The XR Week Peek (2020.03.23): Half-Life: Alyx launches, Oculus Del Mar leaked, PS5 revealed and more!
Today is the day! There are a lot of things I will tell you in this roundup of news, but I already know that no one of you is going to care because, well, Half-Life! 😀
Jokes apart, before starting, let me send a big hug to all of you that are in quarantine because of the coronavirus and thank all the people that in these days have cared about me after having heard the sad news about Italy (Simon, David, Daniel, Suzie, Mark… John that has been so kind… Sebastian, and many others!). I feel so lucky to have such caring people all virtually around me. I wish you the best for your life!
Top news of the week
TODAY HALF-LIFE: ALYX GETS LAUNCHED!
The day has come, and Half-Life 3 is finally confirmed 😀 Today, at 10am Pacific Time, 6pm here in Italy, Valve will officially launch Half-Life: Alyx on Steam. We are all ready to play it, and if you are not, you are still in time to pre-download the game, so that at the X time, you can immediately hit the “Play” button.
There are already some leaked reviews on reddit, and these reviews have all very high marks. The one that I link to you here is from a general gaming magazine and it awards HL-A a 9/10 mark. Personally, I haven’t read the review, since I don’t want any spoilers or influences of any kind. At 6pm CET all the major VR magazines will already publish their reviews, but who cares again, I just want to play the game!
Regarding me, I will probably publish a first impression article after some hours into the game, and then a full-fledged review when I’ll finish playing it. My original plan was to stream the game live on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5TQ0u_d4KbIvaBW9LuVUsg) from the office, but I have to check what I can do given my terrible home connection, now that I’m locked down here. If you don’t have the game, try coming around my channel at the launch time, and see if I’m there. I’ll keep you posted! If you, like me, want to stream the gaming session, Valve has released an interesting guide with many suggestions that I link here below.
The hype is high, and the Valve Index has returned at the top of Steam Charts because of this. Also the Rift S is out of stock now. The only available headset to play Alyx seems the Cosmos Elite, that now also comes with a free copy of Alyx included, and the Pimax. Ben Lang has reviewed the Elite and said that the tracking is very good, but the problems remain the Comfort and the sweet spot.
Interviewed by IGN, Gabe Newell has said that now Valve is experimenting with BCI, and that the Matrix is closer than we think. Honestly, I quite disagree with his statements: reading the interview, he says that it is quite easy to elaborate the motor area of the brain, and so basically it is possible to use it as an input for a game. But this is known since a lot (see all the work researchers are doing with smart prosthetics), and the Matrix is something far more different than it: it would require injecting information into all areas the brain, something for which now we have just very simple experiments.
Anyway, see you in Half-Life today!
More info (How to pre-load Half-Life: Alyx)
More info (Leaked review of Half-Life: Alyx)
More info (Suggestions on how to stream the game)
More info (Valve Index on top of Steam charts)
More info (Oculus Rift S soldout)
More info (Vive Cosmos Elite gives Alyx for free)
More info (Vive Cosmos Elite review)
More info (Gabe Newell talks BCI)
Other relevant news
“Oculus Del Mar” may be the next Oculus headset
Some days ago, in the Oculus Developer portal, have appeared some surprise banners warning developers about the documentation also regarding an “Oculus Del Mar” headset, for which there are “early developers”. The documentation was the same as before, if not for the fact that in the page about headset Input page, there was also a reference to “Oculus Jedi” controllers. After the leak was discovered, Oculus deleted everything.
My first personal impression is that this is a deliberate leak. I mean, it is quite impossible that in a documentation updated to support a new headset with new controllers, the only things that get shown are the headset name and the controllers’ name and nothing else (not even if the controllers support fingers tracking, for instance). I’ve used Google search to find all the pages with references to Del Mar in the Oculus website, and all the docs are identical to the previous versions. Even the modified one with the header file talking about controllers just leaks the constant of their name. It looks like a surgical leak to me.
In any case, it is clear that Oculus is launching a new headset, and since the leaked pages are the ones that regard the mobile headsets, it seems clear that this is an Android standalone headset. The possibilities are three:
- Del Mar is the codename of a headset that is a new version of Quest. Maybe a Quest Pro featuring XR-2 reference design, or a cheap Quest light to substitute the Go;
- Del Mar is the Oculus Go 2. Personally, I don’t believe it much, since 3DOF seems mostly dead;
- Del Mar is the new Quest+Rift, that is optimized to work both with PC and as a standalone. This is a fascinating option.
