This is the first roundup of news of this new year, and to signal a change with the past, I’ve changed the name from “VR Week Peek” to “XR Week Peek”, because, hey, I like talking about all immersive technologies and not only Virtual Reality.
I feel that this year will be full of big changes for me and this is just the first of a long series. Let’s see. In the meanwhile, I wish you all a fantastic 2020!
Top news of the week
CES 2020 is going to start soon
This week, nothing important has happened in virtual reality, but next week, we’re going to be flooded by lots of announcements. This is because the most important tech exhibition of the year, the CES, is going to start on Tuesday. Some companies have already teased or revealed what they are going to announce, while others are just waiting the right moment to surprise people.
I’ve heard one thing or two I can’t tell you, and I’m sure that there is some good news coming. But as far as I know, nothing disruptive for the industry: Oculus has already shots all its bullets, and HTC for the first time isn’t announcing anything. Some surprises may arrive from Sony (I hope so, but I don’t believe so), but for the rest, I’ve mostly heard about news from secondary operators. But some of them are really intriguing.
Do you want to hear some cool stuff already announced for CES? Well…
- Bosch should unveil its smartglasses to see notifications from your phone. They are incredibly light (10 grams!) and look like standard sunglasses;
- NReal has partnered with 7Invensun and is going to add eye tracking to its cheap AR glasses;
- Pimax is going to unveil the price of the Artisan, its new low-price headset with amazing FOV and resolution. We still don’t know the price: if it is comparable with the one of HP Reverb, it can disrupt the market;
- VRgineers are going to show a new 8K version of the enterprise XTAL headset;
- Pico is going to launch the Neo 2, the second generation of its 6DOF headset. It features 4K resolution and a Snapdragon 845 processor for $700: it’s better than Quest, but more expensive than it. The eye-tracked model costs only $900. I think this can be very interesting for the enteprise market, if the Chinese company has solved its problems with the tracking of the controllers;
- Teslasuit is going to officially launch its haptic glove (but it is not going to demo it);
- Theoretically, the startup Kura should unveil its fantastic technology to have 150° FOV lightweight AR glasses. At least, this is what they promised us some months ago. I think this is the occasion that the startup has to show that its claims are true. Anyway, the Twitter channels of the company are strangely silent at the moment.
All of this is very interesting. For sure there will be many other XR news, and I can’t wait to discover what else will be revealed there!
More info (Bosch glasses)
More info (Nreal+7Invensun)
More info (Pimax Artisan)
More info (VRgineers)
More info (Pico Neo 2)
More info (Teslasuit gloves)
More info (Kura AR glasses)
Other relevant news
According to Abrash, AR glasses may substitute smartphones in 2030–2040
In a recent interview with the Information, Oculus R&D Chief Scientist Michael Abrash cast some interesting predictions. He said that:
- He thinks that AR glasses will probably have mainstream appeal in 5–10 years;
- AR glasses will need something like 10 to 20 years to become similar to sunglasses and substitute completely smartphones;
- The next generation of VR devices will be lead by Facebook, because it is the company that has invested more in research for immersive technologies.
So, while he’s very bullish on VR future, he is not that confident on the one of AR: he’s sure that AR glasses will replace smartphones, but that will require a very long time. The reason is that we need a way to miniaturize all the components of the glasses (computational unit, cameras for tracking, etc…) so that they fit the size of a sunglasses, we need a very thin display with a very big FOV, and at the same time, we need a very tiny battery that can power all this system for a day. We need many technological disruptions for this, and in the meanwhile, the most probable approach is that AR glasses will complement the features of smartphones without substituting them.
Another big problem for the appeal of AR glasses is the UX: voice interface is not suitable for public places, gestures are tiresome, and no one wants to take controllers around. So the companies should find a way so that the glasses understand the intentions of the user, maybe thanks to the use of a mixture of AI and BCI. The acquisition of Ctrl+Labs by Facebook may be important in this sense.
Superdata analyzes the market of VR games
It is possible to read very interesting data on AR/VR from the latest SuperData report on Gaming. Let me quote the main points for you:
- XR2 revenue climbed 26% to $6.3B in 2019 thanks to new headsets like the Oculus Quest. Standalone headsets accounted for 49% of VR shipments and brought VR gaming to a more mainstream audience than existing PC and console devices;
- Sales of standalone VR headsets more than doubled in 2019;
- Sales of PC VR went down 8% from last year;
- VR game revenue rose by 41% during 2019: consumers spent a total of $171M on standalone VR games during the year. In comparison, PC VR games only earned $86M
- AR games are mostly only Pokemon Go. Its alternatives like Harry Potter Wizards Unite only earn 1% of this game’s turnaround.
The report highlights how Oculus Quest has been disruptive for VR the last year.
Will HP refresh the Reverb?
Redditor VRMoney seems very confident that HP will release in 2020 an updated version of the Reverb headset, upgrading the tracking system from 2 cameras to 4. The tracking system is the Achille’s heel of the Reverb, which is a very comfortable headset with an amazing resolution (as I highlight in my review), and the fact that it could be fixed is a piece of great news for all the prosumers interested in this headset.
If it happens, it would also interesting to see what happens with the WMR reference design. The Reverb follows the design, that anyway only features 2 cameras. If the Reverb will actually switch to 4 cameras, it may be that either Microsoft is going to release a new reference design featuring 4 tracking cameras, or that HP is going to its own route because WMR has died. This is something worth discovering.
Let’s see. I tried asking HP for feedback on this, but I got no answer yet.
Vive Cosmos is getting $100 discount
HTC is celebrating the new year with a $100 discount on the Vive Cosmos running from 1th to 10th of January. The discount is valid only in the US and in Canada and is applicable both on the official Vive online store and at participating retailers.
