Last week has been the week of CES 2019, one of the most important technology exhibition of the year. In the American sin city of Las Vegas, there has been an enormous showcase of every kind of innovative technologies and of course, AR and VR have been part of the show.
I have to say that AR and VR have not been the main attractions of the show floor: I hoped for a lot of big news, while actually, we had some big news and then a lot of interesting, but less disruptive, showcases. This represents the current status of the technology, that is evolving, but has still not reached the inflection point to become mainstream (as I have already told you in my 2019 predictions about augmented and virtual reality).
As for every CES, I’ve not been there (it’s a dream of mine, I hope to be there next year), but I’ve read a lot of AR and VR-related news from this exhibition and so I’m summarizing here all the most important ones, so that you will be able to know what has happened at CES just by reading a single article! Of course it is impossible for me to write really everything, otherwise this post would be so long that it would have been shorter for you to attend the CES… so I will just report the news that I found worth reading and I will point you to the articles where you will be able to read some deepening on the topic.
Take a breath and start reading!
HTC
HTC has been the VR star of this CES 2019. Every year, the Taiwanese company bets on big announcements at CES and this year has been no exception.
The biggest announcement has been the HTC Vive Cosmos, a headset that has generated a lot of hype also because HTC has not revealed all its features, but it has only teased them. It is a tethered headset, but maybe in the future will be able to work also connected to a 5G mobile phone.
The speculations say it will feature Fresnel lenses, 2K per eye resolution and 90Hz refresh rate, but we had no official confirmation on this. We are instead sure that it will have not integrated audio (but it will feature an accessory to add audio), that it will have a flip-up display and that it will use 4 cameras to offer inside-out tracking. The headset will be launched later on this year for an unknown price. (VR Dizzy has written a very nice satirical post about the fact that we know so little about the Cosmos)
While the Cosmos is tailored at consumers, the just announced Vive Pro Eye is dedicated to enterprise customers. It is a slightly improved Vive Pro, that features integrated eye tracking offered by Tobii. The journalists that have tried it, have said that it is a great product: the foveated rendering applications work like a charm and the analytics offered by eye tracking are fundamental for training applications.
Someone said that there have been various crashes during the demos, but when things worked, they were marvelous. Launch date and price are still unknown, but we are sure that the price will be very high.
HTC has also revealed Viveport Infinity, that will be like the Netflix of VR: paying just a monthly fee, the user will be able to play all the games that he/she wants on the Viveport catalog.
Together with this, there has also been the announcement of Vive Reality System, that will be the home space of all Vive users. It will be the foundation of a Vive OS, the first thing that the user will see when it will put on a Vive headset and that will let him/her meet with friends and launch applications. It will be something similar to the new Oculus Home. The launch will come together with the Vive Cosmos.
Ah, and then Mister President has met Palmer Luckey and futurist Charlie Fink has tried to destroy HTC stand 😀
(If you are interested in these pieces of news, I’ve written an exhaustive post about HTC announcements and also a full roundup of everything we know on the Vive Cosmos)
FinchShift
Continuing speaking about HTC devices, the hardware manufacturer Finch has announced the FinchShift controllers: two 6 DOF controllers that can work with all the headsets that are compatible with HTC’s Vive Wave platform. The controllers may also be paired with two armbands so that it is possible to track not only the hands but also the arms of the user.
What is particular of these controllers is that the tracking works only thanks to embedded IMU sensors. This seems weird since we all know that dead reckoning tracking leads to drifting, but Mister President that has tried them has said that they work quite well.
The launch price is $250.
(More on this news on Road To VR)
New Qualcomm reference design
At CES, Qualcomm has showcased a new reference design for VR headsets that is very close in design to a Windows Mixed Reality headset. It features 2K LCD displays (one for each eye), Fresnel lenses and a field of view below 100°. Tracking is inside-out, there is a handy flip-up display and the audio is not integrated.
The headset can be also be powered by a mobile phone via a USB-C connector and in fact, in Qualcomm’s booth, it was possible to see it connected to a prototypical 5G phone based on Snapdragon 855. Thanks to it, the user was able to see a volumetric video streamed via 5G in very high quality. 5G will disrupt VR and AR and Qualcomm has given us a glimpse of what will happen in the future.
