Author: Sam Machkovech

SAN FRANCISCO—At last year's Game Developers Conference, the SteamVR-powered HTC Vive was a brand new prototype being unveiled publicly for the first time. At this year's show, the VR headset is just a few weeks away from a consumer launch, just behind the much-hyped Oculus Rift.

To promote that launch, Valve is hosting a giant, invite-only SteamVR showcase suite at GDC, packed full of launch-window VR demos. We'll have thoughts on more Vive games and software soon, but for now, we wanted to share our hands-on experiences with the two biggest Vive exclusives unveiled this week: The Lab, and Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine.

VR Wii Sports? Or VR NintendoLand?

The Lab is remarkable because it's Valve's first title with actual VR gameplay, as opposed to the minimally interactive Portal-and Dota 2-themed demos we'd seen at prior events; immersive and cool as they were, we wouldn't call them "games," per se. The Lab also happens to be the first new "game" released by Valve since the closed-beta launch of Dota 2 in 2011. Fans hoping for an epic multiplayer franchise or a lasting, Valve-caliber adventure will instead have to settle on a polished suite of Vive indoctrination mini-games.

SAN FRANCISCO—Ahead of its virtual reality headset's impending March 28 launch, Oculus held one final press event adjacent to the Game Developers Conference. And you know what that means: makeshift living rooms!

Comfortable couches and chairs were centrally placed in cushy, compartmentalized demo stations, each dimly lit and set off by HDTVs, computer- and fan-loaded entertainment shelves, and small bookshelves lined with nerd-hip books like Jane McGonigal's Reality is Broken. What surprised us about the event, however, is how many of these faux rooms didn't have couches.

The event was notable for including the Oculus Rift's full, launch-day release slate of 30 VR games. But it was just as notable for dedicating over a third of its floor space to its full-room Oculus Touch controller system, which isn't set to launch until fall. We came in expecting a good chance to play through a lot of launch content, but we were instead left with barely enough time to scrabble together launch-game impressions—and we think we know why.

Before the Oculus Rift VR headset ships to its first preorder customers in 12 days, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey invited select press to a major preview event, which I wrote about in another article. I touched upon some nausea issues, mostly in terms of particular examples of comfort and discomfort alike, but I skipped the larger question of the platform's immersive feeling in general.

That's because I spent roughly four hours after the preview event feeling sick. I felt stuck in a dizziness spell the likes of which I'd never experienced at over a year of major, lengthy VR preview events. In the past, I'd used more ineffective VR tracking systems, particularly Google Cardboard, and I'd used earlier Oculus kits with more "screendoor" problems and other visual issues.

What was so bad about this one?

AUSTIN, Texas—In October, the South By Southwest festival canceled plans to host a pair of 2016 SXSW Interactive panels amid worries about threats of violence and disruption. Public outcry soon followed, with critics pointing out the irony of a panel about online threats and abuse being canceled for that very reason. SXSW responded by not only reinstating the panels but by attaching them to an even larger, full-day Online Harassment Summit.

While the resulting event on Saturday proved notable for its variety of speakers and their diverse thoughts on how to both moderate and protect various kinds of online speech, it was nearly overshadowed by a frosty pall. SXSW's Online Harassment Summit is the only event in the festival's 22-year run to include a security checkpoint—which visitors had to pass through every time they re-entered its building—and its panels were introduced with reminders that unattended bags would be "confiscated and destroyed" by guards on site, no questions asked.

Between those issues, an overstuffed panel schedule, and the summit venue's long walk from the SXSW downtown-Austin core, the resulting event was dampened by small and thinly spread crowds. There was nothing meek about the content, however. What the Online Harassment Summit lacked in headline-grabbing conflict, it made up for with compelling voices that saw tech, policy, and academic experts finding common ground on the subject of antagonistic and threatening online speech. At its best, the results included informed analysis, mountains of data, and calls to specific action—all while trying to balance both free and responsible speech with paradigms that looked beyond the United States' model.

AUSTIN, Texas—South By Southwest Interactive is currently in full swing, and in addition to hundreds of panel conversations, the festival also includes a giant trade-show floor full of attention-hungry startups. The floor is covered in a mélange of start-up-styled nonsense, and it ranged from intriguing (custom-molded earbuds) to awkward (a 3D food printer that was down due to Windows PC crashes) to creepy (an app-controlled plastic mask meant to be worn overnight for beautiful skin) to outright awful (a wobbling surfboard-like rig meant for standing desks that we almost immediately fell off of).

In short, this isn't a scene in which you'd expect to find established, beloved companies—you're more likely to find your Samsungs and Googles throwing parties or hosting dedicated venues around downtown Austin—which made the startup convention room's one exception to that rule seem all the more curious: NASA.

NASA's SXSWi presence looked a little like a county-fair setup, with a foam-board sign advertising real astronauts stopping by to speak, some giant models of NASA spacesuits and rockets, and some scaffolding-held signs about Mars aspirations and strides towards innovation. Of most interest to us was a single, nondescript cubicle at the edge of the staging, which contained a pair of HTC Vive headsets.

