This roundup of the most important AR/VR news of the past week comes out with a little delay since I’ve been very busy with my development job, and I’ve also a damn cold that doesn’t make me feel very well (but it’s no coronavirus, don’t worry :D). Sorry for that!
So, while today Valve distributes the first goodies for Half-Life: Alyx, let’s have a look to the most important things happened this week in our XR ecosystem.
Top news of the week
Qualcomm releases XR2 5G reference design
Qualcomm has finally released the reference design for AR/VR headsets based on the XR2 chipset (a special version of the Snapdragon 865 for XR headsets), and it will pave the way for the standalone headsets of the future.
The devices that will be based on this reference design will have amazing specifications like:
- 2K x 2K display resolution per each eye;
- Have up to 7 cameras used simultaneously, including the ones for tracking, mixed reality and eye-tracking;
- High-quality passthrough augmented reality with high resolution and framerate. This means having AR and VR on the same device;
- A 5G modem;
- 8K videos playback at 60fps;
- Accelerated AI so that to be able to perform objects recognition and other cool stuff on the camera feed.
To make you understand how these features are incredible, Qualcomm has stated that “the [XR2] reference design has 2x the CPU and GPU performance, 4x more video bandwidth, 6x higher resolution and 11x AI improvement compared to our current widely adopted XR platform [the Oculus Quest]”.
This year we will start seeing these new monster headsets, but most probably they will be very expensive and will be devoted towards enterprise: the only HMD based on XR2 chipset that we’ve seen announced until now is the Lynx R-1 and it costs $1500. Probably, an affordable Quest 2 based on XR2 may come out in 2022. Let’s see. In any case, I’m very intrigued.
Other relevant news
Coronavirus impacts headsets production and kills F8 and GDC
The damn coronavirus continues to impact all our lives: the fact that many countries are applying restrictions on flights to and from Italy is, for example, creating various nuisances to my job.
Regarding VR, this week we register the fact that two important events like Facebook F8 and GDC have been canceled. F8 has been canceled because Facebook cares about the health of its employees and partners. It will be substituted by some live streams and other online content. Honestly, considering that it would have been the event where Facebook most probably would have launched Facebook Horizon, it would be great if Facebook hosted all the event in VR, inside Horizon.
The Game Developers Conference, a big event where there have been in the past many announcements about VR, has been canceled after all the major brands withdrew from it, leaving the organizers with no choice. Technically, it has not been canceled, but postponed to this summer, but there are many unknowns about this future GDC, and we’re not 100% sure of what will happen. So bad, because I was planning to go there in March.
The coronavirus is also impacting the production of all the major VR headsets: we’re at the point that Valve’s customer service has no more left controllers to give to people for RMA. The only company not much affected by it is HTC, that manufacturers its headsets in Taiwan and not in Mainland China. This means that the Taiwanese company may earn some market shares in this period, with people desperately looking for a headset to play Half-Life: Alyx.
More info (Official announcement about GDC)
More info (GDC2020 postponed)
More info (Some irony on the GDC)
More info (Facebook cancels F8)
More info (Coronavirus affecting production of headsets)
More info (Valve with no controllers for RMA)
HTC Vive releases Cosmos Elite, two models of Vive Pro Eye and creates some confusion
For sure you remember the recent launch of a full line of Vive Cosmos headsets, all with customized faceplates. The news of the week is that one of these new Cosmos, the Cosmos Elite, can already be preordered today for $900 and it ships on March, 18th. It is clear that the company is aiming at giving it to players before the launch of Half-Life: Alyx. What is cool of the Cosmos Elite is that it can be paired with a Wireless Adapter, so that to let people play Alyx wirelessly.
At the same time, HTC has also changed the offering for its Vive Pro Eye professional headset, that now comes in two different packages: Vive Pro Eye Office and Vive Pro Eye Office Arena Bundle. The first one costs $1400 (so $200 less than before) and gives you the eye-tracked headset plus the basestation and the controllers, while the second one costs $2,350, and includes all of the above as well as an extra pair of SteamVR 2.0 base stations and a 20m fiber cable.
The problem with HTC is that now there are like 13 headset of its on the market and the situation is starting to really become confusing. It is true that it’s good to offer customization to customers, but when you have so many products on a niche market like VR, probably you have exaggerated a bit. I really hope that the Taiwanese company will understand this and react accordingly.
On the software side, HTC has just launched in China Vive Sync, a solution for remote meetings in VR that may help a lot the Chinese people that are forced to work from home.
