First newsletter of October! This week in XR has not been that intense, but I think we needed some rest after the big news of the OC6… don’t you agree?
Top news of the week
Vive Cosmos has just had a not-so-great launch
On October, 3rd, HTC has started shipping the Vive Cosmos, its super-versatile VR headset, that thanks to many accessories (wireless adapter, eye tracking add-on, SteamVR tracking faceplate, etc…) is one of the most interesting VR headsets for enterprises and prosumers.
Notwithstanding the enthusiasm of mine and of other people in the VR communities, the launch of the Cosmos has not been that enthusiastic, especially for two problems that early reviewers have found in it:
- Controllers’ batteries duration. According to some reviewers, the two “Touch” controllers of the Cosmos last only 2–3 hours, then you have to swap batteries. Considering that each controller even requires two batteries, people have started going crazy: the expected battery duration was at least 10 hours, enough for a good session of VR gaming. 2 hours feels too little, and people became angry because of this. The interesting thing is that HTC has claimed that duration, but then some people of HTC said that is not true, and also some reviewers called this a fake news. The situation is a bit confused;
- Tracking not working in dim light. Many reviewers agree that the inside-out tracking of the Cosmos doesn’t work unless your room is highly illuminated. So, if you try playing at night with just your artificial lights on, it doesn’t work. The need for visible light is a problem that all inside-out tracked headsets share, but usually, they work well with artificially-lit rooms. Considering that I’m sure that in HTC offices they don’t have floodlights on all the time and that they have tested the tracking before shipping it, I’m pretty sure this sounds like a firmware error, that can be fixed in future updates.
I hope that HTC releases a public statement about these two points, to clarify the situation to its customers. We have seen many errors happening when headsets have launched (think about the terrible audio of the Rift S), so this wouldn’t be the first time. Open communication is fundamental, also because I think that the above problems will be fixed with future firmware upgrades. We wait and see what HTC will tell us.
Together with the Cosmos, we have also had the first public appearances of the new CEO of HTC, Yves Maitre. He seems a very honest man, and he admitted that HTC jumped on VR too early, and this is impacting the business of the company. But he’s confident that this, in the end, will pay off, and HTC VR business will be greater than smartphones one in five years. He also said that the market is big enough for HTC and Oculus. Good luck to him and to HTC!
UPDATE: HTC has tweeted that it has already published some updates on the beta branch of its runtime that address the low-light tracking problems. Good to see the company working on this
More info (Upload’s review of Vive Cosmos)
More info (Road To VR not reviewing Cosmos for tracking issues)
More info (HTC addressing low-light tracking problems)
More info (Reddit thread talking about controllers’ batteries duration)
More info (Vive Cosmos Wireless Adapter)
More info (Yves Maitre’s interview for Bloomberg)
More info (Yves Maitre’s interview for TechCrunch)
Other relevant news
Oculus Quest gets the runtime update promised at OC6
This week, Oculus has started distributing the runtime update for Oculus Quest carrying with it some of the features promised at OC6:
- Oculus Go emulation. The Quest will be able to play some applications that had been developed for Go. Oculus has taken care of porting 50+ games from Go to Quest, and some of them work in 3DOF and the others in 6 DOF. It is interesting that people that had bought this content on Go have seen Oculus giving the exact amount spent for buying it as free Quest credit. That’s a bit weird, because it is not that people are forced to buy again the same content on Quest, they can use the same money to buy other Quest games;
- 3 DOF mode. If the environment is too dark and the Quest can’t perform the positional tracking anymore, it lets the user switch to 3DOF mode, which transforms the Quest in a Go with two 3 DOF controllers. It works incredibly well;
- Passthrough+. An optimized passthrough for the Quest, with better resolution, latency and depth perception. I tried it and I have been disappointed: while the claims are all true, the video stream also features some big distortions that make you see the environment as if you were underwater.
The hand tracking has not been offered yet, but in the communities I have found further info about it: in the links below I will link to you the review by Ben Lang, that says that the hands tracking is good but can’t cope with occlusions; and a video with some interesting UI controls employing natural hands interactions that Oculus has thought about. If you are into UX, you should give it a look.
