An immersive drum kit simulation in a virtual garage on a beach.

We shot today’s Twilio IPO in 360 VR right from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. See the moment the bell rings and the stock opens!

Facebook is bringing its set of emoji reactions to virtual reality videos.

Samsung Gear VR users will be able to choose animated emoji reactions for every virtual reality video they enjoy on Facebook. The integration adds an additional layer of social interactivity to the experience and allows users to see their friends’ reactions float across the screen.

The Overview Institute wants to use virtual reality to get more people to embrace our pale blue dot.

While Gabe Newell doesn’t believe that HTC Vive exclusives are a good idea for customers or developers, and stressed that Valve helps developers get funding with “no strings attached,” Oculus Head of Content Jason Rubin told me at E3 that his company’s policy on exclusives is what’s actually going to grow the VR gaming business.

The executive also addressed growing concern around the issue of exclusive titles. “We’re not actively seeking exclusives at all,” he told TechCrunch. “We think that’s a bad idea for VR. It’s not good for consumers, because consumers are being blocked out of content. It’s not good for developers, because what happens is, if they’re locked out of 75- or 80-percent of commercial viability, that’s a horrible thing for their long term business goals. It’s trading short-term cash for long term viability.”

Valve offers VR developers funding to avoid platform-exclusive deals
According to co-founder Gabe Newell, Valve is in a “much better place” to absorb the financial risk of creating a VR title; therefore, it is offering studios backing through “pre-paid Steam revenue.”

What a difference an Internet uproar can make. The Oculus team has reversed course on one of its most unpopular decisions since launching the Rift VR headset in April: headset-specific DRM. After weeks of playing cat-and-mouse to block the “Revive” workaround that translated the VR calls of Oculus games to work smoothly and seamlessly inside of the rival HTC Vive, Oculus quietly updated its hardware-specific runtime on Friday and removed all traces of that controversial DRM.

Telltale wasn’t the only developer that brought Batman to E3 this year: The folks at Rocksteady Studios packed the Dark Knight into their suitcases as well. Batman Arkham VR was a surprise reveal at Sony’s keynote earlier this week and drew a huge round of applause when it appeared onstage.

It would appear that though the two platforms have their major differences, Oculus Rift will be going cross-platform with Samsung Gear VR. This means that mobile devices like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note 5 will be able to see games like “Anshar Wars 2”, a game that Oculus Rift players can also play, with all devices in multiplayer playing at the same time.

The biggest criticism of VR is that it removes us from the wonders of reality. But the truth is, sometimes reality sucks. Anyone who’s ever been admitted to a hospital knows this, and patients admitted in the burn unit may know it better than anyone else. It’s why Frog teamed up with Stanford Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery resident Dr. Brian Pridgen to develop VR Care. It’s a new open-source VR headset, designed for hospital contexts, with apps specifically built to distract burn patients from their painful routine treatments.

On its own, CXC Simulation’s Motion Pro II is both a viable training tool for professional racers and a striking showpiece for hardcore enthusiasts

The latest update to Premiere Pro, Adobe’s popular video editing software, released yesterday includes new tools for editing 360 degree video and stereoscopic VR video. Adobe’s Premiere Pro is one of the most popular video editing applications today, and it’s now got improved workflow for editing VR video.

Just as magic mirrors, beacons and even mobile payments once seemed futuristic, VR at retail stores has progressed from science fiction to the next disruptive retail computing platform.

When it comes to mobile VR, like the Gear VR headset, you can enter an immersive 360° world, but you will be limited to just looking around from a fixed position. In comparison, higher end VR systems like the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift have external sensors, enabling positional tracking and giving you more range of movement to physically move around in a virtual world. Now one San Francisco-based 3D imaging startup, Sterolabs, is aiming to bring some of the same capabilities of full positional tracking to the Gear VR.

VR enthusiasts in the US can finally get their hands on Samsung’s Gear 360 virtual reality camera – if they’re going to an online video conference in California. The South Korean company on Wednesday said it will start selling the camera in the US “on a limited basis” for $350.

Emmy and Cannes Lion-winning content studio Secret Location is bringing a new hybrid immersive experience to the Syfy network. The scripted short-form series, entitled Halcyon, blends both linear and VR elements. It’s set to bow across Syfy channels and companion websites outside the U.S. beginning on September 22.

His many years of experience in the arcade business at Atari and at Chuck E. Cheese’s means that Bushnell has a unique perspective when it comes to public VR experiences like The Void and VR arcades, which he thinks are going to be more successful in the short-term than expensive in-home VR hardware.

How will the now much-shared picture of Mark Zuckerberg at last month’s Mobile World Congress 2016 be perceived five years from now: As a defining event, or a reminder of unjustified hype? And how is Israel faring in midst of all of this VR-AR innovation?

The future of immersive virtual reality is often depicted as a dystopian view of millions of people spending hours alone each day, with huge gadgets stuck to their face, enraptured by fantastical worlds. But it’s going to be millions of people spending time together — with friends, family, colleagues, and new acquaintances — experiencing moments together no matter the physical distance between them.

After spending a few weeks with two of the most powerful V.R. devices now on the market, the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. I suspect that V.R. will be used by the masses one day, but not anytime soon. I’m not sure we’re ready to fit virtual reality into our lives, no matter how excited Silicon Valley is about it.

torytelling in virtual reality has yet to take shape. While the simulated world of gaming has proved the visual capabilities of the medium, few have taken a crack at the art of building a compelling narrative.