This reference design is very similar to the Vive Cosmos, so a lot of us think that the Cosmos will be based on it: thanks to this, we can make speculations on how the visuals of the Cosmos will be.
Who has tried it, has reported very enthusiastic feedback, especially for the stunning displays: the screen door effect is reported to be hardly noticeable.
(More on this news on Road To VR)
Oculus
You may ask what has done Oculus at CES while HTC was generating hype around its devices. Well, the answer is: almost nothing. It has just given some private demos of the Quest to selected journalists (that have of course loved it).
But during the CES, Oculus has done something very important: it has applied another discount to the Rift, that now permanently costs $350. This new price will be applied worldwide… and who knows if this is a way to sell more devices before launching the Rift S…
Nreal
In my opinion, Nreal has been one of the biggest AR reveal of this CES. It is an augmented reality glass that is being developed in China by a former Magic Leap engineer.
Why is it so disruptive? Well, it is:
- Cool, since it is very colored and look more or less like a standard glass;
- Very light, since it weights only 85g on the head. All the processing power is in a separate little box called the Oreo;
- Graphically appealing: the FOV is 52 degrees and the quality of images is better than the one of Magic Leap (there is a 1080p display for each eye);
- Complete: it has integrated audio;
- Quite powerful, featuring the Snapdragon 845 processor;
- Ambitious, since it works to offer 6 DOF tracking and also object recognition. The controller is only 3DOF, though;
- Multi-platform: the glass works through USB-C, so it will be possible to also connect it to a smartphone, to use it as a viewer of applications;
- Quite cheap: the expected price is around $1000 (and it should launch at early fall this year).
For all these reasons, Nreal has just secured a $15M funding. This money will be used to fix all the current issue of the device, like the fact that it overheats or that there is almost no content available.
It is a really promising project, in my opinion, the most interesting of this CES, if we exclude the announcements by HTC. Nreal is showing us the way that AR should take, but I am wondering if they will be able to attract enough content to convince people to buy the headset.
(More on this news on Forbes and VentureBeat)
RealMax
The other AR company to follow is for sure RealMax, that at CES has launched the RealMax Qian, another very interesting AR headset from China.
RealMax is a bit bulkier than Nreal and it also “only” features a Snapdragon 835, but it has some very interesting features:
- It has a whopping 100.8° Field of View!
- It is an AR headset, but it can also offer VR thanks to a magnetic cover attached to the headset (thanks MRTV for spotting this);
- There is a USB port on the device, and so it is possible to plug there an accessory like a Leap Motion to have hand tracking.
The RealMax Qian is very interesting and the reviews are quite positive. User /u/tuplovk on Reddit told me that he has tried the device and that the experience was suboptimal because there was ghosting around images, the tracking was not perfect and the view of the real world was obscured a lot while wearing the device. As for Nreal, the device is cool, but there is still a long road to go.
(More on this on Venture Beat)
DisplayLink
Last year, DisplayLink has shown at CES a technology to make the Vive wireless and that later on has become the official HTC Vive Wireless Adapter.
This year, the company is trying a similar route, by offering a reference design to make the Oculus Rift wireless via streaming on an Intel Wigig network. I really hope that this can become a product since we Oculus Rift owners want to get rid of the cable as well.
DisplayLink has also detailed a new technology to improve wireless transmission via foveation: if, thanks to eye-tracking technology, the system knows the area of the current frame that falls in the fovea of the viewer, it can stream only that area in high quality and the rest of the image with a lower quality. This way, it is possible to reduce the required bandwidth even to one third of the original one.
My review hero Ben Lang of Road To VR has tried this kind of foveated transmission and has said that it works in a stunning way.
(More on this news on Road To VR: article 1, article 2)
Pimax
Pimax is a company towards which I have mixed feelings: on one side they are really trying to innovate the PC VR sector but on the other side, they are also having lots of delays and creating a communication mess.
Before going to CES, Pimax has apologized for all the mess and the delays, has promised to improve its communication (and that’s great) and to ship all headsets to backers by the end of the month.
At CES, Pimax has announced that it has taken virtual reality to version 2.0, thanks to its headsets that have a high resolution, high FOV and that now, thanks to the partnerships with Leap Motion and 7Invensun, feature also hand tracking and eye-tracking (trough add-ons).
