HTC Vive

Audi has revealed that the holoride tech for back-seat passengers demonstrated at CES 2019 will roll out to select vehicles from June. The platform adapts content to the car's movement, transforming a boring commute into a rolling VR theme park.

Autron VR has just launched in Melbourne, Australia, with a range of shooting games, escape rooms and other VR experiences, all tailored for groups. New Atlas went hands on to check it out – and may have ruined regular escape rooms for ourselves.

After briefly teasing it at CES back in January, HTC has now fully whipped the covers off the new VR headset, the Vive Cosmos. The new headset features inside-out tracking, improved displays, and a modular design.

At CES 2019, HTC has unveiled the Vive Pro Eye, which adds eye-tracking to last year’s high-end hardware, and the Vive Cosmos, which turns the tracking inside out. On top of that, HTC has outlined software updates to its content subscription service and something called the “Vive Reality System.”

Our sense of smell is now being used to help sell the illusion of virtual reality with the FeelReal VR Mask, which not only wafts certain scents your way but can also simulate rain, heat and wind on your face.

The virtual reality playing field is spreading out to fill all niches, and HTC is helping speed that along by getting its open source platform Vive Wave out to third party companies. Chinese manufacturer Shadow Creator is the latest to jump on board, unveiling the Shadow VR standalone headset.

​One of the more fun exhibits at this year's fairly dry Digility AR/VR expo in Cologne, Germany was this VR rock climbing wall game, which lets you climb around in a range of weird virtual and photo-realistic environments to help you safely conquer your fear of heights.

​​It has a critical average of just 56 on Metacritic, with writers praising the visuals and atmospherics but bemoaning the slow pace and lack of variety in its gameplay. More than two years after its release we revisit Adrift: a much-overlooked and underrated and misunderstood astronaut sim.​

We first heard about the official Vive wireless adapter HTC was making in partnership with Intel last year, but now it's here at last. The device is going on sale from US$299.99 and up, with pre-orders opening up on September 5, and shipping starting on September 24.

After finding success at Bandai Namco’s VR Zone in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Mario Kart VR launches at London’s O2 arena on Friday. I popped along on Monday to don an HTC Vive headset, grab some VR bananas and give it a try. Here’s what I found.

Training firefighters can be dangerous, costly and time-consuming. To help train firefighters more often and more easily, a new virtual reality simulator called the FLAIM Trainer has been developed, made up of an HTC Vive VR headset, haptics systems and a vest that tracks the trainee’s vital signs.

VR is great at immersing us in gigantic worlds that seem to go on forever – until you bump into the living room wall. Now computer scientists have developed a system that tricks you into walking around in circles in the real world, while thinking you’re moving longer distances in the virtual world.