Back in 2014 when Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion, then Oculus CEO Palmer Luckey said that the acquisition was made with respect for the Oculus ecosystem as a whole, and that its management would be akin to that of a private entity that just so happened to be under Facebook's umbrella. Fast forward to 2020, though, and that seems to no longer be the case. Facebook has announced that Oculus accounts will be phased out; come this fall, all new Oculus accounts will have to go through a Facebook one - if you are one of the holdouts from that particular social network, you'll just have to bit the bullet.

The transition will be gradual; starting this October, new accounts will have to be linked through Facebook. Existing standalone Oculus accounts will still be supported; however, they will only be grandfathered until 2023. According to Facebook, they'll still allow users to run their content on these accounts; but any new apps and content that's acquired for the system after then will not be available for usage in such scenarios. Facebook further said that some content might stop working by then, due to integration of some applications' backends with Facebook-bound accounts, capabilities and servers. And thus, Facebook will finally be fully integrated with Oculus, ensuring a new ecosystem of users, and thus, new data on which to base their publicity and marketing efforts. It's all about the value a user brings; and perhaps some social network integration with your VR environments. Because nothing makes more sense than creating Facebook-bound communities in the VR space, and seeing a Like emote pop up on your most recent spaceflight maneuver.

Today, Lenovo, is announcing updates to its portfolio of education solutions to support schools adopting new curriculums and pedagogy as they head back to class in the Fall during the global health crisis. More than 1 billion students, over 90 percent of the world's learners, have been impacted by school closures in 2020i. In response to disrupted school calendars, educators are implementing distancing learning programs and hybrid learning scenarios - a combination of distance and in-classroom learning. Schools and districts require education-ready devices, more secure platforms, as well as compelling and effective digital content to engage students under changing learning conditions. From purpose-built laptops and tablets, software and content for education to immersive learning with virtual reality (VR) solutions, Lenovo is providing teachers and students the tools needed for schools' expanding digital ecosystems.

Microsoft has recently confirmed plans to bring VR support to their upcoming Microsoft Flight Simulator which is set to launch August 18th. VR support won't be available at launch and will instead be releasing as a free update beginning fall 2020. This update will bring VR support to all Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) headsets and coincides with the launch of the HP Reverb G2. Microsoft plans to support additional platforms/headsets in the future. Microsoft also announced that the popular optical motion tracking TrackIR system will be supported at launch.

Lynx the enterprise Mixed Reality headset startup has recently revealed the redesign of their first headset the Lynx-R1. The Lynx-R1 is an enterprise-focused headset with a planned retail price of 1499 USD which claims to be the world's first AR + VR standalone headset. This means the headset can be used both as a traditional VR headset and as a AR headset with video pass-through. This new redesign reduces the overall size of the headset with new "light folding" optics which reduce the distance between the lenses and the display while hiding the eye-tracking camera in the center of the lens. The headset is expected to ship late September.

Pico Interactive has recently announced two new versions of its G2 4K headset. The original Pico G2 4K was released in May 2019 as a competitor to the recently discontinued Oculus Go, the two headsets were quite similar both featuring only three degree of freedom (3DoF) head tracking and a single 3DoF controller however the Pico G2 4K did feature a slightly higher resolution screen.

The two new headsets the Pico G2 4K S and Pico G2 4K Enterprise offer incremental upgrades to the original headset, the Pico G2 4K S ups the internal storage to 128 GB from 32 GB and boosts the battery capacity by 20% which should equate to roughly 2 to 5 hours more battery life according to Pico. The Pico G2 4K Enterprise also features the aforementioned storage increase and battery boost but also includes a front 16 MP RGB camera. The Pico G2 4K S is now available through enterprise channels for 375 USD while the Pico G2 4K Enterprise will be coming in Q3 2020 for 450 USD.

