Lifeboat Foundation

The wild, behemoth 16-camera virtual reality rig that GoPro announced at Google’s I/O conference is officially called “Odyssey,” and is now available for purchase. But it is not for everyone. It costs $15,000, and only “professional content creators and producers” will be allowed to buy it — after they submit an application.

That price tag might make your eyes spin, but it does cover a good amount of equipment. Buying an Odyssey means you get 16 of GoPro’s top-of-the-line Hero 4 Black, a microphone, the rig and all the necessary cables, a Pelican case to carry it all in, as well as a warranty and support. For a production company that’s looking to get into the virtual reality game but doesn’t necessarily want to go the DIY route, this could be the best option.

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Castrol Edge & Video Games technologies: Racing a Real Car in Virtual Reality.

Castrol EDGE has premiered its latest Titanium Trial driving challenge, featuring Formula Drift professional Matt Powers driving his Roush Stage 3 Mustang whilst wearing a state-of-the-art Oculus Rift Development Kit 2 headset: blind to the real world around him, but fully-immersed in a rapidly changing 3D virtual world.

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Chinese-based VR treadmill project Kat Walk raised nearly $150,000 on Kickstarter, and the company has announced that non-Kickstarter preorders are coming soon.

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Why haven’t we found alien neighbors? One theory says advanced species don’t colonize outer space, but make virtual worlds and colonize inner space instead.

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https://soundcloud.com/a16z/a16z-podcast-techs-big-ideas-and…andreessen

If you’ve ever watched someone experience virtual reality for the first time, you know it can involve screaming, flapping arms, and occasional falls.

On one level people know their bodies are safe on the stable chair, but as their minds are catapulted through outer space on a spaceship to Mars or beamed into a refugee camp in Syria —they can’t help but lose their grip on reality and go along for the ride.

In fact, our brains don’t even require photorealism for suspension of disbelief in VR. A choppy CGI rendition will cause our heart rates to increase and our palms to get sweaty when we’re riding a virtual roller coaster or standing on the edge of a virtual building looking at the ground 30 stories below.

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What will happen when the technology has evolved to the point that people actually prefer virtual reality experiences to real ones?

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EchoPixel uses virtual reality to help doctors visualize each patient’s unique anatomy and internal structure in a floating 3D image.

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The Void is an ambitious project that seeks to combine virtual reality headsets with custom-built physical playgrounds.

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