The XR Week Peek (2020.06.13): Magic Leap exploring a sale, events are going virtual and more!
Another week closed at home, sending big hugs to all of you VR enthusiasts of the world. Many countries are locking down because of the coronavirus, so I hope you all stay safe, healthy and will be able to keep in touch with the people you love. And if you need some pieces of advice regarding how to professionally survive this quarantine, I have written a blog post on the topic you can read.
The good news of the week is that I’ve been selected as one of the speakers at AWE USA 2020! And even if there won’t be an AWE, well, it is very flattering the same. I hope to see your there, physically or virtually 🙂
Top news of the week
Magic Leap is on sale
A report on Bloomberg informed us all that Magic Leap is exploring a sale of the company.
The AR startup is in big troubles: after having overhyped its device for years and having collected billions of investments, it just delivered a HoloLens clone. And while this is anyway a good result for a startup (developing an AR headsets means spending billions in R&D), targeting the consumer market has been a suicide move, that let Microsoft get full control of the profitable enterprise market. The sales never skyrocketed and now Magic Leap is in desperate need of cash, after many layoffs, disappointing sales, and having put its IP as collaterals to a bank.
It seems that the company has chosen a price tag around $10B and has already proposed to some companies including Facebook and Johnson&Johnson. Facebook has already refused the acquisition. The price tag seems a bit too steep given the current situation of the company unless behind the curtains they have some secret technology and some Carmack-style talents. Also because the brand “Magic Leap” is not as shiny as before, when we were all expecting great things from it.
The situation looks uncertain, and probably we will hear about Magic Leap’s plans at the next LEAP Conference. In the meantime, when asked about these rumors, Rony Abovitz answered his typical way, just saying “42”. Then he said how is excited for the Magic Leap 2 and how the R&D for the Magic Leap 3 is going well. A bizarre strategy, that doesn’t surprise me anymore, though. I hope for him that this won’t lead the company to the disaster.
More info (Bloomberg report)
More info (Road To VR quoting Abovitz)
More info (Irony on the news on VR Dizzy)
Other relevant news
Valve Index and Oculus Quest were on sale again
This week the Valve Index and the Oculus Quest have been put back in stock. Oculus and Valve have probably taken out all the devices they had in the warehouses so that to ship them before Half-Life: Alyx and the sale has been a big success. I mean, they went on stock, and then out of stock again in few hours. So, if you were one of the lucky guys or girls that have grabbed one, I’m glad for you. Otherwise, now the situation is more or less like before, with the exception of some places where there are still some Oculus devices in stock (for instance in Japan and Taiwan).
More info (Valve Index sold out again)
More info (Oculus Quest sold out again)
More info (Worldwide availability of Oculus Quest)
New important events have been canceled because of the coronavirus…
A new week, a new list of events canceled because of the coronavirus outbreak. This week, the sad list includes:
- Laval Virtual, one of the oldest events about VR in Europe;
- XR Europe, one of the most important business-oriented VR events in Europe… in which I should have been one of the moderators (sigh);
- E3, the super important gaming event;
- Tribeca, the event about storytelling and films;
- Italian events like Salento AVR and Svilupparty… that I should have attended.
This is so sad. All the events from now to May will probably be canceled one by one… we VR people will have to wait a while before meeting again face by face. I’ll hug you all in autumn.
More info (Laval Virtual canceled)
More info (XR Europe canceled)
More info (E3 canceled)
More info (Tribeca canceled)
…and there is always more interest in virtual gatherings
The organizers of these canceled events don’t want that everything gets lost, so many of them are working towards online versions of these events. This means mainly two things:
- Livestreams and blog posts where the companies make the announcements that they would have made during the event. This is also used to substitute workshops and speeches usually employing Youtube Videos or Youtube Live Streams;
- VR events, made in virtual reality in platforms like ENGAGE, Somnium Space, Mozilla Hubs, VIRBela, etc…
Facebook has for instance taken the first route, and this week it will make all the announcements that it would have made at GDC via videos and posts. We can expect announcements on Pistol Whip, Beat Saber, The Room VR: A Dark Matter, Lies Beneath and Phantom: Covert Ops. Upload VR has also worked on this side and during the E3 it will do its usual E3 VR Showcase.