What is even more intriguing is the fact that Oculus is working on new controllers, dubbed Oculus Jedi. The name made many people recall the CTRL+Labs startup acquired by Facebook, which makes people use their hands as if they were magical Jedis. This seems a fascinating possibility: something that uses electrical impulses to detect the intended hands’ movements of the users. I think that if this is the truth or not depends on the timing of Del Mar. If it launches soon, I see this as not feasible. If it launches in 2 years, it is possible that CTRL+Labs’s algorithms get perfectioned and can be implemented in a consumer product. What seems most probable to me, in any case, is that this will be a controller that will let you use your whole hand, opened and closed, like a Jedi that opens the hand to use the force to attract objects. Something like the Valve Index controllers. Of course, I also expect full fingers tracking.
Regarding when the “Del Mar” will launch, we have no idea. The fact that there are early devs working on it means that there is already a working prototype. But the Quest is selling so well that announcing a successor now would be a suicide move that would jeopardize its sales. I think that we’ll have more info at OC7, with maybe a launch in 2021/2022.
More info (Oculus Del Mar leaked)
More info (Discussion on Del Mar on reddit / 1)
More info (Discussion on Del Mar on reddit / 2)
Oculus has made its GDC announcements
Even if there hasn’t been any GDC, Oculus has made its related announcements online, via various blog posts. The main ones regarding the Oculus ecosystem are:
- Oculus Quest will change its home interface, and it will be possible to trigger the Home interface directly into games, without going back to the home environment, a bit like happens with Dash on PC. The UI will be rethinked completely;
- Oculus is working to provide multitasking on the Quest, starting from 2D apps. So you will be able to browse the web in one window and watch a Netflix move in another one. This windows based system regards only 2D apps, and looks a lot like the basis for an XR operating system;
- Oculus Quest and Rift are going to have prototype support for OpenXR soon. We’re talking about the native SDK, of course;
- Beat Saber announces to have sold more than 2M of copies, with projected earnings of around $67M. The game has also announced a new DLC made of songs by producer and rapper Timbaland;
- To show that the success on Quest is repeatable for games, Oculus has revealed that more than 20 titles have earned more than $1M in revenue on Quest. This proves that the ecosystem is healthy and that developers can earn real money there;
- Quest is making more people discovering VR. 90% of people getting a Quest for Christmas are new users for VR;
- Facebook has released 3 videos related to the 3 talks that it should have performed at GDC.
No one of these pieces of news is mindblowing, but they are all mildly interesting.
More info (Oculus Quest’s new UX)
More info (Oculus’s OpenXR support — Road To VR)
More info (Oculus’s OpenXR support — UploadVR)
More info (20 Games earning more than $1M)
More info (Beat Saber sales)
More info (Beat Saber’s Timbaland DLC)
More info (90% of Quest buyers for Christmas are new to VR)
More info (GDC developer talks)
How VR can help you during the quarantine
My VR headset is helping me a lot during these times. It lets me meet other people virtually, it lets me stay fit, it lets me have fun, it lets me have virtual travels, it lets me attend events (read this story on my experience at V2EC, for instance). And also some people of my family are now enjoying it since it is a great tool to escape the isolation we are forced into. I really wish everyone could have a headset at home nowadays.
Here below, you can find the links to many articles that talk about things you can do with VR during these days. Some of them talk about tools to organize virtual events or virtual meetings, and that can be very useful for your professional lives. Other talks about gaming: there are some indie studios that are slashing the prices of their games to incentivize people to stay at home and play with VR (something that we of NTW are thinking as well for HitMotion: Reloaded). There are porn websites like Pornhub or Sex Like Real offering a free month of Premium so that you can “enjoy your time” during quarantine. Unity is offering 3 months of Free Learning so that you can sharp your development skills. VR First is asking various VR experts to support newbie developers in the more free time that they have in these days.
There are a lot of things to do. Stay safe, stay at home and enjoy your time with VR!
More info (7 Ways you can use VR during this isolation)
More info (Sex Like Real being free)
More info (Unity Learn being free)
More info (Indie Developer slashing his titles by 70%)
More info (VR First tutoring initiative)
More info (10 apps to hang out with your friends in VR)
More info (VR apps for telepresence and meetings)
More info (Hands-on impressions on VR experiences for events)
More info (All the best events to attend in VR this year)
Coronavirus still impacts the whole XR ecosystem
Every week there are pieces of news on how the coronavirus is changing the plans of us in the AR/VR ecosystem.
Regarding events, we had these pieces of news:
- The very-important VR Awards will be held all virtually this year;
- Cannes Festival has been postponed, and it is still not sure if it will be physically held;
- GDC has found new dates for this summer, with an event that will be different from the usual.