Since we launched Oculus Go two years ago, VR technology has improved at an incredible pace. Oculus Go's success first proved that the all-in-one form factor can deliver highly immersive experiences. A year later, Oculus Quest redefined the category, with full head and hand movement powered by our Insight tracking system. Quest enabled incredible VR games like Beat Saber, Dance Central, and The Climb with the freedom of an untethered experience, plus access to high-powered PC games like Asgard's Wrath and Stormland through Oculus Link. Just past the one-year anniversary of Quest, we're humbled by its continued success. The community response has been overwhelmingly positive, and you've told us loud and clear that 6DOF feels like the future of VR. That's why we're going all-in, and we won't be shipping any more 3DOF VR products. We'll end sales of Oculus Go headsets this year as we double down on improving our offerings for Quest and Rift.

Here at HTC Vive, we have long partnered with Qualcomm Technologies to bring amazing immersive mobile experiences to consumers and businesses. Throughout our history of making smartphones at HTC to creating VR headsets like Focus Plus, we leverage the latest and greatest processing power from Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile platform. Today we're furthering our commitment through an agreement to pre-integrate and optimize Vive's WAVE development platform for devices powered by Snapdragon including the Snapdragon 855, Snapdragon 865, Snapdragon XR1, and Snapdragon XR2 Platforms.

Starting now, the Vive Wave runtime will be made available to all Snapdragon customers on these chipsets. In addition, HTC engineers will offer testing and support for new deployments of the Wave platform as part of the agreement.

Calling all pilots! Electronic Arts Inc., Motive Studios and Lucasfilm today announced Star Wars : Squadrons, an immersive, first-person space dogfighting experience set in the beloved Star Wars galaxy. Star Wars: Squadrons will feature thrilling 5v5 multiplayer dogfights, monumental fleet battles, and an original story set during the final days of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the New Republic after the events of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. The game will launch October 2, 2020 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC via Origin, Steam and the Epic Games Store, and will be playable via Virtual Reality (VR) on PlayStation 4 and PC with cross-play support. Tune into EA Play Live on June 18 at 4:00pm PT for the gameplay reveal of Star Wars:Squadrons.

Update Jun 18th: EA has confirmed that the game will fully support joysticks and HOTAS joysticks. They have also published the minimum and recommended system requirements which can be viewed down below.

HTC VIVE, a global leader in innovative technology, today officially announces it will enter the cloud software business with the VIVE XR Suite offering at its hybrid event, "Journey into the Next Normal", which took place physically in Shanghai and online through the Engage virtual events platform. Comprised of five separate applications covering remote collaboration, productivity, events, social and culture, the VIVE XR Suite gives users the tools they need to overcome the new challenges faced while working and living in a socially distant world. The VIVE XR Suite is targeted to launch in Q3 2020 in China, with additional regions to follow throughout the year.

The VIVE XR Suite is comprised of 5 major applications (VIVE Sync, VIVE Sessions, VIVE Campus, VIVE Social, and VIVE Museum) to meet the daily needs of the users to overcome the new challenges faced by users around the world who are working, learning and living remotely. Although it is called an XR Suite, it is important to note that this software is not dependent on VR/AR devices to function. All the applications will function on existing PCs/laptops and some apps will even support modern smartphones, but for a superior immersive experience, PC VR or standalone VR devices would be recommended. Users will be able to login to all apps in the suite using a single account and across various devices they own. This integrated application bundle which is created in partnership with the leading software companies in their respective areas will provide a seamless experience for the consumer and business user. The CEO's of all the software partners in the VIVE XR Suite (Immersive VR Education, VirBELA, VRChat, and Museum of Other Realities) attended the event live via video and within VR in avatar form.

Today, during the VR/AR Global Summit Online Conference, Lenovo announced the latest addition to its portfolio of commercial virtual reality (VR) solutions - the Lenovo Mirage VR S3 headset with ThinkReality. The new VR solution for enterprise was unveiled during the keynote speech by Nathan Pettyjohn, Commercial AR/VR Lead, Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo.

