Another busy week has passed by, and here in Italy we just got the news that lockdown measures will start to loosen from next week, but the road to go out as we wish is still long.
Anyway, I’m very busy at home, and I’m working on a new secret project with the startup Beyond The Gate. We’re looking for a Unity dev for a freelance gig lasting 1–2 months, ideally from Italy or a nearby country (for easier management). You can read the Job description here. It is in Italian, but basically it says that we’re looking for a Unity dev with preferred experience with VR and/or multiplayer games. If you may be the right person, send me an e-mail to tonyvt AT skarredghost DOT com.
Top news of the week
Magic Leap pivots to enterprise, lays off 1,000 employes
With a long post on Magic Leap’s blog, in the end Rony Abovitz has admitted that the company is not going that well, and has announced a new course, that should eventually lead to Magic Leap 2.
There is a lot to say about this, and in fact, plenty of editorials have been written online. Let me briefly tell you my thoughts. Let’s start from the good things: first of all, finally, Magic Leap has admitted what was rumored from months, and we all appreciate its honesty. Then, we all applaud the fact that it has pivoted to enterprise since the consumer market for AR glasses is simply not there: it is a wise choice. In the end, reading that the company still aims at manufacturing a Magic Leap 2 means that there is commitment and passion to go on. This is good and important, also because some competition in the AR ecosystem is necessary.
On the other side, all of this is annoying. The blog post is full of the usual fluff: it could have been written in 10 lines instead of a big wall of text. Rony blames the pandemics for this, but we all know that it has not been the coronavirus that has decided a nonsense strategy for the company. Aiming at consumers with a devkit worth $2300 was a nonsense since the start, and despite the fact that all the community made the company notice this, the board kept on that road. They had a good amount of money, and they wasted it in useless initiatives and in hiring people with dubious utility named “Wizards” or “Futurists”. Now they find themselves without a market, and the pivot to enterprise is too little too late considering that Microsoft has enterprise features that are much better than the ones of Magic Leap.
All the C-level executives have made huge errors, and IMHO all the board should resign because of this. Furthermore, firing people during this pandemics is a coward move, and will let 1,000 people without money to feed their families, with the perspective of not finding a new job until the economic depression ends.
Magic Leap had lots of talented and passionate people, and also its community was little but vibrant (I remember the demos published by Lucas Rizzotto, Suzanne Borders, Alex Coulombe, etc…). My thoughts go to all the people that believed in this dream… and if I can help them somehow, please let me know. But I have no mercy for the management.
That said, I hope that this new course of Magic Leap will take a completely different road from the one that led to Magic Leap One. I hope the company will change, and if it will happen, I wish it good luck.
More info (Magic Leap announcing a new course)
More info (Bloomberg discovering that the layoffs will be 1,000)
More info (Editorial on VentureBeat)
More info (Editorial on TechCrunch)
Other relevant news
Travis Scott rocked a virtual concert on Fortnite
If you thought that Marshmello’s party on Fortnite of some months ago was the peak of virtual events, you were wrong. This week, the rapper Travis Scott headed to Fortnite and made an amazing concert and broke all the records.
Not only it was followed by more than 12M people inside the game, but it was also an astonishing performance, full of special effects. It lasted only 10 minutes, but they were so intense, that all people attending it dropped their jaw. I’ve read amazing online reviews, that talked about how this was a fantastic event. And it gains even more value now, that it has been done during the pandemics when real events are just impossible.
People have started understanding the value of virtual events, and of having a virtual environment where we all can meet and live amazing experiences together. This is what we call the metaverse, and it seems that from one side it is coming through some technology that it is developing (AR and VR), and on the other side through already existing ecosystems that gather lots of people (Facebook, Fortnite, etc…). When the two roads will meet, we’ll have the true massive metaverse that we’re waiting for.
More info (Travis Scott’s concert)
More info (How this concert can be a glimpse of the metaverse)
Maybe Oculus planned to showcase Del Mar at GDC
A vague rumor spread on Reddit this week: Oculus Del Mar could be a 4K headset, and it could have been launched at GDC.
Honestly, I don’t believe that much this info from the source “Dude trust me”. A 4K headset would mean a high cost for Del Mar, that so won’t be a Quest 2, but more a Quest Pro targeted at enterprises. And a launch/announcement of a new headset at GDC would mean creating competition for the Quest that is selling very well. Furthermore, the documentation talked about “Early access to dev” for Del Mar, and this means that the project is still at the alpha stage.
What I believe is that Oculus could have made some selected partners try a prototype of the Del Mar headset at GDC behind closed doors and after the signature of an NDA. Regarding the 4K display, I guess it will depend on what will be the launch date of this device: probably in one year, this kind of display will be cheaper. Let’s see.
