The past week has been the week of the E3, and we had an insane amount of news regarding new upcoming Virtual Reality content, especially for the Oculus Quest! For what games are you hyped? Let me know in the comments or on my social media account!
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Top news of the week
At E3 there have been a lot of announcements for new VR games
Thanks to the popular VR magazine Upload VR, that has organized the E3 VR Showcase, Virtual Reality has had its glorious moment at E3 2019. It has not been something that has happened on the E3 stage, but virtually with a one-hour video stream, but it has been great the same. In the E3 VR Showcase, there have been made more than 30 announcements of games and new content. It has been awesome for all the VR community, even if I have to say that the drawback of making so many announcements in a so short time is that in the end, I had too much confusion about all the names and videos showcased there. Maybe I still remember only the most important 5–6 news and have a blurred image of the other ones. But I’m sure that next year it will be even better. Kudos to Upload for having organized this special moment for Virtual Reality fans at E3.
More info (Roundup of the E3 VR Showcase)
More info (Best of the E3 VR Showcase)
Let me do some highlights of the E3 in VR (mostly from the E3 VR Showcase, but also from other sources).
Beat Saber has announced a new DLC made only of songs from the popular band Imagine Dragons. But even more important, at E3 it has showcased a new 360 mode for the Oculus Quest. Since you can rotate all your body freely with Quest, you can slash cubes all around you. That’s very immersive and fun: from my experience in developing HitMotion: Reloaded on the Vive Focus Plus, I can tell you that moving your body all around your room is how standalone VR is meant to be played.
More info (Beat Saber 360)
More info (Beat Saber 360 probably only on Quest)
More info (Beat Saber’s DLC)
Ready at Dawn has offered a preview of Lone Echo for Rift and Rift S. It will be 50% longer than the original Lone Echo and will continue exploring the relationship between Liv and Jack.
More info (Lone Echo 2)
More info (Lone Echo 2)
Ready at Dawn has also made the bomb announcement that Echo Arena will be released on the Oculus Quest! In my opinion, they are a perfect fit…
More info (Echo Arena on Quest)
Vertigo Games has made a gift to us as well and has told that even Arizona Sunshine is coming to Oculus Quest! A lot of cool games will come to Quest, actually.
More info (Arizona Sunshine on Quest)
There are new hands-on on Asgard’s Wrath, that is really becoming a massive VR game, with more than 30 hours of expected gameplay.
More info (Asgard’s Wrath preview)
More info (Asgard’s Wrath preview)
If you loved Vader Immortal on Quest, you had better to know that the second episode is coming… and it will let you use the force! I expect telekinetic superpowers in your hand…
Falcon Age is coming to PC VR. But the most important news is that it will be exclusive to the new Epic Store. Have we VR enthusiast to download and use another store after Steam, Oculus Store, and Viveport?
According to Mashable, one of the best VR games of the whole E3 has been an indie title developed by some students called Ascend. Reading the review, I am not so sure if the journalist has a so deep experience on VR gaming, but I found his opinion interesting.
Other relevant news
We’re going to have new info on the Vive Cosmos
Finally, HTC is ready to give us all the info on the Vive Cosmos. With a tweet, it has announced that in these weeks (starting from this one), it will start giving info on this new innovative device that can connect to the PC or to the smartphone. We will so know the availability and release date, for instance. For now we only know that the device will ship in Q3 and that devkits are starting to be available.
From the teaser picture, it is possible to see that the headset has had a redesign after the reveal at CES 2019 (the faceplate and the headphones have a different design).
I am very hyped by this headset since it features some intriguing characteristics, like a very high screen resolution, the possibility to tether it to a phone or a solution that is similar to Vive Trackers but that can work with inside-out tracking. The Cosmos can be what brings HTC to be successful again among developers and enthusiasts, after all the recent headsets that were always enterprise-oriented. This will probably be cheaper.
Let’s see.
More info More info (Cosmos confirmed for Q3)
More info (All the info teased by HTC on Cosmos)
Oculus has made various statements about the Quest
The most important announcement has been the fact that in the first two weeks, the content sold on the Quest store has made more than 5 million dollars. This is for sure a very positive result for a new device with a new store. For sure the high quality of games has contributed to that. From the sales number, I imagine a number of sold devices around 100K, but that’s just speculation.
The “content curation” of the Quest store has created some outrage from the dev community (as I have reported in this article). And the recent request of Oculus of removing SteamVR streaming from Virtual Desktop has made the situation even worse, since it made really Oculus seem like an ultra-walled garden.
Jason Rubin has tried answering all these concerns, highlighting how they care about Quest quality and want to publish there only games with high quality and high profitability. Virtual Desktop feature was rejected because it wasn’t ultra polished (of course the streaming had a little lag). All the applications not being so great can be built for Rift, and then if a game proves successful on PC, it can be ported to Quest. I don’t like this idea, but at least I appreciate that he answered the community.
