[Happy New Year and best wishes for a safe, healthy, productive 2016 filled with wonderful (nonmediated and telepresence) experiences! The story below from VR Focus highlights one option for celebrating within VR (see the creator’s 3:16 minute descriptive demo video on YouTube), and this and other virtual fireworks options are featured in a story at UploadVR. –Matthew]

New To VR: Make Celebrations Go With a Virtual Bang In Firework Factory VR

June 27, 2015
Kevin Eva

It’s not just the Oculus VR Share and WEARVR platforms that get all the new content and we begin the weekend with the New To VR spotlight shining on such an app. Firework Factory VR is a new virtual reality (VR) application that allows you to generate your own custom fireworks, altering their make up to produce different effects.

Developed by Aesthetic Interactive, the app allows you to save every creation you make with a unique id whilst the app also takes advantage of the available hand tracking technologies.

Using such is important for the experience according to creator Zach Kinstner, “The most immersive and natural VR experiences will avoid using traditional input devices. With Firework Factory VR, your hands are the input device, and you interact with these wonderful, reactive holographic menu panels. It’s such a powerful feeling to reach out and control time itself — slow, stop, or even reverse it — all while these glowing fireworks streak past you.”

Compatible with the Oculus Rift, with hand tracking available through an attached Leap Motion device, Firework Factory in VR is available [from LeapMotion].