Facebook Technologies, a subsidiary of Facebook Inc. and owner of Oculus, has today "temporarily" suspended sales of Oculus VR headsets in Germany. The news is coming today after Oculus announced that all of the new Oculus accounts have to move to the Facebook login system before January 1, 2023, when all of the current Oculus accounts will be suspended. The German data protection law is extremely suspicious of Facebook's behavior and how they handle user data in general, so Oculus has potentially decided to stop the sales to avoid any possible antitrust regulations from the German government. The exact reason is unknown, and it is yet to be revealed, however, the suspicions laid out here may be part of the reason.

In June 2016 Valve announced 'Destinations', a Steam workshop not easy to find anymore, that allowed the end user to enter real and fictitious scenarios through the magic of virtual reality. The idea was intriguing, but the media was not completely sold and judged Valve's proposal as both "the best and the worst of VR". From all this, however, came a singular discovery: those who reverse-engineered its code discovered in it the HLVR acronym, which initiated a wide debate about the potential appearance of a Half Life VR (HLVR) version specifically developed for VR headsets.

Lending further credence to this hypothesis was Gabe Newell's announcement in February 2017 that Valve was preparing three big titles for virtual reality- two of them based on Source 2, and one of them based on Unity. More such signs appeared in the summer of 2018, and everything was pointing towards this project being indeed real, that it would likely be based on Source 2, and that it would offer a full-fledged blockbuster title that this generation of VR has been desperately seeking. We now have more data courtesy a "leaked email" to Reddit user 2flock that suggests Valve's work is apparently going beyond just VR game development, as images of a prototype device seen below confirm that Valve is also working on its own VR head-mounted display (HMD), one whose development would also be more advanced than initially suspected.

Brendan Iribe, a co-founder of Oculus VR, has announced that he will be leaving the company today in a Facebook post. Having been with the company since its inception in July of 2012, he is now moving on after in his own words "six incredible years." Having been a part of the initial VR push with the Oculus Rift, he has left an indelible mark on an industry that is still growing into its own today.

Calling his tenure at Oculus and Facebook a "transformative experience" Iribe was thankful to the people around him including his team that has been a part of his journey thus far. However, after 20 years he considers now a good time to take a break and "to recharge, reflect and be creative." Even so, it will be interesting to see what he does next, considering he has already co-founded a previous company, Scaleform that was bought by Autodesk in 2011 and then worked for Gaikai before the Sony acquisition in 2012. With a track record in tech that spans multiple industries, it likely won't be long before Iribe is working on the next big thing.

NVIDIA debuted its R399 series of GeForce software, which could be its final sequence before GeForce RTX family of graphics cards are released to market, likely accompanied by a new series of GeForce software (likely R400 series?). Version 399.07 WHQL is "Game Ready" for "Battlefield V Open Beta," F1 2018, "Immortal: Unchained," Pro Evolution Soccer 2019, "Strange Brigade," and "Switchblade." The drivers also add SLI profiles for F1 2018 and "Immortal: Unchained."

GeForce 399.07 WHQL addresses a number of bugs, including blurry screen noticed on "Rainbow Six: Siege" with TAA dialed up to 100%; diagonal screen-tearing on notebooks with MSHybrid; incorrect OpenGL rendering context on GeForce GTX 1050 and GTX 1070; missing textures in "Doom" (2016) with the Vulkan renderer; random BSODs on Oculus VR software; stability issues with "LA Noire VR," and stuttering in some exotic configurations on "Call of Duty: Black Ops 4." A key bug with G-Sync stuttering on machines upgrading to Windows 10 1803 has also been fixed. Grab the driver from the link below.DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA GeForce 399.07 WHQL Software

At last, the long wait is over. The best Virtual Reality game of Gamescom 2017, according to Elite Gamer, is now available on Steam. Elevator… to the Moon! takes players on a wild ride in a dilapidated lunar elevator. Players are tasked to fix their odd space vehicle while off-kilter and loudmouthed president of the world, Doug-Slater Roccmeier yells at them for not following every instruction to the point. Take the trip to its end, where dark and horrible mysteries on the moon are just waiting to be uncovered. Elevator… to the Moon! is no one trick pony. After you've finished the storyline, there is a perplexing alternate ending to experience, many achievements to unlock and fun little secrets to be discovered. As you can see, there is enough action going on to satisfy your lust for entertainment for quite a while.