That’s a piece of great news: I think that $599 is the sweet spot of the price of the Cosmos, and I hope that HTC will keep this as a permanent price. If the problems in the tracking of the controllers get solved, at $600 it can be the right alternative between the Rift S and the Index.
The beginning of the year is time for some nice editorials…
The end of one year and the beginning of a new one are always the right moment to make the point on the current situation of AR and VR. In these days I have found a lot of interesting editorials on the past year and projections on the new incoming one. Let me share with you the most interesting ones.
More info (Tom Emrich’s roundup of 2019 in AR)
More info (VentureBeat projections for 2020 in AR)
More info (The biggest XR stories of 2019 by Charlie Fink)
More info (Ian Hamilton’s analysis of the current status of VR market)
News worth a mention
Boneworks sells 100K copies in its first week
After the very positive news on the VR market I reported you last week, a new one was revealed: Boneworks has sold the amazing amount of 100,000 copies of its game in only one week, grossing $3M. All of this only one platform, that is Steam. This shows that a good VR game, with the right marketing, can sell a lot.
Beat Saber itself became a hit thanks to marketing, that is thanks to the mixed reality videos distributed on social media that became viral. Boneworks has used very well some gameplay videos on the popular Node Youtube channel.
Microsoft SharePoint Spaces to launch in the first half of 2020
Microsoft SharePoint, the popular web-based collaborative platform for enterprise customers, is going to get a VR upgrade, letting its users create immersive environments easily assembling 3D models and 360 photos. Since Sharepoint is very important in the enterprise, it will be very interesting to see the reception it will have in the B2B ecosystem.
If you’re new to VR, read this
In this holiday season, many people have received a VR headset as a gift. Reddit is flooded by questions from beginners, and so it is very handy that Upload VR has created a smart guide for all people getting started now with virtual reality. The guide explains all the basic concepts of virtual reality and provides a guide on how to use VR headsets. The only problem of this guide is that it only talks about 4 headsets and ignores all the other ones.
Roundup of all the XR meetings applications
Niclas Johansson has written a very long list of all the solutions available in the market that let you have virtual (or augmented) meetings. If you’re looking for using a similar solution, you can start documenting yourself from here.
How to create a Holotuber streaming app
You already know that I’m a fan of the work of Takashi Yoshinaga, and the work he’s performing mixing Kinect for Azure and AR/VR technologies.
Well, he’s just written a great step-by-step tutorial on how to stream your volumetric avatar recorded from the Kinect via Youtube so that you can see it in AR via your phone. If you’re a maker, give it a look!
NVIDIA Ampere promises great performances
NVIDIA is going to launch in the upcoming times a new type of GPUs dubbed “NVIDIA Ampere”. The first rumors talk about a new disruption, promising “50 percent increase in graphics performance while halving power consumption”. Many people don’t believe these bold claims, but anyway it is possible that in some conditions and under some workloads, those could also be true.
Ubisoft is confirmed to work on a VR project
A new job listing by “Ubisoft Reflections” studio talks about the development of an “AAA VR” game. Of course, we are all excited by this.
Facebook Reality Labs develops ActiveTouch
In its R&D efforts, Facebook Reality Labs has created ActiveTouch, a new system to offer natural interactions. Thanks to the use of a wristband that you wear on your right hand, it is possible to use your other hand as a touchpad, and so type on it by pressing virtual buttons with your right index that touches the skin of the palm of the left hand. The idea is very cool, and you should check it out.
Eclipse: Edge of Light to launch on PC
Award-winning game “Eclipse: Edge of Light” is finally coming out on January, 14th to SteamVR & Oculus Rift. For this, the game’s graphics have been updated, from its earlier mobile versions, to include normal maps, full-screen effects like bloom, and dynamic lighting on the Artifacts. That’s a piece of very good news for all VR gamers. More info
Some news on content
- STYLY is an interesting XR content creation tool, all made in Japan;
- Hominidae is a creepy but interesting VR experience involving monsters with anthropological features, to be shown at Sundance;
- Next Reality has reviewed Spotify App on Magic Leap One, and the results are not exciting.
More info (STYLY)
More info (Hominidae)
More info (Spotify)
Opportunities from partners (and friends)
VRKiwi (that pays for posts on this blog) is offering various free keys for the artistic relaxing game Art Pulse, that I describe enthusiastically in this post.
Here you are one of those keys for the Playstation Store that I share with everyone: 3KDM-7RNQ-P49M . The first one to use it, will take the game for free!
If it is already taken, shoot me an e-mail and I will send to 4 lucky people a key to have the game all for free!
If you like music & VR, instead, why don’t you check out Instrument Studio VR? The creator gave me new keys to share with you for this week, so feel free to ping me to ask one to use this amazing music recording experience for free!
Ask a key for Instrument Studio VR!
Some XR fun
If no one plays these VR games, there must be a reason…
Rift S has finally a feature that Quest doesn’t have
This book on the Quest has a disturbing cover…
New year, new donations!
It’s a new year, and I need your support more than ever to keep this blog running. Please become a supporter of mine on Patreon to make sure that I can continue writing high-quality posts about AR and VR.
I thank all these people for the support they gave me in 2019, hoping they will continue helping me in 2020:
- DeoVR
- Michael Bruce
- Ilias Kapouranis
- Paolo Leoncini
- Jennifer Granger
- Jason Moore
- Kai Curtis
- Francesco Strada
- Vooiage Technologies
- Caroline
- Matias Nassi
Join the club by clicking the button here below!
(Header image by Pico Technologies)