Before thinking about VR 2.0, I think that Pimax has still to fix version 1.0. And from what I have read on the various magazines, it is on the right path: most of the problems that were present at CES 2018 have been fixed and so the Pimax is on the right path to becoming a usable headset. Some issues are still present (like the absence of a “deluxe audio strap”, or the fact that the software may be a bit complicated to set up), but the company is headed the right way. And the addition of eye-tracking may make the headset less computationally demanding for the future thanks to foveated rendering. For sure the enormous FOV remains the best reason to buy this headset.
About the controllers… well, there is still a long road to go: journalists weren’t allowed to try them and the first production units are expected in April, with a new batch during the summer. We can so expect them to be released in Q3-Q4 2019.
(More on this news on Road To VR’s article 1 and article 2 and on Upload VR’s article 1 and article 2).
Pico
Chinese manufacturer Pico has just announced the Pico Goblin 2 4K, a new version of the Pico Goblin 2 headset featuring a 4K display.
The Pico Goblin 2 is a 3 DOF standalone headset, that features better specifications than Oculus Go (3840×2160 resolution with a 75Hz refresh rate display, Snapdragon 835, 32GB storage and 4GB RAM), and is slightly more expensive. Upload VR states that it is a good headset and the only thing a bit uncomfortable is its strap). Since it can’t compete with Oculus’s content catalog, it is sold as an enterprise headset.
This 4K version should launch in the US in Q1 2019.
(More on UploadVR)
3dRudder for PSVR
Do you remember the 3dRudder? It is a foot motion controller that lets you move in virtual reality by just slightly moving your feet while you are seated. I have also reviewed it on my blog, highlighting how the idea is interesting, even if it needs some refinements.
Well, at CES, 3dRudder has launched a new product line dedicated to PSVR, with 30 games already compatible at launch with this platform (and among these ones, there are also popular titles like The Wizards).
I think that this choice has been very smart because currently, locomotion on PSVR is quite complicated: since the PlayStation Move controllers do not have thumbsticks, the user has to point the controllers in the direction he/she wants to move and this is very awkward, especially if the player wants to shoot while he/she moves. With 3dRudder, all of this is solved: the user can move with his feet and shoot with his hands. That’s perfect.
I think that the 3dRudder has find its ideal platform.
(More on this news on UploadVR)
Insta360 Titan
Insta360 has announced at CES its latest monster cameras for shooting VR movies. Dubbed “Insta360 Titan”, it is able to record 360 videos at 11K or 10K 3D at 30 fps, as well as at 8K at 60 fps and 5.3K at 120 fps. It’s also capable of taking 11K 360 photos in 3D and monoscopic.
It also uses the impressive Insta360’s FlowState stabilization to let you record with this camera videos that are stable even if you are walking or running while holding the camera.
You can already reserve this professional gadget for €17,000 on InstaVR website.
(More on this news on Engadget)
Holoride
Holoride has been one of the VR experiences getting more coverage at CES. Holoride is a startup cofounded by Audi whose purpose is offering VR entertainment experiences to be enjoyed while you are in a car.
In the demo showcased at CES, journalists have been invited to seat in the back seats of an Audi e-SUV and to wear an Oculus Go headset. While the car was running at 90mph on a track outside Las Vegas, the player was able to play a game set in the Marvel universe (you had to fight some Thanos’s bad buddies).
The interesting concept of the entertainment system is that when the car turns left, also the player in the game turns left and the same happens for the right. Since the movements of the car are matched with the movement of the virtual elements inside the headset, the motion sickness is reduced at minimum (even if some journalist has experienced it nonetheless).
The system is cool, but it has to be tuned carefully for every car it is run into. Furthermore, I have doubts on how a game designer can properly design a game where the user has no control on where he will move. Holoride has to demonstrate that it is not only a cool demo, but it can become a real product.
I think that Audi is experimenting on entertainment systems for when the car will all be autonomous and so its inhabitants will have to spend the time someway.
(More on this on Techcrunch)
TPCAST Air
At CES 2019, TPCAST has announced the 2nd generation Wireless VR solution, dubbed “TPCAST Air”. You may wonder what is this fantastic thing and the answer is that it is practically a business-oriented clone of Riftcat VRidge. It is a service on your PC paired with a service on your standalone VR headset (Oculus Go, but in the future Oculus Quest should be compatible as well), that communicate via Wi-fi streaming so that to let you use your standalone HMD as if it were a headset tethered to your PC. The PC service streams to the headset the game images rendered by the PC and the mobile service sends to the PC the data on the pose of the headset and the controller. This means that you are able to play SteamVR games with your Oculus Go. Of course, you had better have some NOLO kit or something like that, or playing Steam games with a 3 DOF headset + controller is quite hard.
