VR

The original Oculus Quest was one of the technology world's great game-changers, and the new Quest 2 makes big improvements everywhere while dropping the price. We've now spent a month with the world's latest, greatest standalone VR headset.

A new study has found integrating an immersive virtual reality system into a chronic pain treatment can significantly enhance a patient’s pain-relief outcome. The research suggests “digiceutical” therapies may be effective for patients suffering chronic pain.

It's huge, it's clunky, it's not pretty, but Marcel Reese claims his VR exoskeleton is "the first working system for realistic walking in VR with force feedback and balance feedback." It tracks your movement, and lets the virtual world push back.

One of the issues with VR gaming is that it's usually set on a scale that's bigger than your living room – so you have to stay in a very small part of the world or "teleport" around. The latest attempt to fix the issue are the Cybershoes.

Researchers at Stanford and Samsung have developed a proof-of-concept ultra-high-resolution OLED display. “Metaphotonic” tech could improve a screen's color purity and potentially boost the pixel density to an astounding 10,000 pixels per inch (ppi).

Nothing breaks the immersion of VR like putting your hand through a wall. Haptics can give som sense of touch, but a new study has a clever alternative – robots that move physical furniture around, so there’s a real chair or wall waiting for you.

Robots are an increasingly common sight in stores, and now they’re getting a bit more hands-on. Japanese company Telexistence has begun trials in convenience stores of a robot shelf-stacker that can be controlled by a human via VR.

Capturing the complexities of the human hand is very tricky. Now engineers have developed a new wearable system that uses thermal sensors to accurately predict hand positions, with potential applications in VR, robotics and translating sign language.

The Cinera Edge is a light personal cinema headset that packs a 5K(ish)-resolution display and Dolby Surround Sound. It uses two OLED displays measuring just 0.83 inches with 2560 x 1440 pixels each, creating the equivalent of almost an IMAX screen.

If virtual reality headgear is going to start gaining more mass appeal, making these wearables as light and as unobtrusive as possible is really going to help – and Facebook just unveiled some VR specs which look similar to a regular pair of glasses.

Haptic feedback is becoming a bigger part of entertainment. Now, a German startup is launching the Feelbelt, which adds the element of touch to games, music, movies, and basically any other device that outputs sound.

For the next nine days, anyone with an Oculus Go or Oculus Quest can access a 15-film lineup of immersive 3D films from around the globe, free of charge, curated and presented by the Tribeca Film Festival. Cinema360 will run from April 17 to 26.