oculus

Almost every other movie these days has a virtual reality tie in. It’s almost unavoidable considering how popular VR is. That’s especially true if the film in question is fantasy or, better yet, sci-fi. With the San Diego Comic Con kicking into full gear this week, there is no better time to promote such virtual reality experiences. Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to a sci-fi cult classic, is no different, and Oculus is only too happy to bring Gear VR owners an appetizer of what’s to come later this year.

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It appears that Oculus really wants to take the fight to HTC VIVE. The Oculus Rift has been on sale in a bundle with its Touch controllers for a few days now, dropping the package's price to $399 and severely undercutting the cost of a VIVE headset. Today, Oculus announced that the Rift will be getting a permanent price cut once the Summer of Rift sale wraps up.

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When it comes to VR, customers have options on both the high-end and the low-end, but nothing that's firmly in the mid-range. If you want an introduction to virtual reality, Samsung's Gear VR makes a good jumping off point, as all you need is a Samsung phone to make it work. On the other side of the coin, HTC and Oculus have the high-end on lock down with headsets that cost hundreds of dollars and require a beefy PC to work. What about everyone else who may want a reasonably powerful headset that doesn't require a PC? Oculus may be gearing up to unveil a headset aimed at that very segment.

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Oculus has announced plans to shutter Story Studio, the company's division for creating VR-based storytelling content. According to Oculus, Story Studio was initially intended to produce short and creative virtual reality content that would 'inspire traditional filmmakers' to create their own similar VR offerings. We're two years into the future now, and VR video creation is a quickly growing category among digital creatives. In light of that, Oculus has decided to stop producing its own internal content and to instead focus on supporting 'external production.'

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This week the folks at NVIDIA have high-fived a set of VR games that, combined, make a radical VR collection for the GTX 1080 Ti and Oculus Rift. Bundles exist that begin with the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti/GTX 1080/1070/1060 graphics card, system, or laptop and roll with an Oculus Rift + Oculus Touch. For those looking for the most insane "you've graduated school, now it's time to leave the real world" gift, this is it.

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Facebook Spaces is launching today on Oculus VR, a virtual social network for avatars automatically created from your photos and galleries of your friends. The next step in the social site's embrace of virtual reality, it's effectively a live VR conference call - though clearly billed as something a lot more fun than that. Importantly, Facebook is making the barrier to taking part as low as possible.

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Although it now shares the limelight with rival HTC Vive, Oculus will most likely be forever remembered as the startup that started this new virtual reality wave. Now owned, by Facebook, the company has been involved in a few controversies lately, and most of them can perhaps be attributed to its co-founder, Palmer Luckey. The public face of the Oculus Rift, however, might be changing, as Facebook confirms that this will be Luckey's last week at Facebook, without exactly saying why.

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Along with the new Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ there's a new Gear VR with Controller to turn the Android smartphones into a virtual reality experience. Though the headset itself is much the same as the existing Gear VR, though now with a dock inside that accommodates the new flagship phones, what's new is the Oculus-powered Gear VR Controller. As we've seen from Google's Daydream and other VR systems, that opens the door to far more interaction.

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It used to be that if you wanted to pretend to be a rock star, you'd have to plop down in front of your TV with a copy of Rock Band or Guitar Hero and your plastic guitar. Today, that process is becoming a little more involved. You still need the plastic guitar, but your time as a rock star can be a little more realistic with the arrival of Rock Band VR on Oculus Rift.

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It was just last month that the long running lawsuit between ZeniMax Media and Oculus (along with parent company Facebook) reached some kind of resolution, but soon ZeniMax will be heading back to court. This time, Oculus CTO John Carmack is turning the tables and bringing a lawsuit against ZeniMax, claiming that the publishing house still owes him money for the purchase of id Software.

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Thanks to some historic events in space science, being an astronaut has once again become a “cool” career path. Of course, that chances of actually being chosen for a space mission are very slim. The next best thing? Getting a taste of what it’s like to live and work as an astronaut, made possible with virtual reality. That is exactly the “close enough” experience that Oculus is offering with Mission:ISS, which will let you at least see if you have what it takes to live among the stars.

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Faithful Mac users might have to wait a bit longer to get their fair share of the virtual reality pie. That is, unless Apple suddenly comes up with its own VR platform and headset within the next six months. That’s because Oculus, one of the three biggest VR companies, doesn’t yet have macOS in its sights. Not even within the next six months. This was the situation revealed by co-founder and now head of Rift Nate Mitchell as he talks about the company’s future in the face of recent setbacks and challenges.

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