Rubin has also said that the Index looks for sure great and that the Knuckles are interesting, but he has no interest in developing a $1000 product that few people buy. Even Oculus with $2000 can blow people minds, he said, but it is not its purpose.
More info (5 million of content sold)
More info (SteamVR blocked)
More info (Very interesting interview with Rubin on all around Oculus)
More info (Jason Rubin answers the community)
FRL is releasing interesting material for AI training
Facebook Reality Labs, the research center of Facebook, is releasing opensource some tools that it has created to train AI agents in virtual reality.
When you have to train an intelligent agent for the real world (e.g. a robot that can assist people at home), the best is always to do that in the real environment, with the real conditions, but it is, of course, a slow and expensive process. The best idea is to train the AI algorithm inside a VR virtual environment so that you can do all the tests that you want really fast and without breaking things. The only problem is: VR is very different from real reality.
That’s why FRL is releasing two tools to make this virtual training easier and more efficient:
— AI Habitat, a set of modular tools to train efficiently AI agents in VR;
— Replica, a set of virtual environments that are incredibly similar to real-life scenarios. These environments have also all the objects accurately labeled so that to help the training of the agent.
If you work in AI, CV or robotics sector, you had better check these resources out.
Is NVIDIA going to release Super RTX graphics cards?
There is a rumor about NVIDIA going to release a new series of RTX graphics cards dubbed “Super RTX” that will represent an improvement of the past-generation RTX graphics cards announced in 2018. The improvement shouldn’t be that massive as the one from GTX to RTX series, it should be only a refresh of the past generation.
According to some people, this announcement should take place on June, 21st… so stay tuned this week for a new episode of PC VR Master race!
News worth a mention
Researchers are already experimenting with 6G
We are all dreaming about the 5G and the potentialities that it has together with AR and VR, but actually, researchers are already working on 6G. 6G should even be able to stream brain data in real-time and this could be useful for those projects related to brain connection on which Elon Musk is working on. Very fascinating: someone has even told me on Linkedin that a mini-antenna for 6G has already been built.
Microsoft is working on addressing privacy concerns of the AR Cloud
The AR Cloud, that system that will allow all of us to have an interconnected and persistent mixed reality world is for sure fascinating, but it introduces a lot of privacy concerns, since it gives companies the access to all our private and public spaces. Microsoft has presented a paper on a way to record this kind of data so that it is impossible to reconstruct pictures of the original places from it.
New interesting patents by Sony comes to light
Sony is working on the Playstation 5 and next gen PSVR. There are a lot of new patents by the Japanese company, and these are very interesting, because they talk about features that will be able to mix the virtual and the real, like an efficient passthrough that can let the wearer stay in the real world even with the PSVR headset on. (Thanks Mati for the tip!)
KAT launches KAT Loco
Kat Loco is a new system that has just been successfully funded on Kickstarter that lets you walk in VR by walking in place. It works by adding little sensors on your body and your feet.
While it seems fun, from my previous experience at Immotionar, I can tell you that most people don’t want to wear sensors on their body every time they have to play and that walking in place is tiresome on the long run, so I don’t expect a mainstream success from this device.
The HP Reverb neverending story continues
The headset is out of stock again on HP website. And the first consumers are reporting strange bugs on the displays.
HP is investigating and has announced that the device will be available on HP website, Amazon and other retailers in July.
Does Magic Leap want to create a big reality show?
According to a rumor, Magic Leap may want to create a service so that people may stream their lives while they use the MR headset. It could be like the ultimate reality show, where every person can stream him/herselves in every moment of his/her life.
I tried asking Abovitz if it is true, but I got no answer.
A girl is able to see again thanks to a special type of XR glasses
A very moving video. It will make your day better.
Dexta Robotics is launching Dexmo Enterprise glove
After a long silence, Dexta Robotics has returned to make some public announcements and has revealed Dexmo Enterprise, an enterprise glove featuring full force feedback. This means that you will be able to feel the force of elements that touch your hands and all your fingers. This can be incredibly interesting for some enterprise applications (e.g. training).
PTC has made some announcements
The company behind Vuforia has announced that it is going to improve its products: for instance, it has talked about the possibility of tracking objects by just using their CAD files.
PTC will also acquire part of 3D scanning company Matterport.
(Thanks Charlie Fink and Mike Eichenseer for this news)
Blippar launches Blippbuilder
With Blippbuilder, you will be able to create on the web in an easy way (so without the need of knowing how to code) simple augmented reality applications, that can also run in the web via WebAR.
Some interesting concepts that I’ve found
I’ve found some cool videos that I want to show you.
More info (AR for cats) More info (Taking AR objects from the phone to real world) More info (ARKit body tracking used in a trippy way)
Some XR fun
Discover what is Oculus Quest’s biggest enemy
Funny link
Frying pans may be the best controllers ever.
Funny link
This is me when a new headset gets released
Funny link
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