SEATTLE—The HTC Vive isn't like any computing device I've ever put in a home. This "room-scale" virtual-reality system is at the bleeding edge of what I'd call "home-appropriate"—meaning, it's pretty ornate and complicated, but not so much that you need to dedicate an entire lab or office space to it.

Though you might assume that. Many question marks currently hover over the burgeoning VR industry, thanks to issues like high costs, required computing power, nausea potential, and an unproven field of early software. The Vive goes one step further by also asking its buyers to clear out some serious space so that they can walk across a room and feel fully transported to a game or app's impressive virtual space. The demands that Microsoft asked of Kinect buyers a few years ago are tame compared to the cleared floors and mounted motion trackers of HTC's dream future.

Demand for space has been easy to shrug off at nearly a year of expo and convention demos, where game developers have done the setup legwork for us. We at Ars have spent less of our HTC Vive preview time sorting out logistics and more time letting our jaws drop to the floor. When it's hitting all cylinders, the SteamVR vision of room-scale VR is crazy-bonkers compelling. But what happens when VR dreams collide with the reality of installing and using one of these things in a home?

AUSTIN, Texas—In his keynote address to the 2016 South By Southwest conference, President Barack Obama responded directly to a question about cybersecurity in light of the ongoing Apple v. FBI case with answers that appeared to favor the American government's current position. President Obama even called out Edward Snowden's disclosure of classified documents in 2013.

When asked by moderator and Texas Tribune founder Evan Smith where he came down on the question of digital-device privacy versus national security, President Obama began his response by saying, "I can't comment on that specific case." Yet the President's lengthy response revolved around that case's core issues of encryption to a point that it appeared unmistakably related.

President Obama began his response by reminding the audience that law enforcement agencies can obtain a warrant, show up on a citizen's doorstep, and "rifle through your underwear to see if there's evidence of wrongdoing"—and they've been able to do so well before smartphones were invented.

You may consider yourself an enterprising PC game-machine builder, and in the past few years, you may have built a pretty damned good rig. That doesn't mean you went crazy, however. Graphics standards have leveled off a bit lately—at least, enough for a reasonably priced machine to run "max" settings at the standard screen resolution of 1080p or even rock-solid frame rates and high fidelity at 1440p.

Those specs are still within quite reasonable reach, but system builders may now want to target two additional, beefier visual standards: 4K monitors and virtual reality headsets.

The former can mean a few different resolutions, but this goal typically quadruples the pixel count of standard 1080p resolution. And while the retail Oculus and Vive headsets have fewer pixels than 4K displays, they have to refresh content at 90 frames-per-second to offset nausea concerns—which far outpace the demands of a standard 1080p/60 display. Either way, if you haven't built a new PC in a while, you're gonna need a bigger boat.

Since its launch in 2013, the app Yik Yak has racked up plenty of users—but it has also earned a pretty nasty reputation. The message board app combines anonymous chatter with GPS functionality, and the unidentified people reading and posting on a given "board" are in the same real-world area, which has fueled years of quick-shot acrimony—and worse.

Imagine implementing 4chan-like functionality for graffiti on a bathroom wall. The app, which has been mostly marketed at college campuses, has been at the center of more than a few reported cases of severe harassment and even threats of violence. Thanks to that reputation, mainstream users largely dismiss Yik Yak as either a cesspool of ickiness or just a thing for college kids.

But Yik Yak's newest functionality announcement could change all that. Tuesday saw the company roll out "handles," or usernames, and anyone who upgrades the app from here on out will be encouraged to pick a name and attach it to posts they make using the service. Pure anonymity has given way to pseudonymity. "Since you can come to recognize the other personalities that make your community unique and awesome, with handles your herd will feel closer than ever," Yik Yak co-founder Tyler Droll said in the announcement.

Earlier this week, my flight to Los Angeles—for a very fun, math-loaded games event—had a nice surprise beyond the flight attendant sneaking me an extra baggie of peanuts. The in-flight entertainment system on the seat-back in front of me was loaded with a ton of free, full-length movies, and one of those was Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

This was remarkable beyond the fact that I could chill with BB-8 at 30,000 feet. Previous Star Wars films took their sweet time to trickle out anywhere outside of a theatrical run, and lord knows how long we waited for the original trilogy to show up on DVD. The House of Mouse appears to have a much more proactive take on getting home versions of Star Wars to fans, and if my Delta flight wasn't proof enough, then consider Thursday's announcement of the impending Force Awakens Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download launch in early April.

The film will first reach homes by way of "digital HD" services on April 1, followed by Blu-ray and DVD versions on April 5. The disc versions will be packed with bonus featurettes, including a "feature documentary" about the film's creation, a recording of the actors' first table read, deleted scenes, and other short clips detailing specifics like droids and battle sequences. (We're particularly interested in whether the table read video captures Harrison Ford or Carrie Fisher in their typical off-the-cuff, zero-f###s-given modes as of late.) The announcement warns that "digital bonus offerings may vary by retailer," so completists should probably plan on grabbing the Blu-ray.