The Lenovo Mirage VR S3 is an all-in-one headset developed in conjunction with Pico Interactive, a global technology company that develops innovative VR and enterprise solutions. Specifically designed for enterprise, the Lenovo Mirage VR S3 features a 4K display for clearer visuals, hands-free control for utilization with or without the provided controller, and an easy to clean, hygienic face plate suitable for mass use. Built with integrated audio and up to three hours of battery life, the new VR headset is rugged, light weight and ready to scale within the enterprise.

Today, HP Inc. unveiled its latest virtual reality (VR) headset, the HP Reverb G2, in collaboration with industry leaders Valve and Microsoft. The HP Reverb G2 is the world's highest resolution VR headset among major vendorsi, delivering cutting-edge optics, inside-out tracking, spatial 3D audio, natural gestures, long-wearing comfort, and plug and play support for Windows Mixed Reality and SteamVR.

"The power of collaboration is on full display with the HP Reverb G2, and alongside Valve and Microsoft, we engineered a no-compromises VR headset that's immersive, comfortable, and compatible across Windows Mixed Reality and SteamVR," said Spike Huang, vice president and global lead of VR, HP Inc. "The time is now for VR and the HP Reverb G2 brings high-quality VR to the masses with more immersion for gamers, interactive experiences for creators, increased engagement for collaboration, and higher retention rates for education and training."

Pico Interactive, a global tech company that develops innovative virtual reality (VR) and enterprise solutions, today announces the availability of its highly anticipated headsets from the Pico Neo line - the Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye, both of which deliver key VR solutions to the enterprise.

Both models were built with business in mind, featuring best-in-class 4K resolution, enterprise functionality, six degrees of freedom (6DoF) and spatial stereo speakers. The headsets feature the comfort and hygienic design of an all-PU facial interface, unique counterbalanced design for easy and extended wear, and have plenty of room for prescription glasses. Using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform with Boundless XR, the Neo 2 allows content streaming from a VR Ready PC and select existing PC VR platforms.

Experience matters. And with NVIDIA Quadro Experience—a new application for Quadro GPUs—professionals across industries can boost their creativity and increase their productivity like never before.

Quadro Experience, available now, helps professionals simplify time-consuming tasks, streamline workflows and ensure your favorite applications always have the latest updates. NVIDIA Quadro Experience makes sharing content easier by providing screen capture and desktop recording in 4K, so teams can easily upload content and even broadcast their work directly from their desktop or laptop.

XRSPACE, the company pioneering the next generation of social reality, has today announced the launch of the world's first social VR platform designed for mass market users, combined with the first 5G mobile VR headset, delivering on the promise of a true social VR experience for all.

XRSPACE aims to create the social reality of the future - a world where people can interact both physically and virtually in a way that is contextual, familiar, immersive, interactive and personal. At a time when face-to-face interaction is restricted due to social distancing measures, XRSPACE is aiming to bring people together in a virtual world that is powered by cutting edge XR, AI, and computer vision technology, creating a new experience through 5G which is meaningful, anytime, anywhere.

Power up your XR displays and 5G devices because NVIDIA is taking streaming to the next level. With the announcement today of the NVIDIA CloudXR 1.0 software development kit, we're bringing major advancements to streaming augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual reality content — collectively known as XR — over 5G, Wi-Fi and other high-performance networks.

With the NVIDIA CloudXR platform, any end device — including head-mounted displays (HMDs) and connected Windows and Android devices — can become a high-fidelity XR display capable of showcasing professional-quality graphics. CloudXR is built on NVIDIA RTX GPUs and the CloudXR SDK to allow streaming of immersive AR, MR or VR experiences from anywhere, whether from the data center, cloud or at the edge. And with NVIDIA GPU virtualization software, CloudXR scales efficiently allowing multiple users or tenants to securely share GPU resources.

Valve has announced that SteamVR will drop support for the macOS platform so that development teams can focus on Windows and Linux support. SteamVR users running macOS who wish to continue using SteamVR will need to opt-in for legacy macOS builds from the "Beta" tab under SteamVR properties. This measure will probably stop functioning relatively quickly as new hardware and software changes appear. This move doesn't come as much of a surprise as the macOS platform isn't known for its VR activity, in the long-term macOS users will have to migrate to an alternate operating system or dual boot if they wish to continue accessing SteamVR.

