Jamie Soar suffers from retinitis pigmentosa, a condition that has rendered him legally blind and which affects some 100,000 people in the U.S. alone. Because of the dual-screen projection method used in virtual reality, Soar was able to see normally for the first time in his life.

Google will not only use its Oct. 4 hardware event to unveil two new flagship phones, but the company is also going to introduce its first-ever Daydream virtual reality headset, Variety has learned from multiple sources. The device, which is meant to be used in conjunction with either of the two new phones, could be sold for as little as $79, according to a source with knowledge of the announcement. A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

Microsoft’s partners will ship a new line of virtual reality headsets to take advantage of Windows 10’s VR and holographic capabilities. At today’s event, Microsoft said that the headsets will start at $299 and will include inside-out tracking sensors, obviating the need for external cameras or laser systems like those on the current Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, and Acer are all listed as partners.

Oculus may be closing out 2016 with a bang with the launch of its Touch controllers, but HTC is going to kick off 2017 with something special: a peripheral that makes its Vive headset wireless. HTC today announced a tether-less VR upgrade kit for its SteamVR device, made by TPCAST, one of the first of 33 companies to join the Vive X Accelerator. A preview version of the kit was shown off today at Alibaba’s “11/11” global shopping festival in Shenzhen, China. This is not the wireless prototype device in the works at Quark VR.

The traditionally film-focused company IMAX has partnered with businesses like Acer and the Creative Artists Agency to establish a $50 million fund with the goal of financing at least 25 interactive VR experiences in the next 3 years. IMAX’s push for high quality VR experiences could be good news for virtual reality content creators on both the film and video game side of the industry. According to IMAX’s CEO, investing in premium VR experiences has the potential to ultimately attract more people to the platform and increase interest in virtual reality as a whole.

Videos of a Samsung Galaxy S7 edge running Google Daydream have surfaced, and they show a glimpse of what could be in store for non-Pixel users. Of course, the Galaxy S7 edge isn't technically a Daydream-ready smartphone. Thanks to this development, it more or less confirms that other devices, aside from the Pixel, can run the platform by way of unofficial means — that is, if the handset has capable hardware components to support VR and if Google doesn't put a cork in it.

Science fiction as we know it would not exist without Hugo Gernsback. He coined the term “science fiction” as the editor and publisher of Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted to the burgeoning genre, which he launched in 1926. The Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy are named after him.

Over the past several years, Jack Gallant’s neuroscience lab has produced a string of papers that sound absurd. In 2011, the lab showed it was possible to recreate movie clips just from observing the brain activity of people watching movies. Using a computer to regenerate the images of a film just by scanning the brain of a person watching one is, in a sense, mind reading. Similarly, in 2015, Gallant’s team of scientists predicted which famous paintings people were picturing in their minds by observing the activity of their brains.

Lenovo just showed us its first VR headset, a prototype device that works with Microsoft’s Windows Holographic platform. Next to other tethered PC headsets like the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive, it’s noticeably smaller and lighter — Lenovo says it’s targeting around 350g for the final product’s weight versus the Vive’s 555g. The design is also pretty comfortable, taking heavy inspiration from PlayStation VR’s approach and suspending the lenses in front of the user’s eyes rather than securing them in place with a strap.

Facebook is closing around 200 of its 500 Oculus virtual reality demo stations at Best Buy locations across the US, Business Insider has learned. The scaling back of Facebook's first big retail push for VR comes after workers from multiple Best Buy pop-ups told BI that it was common for them to go days without giving a single demonstration. An internal memo seen by BI and sent to affected employees by a third-party contractor said the closings were because of "store performance."

Some new technologies can be tuned to our personal characteristics, like the voice recognition on smartphones trained to recognize how we speak. But that isn’t possible with today’s virtual reality headsets. They can’t account for differences in vision, which can make watching VR less enjoyable or even cause headaches or nausea. Now researchers at Stanford’s Computational Imaging Lab, working with a Dartmouth College scientist, are developing VR headsets that can adapt how they display images to account for factors like eyesight and age that affect how we actually see.

How much it will cost to create virtual reality estate tour? AirBnB with simple step by step guide with cost calculation to increate sales? In this article, we are going to talk about VR tours which are fairly useful to businesses to present themselves. It will be very useful for hotels, real estate agencies, museums and so on. Let us guide you through 5 simple steps to build your own Virtual Reality tour. You will see that it is much easier than you might have ever imagined.

Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, the man behind the Rift concept and its first prototypes, is leaving the company three years after selling to Facebook. According to Oculus, this will be Palmer’s last week with Friday marking his official last day as an employee of Facebook. In an official statement, the company said that: “Palmer will be dearly missed. Palmer’s legacy extends far beyond Oculus. His inventive spirit helped kickstart the modern VR revolution and helped build an industry. We’re thankful for everything he did for Oculus and VR, and we wish him all the best.”

On stage at Facebook’s F8 conference this morning, CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that the company will today launch their first social VR application. Back in October, Facebook Social VR Product Manager Mike Booth said that the company intended to launch their social VR application “as soon as possible” and it seems he wasn’t joking.

The CaptoGlove is an input device (er, garment?) meant for a variety of platforms--its creator seems to be aiming for “platform agnostic”--including the PC, mobile devices, and for XR. It’s designed to allow you to ditch standard input devices such as gamepads, keyboards, and mice, and the company making it, also called CaptoGlove, has just launched a Kickstarter campaign.

Oh my...

The Kerbal Space Program community has been abuzz today with the news that a portion of the KSP team at Squad have been hired by Valve. It all began when an ex valve artist spoke about the hires during a recent podcast.  Further reading: The best VR games. 

At last week's Pentagon Lab Day in Washington, DC, the Army's Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) and Army Research Lab demonstrated a prototype of technology straight out of first-person shooter games—an "augmented reality" heads-up display that could help soldiers tap into sensors and other data.

During a speaking appearance today, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick discussed a number of interesting topics, including microtransactions, virtual reality, and the Nintendo Switch. Starting with microtransactions, Zelnick said Take-Two is not trying to nickel-and-dime players, though he did acknowledge that the company has received some amount of criticism on the subject. Microtransactions are part of what Take-Two calls "recurrent consumer spending" and this is big business for the company, and highly lucrative given the margins on digital content.