The VR route is instead being pursued by HTC (with its VEC event happening soon) and IEEE. There are also many other canceled VR events working on this side, but I can’t spoil much. I know that because we are proposing to various events with our VRrOOm Social XR platform and dozens event organizers are visiting us and the other online platforms in these days. I guess you will all hear more news on this side in the upcoming weeks.
I leave in the links here below also two great articles about the available online platforms and how it is hard to organize a VR event (an amazing post written by the Educators in VR summit organizer), so that if you want to organize one, you have some hints on how to start. You can also contact me to have some help in organizing your VR event, if you wish.
More info (Interest in virtual gatherings rising)
More info (Facebook talking about its upcoming GDC announcements)
More info (UploadVR’s E3 VR Showcase)
More info (RecRoom experimenting with remote working)
More info (Registration and Agenda for VEC 2020)
More info (List of platforms for remote working and meetings)
More info (My playthrough with VirBELA)
More info (Post Mortem of Educators in VR summit)
Varjo XR-1 adds chroma-keying feature
You know how much I love Varjo: I think it is one of the most innovative startups in the VR landscape because they’re taking an original approach to Virtual Reality.
This week they have added two new amazing features to their XR-1 mixed-reality headset: chroma-keying and marker tracking. They both serve a similar purpose, that is blending the virtual and the real: if wearing a Varjo XR-1 headset you go to a greenscreen room, you will see the virtual world in the places where there is the green color and the real one in the other parts of your view.
This means that if you are in Google Earth VR in a green room where there is a friend of yours, you can see the city that you are visiting all around you, and the real image of your friend being there with you. The tracked markers can be useful to add virtual elements in specific positions of your visuals, like for instance a set of instructions. This is astonishing. I encourage you to watch the videos linked below to understand how cool is it. And apart from being “cool”, it also serves the purpose of making mixed reality training and design solutions more efficient.
More info (Varjo XR-1’s new features)
More info (Upload’s hands-on chroma-keying on XR-1)
More info (Cool mixed reality video with Varjo XR-1)
nReal changes name and teases all-in-one solution
If Magic Leap is suffering, its competitor nReal is instead thriving. The Chinese company has just teased a future release of an all-in-one solution dedicated to the enterprise. From the image, it seems like a clone of the HoloLens 2, probably a bit less performant than the Microsoft headset, but also cheaper. We have very little info on this, also because the lockdown has slowed down the plans of the startup from Beijing.
At the same time, Next Reality has spotted that nReal has slightly changed the name of its company from Hangzhou Tairuo to Shenzhen Tairuo, and has now a new parent company called Beijing Unicorn Technology. Honestly speaking, we have no idea what is happening, and we don’t even know if this has to do something with the recent lawsuit by Magic Leap or the one from Unreal… are these moves being made to slow the lawsuit or are these just an internal re-organization? Who knows…
More info (nReal teases new headset)
More info (nReal changes name)
News worth a mention
Facebook Research used ML to give Quest applications more GPU power
A research project from Facebook (not to be released anytime soon) used “super-resolution” to reduce the computational power needed by games running on Quest. The idea of the algorithm is rendering the VR experience at low resolution and then use Machine Learning magic to expand this low-res rendering to the native resolution of Quest while preserving the visual fidelity. This can give a boost of 67% to the total rendering power of the Oculus Quest.
It is all nice and cool, but it is just a research project. No way that it will be implemented on the Quest anytime soon because going from a prototype solution to a full-featured project requires a lot of fine-tuning.
Tilt Brush adds Sketchfab integration and more
Google TiltBrush is adding some interesting features for creatives:
- Sketchfab integration, so that to upload your artworks on Sketchfab in a very easy way;
- Google Drive backup, to not risk losing your work;
- Camera Path, so that you can create nice videos about your creations using preset camera movements.
More info (Camera Path and Google Drive backup)
More info (Sketchfab exporting)
MRTV has reviewed the Pimax Artisan
Sebastian Ang, in a recent cool video of his, has made a review of the Pimax Artisan, the newest Pimax headset announced at CES 2020. He says that this is probably the best Pimax headset for the average VR user, but that this headset can’t compare to the Index, that still remains the best headset for prosumers out there.
You can use your GPU to help the research on COVID-19
NVIDIA is using its program Folding@Home to help research centers in doing their research and simulations on the new coronavirus. According to the program, you can install an application on your PC that will give to research centers your unused GPU power, so that they can make distributed simulations that can help in finding a solution to the damn virus. It doesn’t cost you anything and you can cancel this whenever you want, so I encourage you to do it.
