Ahead of Comic Con Disney’s D23 Expo announced Marvel VR for Oculus, A Star Wars AR HEADSET!, and a Star Wars theme park..oh AND reveled the Kingdom Hearts 3 Toy Story Trailer!!!

I consider my self a Disney fan, I love Tron and Darkwing Duck, also since I am a big Star Wars and Marvel fan over the past few years I have to say I have become a bigger Disney fan. All that being said Disney’s D23 Expo was not on my radar and its a damn shame because they just announced some major things for its entertainment empire including big VR and AR news.

 First up is Marvel Powers United VR  being made by Oculus and Sanzaru Games. Though the full lineup details is being held out for Comic Con we do know  The Hulk, Captain Marvel, and Rocket Raccoon are playable. The announcement came during the “Level Up” gaming panel, which also includedDisney reveal of a Star Wars AR headset in development with Lenovo.  The collection of games reveled is called Star Wars: Jedi Challenges, includes holochess  a lightsaber game of course. Check out the reveal video .

No word yet on when the release date for headset will but the website is currently live. 

Speaking about Star Wars, Disney also offered several new details about its Star Wars Galaxy expansion confirming rumors that the company was working on an Westworld-esq set in George Lucas’ universe.

According to Walt Disney Parks and Resorts chairman Bob Chapek, the project amounts to almost exactly that. “We are working on our most experiential concept ever,” he told the crowd during a Saturday panel. “It combines a luxury resort with immersion in an authentic environment.”

At D23 today, Disney announced that it's making an augmented reality headset with help from hardware manufacturer Lenovo. It's designed specifically with Star Wars experiences in mind.

And last but not least Disney keyblade dropped a new Kingdom Heart 3 Toy Story trailer for good measure. This is some crazy stuff and Im blown away at what the media empire has in store for the future. I think I may skip E3 next year and focus on D23. 

http://arkittens.com/

CatsAndVR@Pocket Gamer Connects SF- VR Indie Pitch Winner VINDICTA

Recently CatsAndVR had the chance to not only attend Pocket Game Connects SF but also be part of their VR Indie Pitch. My game is still a work in progress and the feedback was great for my development. However, the winner of the VR Indie Pitch was an excellent game from Beirut based Independent Studio "Game Cooks". 

Vindicta is a great VR FPS that is able to stand out from a very crowded marketplace with its innovative control scheme, smooth gun combat, and art style that seems like a mix of Portal and Half-Life. Holding down the Vive's touchpad buttons and swinging your arms allow you to move in the game. At first I thought this controller scheme was silly till I realized how creative Game Cooks really is. One simple controller scheme not only solved an the locomotion issue faced in many First Person Shooters it added a spastic level of immersion that I feel is often missing in VR games. 

I got a chance to talk to Lara Noujaim, Director Of Publishing at Game Cooks.

Lara went into detail on the conscious decisions the Game Cooks team made in order to develop in to a VR studio starting with seeing the potential of the market at GDC, trying their hand at their first VR game HOVR, and then making the leap to wanting to be a full time VR studio.

I was very happy for Lara and her team but the whole field of view did not present itself until I saw Lara speak at here PGConnects panel "VR from the Unlikeliest Places"  

#VRCSanFrancisco #vr big pitch winners @Vindictagame representing not only #womeninvr #womeningaming but also the #middleeast @GameCooks pic.twitter.com/NiO7hMftHk

— CatsAndVR (@CatsAndVR) June 28, 2017

Lara went into detail about how tough it really is to be a VR development studio in a country where is not as readily available due to import restrictions not to mention that Lara and her team have to be extremely selective in what events they are able to attend in the US due to the simple fact they are an independent studio with limited funds. 

With the lack of VR Headsets in the Middle East it is very hard for them to even promote locally but the Game Cooks team makes a point of reaching out and evangelizing VR in their area.

After that talk by Lara I knew that I must push myself to be a VR developer and really view myself as lucky for the many VR resources available to me in the Bay Area. 

If you have a VIVE go out and support these truly Independent team out to prove themselves despite the odds. VINDICTA is on sale now. 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/597770/VINDICTA/

Holy shit, Starbreeze are cool. They are giving away Payday 2, Payday 2 VR, and in return just asking you to check out The Mummy for StarVR IF you can.

Starbreeze Studio is currently offering their action packed four player co-op action game PAYDAY 2 for free on Steam for a limited time, up to a maximum of 5 million copies, in anticipation of the release of the upcoming PAYDAY 2 Ultimate Edition. The free download will additionally grant current and future compatible headset owners the base PAYDAY 2 VR game for free when it releases. PAYDAY 2 VR will allow players to crossplay with their friends on PC and enable heisters to retain their current characters and stats. The beta for PAYDAY 2 VR is expected to start during the autumn of 2017.

