If you're interested in checking out the Oculus Go but you've held off on buying one thus far, it looks like your patience has paid off. Facebook and Oculus have cut the price of the Go, bringing it down to a starting price of $149. This is a permanent price cut too, and it applies to both of the Oculus Go models Facebook offers.
Another day, another delay: Iron Man VR, an upcoming title exclusive to the PlayStation VR (and by extension, the PlayStation 4), has been hit with a delay. Developer Camouflaj Games announced the delay today on Twitter, saying that the decision was made in order to "deliver on our vision and meet the high expectations of our amazing community." Thankfully, the delay isn't too severe, but those who were looking forward to Iron Man VR will nevertheless have to wait a few more months to play it.
Half-Life: Alyx - the first Half-Life game we've seen in more than a decade and the flagship title for Valve's Index VR headset - is on the horizon. It was revealed back in November with a March release date, and it seems to have people excited right now. The Valve Index is apparently sold out in pretty much every region where it's available, so if you were hoping to pick up a headset in anticipation of Half-Life: Alyx, good luck.
Entering into a new decade tends to elicit a bunch of forward-looking thoughts and ambitions from people, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Today he shared his goals not only for the next year, but the next decade. Zuckerberg generally spoke in very broad terms, but what he said today does give us an idea of what Facebook will look to do over the next ten years.
Panasonic HDR-capable UHD VR glasses shown this week at CES 2020 showed the world that such devices needn't look like a boxy nightmare. Where the first several generations of VR headset from companies like Oculus and HTC brought about a new sort of design language with the hunk-on-face look, the Panasonic design looks like they dropped in from an alternate dimension to bring us some VR glasses that'd be right at home in The Matrix.
CES wouldn't be CES without a glittering autonomous car concept hitting the Las Vegas strip, and for 2020 it's the turn of the Audi AI:ME to ditch the driver. Billed as the "third living space," the self-piloted e-tron electric hatchback is a prototype of not only what the car of the future might look like, but the sort of things we may be doing inside when we're not focused on actively driving.
Charmin has a set of three conceptual designs for CES 2020, including a toilet paper-retrieving robot, a smell sensor, and a VR experience for the WC. Before we go too much further, it's important to note, here, that Charmin has expressed that these items "won't be for sale in the future." That's unfortunate, especially given the helpful nature of the rolling toilet paper retriever. The VR experience might be best left in the conceptual universe.
Brace yourselves. We have entered a new decade and with it comes all sorts of cool tech upgrades that are sure to change our lives – and get us spending, no doubt. Tech will be building on the electric vehicles, mobile internet, smartphones, tablets and other foundations laid in the 2010s. From consumer tech to new industrial forces, this is what the 2020s will bring to us.
Samsung Core R3 and the system called NEON Artificial Human from STAR Labs were revealed today in brief thanks to some newly-public USPTO documents. This comes days before the otherwise-official reveal from the folks that've been teasing the system - Samsung's experimental technology group STAR Labs. Now we see what mysteries they've successfully concealed over the last several months at least.
As fancy as virtual reality or even augmented reality may sound like, the illusion of these synthetic worlds breaks down easily. Even when you're not aiming for reality like in VR, the lack of intuitive manual controls much less convincing haptic feedback can really break the immersion that these experiences promise. That's where haptic gloves like the upcoming Teslasuit Gloves come in, employing subtle tricks to make your hands and brain believe that you're really gripping something that isn't really there.
Facebook is building its own Android alternative, with an in-house team cooking up a replacement to the OS that will leave future VR, smart home, and other products less reliant on Google. Currently, products like Oculus Quest, the standalone virtual reality headset, and Portal, Facebook's video-call display, are based on customized versions of Google's Android.
Oculus and Facebook made a lot of announcements at Oculus Connect 6 in September, but one of the biggest announcements was that Oculus Quest would be getting a hand tracking feature. With hand tracking, users will be able to ditch the controllers and use their hands to interact with objects in VR. Originally scheduled to go live at some point next year, Oculus has moved up release and will be launching the hand tracking update for Oculus Quest this week.