Digi-Capital releases a new market analysis on the XR ecosystem
According to the new research by Digi-Capital, in 2019 there have been $4.1B invested in AR and VR companies. Most of the deals have concerned big and medium companies, that’s why me and you haven’t get any billion 😀
Google MediaPipe can now track 3D objects
After having released a hand-tracking solution for mobile phones some months ago, now Google is back again with its MediaPipe solution, this time offering real-time tracking of 3D objects on mobile devices. The system can detect and track specific objects like chairs and feet all just using your phone camera. From the videos, it is impressive, and I’m going to test it very soon.
EyeRide wants to offer smart vision to motorcyclists
A new interesting AR project is thriving on Kickstarter. It is called EyeRide and there is nothing more nothing less than a smart motorbike helmet, that can show you info on the road you’re following, notifications from your phone and such, all leaving the hands of the motorcyclist free. It has already collected half a million dollars on Kickstarter, so people are loving the idea.
Vicon can now track your body in AR
Vicon, the famous tracking company, has just released an update to the Capture.U motion analysis app that lets users measure, visualize, and improve athletic performance as it’s happening. That is, if the athlete wears Vicon’s Blue Trident sensors, the trainer can watch him using an iOS device and see the full skeleton of the athlete super-imposed to his body. This is overly important for training sessions where posture is important.
But don’t expect it to be a solution you can use in your gym: this is an expensive professional product.
Snapchat launches Snap Lens Builder
If you are into AR filters creation, then you may be happy to discover that now Snapchat lets you create filters very easily on the web thanks to the Snap Lens Builder webapp. It is specifically made to create simple filters on the fly, while for more complicated ones, you have still to use Lens Studio.
Unity’s HDRP is now VR-compatible
Unity High Definition Rendering Pipeline is now compatible with Virtual Reality projects. This means that now with Unity you can create visually stunning VR experiences that before you could obtain just by using Unreal. Very good news for all us Unity VR developers.
Very good pieces of advice on how to create trailers
If you want to create a trailer for your VR experience, you may be tempted to do immediately either a first-person-view video or a mixed reality video. According to the most famous trailer creator of VR games, Kert Gartner, both approaches are wrong and the best solution is actually doing a video in 3rd person.
(Thanks to BattleGroundsVR devs for the tip)
Two creative XR things worth watching
I’ve come across two interesting creative things you had better having a look:
- FXG’s CEO Nikk Mitchell has shot a 360 video showing you how is hard the life in China during the coronavirus outbreak;
- Artist KAWS has made an AR experience where you can see big giant figures in augmented reality in some selected plazas of the world.
More info (Nikk Mitchell)
More info (KAWS)
Some info on content
- Visually Stunning Paper Beast game for PSVR is going to launch on March, 24th. A suicide move given the launch of Alyx on 23rd;
- Extreme Escapes is a puzzle game for Quest that seems very interesting;
- Auducka is a crazy game on SideQuest mixing Duck Hunt and Audica;
- Sci-fi shooter Boiling Steel has launched on PC VR.
More info (Paper Beast release date)
More info (Paper Beast hands on)
More info (Extreme Escapes)
More info (Auducka)
More info (Boiling Steel)
News from partners (and friends)
Do you want to play Powder VR for free? Well, the devs of this cool game are looking for feedback, so if you register to their newsletter, you can get a key for the game for free!
Merging Realities event is back! One of the coolest XR event of 2019 is back on March, 25th. You can attend it virtually on Altspace VR.
More info on Merging Realities
Some XR fun
Current situation of supermarkets explained in VR
Support The Ghost Howls!
Support the quarantined Ghost so that he can keep giving you the best info on AR and VR every week!
The family of my supporters is composed by these amazing people:
- DeoVR
- Michael Bruce
- Ilias Kapouranis
- Paolo Leoncini
- John Fredericks
- Jennifer Granger
- Jason Moore
- Steve Biggs
- Kai Curtis
- Francesco Strada
- Vooiage Technologies
- Caroline
- Matias Nassi
…and you, if you click the button here below!
(Header image by Magic Leap)
Disclaimer: this blog contains advertisement and affiliate links to sustain itself. If you click on an affiliate link, I'll be very happy because I'll earn a small commission on your purchase. You can find my boring full disclosure here.