More info (Rumors on Oculus Del Mar)
More info (One of the source articles on Reddit)
Oculus and Valve could have been friends, but it didn’t happen
The cold war between Oculus/Facebook and Valve continues, and from time to time we get to know some interesting stories from the past.
A leak from VNN seems to point to the fact that in the early days, Oculus and Valve were agreeing about making both platforms (Steam and Oculus Store) compatible with both devices (Rift and Vive). This would have required sharing the runtime code of the devices, and Oculus shared its own with Valve, but Valve didn’t because part of its code was a property of Alan Yates, that hated Oculus for some facts (like Abrash going working at Facebook), and so didn’t agree with sharing it. This caused the idea to crash and ultimately led to the exclusivity of the Oculus Store. This is just a rumor, but it seems confirmed by some sources.
In a debate about the topic on Reddit, Palmer Luckey explained what knowledge Oculus shared with Valve in the early days. It seems that Luckey’s team was working on 6DOF input (i.e. controllers) and had great knowledge on them, that was shared with Valve during the initial collaboration. So it may be that Oculus contributed to the success of HTC Vive’s room-scale technology.
I think it’s a big pity: we could have had a friendly ecosystem where companies collaborate together and make the technology to grow fast, instead of some walled gardens. But I think this is only a dream, a utopia, and ultimately in business competition always happens when there is big money at stakes.
More info (Alan Yates and Valve’s code / 1)
More info (Alan Yates and Valve’s code / 2)
More info (Palmer Luckey on the info shared by Oculus)
The coronavirus is helping XR adoption, or maybe not
These weeks we’re getting news about how AR/VR usage is increasing during this pandemics: for instance, VRChat has seen record usage, Fortnite’s concerts are getting record views, Snaps has seen an increase of revenues of 44%, and so on. People are understanding the potentialities of VR to escape from the current situation, and companies are in need of AR for remote assistance. This is important for our technology.
But from a very feet-on-ground analysis by DigiCapital, it is possible to see that we must not overhype the situation. If from one side it is true that XR can answer the needs of companies and people, on the other side, the upcoming recession/depression will leave both categories with less money to invest in non-necessary things. So, even if someone may like to have a Quest to stay fit at home, probably he won’t buy it because he has to spare money to eat and pay the rent. For this year, the increment of interest may be counteracted by the less availability of cash, and the net result may be neutral. So, don’t expect the coronavirus to make VR skyrocket.
Robert Scoble says that probably the year of XR will be around 2022, and personally I agree with this general estimate. That year we’ll be out of the depression (hopefully), and we’ll be close to the release of Facebook and Apple AR glasses. LBVR can live again without worrying about corona, and 5G will be deployed in many big cities around the world. We have still to be patient.
More info (Amazing roundup of Charlie Fink highlighting the current success of XR experiences)
More info (VRChat getting record usage)
More info (Digicapital analysis on AR/VR market — a must read)
More info (Some pieces of advice for gamedev during this pandemic)
News worth a mention
A bunch of updates on Half-Life: Alyx
After one month from its release, we are all here still talking about Half-Life: Alyx, and this week we had many cool info about it:
- SuperData estimates it has been the 8th most grossing PC game of the whole 2020, with an estimated revenue of $40M only in March (so in like 8 days). Numbers of big Desktop PC games are distant, but are massive for a VR game;
- Alyx enters the classification of Top Steam releases;
- Valve releases Half-Life: Alyx environments for SteamVR Home for free for everyone (before they were exclusive to the game owners);
- Valve reveals that they had thought about some other enemies, like a fast headcrab, but they removed them because they were too scary;
- The community found a way to use Hammer to create some mods: it is a workaround, but it works. I’ll leave here the articles that guide you on how to use them. But a SteamDB listing makes us hope that official modding tools are coming soon. I hope so because this would give new life to the game, and will empower creators like my game designer Max.
More info (SuperData analysis)
More info (HLA topping Steam releases)
More info (Valve updating SteamVR and enabling HLA environments for everyone)
More info (Fast headcrab removed)
More info (Combine Tripwire could have been a weapon in Alyx)
More info (The community finding a way to mod Alyx)
More info (How to mod Alyx)
More info (SteamDB listing makes us hope for a release of the official modding tools)
More info (Half-Life: Alyx Mod with Gordon)
Facebook adds 360 backgrounds to Messenger
Digital Facebook F8 has started with a long video hosted by Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook. Long story short, he has spoken a lot about videochats, and we had no info about AR/VR. The only VR-ish thing that he said is that in Messenger video calls you may choose to have a 360 background photo behind you, that moves if you rotate your phone, for a more realistic presence effect.
Mozilla lays out its plans for Hubs
In a long blog post, Mozilla explains how it has designed its events platform Mozilla Hubs so that it can become the foundation of the metaverse of the future, taking inspiration from what has made the Internet so successful.