It is interesting that always more companies are interested in offering this kind of Wi-fi streaming solutions (AMD has just entered the field as well). And it is also interesting that a hardware company like TPCAST is investing in a software solution. Does this mean that TPCAST will concentrate on software from now on? Uhm…
(Read more on TPCAST website)
DEUS Odin Pre
At CES it has also been spotted the mysterious headset Odin of the Russian startup DEUS. The headset features 2160 x 2160 pixels LCD displays running at 90Hz (exactly as in the new reference design by Qualcomm… are they by chance the same displays?) and a very interesting proprietary tracking technology that is not the SteamVR one. We also know that there is not integrated audio, that the field of view is around 110 and that it features Fresnel lenses.
Youtuber VooDooDE has been able to see the headset and also verify that the tracking works and that the visuals are very good. Anyway, judging from what we can see in the video, the Odin is still at a preliminary prototype stage.
NVIDIA
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has announced at CES the entry point graphics card of the RTX 20 series. It is called RTX 2060 and features 6GB of GDDR6 RAM and of course enables real-time ray tracing. The card will have the VirtualLink connector.
According to NVIDIA, it is even more powerful than an NVIDIA GTX 1070Ti card, even if some people on the web doubt this claim. It will launch tomorrow January, 15th for $349.
On stage, the CEO has announced also an RTX line for laptops (more on this on the next paragraph). But what is important, is that according to Mr.Huang, that quotes data computed together with analytics firm ABI, the total number of PC headsets sold until now is 4 million. This is a very interesting estimate, that shows how numbers of VR sales are growing.
(More on this on Road To VR article 1 and article 2)
RTX Laptops
NVIDIA has announced that finally, we will be able to have all the fancy RTX on/RTX off features on laptops as well.
The first laptop to feature these features will be the Asus ROG Mothership GZ700, that will come in Q1 2019. This is a monster laptop with Intel i9 processor, RTX 2080 graphics card and 64 GB RAM. The keyboard is detachable and so the laptop can also work as a big gaming tablet. Of course, there is a VirtualLink port to connect your favorite headsets.
Shut up and take my money (or my kidney, since I don’t have the money to buy this PC).
(More on UploadVR’s article 1 and article 2)
AMD
AMD has answered to NVIDIA with the AMD Radeon VII: the first 7nm GPU on the market. We have not all specifications yet, but we know that it features 3840 stream processors, 16 GB memory, and 1 TB/s memory bandwidth. According to AMD, it is even faster than the RTX 2080 graphics card (anyway, it is better to wait for some independent benchmarks). It is expected to ship on February, 7th for $699.
Unluckily for us VR enthusiasts, this graphics card doesn’t offer a VirtualLink port. Maybe the next GPU, codenamed “Navi” will feature it, so we will have to wait a little more.
(More on this news on Road To VR and Upload VR)
Naughty America
We all know that the porn industry is very attentive to innovation and it is one of the first to adopt new technologies. At CES, Naughty America has shown how it intends to use augmented reality in its business.
The idea is the one of transforming the world in a 24/7 nightclub. Naughty Club intends recording volumetric videos of lap dancers so that all people can enjoy them from everywhere through augmented reality. Do you want a private lap dance on your kitchen table? You will be able to do that. And if you are wearing AR glasses, no one will be able to see what you are seeing!
Naughty America tried offering the lap dance animations through animated 3D models, but it felt too innatural and so reverted to using volumetric videos.
The application will be deployed first on Android phones this year and will come to iOS later on.
(More on this on VentureBeat)
Other interesting news
Some other news worth mentioning:
- Youcamapps lets you preview your hair color in real-time in AR. Just amazing. Watch the video to discover it. (Credit: video by FashionTech | Electric Runway, shared by Anthony J James)
- Rokid has unveiled Project Aurora, an augmented reality glass with a slight aim towards consumers. It has not a computational unit and has been conceived so that to be connected via USB to the smartphone or laptop, so that to extend the entertainment experience of the user. Rokid Aurora has been demoed using the popular game Fortnite.