The Oculus Quest keeps getting the interest of the whole community. Startup VRNGRY has just released a power bank that gives you many hours of continuous play and at the same time balances more the weight of the headset. And Mike Boland has estimated that the headset has sold 330,000 units until now.
More info (Quest October update)
More info (My review on 3DOF mode and Passthrough+)
More info (List of Oculus Go games running on Quest)
More info (List of Oculus Go games upgradable to Quest)
More info (Video of Oculus Go games running on Quest)
More info (Oculus giving free credit for Go content)
More info (Ben Lang’s review of Quest hands tracking)
More info (Example of hand-tracked UIs)
More info (VRNGRY power bank)
More info (Analysis on Quest sales)
Verizon has acquired Jaunt
Verizon has just acquired XR startup Jaunt for an undisclosed amount. We know very little about this deal, apart from the fact that Jaunt will be assisting Verizon in the first time to guarantee an effective transition.
This news comes a bit unexpected and honestly makes me a bit sad. Jaunt was a company creating astonishing 360 3D videos, it had also its professional dedicated camera, but then was probably “forced” by VCs to switch from VR to AR, laying off many people and abandoning all its assets related to VR. It was now working on AR telepresence, streaming volumetric avatars in augmented reality.
Personally, I have no idea what Verizon thinks doing with the expertise of Jaunt. Most probably it will be used for some 5G demos about remote telepresence (as my friend Eloi suggests), and probably also to create some XR communications service offered by Verizon. My impression (not confirmed AT ALL, so take it as just a sensation) is that Jaunt has been sold for much less of the investments it got in these years (more than $100M): probably the continuous pivoting have hurt too much the destiny of this startup.
Apple acquires IKinema
Another acquisition got my attention this week: Apple buying IKinema. IKinema was a company working on motion capture and had developed a great solution that lets people animate a full-body avatar with just some Vive Trackers on their limbs. What was impressive of this software was its inverse kinematics skills (hence the name IK-inema), that is its ability to reconstruct with great precision the pose of the body starting from just 5 points tracked with the Vive Trackers.
Since the acquisition, IKinema’s solution, dubbed Orion, is not available for purchase anymore. As when Apple bought Metaio and Faceshift, a great service is not available anymore for all the devs of the world because of an acquisition by Apple. I hope that IKinema will be used for something cool and won’t follow the destiny of Faceshift that at the moment is mostly used to show some Animojis…
What Apple will do of this IK expertise is unknown, but it is very reasonable to think that it will be used in the future for some full-body avateering connected to its XR glasses. As has happened with previous acquisitions, we have just to wait and see. Usually Apple takes some years to improve the technologies it has acquired and integrate them into its vision of future products before showing the fruits of the acquisitions (e.g. Metaio becoming ARKit years later).
News worth a mention
Researchers develop artificial skin
Researchers of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) have developed a soft artificial skin made in silicone that is able to emulate the sensations of touching surfaces made by different materials. These sensations of touch can be created thanks to actuators that pump air in and out special membranes of the skin, and that so can touch the skin of the user in a different way depending on the material that has to be emulated. The actuators run at 100Hz, so they can emulate these sensations very fast.
Of course, this is not something that we will see soon in a VR product, but more a long term project.
GeoAR.js lets you create geolocalized AR experiences
If you have to develop geolocalized AR experiences, now you have a new tool that can help you. It is GeoAR.js, a completely opensource library created by Nicolò Carpignoli, the same guy maintaining AR.js, the opensource framework to create AR experiences.
GeoAR.js seems absolutely worth a look, since it is free, opensource, and let people create geolocalized AR experiences that run completely in the web using A-frame.
Oculus controls more than 50% of the PC VR market
The new Steam hardware survey is out and from it it is clear that Oculus is performing always better. Thanks to their very cheap prices, Oculus Rift S and Oculus Rift CV1 now represent more than 50% of the total headsets used on Steam. And I think that with the Oculus Link, this number will increase even more.
In the meantime, the Index is slowly gaining ground and now has more market shares than all WMR headsets combined!