It has also announced that soon it will release Hubs Cloud, which will let you host your own private server of Mozilla Hubs easily on cloud services like AWS.
More info (Mozilla Hubs Cloud)
More info (Mozilla Hubs’s masterplan)
VR Ears crushed its Kickstarter goal
VR Ears Kickstarter campaign to offer high-quality detachable off-the-ear speakers for all VR headsets has started and it has already passed its goal. If you’re interested in this device, go checking it out now.
More info (VR Ears) More info (VR Ears succeeding on Kickstarter)
8th Wall enables inline WebAR
The 8th Wall is one of the most interesting AR startups out there, and its WebAR products are becoming always better. The new feature that it has launched lets you create WebAR experiences that are embedded into any webpage and not require the full screen. This is great for usability, and I think it may be awesome for online e-commerce, where you could see all items and try them directly from the catalog page, without leaving it.
Unity Reflect its a great XR tool for enterprise customers
I admit I missed this news from December 2019. Unity has launched Reflect, that lets enterprise customers create AR/VR solutions starting from the tools they already use, like for instance Revit.
Eight360 is the craziest motion platform for VR
Have you ever dreamt being inside a huge ball that simulates all the forces and the motions of the VR experience you are in? Something that can make your VR racing experience more realistic? Well, Eight360 Nova is exactly that: a massive motion controller for VR. It is aimed at enterprise and military, also because its cost, $150,000/year, is a bit too much just to play Dirt Rally at home. Well, at least for me.
Some interesting research in XR
This week I have been very happy to read about some interesting XR research projects. I don’t know if they will ever become products, but they are cool the same. They are:
- WireReality, a tangible interface that gives force feedback to the hand and fingers thanks to the use of wires attached to the shoulders;
- Adobe Dually Noted, a prototype that lets you add shared comments between a PDF and the printed version of it. This can be very useful in education, but I think that without an AR headset, this is barely usable with the phone;
- Tasbi, a smart bracelet by Facebook Reality Labs that vibrating at different frequencies can give you more realistic haptic sensations to your controllers in VR;
- PinchType, a smart virtual keyboard, that mixes the WASD design with the old T9 typing of Nokia phones. It’s cool, but I don’t see it becoming mainstream, because people don’t want to learn a new way of typing;
Facebook is also exploring the trust of users in new technologies (AR/VR, smart assistants, etc…) and it is offering grants for students with projects in this sense. If you may be interested, you can try applying to this program and have a grant of $75,000.
More info (Wireality)
More info (Adobe Dually Noted)
More info (Facebook’s Tasbi — Video)
More info (Facebook’s Tasbi — Research Article)
More info (FRL’s Pinchtype)
More info (Facebook’s grants on trust and privacy)
Some news on content
- Pixel Ripped 1995 is out, and it has been positively reviewed by journalists. So support this nice indie game!
- Surprisingly, Dead And Buried 2 has released an update out of the blue called Dead And Buried 2: Reloaded, and this adds a tons of functionalities to the game;
- Dreams is close to release its PSVR support;
- BigscreenVR is now hosting movies on demand that you can see alone or with your friends;
- SuperNatural has been previewed by UploadVR and it seems a very complete fitness game, but it has still to be seen if it is worth $20/month;
- The Under Presents continues its performances until the end of May;
- A prototype lets you paint with Bob Ross in VR;
- Echo Arena is entering open beta on Quest soon;
- Ancient Dungeon seems a great roguelike dungeon crawler in VR. A great work for only one solo indie developer. And it is on Kickstarter, so go supporting him!
More info (Pixel Ripped 1995)
More info (Dead and Buried 2: Reloaded)
More info (Dreams on PSVR)
More info (Movies on demand on BigScreen)
More info (Supernatural) More info (The Under Presents)
More info (Bob Ross in VR) More info (Echo Arena open beta)
More info (Ancient Dungeon)
News from partners (and friends)
XR Immersive Enterprise has now become a fully digital event and it’s free. Don’t miss 3 days (May 5–7) packed with content, interactive discussion and online networking, about AR/VR/MR applied to business.
Musical Artist SWA is going to launch its new LP on May, 1st and for the occasion he has organized a big event on VRChat. He’s made a dedicated private world, and you can join this event by adding “SwaMusic” as your VRChat friend or by writing him an email at contact AT swamusic DOT com.
Bohemia Interactive, the big corporate creating training simulations for companies and the militaries is starting an event tomorrow, with interesting talks about its most recent solutions and the difficulties of creating enterprise training solutions. You can join it and learn something new.
Some XR fun
A detailed study of bathrooms inside VR games.
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(Header image based on an image by Magic Leap)