Fringe Realities are pleased to announce that their atmospheric horror VR game Project: Nightlight is planning to be released on Steam VR with a release window of Q1 2023. Project: Nightlight sees the player take control of a nightguard, unravelling the mysteries of The Department and the secrets it's trying to keep from going public. When something is amiss with the contained Artifact, the player will be guided by the distressed co-worker Dave over the walkie-talkie.

Project: Nightlight aims to provide a whole new level of immersion thanks to the unique capabilities of virtual reality. The game allows the player to interact with objects with an acute attention to real-life accuracy, such as handling bolt cutters or melting locks with a blowtorch. Further details will be provided in the leadup to the launch of Project: Nightlight on Steam VR in Q1 2023. For more information and future updates, they'll be available on the official Twitter page @FringeRealities.

Today, the National Football League, the National Football League Players Association and StatusPRO, Inc., a sports technology and gaming company that uses NFL game data to create authentic extended reality experiences, announced the release of NFL PRO ERA, the first-ever NFL and NFLPA-licensed virtual reality (VR) simulation gaming title. Available globally on Meta Quest 2 and PlayStation VR platforms, NFL PRO ERA will bring fans closer to NFL players' point of view with a first-person 3D immersive football gaming experience. NFL PRO ERA will feature the NFLPA group license to allow fans to play the current NFL roster in the game.

"The NFL is excited to partner with StatusPRO, which has developed cutting-edge VR technology and leveraged their expertise as former football players to create an incredibly immersive NFL experience," said Ed Kiang, VP of Video Gaming at the NFL. "NFL PRO ERA will enable fans to connect with the game and their favorite teams in a whole new way."

Hopefully you were able to tune into our second annual Meta Quest Gaming Showcase today. But if not? Don't worry, we've got you covered. Below you'll find a recap of every announcement from today's show (and all of the trailers too). NFL PRO ERA, Among Us VR, Red Matter 2, Bonelab—the list goes on. Best of all: Every game we showed off today is slated to release within the next year.

We're also celebrating today's show with a sale in the Meta Quest Store. Grab games like Moss and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners so you can get caught up before the sequels drop later this year. And we gave away the world the showcase took place in as a new Home environment—look for Crystal Atrium under the Personalization tab of your settings menu.

Factors such as the rising popularity of topics related to the metaverse and UGC (user-generated content), as well as the rapid increase in AR/VR device shipment, will likely result in the creation of a growing body of virtual reality content in the market, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. TrendForce expects annual global virtual reality content revenue to grow at a 40% CAGR from US$2.16 billion in 2021 to US$8.31 billion in 2025.

TrendForce further indicates that gaming/entertainment, videos, and social interactions comprise the primary categories of virtual reality content. Incidentally, as the construction of the virtual world and the development of virtual reality content are unlikely to be accomplished by only a handful of companies alone, companies in this space will therefore place an increasing emphasis on UGC instead. Leading companies will likely leverage the build-out of virtual reality platforms/environments and the provisioning of developmental tools/interfaces in order to not only lower the barrier to entry for content creation, but also raise user participation, thereby driving up the content market for virtual reality applications.

Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, has introduced its first product designed to empower the next generation of immersive storytellers. The new RF5.2 mm F2.8 L Dual Fisheye lens brings stereoscopic 3D virtual reality (VR) capture to the EOS R5 camera as part of the EOS VR System, which also includes a future firmware update for the EOS R5 camera to support use of this lens with new VR shooting specific functions, as well as new upcoming Canon EOS VR software solutions for conversion and processing.

As the world's first digital interchangeable dual fisheye lens capable of shooting stereoscopic 3D 180° VR imagery to a single image sensor the complexities of virtual reality production and the ability to view the content in full capacity, are greatly streamlined for seasoned professionals and newcomers to the craft. In order to truly experience the captured content by this system in its truest form, a compatible VR headset is recommended for use such as the Oculus Quest 2, allowing the viewer to immerse themselves in the content—by simply moving their head to provide a vivid, incredibly wide view.

NVIDIA DLSS adoption continues at rapid pace, with a further 9 titles adding the game-changing, performance-accelerating, AI and Tensor Core-powered GeForce RTX technology. This follows the addition of DLSS to 5 games last month, and the launch of Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition a fortnight ago. This month, DLSS comes to No Man's Sky, AMID EVIL, Aron's Adventure, Everspace 2, Redout: Space Assault, Scavengers, and Wrench. And for the first time, DLSS comes to Virtual Reality headsets in No Man's Sky, Into The Radius, and Wrench.

By enabling NVIDIA DLSS in each, frame rates are greatly accelerated, giving you smoother gameplay and the headroom to enable higher-quality effects and rendering resolutions, and raytracing in AMID EVIL, Redout: Space Assault, and Wrench. For gamers, only GeForce RTX GPUs feature the Tensor Cores that power DLSS, and with DLSS now available in 50 titles and counting, GeForce RTX offers the fastest frame rates in leading triple-A games and indie darlings.

Microsoft Flight Simulator was built from the ground up to achieve three key goals: realism, accuracy, and authenticity of flight. Today, we're excited to share that Virtual Reality for Microsoft Flight Simulator is now available on your favorite VR headset for PC, offering simmers the deepest and most immersive virtual flight experience in the new simulator to date.

The flight sim community has been a very active and insightful partner in shaping how the team approached VR, and continues to be a critical partner in our continued development as we make further improvements and add new features to the simulation. Adding VR to Microsoft Flight Simulator was a direct result of community feedback, and we look forward to continued involvement in the future of the franchise with us.

