Virtual Reality

We already have several major players when it comes to virtual reality for consumers, but XRSpace thinks there's room for another – and it wants to make social interaction the focus of its new VR hardware and software.

The Oculus Quest has cameras all over it, which it uses in many fascinating ways. One of those is to track your motion within a room. Another, which has been an experimental feature up until now, is to watch your hands.

By far the most extreme gaming and simulation platform we've seen, the Nova places you in a fully untethered ball that's free to spin in any direction, creating all sorts of wild gravity effects for total immersion in a range of different vehicles.

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.

Although there are already mobile VR systems that track what each of a user's fingers are doing, they typically take the form of expensive gloves. KupVR is designed to be a low-cost alternative, as it leaves the user's fingers open and free.

The Oculus Quest is a stunning piece of technology, an all-in-one, totally self-contained VR setup that drags virtual reality out of the lofty realms of nerd-dom and makes the incredible experience of VR something the unwashed masses can enjoy.

Phoria is a startup working to leverage VR and AR technologies to take its users to entirely new places. New Atlas sat down with its CEO Trent Clews-de Castella to discuss its ambitions, and where its experiences might be taking people in the future.

Middlesex University London is putting student nurses, pediatric postgrads and midwifery students to work in virtual environments to deal with scenarios faced in real-world settings.

Home VR is going to hit the mainstream big time this decade, and it'll be devices like this that get it over the line. Panasonic has demonstrated a set of lightweight, compact, ultra high-def VR goggles that actually look good.

A study is suggesting VR may inhibit effective formation of visual memories, and in some contexts could result in poor educational results. The study hypothesizes the enhanced cognitive demands of VR potentially disrupt visual memory formation.

Interactive 3D images that appear to float in the air, above a table that a group of people can stand around without needing any special headsets or glasses: that's what Australian company Voxon Photonics has built with its US$10,000 VX1 table.

Although VR tech may allow users to see and hear computer-generated environments, the extent to which people can feel those worlds is still quite limited. That could be about to change, though, thanks to what's being called an "epidermal VR" system.