With all the hype surrounding new gaming consoles in 2013, from upstarts like OUYA and Nividia’s Project Shield to new boxes from big boys like Sony with PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s still-secret new Xbox, one of the most exciting hardware trends of the last few years continues to fly under the radar: VR.
Designers like John Carmack and Cliff Bleszinski publicly demoed and discussed new VR technology, while consumer grade devices like Oculus Rift racked up headlines and support on Kickstarter. But the VR scene has gone quiet in recent months. That may be because publishers like EA are hard at work making games for the headgear and aren’t quite ready to unveil their work yet.
Meant To Be Seen, an outlet that specializes in certifying media for stereoscopic 3D presentation, posed a notice on its website on Monday noting that EA, a member of MTBS’ 3D advocacy group, is amping up its experiments for Oculus Rift.
After spotting a job posting at DICE calling for interns to work on VR headset conversion for Frostbite 2 engine games, MTBS got in touch with DICE director Frank Vitz. Vitz confirmed that DICE is indeed working on converting Frostbite-based games to Oculus Rife, though these experiments may never be publicly release.
“I have one of the first [Oculus] Rift dev kits coming my way in March,” said Vitz, “We have an internal community eager to work on it. I know of at least four dev kits on order. There are multiple titles in the works that would be awesome with the Rift.”
Just some of the games in development at EA using the new Frostbite engine are DICE’s own Battlefield 4 and BioWare’s Dragon Age 3: Inquisition. Even if it moves forward with Oculus support, DICE won’t be handling all conversions for VR headsets. “It will be the responsibility of each game team to ensure that their game works in stereoscopic 3D and with the Rift if it proves to be viable.”
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