In the midst of the campaign, more than 150.000 concurrent players are playing PAYDAY 2 on Steam, presently marking it as the 4th all time high most played game by concurrent players on the platform. 

Time limited offer to download PAYDAY 2 for free: http://store.steampowered.com/app/218620/PAYDAY_2/

The PAYDAY 2 Ultimate Edition FAQ can be found here: http://www.overkillsoftware.com/games/payday2-ultimate-edition/

But wait theres more!

Universal Brand Development announced that fans will be able to continue the epic-adventure of TheMummy beyond the big screen with Starbreeze Studios,   The Mummy Prodigium Strike location-VR game

The Mummy Prodigium Strike is a groundbreaking location-based experience developed by VR pioneer Starbreeze Studios, in which players take on the role of a Prodigium agent and are tasked with capturing the ancient princess Ahmanet—all the while battling hordes of ravens, spiders and theundead. From a helicopter hovering above to the intense action on the ground, players must protect their fellow agents as the Mummy grows in power, battling to the finish to either capture her, or be her slave for eternity. The Mummy Prodigium Strike utilizes the 210-degree virtual reality headset StarVR and a unique set of 4D experience-enhancing elements, allowing users to fully transport themselves into the new world of gods and monsters. Fans can experience The Mummy Prodigium Strike in Los Angeles at Hollywood & Highland Center and at IMAX VR center in Los Angeles and New York City. Tickets are available now for $15 on location at Hollywood & Highland, and for $12 at www.IMAXVR.com.

www.catsandvr.com/blog/

Oculus partners with the California State Library to continue their goal of making VR accessible

“Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future.” —Ray Bradbury

Access to information and knowledge opens the doors to new possibilities and let us experience worlds that would otherwise be beyond reach. Through a new partnership with the California State Library, Oculus is giving access to VR to people that may never have the chance. This pilot program will place 100 Rifts and Oculus Ready PCs in 90 libraries throughout the state.

“It’s pretty cool to imagine how many people will try VR for the very first time—and have that ‘wow’ moment—in their local libraries,” says Oculus Education Program Manager Cindy Ball. “We hope early access will cause many people to feel excited and empowered to move beyond just experiencing VR and open their minds to the possibility of one day joining the industry.”

The 90 participating locations span nearly half of the state’s 184 library jurisdictions—with the possibility for future expansion.

“If this pilot is successful, that shows that library patrons and librarians value the availability of VR equipment in libraries,” Ball said. “Next steps would include the California State Library expanding the program by allocating or raising additional funding to scale the presence of VR.”

The applications available for discover and explore include Google Earth, Apollo 11, Titans of Space 2.0, Everest, Ocean Rift, The Body VR, Guided Meditation VR and Star Chart. This program also gives some additional life to the excellent work of the now defunct Oculus Story Studio. Dear Angelica, Lost and Henry will also be available.

http://www.catsandvr.com/blog/

PSVR system seller BATMAN: Arkham VR coming to HTC VIVE and Oculus Rift this month.

Batman: Arkham VR will be coming to both the Oculus Rift and HTC VIVE with not only Touch and Vive controller support but also full gamepad support on PC, including the PS4™ Dual Shock 4 Controller, Xbox One Controller and the Steam™ Controller. The game will be available on April 25th.

Batman ™ : Arkham VR is the first virtual reality experience to immerse players into the Dark Knight’s universe, putting them inside the Batman’s™ cowl like never before. PC players with HTC Vive and Oculus Rift hardware will now have the opportunity to experience Gotham City through the eyes of the World’s Greatest Detective, and delve deep into a tense Batman™: Arkham mystery. Players will enter a virtual reality world where they must think like Batman™ and utilize his legendary gadgets, unravelling a plot that threatens the lives of his closest allies. 

“Bringing Batman™ to VR was a very rewarding experience for us here at Rocksteady. The Dark Knight has always been an incredible character to work with due to his psychological depth, so it’s really exciting to use this immersive medium to delve deeper into his psyche than ever before” said Sefton Hill, Creative Director, Rocksteady Studios. “We’re thrilled that PC players can finally wear the cowl for themselves and take on the role of the World’s Greatest Detective with the addition of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift versions.”

CatsAndVR.com

CATOMIC is not just another match-3 mobile game, IT HAS CATS IN SPACE!

Catomic is not just any old match-3 game, but a match-3 games featuring CATS!

Game studio On5 is preparing a their new title “Catomic” for launch on March 15. In this free to play game the player needs to join objects by three or more in order to get more advanced objects. As the player progresses, the cats’ space program develops.

The space exploration starts with zeppelins, then flight on machines heavier than air (by Whisker brothers), and commercial airlines. Earth’s artificial satellite “Mittens I” will be launched, the cats will land on the Moon, and an orbital station will be established by Cat Space Agency. A private company CatX will develop Ocelot reusable booster rockets, and a huge spacecraft called Puss will be constructed.