Today, The Khronos Group, an open consortium of industry-leading companies creating advanced interoperability standards, publicly releases the OpenCL 3.0 Provisional Specifications. OpenCL 3.0 realigns the OpenCL roadmap to enable developer-requested functionality to be broadly deployed by hardware vendors, and it significantly increases deployment flexibility by empowering conformant OpenCL implementations to focus on functionality relevant to their target markets. OpenCL 3.0 also integrates subgroup functionality into the core specification, ships with a new OpenCL C 3.0 language specification, uses a new unified specification format, and introduces extensions for asynchronous data copies to enable a new class of embedded processors. The provisional OpenCL 3.0 specifications enable the developer community to provide feedback on GitHub before the specifications and conformance tests are finalized.

In a recent driver update for the Oculus Quest references to the upcoming "Oculus Jedi" controllers were discovered by Gerald McAlister. The "Oculus Jedi" controllers are expected to complement the next-generation "Del Mar" standalone VR headset. In an analysis of the drivers UploadVR discovered several key changes in the new design.

When the new "Oculus Jedi" drivers are compared to the existing Oculus Touch controller firmware it is revealed that new controllers will retain the original inputs and layout of the Touch controllers with a thumbstick, index trigger, grip trigger, A/X button, B/Y button, and a system/menu button. The Jedi controller may receive a tracking update with faster controller polling and a new ICM-426-series TDK chip. The updated IMU should greatly reduce noise and improve resolution of tracking to allow more precise positioning of the controller. Other improvements may include updated an updated haptics driver and analog finger sensing like what is found on the Valve Index.

Rebuff Reality a virtual reality accessory company have reached their funding goal of $30,000 USD for their latest product the VR Ears in its first day and is currently sitting at $51,000. The VR Ears are an audio addon for several popular VR headsets including the Rift CV1, Rift S, Quest, original Vive (only with DAS), Vive Pro, Vive Cosmos, PSVR, Valve Index, and some Pimax headsets. The off-ear headphones clip onto the VR headset headband and attach via a 3.5 mm audio connector. The VR Ears are powered by an internal battery with a reported endurance of 8 hours and can be recharged via the onboard USB-C port.

The VR Ears are available via Kickstarter for an early bird price of $89 USD and are estimated to ship in December 2020. Stretch goals exist for $100,000 - $1,000,000 and include free headstraps, carry cases, cables and mics for all backers if reached. The campaign has 29 days to go and will end on May 22nd. As with any Kickstarter make sure your aware of the risks and proceed accordingly.

VR was hailed as the next frontier in games entertainment. However, reality hasn't quite lived up to the narrative. Even with support from giants such as Facebook and Valve, and mainstream support provided by PlayStation in its PlayStation VR, the adoption of this technology for the mainstream crowd has been slow. At first, problems with expensive user-end pricing drove slow adoption rates; then, as technology progressed, and prices went down, users were met with a low number of high-quality apps or games that actually provided them with reasons to boot up or invest in the technology.

Half Life: Alyx could have been the "killer app" that VR needed for a booming mainstream adoption - much like the original Halo was the sales point for many an Xbox system back in the days. However, it seems that this isn't the case - and likely won't ever be. Half Life: Alyx is set in one of gaming's most iconic franchises; for all accounts, it's an incredibly acclaimed game, featuring a 93 aggregate review score on Metacritic, and a mightily impressive 9.1 in user reviews. However, as it stands, the game was not unlike a popping balloon: it peaked at 16,459 concurrent players on the day of release, and has since seemingly settled in a 3,000 average concurrent player count. This speaks nothing of the game's quality, as we've seen: it speaks to the adoption of VR.

