The Ghost Howls’s VR Week Peek (2019.10.21): Daydream is dead, Varjo VR-2 is out, Sony makes AR glasses and much more!
Last week I told you that most probably I wouldn’t have written a Week Peek this Sunday because I’m very busy showcasing our game at the WCVRI exhibition in Nanchang. Actually I’m busy, I’m stressed and super-tired (I will tell you my experience very soon!), but I thought that you my readers deserve at least a simplified version of my Week Peek, so here you are!
Top news of the week
Daydream has died
This is the most important and most “you don’t say” news of this week. Google’s next flagship phone, the Pixel 4, won’t be compatible with Daydream View headset and Google has also stopped selling the Daydream View. This means that now, after many months where the project seemed abandoned, now it is officially dead. The reason is the one that you can imagine: not enough sales and retention.
Google will continue to keep the servers up to let existing Daydream users continue using the apps, but there will be no new apps, no new products and no new sales of the hardware.
It is a true pity, because the Daydream View was a very high quality mobile viewer, the UX of Daydream was one of the best I tried in VR and there were also some very cool exclusive titles (like a Blade Runner game).
But the Daydream project never took off, and its competitor Gear VR, thanks to Oculus money and branding has always performed better. But now they rest together in piece.
More info (Daydream dies)
More info (Best Daydream exclusives)
Other relevant news
Varjo releases VR-2 and VR-2 Pro
Finnish company Varjo is very active and it has just announced the second version of its retina-resolution VR headset: the VR-2, and its pro version called VR-2 Pro.
Varjo headsets have the peculiarity that they use two displays: one high-density microdisplay in the center of your vision and one standard VR display in the other zones, so that you have NO screendoor effect while you look forward. It is a quite interesting and original approach to VR, that is great for all those applications that require perfect resolution (e.g. car design).
The VR-2 is better than VR-1 because it merges better the output of the two displays through an optical combiner that is able to make the transition more seamless. It also adds compatibility with SteamVR, so you can play Steam games and enterprise applications with Varjo. Notice that only programs built with Varjo SDK will be able to exploit the special two-displays technology.
VR-2 Pro adds an integrated Leap Motion and a 10m cable.
The VR-2 is also €1000 cheaper than the VR-1, even if the cost is still very enterprise oriented: 4995€ for the VR-2 and 5995€ for the VR-2 pro.
More info (Article on Road To VR)
More info (Article on Upload VR)
Sony creates an AR headset for LBVR
Sony is offering a Ghostbuster AR experience in Ginza, Japan, and for this it has manufactured an AR headset. We have zero details about it, and in fact among VR journalists there have been a lot of speculations: Upload says that it is a mobile-phone-powered headset (like the one of Lenovo Star Wars experience), while Road To VR says that it is based on waveguides.
Display expert Karl Guttag has written a very interesting speculation on it based on his own big experience on optical systems and what it is possible to see from the video trailer of the experience. If he’s right, then the display of this device is something not that amazing, considering that it will have very dim lighting for the holograms.
To have more details we have to wait for the reviews of people that will actually go to Japan to try this experience…
More info (Road To VR article)
More info (Upload VR article)
More info (Karl Guttag’s article)
New Rumors on Half Life VR
According to Valve News Network, Half Life VR will be set in the 20 years period between Half Life 1 and Half Life 2. It is like this will be Half Life1.5, that is 3/2.
You won’t play as Gordon Freeman but Alex Vance, that is one of the main characters of Half Life 2. The gameplay duration should be around 12–16 hours.
Valve said that the game should launch in 2019, but knowing Valve Time, if we are lucky, it will be announced in 2019 and launched in 2020.
News worth a mention
BBC VR Hub shuts down
BBC VR Hub shuts down: the entity behind VR storytelling experiences like “Nothing to be Written” and “Doctor Who: The Runaway” has just been closed. That’s a sad news, but the good story is that actually BBC is continuing investing in AR and VR in other ways.
Who will own the XR metaverse?
I found a very interesting article on Medium that talks about all the different pieces required to make the AR metaverse to work (the AR Cloud), and what companies are working on them.
PSVR Halloween sale
Do you like horror games in VR? Well, if you have a PSVR, this is the right time to buy them, thanks to the recent halloween sale by Sony
Spectro is an enjoyable Halloween experience
Do you like scary and spooky experiences but you don’t like jumpscares? Then you could enjoy Spectro, a new VR game that is an about ghosts but it is family friendly.
Enjoy Mona Lisa in VR
Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in the world, that’s why millions of people go visiting it. There is always a big crowd in front of it, and it is difficult to enjoy it well. That’s why Louvre museum together with Vive Arts is going to offer a Mona Lisa VR experience, that lets you appreciate this masterpiece in all its details.
Ubisoft is investing a lot in LBVR
Ubisoft doesn’t only produce VR games on Steam, but it is also very active in the LBVR sector, and now counts over 200 locations worldwide that makes people play Ubisoft LBVR experiences.
In the article that I’m linking, you can also find very interesting insights on how to build good LBVR installations, so it is worth a read.
Privacy in Cosmos and Pokemon Go
Privacy in AR and VR is a topic we should be constantly worried about.
This week, HTC has confirmed Road To VR that the Cosmos doesn’t transmit any data of the positional tracking outside your PC and the data is also encrypted to prevent hackers to access them.
An article on Kotaku, instead, highlights the privacy risks of games like Pokemon Go, that can track your position your whole day.
More info (Vive Cosmos)
More info (Pokemon Go)
Qualcomm launches the “XR Optimized” program
Qualcomm continues its investments in AR and VR has launches the “XR optimized” program, aimed at guaranteeing high performances and compatibility between smartphones and VR viewers. Some smartphone vendors like ZTE and some smartphone-connected XR viewers by VLAVR and 3glasses have already joined the program.
Interesting lessons about XR interfaces
Professor Fabio Zambetta has shared with me some cool slides about HoloLens. In them you can find some interesting insights on how Microsoft designed the UX of HoloLens (go to section 2 of the slides linked below).
6d.ai can make you see your world as made by Lego
In a new cool demo made by startup 6d.ai, you can see the smartphone reconstructing the world around it as if it were made by Lego Bricks. It is impressive!
Verizon works on 5G edge services for AR/VR
Verizon is working on a system to let more devices connected on a network to exploit one single GPU of a single device. This, together with 5G, may be useful to make sure that one mobile VR headset has to perform heavy calculations, it can exploit the computational power of the devices around it and so run smoothly.
Some XR fun
VR & Star Wars
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(Header image by Google)
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