All ModeIt’s been a great week for VR. Oculus held its yearly developer conference event Oculus Connect and this produced lots of exciting news. These are the top stories this week based on feedback from fans on our Facebook page.
1. It’s official, Minecraft is coming to VR
Breaking: Minecraft is coming to VR
Minecraft has become a phenomenon unto itself. It has a loyal following of millions of people. Minecraft is a game that allows for basically unlimited replay. And it’s a natural desire to want to get inside the game and experience the world for yourself.
In other words, Minecraft coming to virtual reality is extremely good for VR and its mass adoption.
It’s coming to the Oculus Rift and Gear VR. And it will likely make its way on to more platforms as well.
2. Netflix Is Coming to VR Also
You Can Now Watch Netflix On A Virtual Reality Headset
This is another huge break for virtual reality. One of the first things people ask about when they try the Gear VR is Netflix.
Kicking back and watching Netflix in the privacy of your virtual home theater is a killer app. And it helps tremendously with the current limited-content problem. Netflix has essentially endless content.
It is already available for download from the Oculus Store on the Gear VR.
3. One should never underestimate the power of Carmack
John Carmack made Netflix and Minecraft happen for Gear VR
The legendary John Carmack has been the head of Oculus’ efforts with the Gear VR. It’s quite possible that no one else in the world has the technical talent and experience to do what Carmack is doing with the Gear VR.
Carmack used his personal influence to secure the deal with Minecraft. He referred to the deal as being the best thing that could happen for VR.
John Carmack is still working at full power in his Oculus office in Dallas and there is sure to be many more exciting developments to come from him.
4. Laptops will feature NVIDIA’s top of the line DESKTOP graphics cards. NVIDIA says VR is a reason.
NVIDIA brings its top-end desktop graphics to laptops
Virtual reality is very demanding of computers. If any of the parameters slips, such as FPS, you run in to a sub-optimal experience. And since VR is so up close and personal, this can often cause serious discomfort for the user.
There has been concern about the technical difficulty of setting up consumer VR. There are countless configurations out there and many of them will not work well with VR. There will soon be ‘Oculus Ready’ and ‘VR Ready’ configurations to deal with this problem.
NVIDIA announced that they are bringing their top-end graphics cards to laptops. This will help standardize VR systems and allow for serious portable VR as well.
5. Want to understand why VR is getting big now? Look at this infographic
An illustrated guide to the history of VR [Infographic]
Finally, we include this interesting infographic. Many people are still unaware of the perfect storm of technologies coming together to make modern consumer virtual reality possible.
This infographic gives an easy to read history of how we got to where we are today.