The StarVR One VR headset was initially announced in 2015, it amazed us with its ultra-wide 210º horizontal FOV and enterprise features. In 2016 Acer signed a joint venture with Starbreeze the company developing the StarVR to bring the headset to market, after a year Acer increased their stake in the venture to 66% as Starbreeze could not meet their capital commitments. Finally in late 2018 it was announced that developers and enterprise would be available to apply for hardware. Since then we haven't heard anything from the company until recently when a purchase button appeared on the StarVR site.

The purchase page shows availability from several distributors in Japan and Taiwan, with China listed as coming soon. The EU, UK & USA all have open expressions of interest for resellers in the region. Surprisingly no price is listed for the headset but we can assume it will be close to the $3,200 USD the developer version sold for in 2018.

Valve's Half Life: Alyx has been finally released, after the company first teased, and then unwrapped the game back in November 2019. Half Life: Alyx has been completely developed for the VR gaming crown, with a focus on execution that meant for it to finally be VR's killer app - much like Halo was for the original Xbox. Valve describes the game as a full-length release in the Half Life universe, slotting in the 20-year time gap between the events of the original Half Life and Half Life 2.

Of course, to play this game, you need a PC-based VR headset to play the game through Steam. The game has received rave reviews already, featuring a 93 Metacritic score based on 24 critic reviews, and an 8.2 user score. Give it some time before actually looking for guidance in that user review score, though. Valve founder Gabe Newell had this to say: "Half-Life: Alyx represents the culmination of Valve's technological advancement over the past few years. We have built SteamVR, our game engine, our tools, and VR hardware specifically to enable us to ship the best content we know how to create. Today, as we ship Alyx remotely from our homes, we are hoping that everyone stays safe and has a great time playing the game. Please let us know what you think."

Valve's Index VR headset is expected to go back on sale on Monday, March 9th, when Valve will again re-fill its stock of Index VR headsets, according to Engadget. Just in time for the Half-Life: Alyx launch, Valve has decided to supply all of the gamers with a stock of the headsets so everyone can experience the new Half-Life game with Valve's Index VR. Considering that Half-Life: Alyx is dropping on March 23rd, Valve thought of everyone in need of a new VR headset and decided to offer it on Monday. Valve is expecting the headset to sell out completely, so its best to be early if you want to get one too, for $999. The sale will begin at 1PM eastern time.

NVIDIA today reported revenue for the fourth quarter ended Jan. 26, 2020, of $3.11 billion, up 41 percent from $2.21 billion a year earlier, and up 3 percent from $3.01 billion in the previous quarter. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $1.53, up 66 percent from $0.92 a year ago, and up 6 percent from $1.45 in the previous quarter. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.89, up 136 percent from $0.80 a year earlier, and up 6 percent from $1.78 in the previous quarter.

For fiscal 2020, revenue was $10.92 billion, down 7 percent from $11.72 billion a year earlier. GAAP earnings per diluted share were $4.52, down 32 percent from $6.63 a year earlier. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $5.79, down 13 percent from $6.64 a year earlier. "Adoption of NVIDIA accelerated computing drove excellent results, with record data center revenue," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Our initiatives are achieving great success.

VR has been hailed as the next coming of truly ingenious, engrossing, enveloping experiences, and to some extent, it already does offer those. There are still limitations to the technology and the level of realism it can impart (there is a whole slew of senses we need to trigger for truly enveloping experiences, of course), but I feel we sometimes get somewhat limited in the way we look at VR. Of course, we can all imagine video games built in VR - and when we do, we likely imagine them as they were presented to us in Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One.

Then there are other use-cases, such as real-estate experiences that place you right inside your future home and allow you to see the changes you'd make. Architecture design, engineering, game world design, even strolls through museums, your mind a subatomic particle able to instantly travel to foreign countries and explore their marvels. All for this, mind you, without ever leaving the comfort of our home, without the required expenses and no wasted time with travelling or passport checks - all, however, simulated. But what if VR could go even further? What if VR could be used as a coping mechanism? What if you could meet your dead parents, siblings... Or children? This is the story I bring to you today: of how VR was used to reunite a mother with her deceased seven-year-old girl. This is the story of Ji-sung and her daughter Nayeon.