Instagram implements AR shopping experiences
Face filters are currently the most successful application of mobile AR and Facebook knows that well. That’s why it has just started offering on Instagram AR try-on features related to products that you may buy there, starting from make-up and sunglasses. If you see an ad on Instagram and you want to buy the product, now the social media lets you try it live on your camera in AR before buying it. Then you can share the picture of your virtual try-on and your friends will be able try and buy your same product just by clicking on it.
I imagine this being awesome for makeup sales.
ARKit 3 body segmentation is unleasing the creativity of people
ARKit 3 offers the possibility to detect and segment various body parts of the users, starting from hands. Creatives from all over the world are using this to offer very artistic filters, that I link you below so that you can appreciate them.
More info (ARKit 3 filters 1)
More info (ARKit 3 filters 2)
Someone experimented with hands tracking on the Index
On Reddit, I found a Redditor that has applied the famous Mediapipe hands tracking developed (and released opensource) by Google to the cameras of the Valve Index. The system is a bit glitchy, but it works, and lets you use your hands with the Valve Index. Unluckily for now it works only on Linux, and with some delay.
Should we stop talking about XR?
We all talk about XR or AR/VR and many of us define themselves as XR developers, or bloggers, or enthusiasts. But according to journalist Rober Scoble, we should not: according to him, AR and VR are so different that we should start separating it. And a person either does AR or he/she does VR.
I agree in part: while the technologies are very different, they share many similarities and so at the moment, it is still possible to have an interest in both. Of course, the more we will go on, the more we will have to specialize in a particular topic.
Raindance Festival has come to an end
Raindance Immersive Awards have just taken place in UK and they have awarded some of the best XR storytelling pieces of content out there: Gloomy Eyes, Afterlife, The Curious Tale Of The Stolen Pets and many others.
VR can be used to cure recurring nightmares
The applications of Virtual Reality in psychology are really many and one of them that I have discovered this week is the therapy for recurring nightmares. People can re-live the recurring nightmare in VR, but changing it so that it becomes ridiculous, funny, and so it becomes less frightening, relieving the patient from his anxiety.
Iron Man VR launches on PSVR at the end of February
One of the most awaited VR games of this year has finally a release date and price: Iron Man VR will launch on PS4 on February, 28th 2020 for $40 for the standard edition and $50 for the deluxe edition. The game has been overly praised not only for letting you impersonate one of the most beloved superheroes, but also for its innovative locomotion system that lets you fly in the sky without having motion sickness.
Some news on VR content
As every week, here you are some brief news on VR content:
- One of the most absurd and funny short VR experiences, “Beach Body Bros” by Tyler Hurd has been launched on the Oculus Store. I advise you to try it and have fun!
- French indie developer Olivier JT is finally going to release its much awaited sci-fi musical experience Synthesis Universe;
- Echo VR is going to be released on Quest. For now, it is preparing for that launch offering many updates, among which there is a new mode that lets you fight against AI opponents;
- Golem has finally a release date: 8th November;
- Beat Games releases the DLC “Beat Saber: Panic at the Disco!”, with many songs that its players can have fun with. The problem is that with the new update of Quest, it will become illegal to create mods for Beat Saber, and the risk for who still creates them is the ban of the account and the device;
- Google releases an experience that recreates the whole Versailles mansion in VR through photogrammetry. While the purpose is for sure great, some people complain that the quality of photogrammetry used is not top notch;
- Arthur Carabotts creates an AR experience that lets you decompose his song and enjoy all the various tracks that compose it by putting them in different parts of your room;
- The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners comes to VR and offers a very interesting narrative with many branches in which you decide how the story will unfold.
More info (Beach Body Bros)
More info (Me playing Beach Body Bros)
More info (Synthesis Universe)
More info (Echo VR)
More info (Golem release date)
More info (Beat Saber: Panic At The Disco!)
More info (Beat Saber can’t be modded on Quest)
More info (Google’s Versailles tour)
More info (Arthur Carabotts)
More info (The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners)
Is Red Dead Redemption 2 getting VR support?
A redditor believes that on 9th, we will discover that Red Dead Redemption 2 will get PC VR support. I don’t know if this will actually happen (probably not), but it is very fascinating, so why not dreaming a bit?
Some XR fun
VR videogames make people violent
I want a girl that looks at me like Carmack looks at people that play with the Quest
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