Immersive concert company Wave will shutter its VR-only app on Steam and Oculus at the end of March. The startup, formerly called TheWaveVR, says the VR industry hasn't developed "as quickly as we’d hoped."

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• Wave's music platform for live and recorded immersive performances debuted in 2016. Two years ago, the startup began to pivot away from VR and more toward gaming and streaming, Wave CEO and co-founder Adam Arrigo said in a Twitter message.
• While there are more virtual concert opportunities outside of headsets, the company kept its TheWaveVR app for VR performances running “just because the community in there has made such inspiring stuff," he said.
• The VR app was built on Google’s Poly 3D object hosting service, which will shut down at the end of June. "As much as we'd love to, we aren't able to spend the resources to build a new backend pipeline," Arrigo added.
• The Weeknd, John Legend, and Imogen Heap are among the artists who have performed on the platform, which could return to VR sometime in the future, perhaps as more people adopt it.

An Israeli project is seeking funding to integrate Holocaust survivor testimonies into virtual reality. NeVeR Again VR is hoping to raise roughly $155K to complete its initial infrastructure — including some AR/VR stories—in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 7, 2021.

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• NeVeR Again says about 40 Holocaust survivors die every day. As the survivor population dwindles, Holocaust denial has grown more prominent on social media and the internet, it said.
• On its giveback crowdfunding page, NeVeR said it plans to model survivors and their grandsons/great-grandsons in a studio set up by TetaVi, a volumetric video capture technology developer. It will use the VR model for the survivor’s testimony.
• Each story and character will be integrated into the VR world, including at the sites where their stories took place, for people to view from anywhere in the world.
• The testimonies are geared toward students, Jewish communities, and those who can't afford to visit Poland. They plan to share the project with museums, conferences, and exhibitions.
• In the longer term, NeVeR Again is seeking to raise $348K overall for four complete VR stories.

Game developer Matt T. Wood generated some interesting Twitter responses when he asked devs if they would continue to work on VR projects. Most were positive about the VR medium, with a few outliers. Here's some that stood out:

• "I don't think I'll be able to keep myself away. The sense of 'place-ness' is unmatched. I repeatedly fall back in love with it all making things." — Anton "Santon" Hand
• "For Art, designing for VR feels refreshing after a long career in flat titles. These are the glory years before big industry moves in and soaks up the audience." — Rob Yescombe...

Skydance Interactive has pushed back the Quest release date for "The Trial," the wave-based combat mode for "The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners." The anticipated mode, which pits players against hordes of zombies, is already available for the game's PC VR and PSVR versions.

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• The studio announced the delay yesterday, two days before the mode's scheduled release. It promised to release more information about the free Quest update "soon."
• The Trial allows users to kill zombies in different ways to earn points, which can go toward new weapons, gear, and supplies.
• "The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners" was released natively for the Quest and Quest 2 back in October. UploadVR ranked it as the #1 best game for the Quest so far. (See story #6 below).

A new AR app stars animated British duo Wallace & Gromit. "Wallace & Gromit: The Big Fix Up," a narrative mobile experience with AR gameplay, is out now on Google Play and the Apple App Store.

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• Mobile users play as a new employee of the duo's new business venture, Spick & Spanner, to help fix up the English city of Bristol.
• The creators used Unity’s AR Foundation toolkit as well as 3D mapping platform Fantasmo to bring the city to life in 3D.
• It comes from Wallace and Gromit creator Aardman Animations, which worked with the studio Fictioneers, a Potato, Sugar Creative, and Tiny Rebel Games collaboration.
• The studio was excited to bring the pair to the app because they're engineers and are "always tinkering" with new toys, which fits well with interactive AR, Aardman creative director Finbar Hawkins said.

As the amount of VR content continues to grow, UploadVR created a ranked list of the best VR games of all time (so far). The publication also has separate lists of best games for the Oculus Quest, Rift, PSVR, and SteamVR For Vive, Index, and Reverb G2.

Best of all platforms:

1. Half-Life: Alyx (PC VR)
2. Astro Bot Rescue Mission (PSVR)
3. Asgard’s Wrath (Rift)
4. The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners (PC VR, PSVR, Quest)
5. Superhot VR (PC VR, PSVR, Quest)
6. Lone Echo/Echo VR (Rift, Quest [Echo VR Only])
7. Wipeout: The Omega Collection (PSVR)
8. Ghost Giant (PSVR, Quest)
9. Skyrim VR (PC VR, PSVR)
10. Star Wars: Squadrons (PC VR, PSVR)
11. Boneworks (PC VR)
12. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (PSVR)
13. A Fisherman’s Tale (PC VR, PSVR, Quest)
14. Pistol Whip (PC VR, PSVR, Quest)
15. No Man’s Sky VR (PC VR, PSVR)
16. Beat Saber (PC VR, PSVR, Quest)
17. Blood & Truth (PSVR)
18. Paper Beast (PC VR, PSVR)
19. Moss (PC VR, PSVR, Quest)
20. Population: One (PC VR, Quest, PSVR coming soon)
21. Until You Fall (PC VR, PSVR, Quest)
22. The Gallery Episodes 1 & 2 (PC VR)
23. The Room VR: A Dark Matter (PC VR, PSVR, Quest)
24. Gorn (PC VR, PSVR, Quest coming soon)
25. Eleven: Table Tennis (PC VR, Quest)

QUICK HITS:

• Avoid angry customer tweetstorms about submitting more data just to get theirs back, by asking these five questions about your data privacy solutions.*
• Asobo Studio is reportedly working on VR controller support for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
• An early access trailer for VR MMO game "Dino Eruption" is gaining traction on Reddit.
• Valve VR programmer Joe Ludwig is developing Aardvark, an open-source platform to bring AR utilities into VR spaces.
• Disney is bringing a version of its VR short film, "Myth: A Frozen Tale," to Disney+ on Feb. 26.
• UMass Lowell Assistant Psychology Professor Jiabin Shen received a $700K grant to support his research into VR rehabilitation for traumatic brain injuries.
• High-school startup Cognality VR LLC has developed a VR platform, now in beta, that creates calming scenes to help autistic individuals manage meltdowns.
• RoadtoVR's Ben Lang describes how VRChat users are using motion-trackers to compete in live breakdance battles in VR.
• Bullish on Bitcoin? Start earning daily interest on it with Nexo's Crypto Savings Account.*

*This is sponsored content.

Tweet of the Day: Visual development artist Matt Cyrus Saghezchi shared some of the art he did for animated VR film "Baba Yaga," now out for the Quest.