More info (Vive Cosmos Elite launch)
More info (New offerings of Vive Pro Eye)
More info (Ben Lang’s editorial on HTC’s strategy)
More info (Vive Sync launch)
iPhone 12 may feature a special connection for AR glasses
Some rumors say that the next iPhone, the iPhone 12, may implement the Wi-fi protocol 802.11ay, an incredible standard able to guarantee speeds up to 176Gbps. These insane speeds come at a cost: the connection is pretty fragile, and this Wi-fi is not able to trespass walls and other obstacles, requiring a de facto line of sight between the receiver and the transmitter.
You may wonder why I’m talking you about Wi-fi standards: well, if these rumors are true, this Wi-fi can’t clearly be useful for reliable internet connections (remember the line-of-sight stuff), but it could be great to connect the iPhone to a nearby device, a device requiring a high bandwidth. Of course I’m talking about a potential AR glass, the iGlass, that could so exploit the computational power of the phone without needing a cable to be connected to it. This is a very fascinating hypothesis, but honestly, I don’t know if I believe it. The main reason is: if the glass is not connected to the phone, it needs a dedicated battery, and this means that it must be bigger. Is this really what Apple wants?
(Thanks Robert Scoble for this news!)
Developers continue to have fun with Oculus Quest hands tracking!
A new week, a new sheer of demos exploiting Oculus Quest hands tracking! And this time, you will finally be able to download one of them. My favorite from this week? A demo made by the creator of Holoception, that mixes portals and hands tracking.
If you want to make similar experiments, you had better knowing that MRTK now supports Quest hand tracking, and this can make the development of applications employing just the hands much easier.
There is not much to say, but there is a lot to see… so click on the below links, watch the videos and let them inspire you!
More info (MRTK now supports Oculus Quest hands tracking)
More info (New Quest hands tracking demo)
More info (Cool demo with hands tracking and a mannequin)
More info (Hands tracking + portals)
More info (Downloadable cool hands tracked demo)
More info (Dev shows how to map real and virtual world with Quest)
More info (Another very original demo that uses Google Poly)
Facebook acquires Sanzaru Games
With a surprise move, Facebook has acquired Sanzaru Games, the company behind the best VR game of 2019, Asgard’s Wrath. The details of the deal are unknown. We only know that the game studio should operate as an independent entity, and not be absorbed completely inside Facebook.
With this operation, Facebook secures another amazing development studio (after Beat Games), making sure that it will be able to provide high-quality games for its headsets in the future, and protecting itself from hostile acquisitions of other companies (like Sony acquiring Insomniac).
But it’s not over: Facebook has teased other big news for the future. In a prepared statement, the social media declared: “we’re exploring many ways to accelerate VR, and 2020 is going to be an incredible year for VR game launches and announcements. We are thrilled to have Sanzaru joining our team. This is just one of the many amazing VR announcements we have in store this year.”
What a time to be alive.
More info (News on Road To VR)
More info (News on Upload VR)
News worth a mention
XBOX Series X will be VR ready
Microsoft has released more specifications for its upcoming XBOX Series X, and from these data is clearly possible to see that it will be compatible with VR headsets. The GPU will allow for 12Teraflops, for a computational power superior to an RTX2080, and will also support variable rate shading (and so will be able to support foveated rendering).
This reinforces my belief that Microsoft in 2021–2022 will add VR support to it, to fight the PSVR when the market will be riper.
100+ games have exceed $1M revenue
According to Tipatat Chennavasin, 106 games have made more than $1M in revenue, and half of these titles have come out in 2019. This shows that it is now possible to make real money with VR games, and that every year, the market becomes always better.
Thanks to “To The Top” developers, we also know how much money a good VR indie studio can earn on SideQuest: in the month of launch, they have had around $6000 in revenue: not bad at all, but also not enough to sustain a medium-sized studio alone.
More info (100+ VR games exceeded $1M)
More info (To The Top revenues)
Snap has acquired some of the assets from Daqri
In 2019 AR startup Daqri has shutdown. This week, I’ve learned that this has been mostly because investors taking control of the company and not giving it a good path to follow (something similar to what has happened to Jeri Ellsworth with CastAR). In the same article, it is also reported the news that Snap has acquired part of the assets and hired some of the people from Daqri.
20 AR trends to follow in 2020
Investor Tom Emrich has written another amazing post, this time highlighting the most important AR trends to follow for this 2020. It is a must read.
