This Week in Virtual Reality, 7 November 2016

This week’s top Virtual Reality stories: smell and taste come to virtual reality, and more!

Virtual Reality is one of the most exciting new areas of technology, and for good reason. VR offers amazing experiences for users and creators both, and growth in the space is incredible. New products, new technologies, new experiences, and best of all, new jobs! Did you know that Virtual reality job openings are up 800% year-over-year? It’s true!

With so much going on in this fast-moving field, it can be hard to keep up. That’s why we created “This Week in Virtual Reality.” Each week we publish a curated list of Virtual Reality stories as a resource to help you keep pace. New posts will be published here first, and previous posts are archived on the Udacity blog. So, whether you’re currently enrolled in our VR Developer Nanodegree program, already working in the field, or just pursuing a burgeoning interest in the subject, there will always be something here to inspire you!

Food & Beverage

Nimesha Ranasinghe and Ellen Do of the National University of Singapore create a device that can simulate smell and taste in virtual reality interactions.

Society

Jordan Belamire writes about being sexually harassed while playing the virtual reality multiplayer QuiVr, highlighting new social challenges for developers to confront.

Industry

Intel purchases Santa Clara-based virtual reality firm Voke, a 12-year-old company that develops VR experiences based around live action rather than animation.

Science

19-year-old Gemma Busconi’s DiscoVR startup helps even the virtual reality playing field, tackling the observation that women experience VR differently.

Media

Pasadena-based startup obEN creates virtual reality avatars based only on a quick series of selfies and an audio sample to improve immersion into VR experiences.

Hardware

Futuremark releases a new hardware testing suite called VRMark which gauges a system’s readiness for the demands of virtual reality.