In the meantime, even HTC that was safe until now is having troubles in manufacturing the external tracking faceplate, whose release date will be delayed. Google will delay the release of Chrome 81, the one that should have included WebAR. Bummer.
In China, Rokid has made a smart glass with thermal sensors included, so police forces can immediately detect people having a flu.
In the world, Zoom is seeing its use skyrocketing, while there is not a similar spike for remote VR meetings systems. I think the reasons are mostly two:
- Zoom serves everyone, while VR only people having a VR headset. Then Zoom is much easier and has less friction, while VR meetings are a bit more clunky, and are mostly useful when a 3D interaction is needed;
- People are still trying to understand how to use VR. I’m getting many requests for VR meetings and events by people that still have to understand how to organize their gatherings in VR. I think that some time is needed before all these people understand what to do and actually start using these tools.
More info (Virtual VR Awards)
More info (Cannes Film Festival postponed)
More info (Summer GDC)
More info (Rokid thermal glasses)
More info (HTC faceplate delayed)
More info (Google Chrome 81 delayed) More info (Zoom spiking, VR not)
New iPad Pro will feature a LIDAR sensor
The time has come and finally Apple will implement a depth back camera in its upcoming iPad Pro. The device will feature a LIDAR Time-of-flight sensor, that mixed with an RGB sensor will be able to reconstruct with high precision and speed the scene that it is framing.
This has enormous implications for augmented reality and 3D reconstruction, since with the addition of a depth sensor, the iPad Pro will be able to perform these operations much better. It will be able to reconstruct easily the room it is in and it will be able to guarantee a very stable tracking for AR. It is another step towards the creation of a great AR ecosystem for Apple. And probably the Android world will follow Apple’s steps soon and will adopt depth sensors as well in the upcoming months.
Yes, Android, Google. There is a lot of irony in this since Google was the creator of Tango, the system for the first tablets featuring a depth sensor already in 2014. But it was too early and there was no clear applications for them, if not for some makers or enterprise projects, and so the project was shut down in 2017. Apple has instead grown an ecosystem, making the features of the rear cameras always more important, before using depth sensing to improve photos, then to offer augmented reality… and now that the times are ripe, they are adding depth sensor. And I’m sure that it will be a success. This is a great lesson to Google, and a great lesson for all the startuppers that are reading this post: timing in business matters, and matters A LOT. Early technical innovations, without a clear use case, are destined to die. While a step forward at the right time, might guarantee success to you. Keep that in mind.
More info (Apple iPad Pro featuring LiDAR sensor)
More info (New iPad Pro demo applications)
More info (New iPad Pro environment reconstruction video)
More info (Depth sensors are the new trends for mobile)
PS5 specifications have been revealed
The full specifications for the Playstation 5 have been revealed, and we all now have the confirmation that it is a wonderful VR system. If we want to compare it with a PC, it is more or less like a desktop featuring an NVIDIA RTX2070 super, a system able to provide high-quality VR experiences for the next few years. If you want all the main specs, you can find them here:
- GPU: 10.3 TFLOPS (36x RDNA2 CUs @ max 2.2GHz)
- CPU: 7nm 8-core @3.5GHz
- RAM: 16GB (448 GB/s)
- Storage: 825GB PCIe 4.0 SSD (8–9 GB/s)
These specifications are more or less in line with the ones of the Xbox One Series X, just slightly inferior. I guess it will be the final price and the available titles that will define what hardware will win the race.
Regarding the compatibility of older PS4 titles (including VR ones), Sony has clarified that most of titles will be compatible, but some of them won’t work on Day 1.
More info (PS5 specifications)
More info (Compatibility of PS4 titles)
Magic Leap reveals updates and new enterprise solutions
With various posts on its blog, AR startup Magic Leap has revealed a bunch of new updates. First of all, the LuminOS system has been updated to version 0.98.1 with some updates on the UI of the system, the introduction of a Desktop companion app and overall improvement of features.
But what is more interesting is that Magic Leap, given the more requests for tools for remote working, has improved its Meetings solution so that it can now be used to perform business meetings in AR. And it has also at the same time partnered with the Spatial startup so that to offer a package for big enterprises. This package offers 4 Magic Leap 1 headsets + the subscription to Spatial pro, all for 45 days, for a rental price of $5000. If the company is interested in buying the package after the trial, it can buy just 3 of the headsets and one comes for free. Honestly, I find this offering for 45 days a bit puzzling, giving the high price, but Spatial told me on Twitter that it is justified by the many services offered by it. Mah.