Project Aurora offers a 1280×720 high-resolution display, 6DoF tracking and SLAM, dual depth cameras, stereo speakers and 40-degree field of view (FoV). The design is pretty cool (More on VR Focus);
- Vuzix has showcased its $1000-AR glasses called Blade, that let you see notifications from the smartphones and use some little dedicated apps (like Skype) in front of your eyes. The design is quite similar to the one of a standard glass;
- NOLO has showcased streaming technology of a VR game to the headset via a 5G router. It has also announced a VR battle royale game called “Survive: VR Battle Royale” (More on Upload VR);
- Bebop showcased its Virtual Reality gloves that have a very light form factor (More on Engadget)
- Contact CI has shown the evolution of its gloves presented at CES 2018. David of UploadVR is a great fan of this gadget that features motorized tendons and he says that Contact CI is able to really fool your brain in thinking that your hand has touched a surface. There are anyway some things that have still to be fixed, like the fact that the motor is noisy as hell (More on Upload VR);
- HTC Vive and HP have announced that they will sponsor a $50000 VR e-sports tournament held by Virtuix (More on UploadVR);
- MixCast has announced a solution called MixCast Moments that lets VR arcade owners install Intel Realsense cameras into their booths so that to have automatically mixed reality videos and photos of the players. The process doesn’t require manual editing of the videos, that are so ready out of the box to be shared on social media. For home use, instead, MixCast offers the free MixCast 2.0 solution (More on UploadVR);
- Dell has showcased Dell Mobile Connect, a special feature that lets you use your phone while you are in VR. This is for instance useful to answer to calls or text messages while you are playing VR games. Unluckily this feature is available only on some Dell PCs (More on Road To VR);
- Foldaway has showcased a new type of thumbstick for Virtual Reality controllers that is also able to give better haptic feedback. Its origami-design is very innovative (More on Road To VR);
- The NordicTrack VR bike is a stationary bike that comes paired with a Vive Focus to lets you exercise while having fun in VR. Ben Lang of Road To VR tried it and found it incredibly engaging (More on Road To VR);
- Wayray Holographic has created an AR windshield system for cars to show navigation direction and also information on the part of the city the driver is in. It is controllable via hands gestures. This system is going to be installed in the Genesis G80 car (More on Cnet);
- NISSAN has made a tech showcase, showing how could be the driving experience of the future, with the driver seeing continuously mixed reality. This may mean superimposition of navigation instructions in AR, but also video communication with other people, having a virtual assistance or directly seeing the real world modified with mixed reality for entertainment (More in this video by Cathy Hackl);
- Northern Digital has showcased Atraxa, the reference design of two 6 DOF controllers for VR headsets that are tracked through magnetical fields. According to journalist (and friend of mine) Scott Hayden, the tracking is pretty solid, but can’t compare yet with the one of Rift and Vive. Atraxa has claimed that its solutions are already used in headsets distributed in the market (uhm… Magic Leap?) (More on Road To VR);
- Teslasuit has showcased the improvements of its full body suit, that seems the closest thing that we have to Ready Player One’s full body suit: it lets you feel haptic sensations, it lets you feel pain (through electrical shocks), it makes you contract the muscles, it lets you feel hot and cold. A really amazing device, that will be launched in the upcoming years for enterprise customers (More on DigitalTrends);
- INT has showcased its new display technology: “INT’s UHPD platform is a proprietary glass-based red/green/blue (RGB) AMOLED display that delivers a leap forward in pixel density (greater than 2200 ppi) and achieves 4K resolution.” (More on Electronics 360);
- Big Box VR has announced “Population:One”, a battle royale game with 24 players in a one kilometer map (More on UploadVR);
- VRFetus lets future mothers see their fetus in virtual reality; (More on VRRoom);
- There were various attractions for VR arcades and amusement parks. This crazy rollercoaster was one of them.
UPDATE: I have seen that Forbes contributor and Futurist Charlie Fink has written a fantastic roundup of his experience at CES. I really think it is worth reading, because it shows you various XR gadgets that I have not detailed in this post. You can find it here, if you are interested.
And that’s it with this monster post. Congratulations for having made it through then end! I hope that it has been useful to you to keep yourself updated with the latest news from CES and if it has been the case, please subscribe to my newsletter to not miss the next roundup 😉
(Header image by CES)