Today, Lenovo announced it has become a reseller of Varjo's human-eye resolution VR and XR headsets. This further deepens the existing collaboration between the two enterprise-class manufacturers and allows customers to easily access a complete solution for their professional virtual and mixed reality workflows. Through the reseller agreement, users can purchase "Certified for Varjo" workstations along with any device available in Varjo's portfolio via Lenovo's distribution channels.

"Many existing VR offerings in the market today are enterprise versions of a consumer designed product," said Mike Leach, solution portfolio lead, Lenovo. "However, Lenovo's professional workstations and Varjo's VR and XR headsets are specifically engineered to perform in the most sophisticated and demanding enterprise use cases. Our ability to offer customers a single point of purchase for certified workstations and VR/XR devices streamlines access to the tools needed for immersive workflows that are changing the way we work today."

Respawn Entertainment, a studio of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA), and Oculus from Facebook today announced during Facebook Connect that the highly-anticipated upcoming Virtual Reality (VR) title, Medal of Honor : Above and Beyond will release on December 11, 2020, worldwide. This new innovative and immersive title blends films and games into one, and will be available on the Oculus Store for Oculus Rift and Steam with OpenVR support and cross-platform play.

"The Medal of Honor franchise has always been a powerful series that tells the untold stories of war heroes, and from the beginning of this series in 1999, our goal has been to create grounded and emotionally authentic games that are true to the experiences of people that fought and lived through it," said Peter Hirschmann, Director, Respawn Entertainment. "We're honored to share these moving first-hand stories from survivors and veterans of WWII and deliver an immersive VR gameplay experience that provides high-flying action and emotional, intimate storytelling in equal measure."

Pico Interactive, a global tech company that develops innovative virtual reality (VR) and enterprise solutions, today announces the availability of its highly anticipated headsets from the Pico Neo line - the Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye, both of which deliver key VR solutions to the enterprise.

Both models were built with business in mind, featuring best-in-class 4K resolution, enterprise functionality, six degrees of freedom (6DoF) and spatial stereo speakers. The headsets feature the comfort and hygienic design of an all-PU facial interface, unique counterbalanced design for easy and extended wear, and have plenty of room for prescription glasses. Using the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform with Boundless XR, the Neo 2 allows content streaming from a VR Ready PC and select existing PC VR platforms.

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.

Mixed reality headsets seem to present a new opportunity for the Virtual Reality segment, and Samsung has taken advantage of this trend by announcing the new Samsung HMD Odyssey+, a product that stands out for a novelty in its OLED displays that eliminates the screen door effect. This is a visual artifact of displays where the fine lines separating pixels become visible on the screen. This effect hurts the visual experience, but it can also cause dizziness or nausea.

Samsung say they have solved the problem with an innovation called "Anti-Screen Door Effect (Anti-SDE) Display". This technology helps to increased the perceived resolution of the displays, and according to Samsung the user will have a perceived screen density of 1,233 PPI. The actual density is 616 PPI on a conventional AMOLED, but with the new Anti-SDE AMOLED technology that resolution promises to double virtually before our eyes.

The name of the product may sound ironic given the intended application, but the Mozilla Firefox Reality web browser is the first of its kind to be built dedicated to virtual reality (and also augmented-, and mixed-reality for that matter) portals. Mozilla had originally announced earlier this year this was in the making, and today we see availability at the usual VR suspects- Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream app stores. The Mixed Reality Team at Mozilla felt that VR took advantage of the so-called 3D immersive web, and that using existing 2D-centric browsers meant not being able to, in their words, "enjoy it".

This meant that Mozilla built Firefox Reality with a new approach to navigation, user input, searches and more. Features built into the browser include searching with one's voice, for example, taking advantage of microphones either integrated in headsets or as part of audio peripherals used in conjunction. Mozilla says they spent thousands of hours testing and collecting feedback from users to get to the release version of the browser, and this comes also in the form of a new home screen that adds interactive, immersive experiences right from the get go as seen below. More to follow past the break.

Worldwide shipments of virtual reality (VR) headsets were down 33.7% year over year in the second quarter of 2018 (2Q18), according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Augmented and Virtual Reality Headset Tracker. IDC expects this to be a temporary setback as the VR market finds its legs. The arrival of new products, such as the Oculus Go and HTC Vive Pro, and new brands, combined with the need for greater headset fidelity all point to a positive outlook for the quarters ahead.

Screenless viewers brought a lot of attention to VR in the early days as the entire market was artificially propped up by brands like Samsung, Alcatel, and Google that bundled the headsets with smartphones. However, since then, the screenless viewer category has declined substantially, shrinking from 1 million headsets in 2Q17 to 409,000 in 2Q18. This category was the largest contributor to the decline in shipments for the overall VR headset market.

Have you heard the news? Analyst reports are in and apparently, it's curtains for Virtual Reality (VR). Pardon us if we're not heeding the alarms. News of the so-called death of VR comes once a year and is greatly exaggerated.

That's not to say analyst VR forecasts don't have valuable information-they most certainly do. But we thought it would be helpful to look more closely and critically about how they came to their conclusions.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, debuted the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 Platform, the world's first dedicated Extended Reality (XR) platform during a launch event leading up to the Augmented World Expo (AWE). XR1 is a next-generation platform offering mainstream users high-quality XR experiences while enabling OEMs to develop mainstream devices. The XR1 platform also has special optimizations for Augmented Reality (AR) experiences with Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities offering better interactivity, power consumption and thermal efficiency. Qualcomm Technologies also announced that Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) Meta, VIVE, Vuzix and Picoare already developing on the first dedicated XR1 platform.

"As technology evolves and consumer demand grows, we envision XR devices playing a wider variety of roles in consumers' and workers' daily lives," said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager, Mobile Business Unit, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. "By integrating powerful visuals, high-fidelity audio, and rich interactive experiences, XR1 will help create a new era of high-quality, mainstream XR devices for consumers."