Do you want to learn WebXR?
This week, I’ve found two incredible resources for WebXR development:
- A big library of sample WebXR projects released by startup The8thWall. This library gives you the source code of all the most common WebAR application types (of course integrating the8thWall framework), and lets you also clone them (of course if you have a paid account), so that you can create your professional WebXR applications in just a few clicks!
- Danilo Pasquariello’s Youtube channel, where he teaches you how to develop WebVR experiences using A-frame. Very cool, actually.
More info (The8thWall)
More info (Danilo Pasquariello)
Do you want to read a good book on AR/VR?
Blogger Tom Ffiske, that writes on Virtual Perceptions, has decided to write a very good book about AR and VR technologies and it is becoming pretty popular on Amazon. It is called The Immersive Reality Revolution and I advise you all to buy it now!
Facebook now lets you shoot a 3D photo with a simple camera
Do you remember Facebook 3D photos? Well, to shoot them, you had to own a special phone with dual cameras, so that the system could know the depth of the various elements portrayed in the photo. Now, this requirement is not necessary anymore: thanks to its AI magic, Facebook is now able to understand the depth of the various elements portrayed in a simple photo, and so you can shoot a 3D photo with whatever phone you want. I guess this technology may also have interesting applications for AR in the future.
Watch the Unboxing of the Pimax Artisan
Youtuber Sebastian Ang has made a very well-made video with the unboxing of the Pimax Artisan. Discover this new headset announced at CES by clicking the link below.
Sketchfab launches Public Domain program for cultural institutions
Sketchfab has just launched a Public Domain program, to let cultural institutions like museums share the 3D models of the elements they own with a CC0 license, letting everyone exploit them as they wish, for commercial and non-commercial purposes. This is a piece of great news to help the creation of educational content about heritage.
Oculus fixes two of the greatest issues of Oculus Link
This week, Oculus has finally fixed two problems haunting Oculus Link users:
- The Oculus Quest runtime now won’t have to necessarily have the same version of the one running on the PC;
- The microphone of the Quest will now finally work with the PC, exactly as if it were the microphone of the Rift S.
More info (Oculus Link runtime fix)
More info (Oculus Link microphone fix)
A simple hack for Rift S owners
A redditor has published a simple hack on how to put the cable of the Rift S so to improve its comfort, thinking that everyone already knew it, and instead, the post became very popular. If you have a Rift S, give it a look!
How about a game on bananas in VR?
My friend Marco Giammetti and his team have made an original indie game about measuring objects in VR using bananas. The idea is funny, the trailer is cool, the graphics are well-made, and for these reasons the post about it has been the top trend on subreddit /r/virtualreality this week! Have a look at this game, already available on Steam, and support VR indie developers 🙂
Some info about content
Some news on VR content from this week:
- Drifter Entertainment has just announced “The Lies Beneath”, a survival horror VR game for Rift and Quest. It seems a great title if you like horror games;
- If you like dark vibes, you will for sure like also The Room: A Dark Matter, that is also having amazing previews from journalists. Everyone says that it is already setting a new standard for VR puzzle games. It is going to launch on March, 26th on PC VR headsets, Oculus Quest, and PSVR;
- Rhythm game Synth Riders is getting a very interesting update adding multiplayer to the game!
- Bizarre Barber is a weird but interesting new VR game, that seems an acid trip that meets Edward Scissorhands;
- The Museum Of Other Realities exits from Early Access and launches a full version that lets you enjoy VR artistic creations in a virtual museum, also with your friends, thanks to a neat multiplayer feature.
More info (The Lies Beneath)
More info (The Room: A Dark Matter preview)
More info (The Room: A Dark Matter launch date)
More info (Synth Riders multiplayer update)
More info (Bizarre Barber)
More info (Museum of Other Realities)
News from partners (and friends)
XR Europe will be awesome! This big event about enterprise AR and VR will be hosted in London on 28–29 April, 2020. If coronavirus doesn’t ruin our plans, I should also be there speaking inside a panel, so if you go there, it could also be a great opportunity to meet!
I obtained a big $100 discount for all my readers that want to register to this event. You have just to write the code 5099TGH100 during check-in to obtain it!
Click the link to learn more about this event and register to attend it!
Some XR fun
This is one of the weirdest rag-doll experiments in Unity
VRChat on PC vs VRChat in VR
AR can be used for pranks too…
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(Header image by Qualcomm)