As the player joins and upgrades the objects, the ground infrastructure grows too. The cats graduate from schools and universities, found Capple, Catsla, Cat Space Agency, and train astronauts. Pesky mice and raccoons try to impede the progress, but they can’t stop the goal oriented felines.

The game will be available for iOS and Android on March 15th.

This one goes out to all my fellow Space Cats.

CatsAndVR.com

If there was only one game CatsAndVR needed to play at GDC17 it was SUPER FURRY NEON CAT HEADS!

Well thanks to my super RADD day job I only got to spend one day on the GDC floor this year. Knowing how amazing GDC has been for me in the past and now finally going in with some development experience it made me a bit sad to only be at GDC for one day. Much Sad, Very SMH...until I saw my true reason to be at GDC was to cover SUPER FURRY NEON CAT HEADS. If there is one VR game this year that obviously speaks to a site called CatsAndVR.com it would be SUPER FURRY NEON CAT HEADS! Check out my review above and additional gameplay in the videos below. 

Super Furry Neon Cat Heads was designed by group of game developers in Lexington Kentucky who created it during an exhausting drive to the MIT Reality Virtually Hackathon. Led by Shylo Shepherd - Lead Cat Lady, Designer, and Motivation Generator the team set out to build a rhythm game about a cat imagining themselves as the DJ in a group using their cat tower as a means of acting out their fantasy. 

The game not only had an interatcive Cat Tower but also literally turned the Vive Headset into a Super Furry Neon Cat Head.

"As children, and for many in adulthood, role play and pretend are entertainment staples. We hope to evoke feelings of nostalgia and whimsy as players let go of themselves to play a game that requires putting on a furry neon…well actually LED...cat head, and swat at a cat tower covered in LED’s to the rhythm of a meow-mixed dance beat. Role playing the cat with the cat head and immersion through VR are important to assist with the feeling of pretend. Wearing a furry cat head that changes color also helps the game feel lighthearted and fun for the sake of fun. Besides, it looks cool."- Shylo Shepherd, lead designer on Super Furry Neon Cat Heads

CatsAndVR.com will be looking forward to what this team puts together in the future. Word on the street is that Purrody Games will be coming out with a Punch Out Style Cat VR game in the future. 

http://www.catsandvr.com/blog/

Happy Caturday from CatsAndVR.com & LootCrate! An Ode to LootCrate.

This months LootCrate may be my cats favorite as they love their new Batman feeding bowl and they have been snuggling with the Power Rangers shirt that came with it. 

As a long time fan of LootCrates I have to tell you after a tough week at work, a tough week of figuring out the future, and a tough week of listening to how America is going through a insane time politically it is pretty rad to chill with the cats and do a theraputic unboxing video. 

The thing about LootCrate is that it was created with the community in mind and continues to be a very community driven product. To be a bit hokey, LootCrates remind me of a simpler time when the dreams and aspirations of life seemed possible.

And to tell you using unboxing videos in an almost zen way has actually helped me to continue to see those dreams and aspirations as still being possible. When I lost my job a few months back I made an unboxing video to keep my self up. Keeping that positive attitude actually helped me get a job in VR. catsandvr.com/blog/catsandvrsuperbowl

LootCrates actually helps me connect with my current co-workers as I am able to give them gifts.....well only when I don't really want the stuff. I will say I recently gave away my cherished RoboCop LootCrate shirt to one of my good friends...and I love that shirt.

So thanks LootCrate for supporting CatsAndVR.com and all CatsAndVR.com fans go  and check out LootCrate.com

Tyler Hurd made the best Cat VR experience out now and the Cat Gods have not let me check it out.

Ex Double Fine Art Director Tyler Hurd made an amazing Cat VR experience and apparently I am not cool enough to try it. You get to shoot metallic kittens from your mechanical kitten hands and the world is soooo cruel they wont let me play. 

The experience is called Chocolate, named after the Giraffage song that it is actually a VR music video for. Chocolate is being called the definitive Cats And VR experience. Executively produced by Viacom NEXT, Chocolate made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival and is following that up with being a major part of SXSW VR Selections. https://www.sxsw.com/film/2017/sxsw-film-festival-reveals-midnighters-shorts-inaugural-vr-program/

Tyler Hurd’s previous VR works include the Ren and Stimpy inspired BUTTS (2015) and Old Friend (2016).

There is no release date for Chocolate, but it’s likely to come out sometime this year for the HTC Vive. Hopefully the cat gods will allow me to check it out soon. 

The CatsAndVR.com top 5 VR compaines in 2016 (for Us). Have a Great NYE! Have a Great 2017

First of all I would like to thank all the people who supported CatsAndVR.com this year. This started of as a pet project so I could learn and immerse my self in the world of Virtual Reality. 

