Hardware requirements for the Oculus Rift

Continuing in a VR theme, as with the previous blog post; with the commercial release of the Oculus Rift (mooted for 2016) it is interesting to see what hardware one would need to be able to use this. 

MCV lists here the specific requirements and they are certainly worth looking at.

With the competition in VR hardware heating up it will be fascinating to see how developments of the various planned devices turn out over the next few months.

UE4 and SteamVR

The Unreal engine has carried VR support for devices like the Oculus Rift for a while now and now extends this to the SteamVR effort. This is with version 4.8 onwards of the UE4 engine.

You can read the piece of news/press release on the official Unreal engine site here. This of course is good news for any VR developer with the SteamVR hardware lined up to be one of the major competitors in the area in the near future.

Minecraft and Game of Thrones

If you ever wondered what different locations from the TV show Game of Thrones would look like recreated in Minecraft then you might want to check out the video below.

The effort is detailed in full in the official site of the project (imaginatively called WesterosCraft) here.

Angry Birds in VR?

This is making headlines over the web (alongside the screenshot below) and is definitely worth mentioning here too; it appears Rovio is preparing a VR version (on the Samsung Gear) of their hugely successful Angry Birds title. 

While not a lot of information is available on this currently it appears the exciting part of this is the player being placed at a third person viewpoint, this time behind the action.

As this is one of the most iconic games of all time it goes without saying that should this ever be released, it could potentially be a big boost for the medium.

TIGA Budget Submissions document quote

This is a few weeks old now but there is a quote from myself in the recent TIGA Budget Submissions March 2015 document.

This can be read in full here (my quote is on page 17).

Creative England, Bournemouth University and Arts University Bournemouth games jam

Between the 8th and 10th of May we ran, here at Bournemouth University, a games jam competition, over 48 hours, with participating students from two different Universities (Bournemouth University and Arts University Bournemouth). 

Creative England, and their GamesLab programme, provided two cash prizes for this. 

Six teams completed games with three industry judges, who were kind enough to come in for this on a Sunday, providing valuable feedback and the award prizes at the end.

Whilst the competition is finished now you can see more information about this here and find out more about GamesLab here.

Elsevier Entertainment Computing journal special issue guest editing

I am one of the two guest editors for a recently published special issue in the Elsevier journal of Entertainment Computing. 

This is a special issue consisting of five selected expanded and enhanced articles from the 5th International Conference on Games and Virtual Worlds for Serious Applications (VS Games 2013). 

It is Volume 5, Issue 4 (2014) of the journal.

You can see this special issue, among all other special issues published in this specific journal, here.

International Gamification for Business Conference 2015 IPC

Another conference I have been asked to sit on the International Program Committee for is the International Gamification for Business Conference 2015.

Taking place in Birmingham in September 2015, you can find information on submission for this here.

IEEE GEM IPC

I have recently been invited to participate as a member to the IEEE GEM 2015 International Program Committee. 

The conference is taking place in Toronto in October, with its full name being the 7th IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Games, Entertainment, Media Conference.

The official website and more information about the conference itself can be found here.

ICGIP 2015 IPC

I have been invited to sit on the International Program Committee for ICGIP 2015 (the 7th International Conference on Graphic and Image Processing). 

This event is taking place in Singapore in October.

More information can be found here at the official site of the conference.