In addition to slashing the price of Oculus Rift HMD Set down to USD $399, Oculus VR announced a new standalone VR headset for the masses, the Oculus Go, which at USD $199, is significantly cheaper than the Oculus Rift, while not being that much costlier than the $129 Samsung Gear VR. Oculus Go lacks the fully-tracked motion sensors or inside-out tracking of the Oculus Rift, which helps keep its price down. It retains the essentials, including a 2560 x 1440 pixels display resolution, new lenses, and 3D spatial audio built into the headset. Oculus VR plans to put Go in the hands of developers by November 2017, with mass-production expected to begin shortly after, and retail availability some time in 2018.

Oculus VR announced that its pioneering Oculus Rift VR HMD has finally emerged from its early-adopter pricing, and will be sold at USD $399 a piece, going forward. The company had been facing increased competition in HMDs from the likes of the HTC Vive, and tech majors Microsoft announcing their VR/AR standards. Each $399 Rift bundle comes with Touch controllers, sensors, and six free apps that give you hours of entertainment including Epic's arcade shooter, Robo Recall, and our creative tools, Medium and Quill. Oculus VR, throughout its press-release, emphasized that the $399 price isn't a limited-period offer, and that the pricing is "permanent."

Tough breakups aren't easy by definition, and the breakup between legendary programmer John Carmack and former employer ZeniMax has probably been one of the most worded of all. Now, Oculus Chief Technology Officer John Carmack has filed a lawsuit against ZeniMax for $22.5 million, money he claims ZeniMax still owes him from id Softwares' $150 million sale to ZeniMax back in 2009. Carmack says the amount he is filling for is part of the $45 million owed to him for the sale, of which he has already been able to convert 22.5 million (the non-missing half) in ZeniMax shares. However, Carmack says ZeniMax is unlawfully withholding the remaining $22.5 million because of "sour grapes".

Carmack claims ZeniMax is holding back the payment as payback for "a series of allegations regarding claimed violations of Mr. Carmack's Employment Agreement", referencing the Zenimax/Facebook lawsuit over the supposed theft of trade secrets. However, Oculus was recently found not guilty of stealing trade secrets, though the court ordered the company to pay $500 million for copyright infringement, false designation and the violation of Palmer Luckey's NDA. Oculus is appealing the case, calling the prior ruling "legally flawed and factually unwarranted."

Earlier this month, Zenimax was awarded $500m when a jury found that VR pioneer Oculus had violated a NDA and illegally used code from the game publisher. That may just be the beginning of the legal ramifications facing Oculus however, as Zenimax has just asked the court to block Oculus from using the code involved in the court case altogether, potentially blocking the sale of a good number of games utilizing the technology of the Oculus VR headset.

Oculus is appealing the case, and calls the prior ruling "legally flawed and factually unwarranted." To their credit, the court did agree that while Oculus had violated a non-disclosure agreement, it did not find that they had committed the larger crime of stealing trade secrets.

AMD, CyberPowerPC, and Oculus VR announced a breakthrough Oculus VR-ready gaming desktop priced at just US $499. At the beginning of 2016, you needed to spend a minimum of $949 to build a desktop that meets Oculus VR minimum requirements. Under its hood, is an AMD FX-4350 quad-core processor, Radeon RX 470 4 GB graphics card, 8 GB of dual-channel memory, 1 TB of HDD storage, and a DVD drive. The desktop also includes a keyboard and mouse. The only other piece of hardware you need to spend on is the Oculus Rift HMD itself.

CyberPowerPC is also selling a slightly more premium variant in the Gamer Xtreme VR desktop, priced at just $699. For $200 more, you get an Intel Core i5 "Skylake" quad-core processor, Radeon RX 480 8 GB graphics, pre-installed Windows 10, and WiFi WLAN adapter, besides all that you get with the $499 variant.

In this episode of TechPowerUp News, we talk about the spectacular Surface Book, one of the most talked about products launched at the unexpectedly awesome Surface launch event; plus get our take on the brand new Oculus VR-ready gaming desktops co-designed by AMD and Dell.

Most of you are familiar with the name John Carmack. For those who may not be, he's the legendary game developer and engineer who was one of the four founders of iD software and the creator of classic genre establishing games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake. If you play any first-person shooters on your PC you can add Mr. Carmack to the list of people to thank for that

After 20 some years with iD Software, Carmack became very interested in the advances of virtual reality after iD released its latest game Rage, especially with Oculus VR's Oculus Rift headset, and last August signed on to be the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) over at Oculus VR. At the time, he was splitting his time between Oculus VR and id Software. In November of 2013, Carmack left iD Software to devote all his time to working with virtual reality at Oculus VR.