Nreal is adding hand tracking to its mixed reality glasses

Image: Nreal Nreal is adding hand tracking to its upcoming mixed reality headsets. It’s partnering with a company called Clay AIR, which makes a camera-based system for tracking gestures like pinching, pointing, grabbing, and swiping. That gives the ... more - theverge

Valve explains one of Half-Life: Alyx’s first levels in this video tour

Image: IGN You can now check out perhaps our best look yet at the VR-only Half-Life: Alyx , the next game in Valve’s seminal franchise, thanks to a new video with 13 minutes of uninterrupted gameplay posted by IGN . The video takes the main character ... more - theverge

Valve’s Index VR headset will be back in stock on Monday

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Valve’s new Index VR headset has been sold out for weeks, but the company just informed customers that the product will finally be on sale again on Monday, March 9th, starting at 1PM ET. Here’s the Index product ... more - theverge

Valve shows off how you’ll fight and move in Half-Life: Alyx

Valve’s much-anticipated virtual reality game Half-Life: Alyx debuts on March 23rd, and it just offered a little more detail on what we’ll be playing. It released three short videos today showing off combat and puzzles in Alyx , as well as the game’s ... more - theverge

Facebook restricts social visitors to its offices over coronavirus concerns

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge The world’s biggest social network is restricting social visits to its physical offices, as Facebook tries to protect its employees from coronavirus exposure, Business Insider reports. A Facebook spokesperson tells ... more - theverge

New Google Pixel features coming this month include more emoji, dark mode scheduling, and Google Pay improvements

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Near the end of last year, Google outlined a new strategy of bundling together new software tricks for its Pixel phones into “feature drops” instead of trickling those features out individually. Today, the company is ... more - theverge

Apple and Samsung dominate top selling phone lists for 2019

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Apple produced the two top selling phone models in the world last year, the iPhone XR and iPhone 11, according to reports by Counterpoint Research and Omdia. The iPhone 11’s second place position was particularly ... more - theverge

Steam just added new search features, including a price filter

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Valve is adding new features to its Steam storefront’s search system, letting users filter out games they already own, set a maximum price, and avoid seeing VR-only games if they don’t have a virtual reality headset. ... more - theverge

Space Channel 5 makes a funky return in VR

Back in the heady days of 2016, when VR hype was at its peak amid hardware launches from Oculus, HTC, and Sony, it felt entirely natural for the killer app to be the transformative PlayStation VR conversion of Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Rez . Here was a cult ... more - theverge

Qualcomm reveals a headset design for its latest VR chips

Qualcomm Qualcomm has revealed a reference design for its new virtual and augmented reality platform. The headset offers a rough guide for building with the Snapdragon XR2 — a 5G-enabled chipset designed for VR/AR hardware. The design is a prototype ... more - theverge

Purdue online students can now graduate in VR

Purdue University Global will let some graduates join its 2020 commencement ceremony through virtual reality. Around 75 students will get a Google Cardboard-style VR viewer and watch the ceremony through a 360-degree camera feed alongside around 400 ... more - theverge

HTC unveils new Vive Cosmos VR lineup with swappable faceplates

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge HTC is expanding its range of virtual reality headsets today with multiple new variants of the Vive Cosmos. The original Cosmos launched last year as a $699 high-end PC-powered system that used inside-out tracking ... more - theverge

Facebook sued by the IRS for $9 billion in unpaid taxes

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Facebook is facing a lawsuit from the US Internal Revenue Service, which claims the social network owes $9 billion in unpaid taxes, according to Reuters . That lawsuit went to trial in a San Francisco court on ... more - theverge

Save on leather iPhone cases, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and more

Apple’s Smart Battery case shown on the iPhone XS, XR, and XS Max. Today’s deal excludes the iPhone XR’s case | Photo by James Bareham / The Verge If you’ve been putting off buying a case for your iPhone 11 Pro, Pro Max, iPhone XS, or iPhone XS Max, ... more - theverge

Apple now lets you shop directly in augmented reality

This week, Apple began rolling out a new update to its Quick Look augmented reality tool, letting iPhone and iPad users check out products in AR and then buy them directly. Quick Look already let retailers offer an AR preview of their products by uploading ... more - theverge

Sony reportedly battling to keep PlayStation 5 price down

Sony is struggling to land on a price for its upcoming PlayStation 5 console, according to a new report by Bloomberg, with component shortages potentially pushing the MSRP beyond that of the PS4. The bill of materials is said to be at around $450 right ... more - theverge

AR Pianist app is fun to watch, but that’s about it

Image: Massive Technologies AR and VR company Massive Technologies has just released an app called AR Pianist which superimposes virtual musicians on pianos to give you “piano concerts from the comfort of your living room.” The app was first teased last ... more - theverge

Sundance VR and AR got extremely weird in 2020

Scarecrow | Sundance Institute Don’t forget to bring a swimsuit Continue reading… ... more - theverge

Sundance 2020: reviews from the annual indie film festival

Photo by Anna Kooris / Sundance Institute VR, independent film, and sneak peeks from streaming services Continue reading… ... more - theverge

La Llorona review: not the ghost story you’re expecting

Sundance Institute Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. In 2019, the blockbuster Conjuring franchise produced a film ... more - theverge

Google Maps gets a new icon and more tabs to celebrate 15th anniversary

Google Maps is turning 15 years old, and to celebrate, Google is rolling out a new icon for the service along with a slightly redesigned app and a couple of new features. The biggest change here might be the icon itself — gone is the classic map intersection ... more - theverge

Shirley is a gothic drama about Shirley Jackson’s haunted life

Thatcher Keats / Sundance Institute Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Shirley Jackson is best known for her creepiest ... more - theverge

Pepe the Frog died, and part of the internet died with him

Kurt Keppeler and Christian Bruno / Sundance Institute Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Years ago, the birth ... more - theverge

New Oculus Quest update makes controller-free hand tracking much easier

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Oculus’s newest update for its wireless Oculus Quest VR headset should make tracking your hands in virtual reality without a controller much easier (via UploadVR ). Controller-free hand tracking was first rolled ... more - theverge

Google opens its latest Google Glass AR headset for direct purchase

Image: Google Google is making its latest augmented reality headset, Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2, available for direct purchase, nearly a year after launching it through select workplace partners for $999 a unit. The price remains the same, but ... more - theverge

Tesla review: a weird, fourth-wall-breaking take on the internet’s favorite inventor

Sundance Institute Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Thomas Edison is the inventor you learn about in school. ... more - theverge

Zola review: proof that a viral Twitter thread can make a great movie

Anna Kooris / Sundance Institute Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. In 2015, a little-known Twitter user named ... more - theverge

Filmic DoubleTake lets you record from two iPhone cameras at the same time

Users can choose two of the four lenses to record from on the iPhone 11 Pro. Filmic is releasing a new app for iPhones today that allows you to capture video from two cameras at once. The app, called DoubleTake, was first previewed at Apple’s iPhone ... more - theverge

Atari-branded hotels with e-sports studios and game rooms are coming to the US

Image: Atari Atari has licensed its name for a number of brand partnerships in the gaming space, but the company’s latest deal to build eight Atari-branded hotels marks its foray into the hospitality industry. The company announced a licensing deal with ... more - theverge

Spree review: in search of an audience

Sundance Film Festival Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. When a real-life killer finds fame on a forum or a social ... more - theverge