As 2016 started I was in a job I hated but thanks to CatsAndVR.com I was able to get a job in VR that allows me to travel, be plugged in, and also follow my passion. I have learned a lot and due to that job I have I have not been able to put as much time into CatsAndVR.com over the last month. Since the end of 2016 falls on Caturday, I am closing 2016 out with a post. 

So Happy Caturday, Happy NYE, and Happy 2017 to all of you. Here we go.

The Top 5 VR Companies for me in 2016 (in no particular order I think they are all awesome)

Number One

Unity Technologies announced a host of new partnerships and exciting updates in 2016.The dev team I work with uses Unity as our bread and butter. There is a reason it is the game engine helping to push VR into a consumer product.  

With nearly 5 billion downloads of made with Unity mobile games in Q3 alone including  Super Mario Run, Unity continues to enable developers to create content and are now using that for VR and AR.

At the end of the year they released their EditorVR for constructing environments for VR in VR. For now, if you’re building VR games and experiences, EditorVR will likely help you with laying out a scene in VR and building your own custom VR tools

Unity has helped the VR ecosystem with innovation and has made some great hires this year to help chart them into 2017 including hiring innovators such as Tony Parisi and Danny Lange.

http://www.catsandvr.com/blog/unityai

Number Two

As VR grew in the past few years, so has UploadVR. UploadVR has helped create an awareness of VR in the San Francisco Bay Area and is now helping to evangelize globally.  This growing set of influencers in the VR community known for their events and ability to connect the VR world.. Upload VR is not just a blog but a group helping to shape VR not only as a consumer product but through connecting VR to the world of art, cinema, as well as using these connections for good. 

They are also helping to push Unity by hosting Learn Unity events. I hope to take one of these in 2017 so I can better my own skill set. On a personal level I owe something to Upload VR due to the fact that they gave me tickets to their E3 Upload Party. If I had not received those tickets I may have not went to LA to try to get in to E3 as press. I was successful in getting press for CatsAndVR and thus my 2016 VR year actually seemed like a reality. 

http://www.catsandvr.com/blog/uploadvrart

http://www.catsandvr.com/blog/uploadvre3

Number Three

Mindshow is a product built from a passion for VR. Not just because VR is cool but because we were promised the future when we were kids and still seeking it. 

Mindshow is Walt Disney. Mindshow is Jim Henson. Mindshow is Steve Jobs. Mindshow is the spark in humanity that made them create characters out of the stars. Mindshow are the muppet babies playing make believe come to life. 

It was hard to try to write something about Mindshow after I first tried it at VRLA because everyone who tried it in the media loved it to some degree and has been able to post before me. What do you write to be different. CatsAndVR.com can't compete with UploadVR, Techcrunch, VRScout , and the other cool kids in resources, turnaround time, etc.

Mindshow reminded me I did not start the site to do that at all but instead I started it to learn and to grow. In the end maybe this post did not fully explain what Mindshow really is or do the experience justice, but neither did the trailer. You have to experience it to really know that this is what we have been seeking in VR the whole time. You see in the end what Mindshow really is can just be described as inspiration captured and then shared for the sake of shared inspiration itself. Inspiration is what I walked away with from VRLA. Inspiration is what I walked away with from Mindshow.

http://www.catsandvr.com/blog/mindshow

Number Four

As you may know, TheWaveVR recently made headlines for raising $2.5 million to create a VR music ecosystem. http://www.catsandvr.com/blog/thewavevrfunding

TheWaveVR is a VR platform for people who love music, enabling them to view, host and socialize in live and recorded shows worldwide, anytime, anywhere.  TheWave creates a VR venue where artists can perform live music by simply importing their tracks, customizing the visuals of the venue, and sharing virtual shows. Fans can attend via most major VR head mounted displays, interact with performers, socialize with friends, dance, paint and more.

One of the major highlights of the VRLA Summer Expo was the VR Rave presented by Skullcandy, Subpac, WeLens, and TheWaveVR. Attendees like comedian Reggie Watts got to experience a next level audio visual experience that incorporated 3D visuals as well as the ability to experience it all in VR.

Number Five

Thank you everyone this year. I started this year just wanting to be part of the VR world and now I have an HTC Vive, Playstation VR, and Gear VR I can call my own. I used CatsAndVR.com to get me a paying job in VR. I have traveled all over America evangelizing VR for my day job and got to meet a bunch of pro Football players.

I watched two Warriors games from a private suite because of VR and got to travel to 3 new states due to VR. All in all I think CatsAndVR.com was a worthwhile investment. I look forward to growing, writing more, learning Unity, going to VR meetups, and being a member of the VR community. Have a safe NYE and great 2017. 

-

Bobby Venom