What I found very intriguing instead is the release of the first version of the MagicVerse SDK, that is the SDK that should provide the AR Cloud solution created by Magic Leap. The SDK is available not only for Magic Leap 1 glasses, but also for Android and iOS phones because the philosophy of Magic Leap is that anyone should be able to join the MagicVerse. I have not tried it, but I’m intrigued by its possibilities of a shared AR experience in any place, with anyone.
More info (News on Magic Leap)
More info (Magic Leap releases the Magicverse SDK)
More info (All updates to LuminOS SDK)
More info (Remote collaborations package)
News worth a mention
AR.js v3 has been released
Thanks to the amazing job of Nicolò Carpignoli, his colleagues and all the community, the opensource WebAR framework AR.js has now reached version 3.
In its new version, the overall system has been optimized, and new features like geolocation and image targets have been added. Also, the repository has been organized and now the maintainer is an organization and not a single user anymore. AR.js is growing always more into a complete system for developing your WebAR experiences and I really push for the adoption of this SDK! It is free, opensource, compatible with A-frame, and with a number of features growing day after day. Dig into it now!
More info (AR.js 3 released)
More info (My getting started guide on AR.js)
Headsets shipments will drop hard now, to recover later
A new analysis of IDC on the shipments of XR headsets reveals that this 2020 will have a very bad start. Due to the problems caused by coronavirus, that is limiting the production of electronic devices, causing issues with shipments and also making people concentrate more on survival, the sales for the first 6 months of this year will drop consistently. Q2 2020 will see a year-over-year decrease in shipments of more than 24%. But the remainder of the year will be good and sales will start to raise again, for a total expected sales in 2020 featuring a +23.6% from 2019. I hope so.
Watch another great MR demo by Greg Madison
Greg Madison is a genius working on AR/VR UX at Unity Labs. He had already made that demo where he mapped his whole apartment so that he could walk in it both in VR and in real life, and now he has taken that demo to the next level. He has set a shooting game in his apartment, and in it he can also use his real table as a prop in the game, moving it in the real and virtual world together. Amazing demo, have a look at it!
Another great UX post by Leap Motion
I was a big fan of the posts on natural UX in VR by Leap Motion (usually published by Road To VR), and I was a bit sad I couldn’t find any new one of them anymore. But now, under the new brand Ultraleap, the company has published a new one that regards designing windows in space for AR and it is pretty cool. If you are into UX, give it a read.
Get started with ARKit and CoreML
AR and ML are a match made in heaven. The system can understand what you are seeing and give you pieces of advice in augmented reality. Or it can let you interact with the objects around you in a very smart way, letting you use your hands and feet in AR. A very nice article on Medium teaches you how to mix ARKit and CoreML on Apple systems to experiment with the mix of AR and ML.
Have you ever driven a cart in VR?
The popular Youtuber Nathie did and had lots of fun with it!
Some news on content
Some interesting news on XR content:
- Phantom: Covert Ops, the action game where you are on a kayak, has now a new trailer and a launch date: June, 25th;
- Echo VR enters in a closed alpha stage for Oculus Quest. Its delays are causing the shifting of the release date for Lone Echo II;
- Pistol Whip releases a new Mad Max update, with a new level, and two new modifiers for the game!
- A very original app for Oculus Rift called Color Space lets you color some artworks, a bit like a VR version of the coloring books for children;
- Upload is a very interesting series on Amazon Prime Video, where a dying man upload his self on a digital afterlife and enjoys his time there. It seems fun.
More info (Phantom: Covert Ops)
More info (Echo VR)
More info (Lone Echo II delayed)
More info (Pistol Whip: Mad Max Update)
More info (Color Space)
More info (Upload)
News from partners (and friends)
My friends at XR Intelligence have announced that while XR Europe has been canceled, XR Immersive Enterprise, an event more focused on enterprise people will still be held, but all online.
The official description of the event is: “XR Immersive Enterprise 2020 (May 5–6) is the leading senior-level B2B conference for executives looking to unleash the potential of XR technology across enterprise. Bringing together global business leaders from AEC, Automotive, Manufacturing, Engineering, Retail, Pharma, Healthcare and more, the event is purpose built to look at how virtual, augmented & mixed reality are transforming training, collaboration, design, manufacturing and marketing across industry.”
If this may be your type of event, click on the link and discover more about it!
Discover XR Immersive Enterprise
Some XR fun
When Beat Saber meets CoronaVirus, this application comes out!
How you feel vs how you look
When you want to play Beat Saber, but you are poor
All of us in these days
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