of of packaging and deploying appsto the Oculus Quest device for testing, the company has introduced three changes tosignificantly speed up the iteration process for developers building Quest apps with Unity.

The first is ‘OVR Build APK and Run’, a command which employs a cache to speed up the time it takes to package the app, a method that makes the same APK that comes from the “Unity build And Run” but runs 10-50% faster. The second is ‘OVR QuickScene Preview’ which automatically divides projects into multiple asset bundles and uploads them to Quest. After making changes to the app and using the command, only the bundles which contain changes need to be uploaded to the headset. The last change is what Oculus calls Shader Stripping (this one requires Unity 2018.2 or later) which can speed up both the ‘OVR Build APK and Run’ and ‘OVR Quick Scene Preview’ processes. Read More.

With the long term affects of the COVID crisis already in motion, shifts in the ways governments, businesses and individuals operate to combat these changes are underway.

The past few months have seen an outcrop of alternative shared virtual work spaces and community platforms that individuals can congregate to from the safety of their homes.

Last week HTC unveiled their new business focused social VR platform Vive Sync. As a social productivity device, Vive Sync is said to include support for OneDrive, which includes the ability to show PowerPoints, PDFs, marketing videos, or 3D models. Users will be able to use voice recognition to record notes, annotate with a 3D pen, and take screenshots. As for 3D assets, Vive Sync currently supports FBX and OBJ files, as well as Unity Asset Bundles. Read More. 

 Entertainers are also finding new ways of reaching out to their audiences, making use of Social VR Platforms to connect with their fans. 

International artists John Legend, Tinashe, Jauz and Galantis are the latest musicians added to the roster of Wave’s summer concert series “One Wave”. The platform which  has become the de facto concert platform for virtual users, kicked off the series with a live show from Church of Galantis, promises to bring more of it’s wild visualizations and custom environments, giving VR users access to a concert-going experience that simply isn’t possible outside of VR. Read More 

 Comedian, lyrical wizard and beatboxer extraordinaire Reggie Watts is set to return to AltspaceVR on Saturday, May 2nd, for an inaugural live show in his newly unveiled multi-week series called ‘Reinterpreted Reality’. Read More. 

With closure of gyms, among other public facilities during national lockdowns across the world, fitness has become another area of concern for individuals confined to their homes. Building on the beloved mechanics of VR rhythm games, Oculus has release Supernatural, the first app that offers the full fitness package for VR. The game is a subscription service that offers daily personalized full-body workouts and expert coaching from real-world trainers set to beautiful photorealistic landscapes and music from popular artists across the world. Read More. 

We R VR Jozi 

Welcome to WeAreVR Africa, where we showcase the latest developments in Africa's Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and 360 video industries. Meet the hottest entrepreneurs, artists and engineers in XR under a single roof. 

Each month we feature a number of exciting projects and the people that make them a (virtual) reality.