The XR Week Peek (2020.06.15): PS5 revealed, SteamVR implements OpenVR and more!
I’m super tired because of two big projects I’m working on (you’ll discover a cool one pretty soon…), but I’ve managed to find the strength to write the roundup of best XR news just for you! I hope you’ll enjoy it…
Top news of the week
Sony announces PS5, it supports PSVR
With an online livestream of around 1 hour, Sony has finally unveiled the design of the PlayStation 5. It comes in two flavors: one that works with physical disks and the other one with an internal hard drive to download games from the store. The console works in conjunction with the innovative DualSense controller.
The specs, that were already announced, are:
- 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)
We have no news about the PSVR 2 headset, on which we have great hopes. But Sony has confirmed that while we wait for it, the PS5 will be able to work with the current PSVR device.
Sony has also shown the new PlayStation Camera, that has now high frequency, high resolution (full HD), and a stereo pair of cameras. The camera won’t be included in the PS5 box but will come later as an accessory. The fact that is going to come later, that it is stereo (so it can calculate the depth of objects) and that it is in high-resolution made some VR journalists wonder if this is the new device that is going to track reliably the PSVR 2 headset, maybe in conjunction with another special tracking technology (like ultrasound) for the controllers.
And we all hope to know more about the PSVR 2 as soon as possible: with the great new processing power of the PS5, and all the amazing tech that we’ve seen in Sony’s patents, it can really become the headset that can disrupt the console gaming market. PS4 is already popular, but it was hacked for the PS4, while the PSVR 2 has been designed together with PS5, so I expect that all the problems of tracking and visual fidelity will be solved. Add to it the great exclusive games by Sony, like Resident Evil 8 that has been announced and most probably will have VR support, and you obtain the perfect mix for the success for PSVR 2.
More info (PlayStation 5 specifications)
More info (PlayStation 5 reveal)
More info (Current PSVR works with PS5)
More info (Speculations on new PlayStation Camera)
More info (Resident Evil 8 and Astrobot: Playroom games for PS5)
Other relevant news
SteamVR now supports OpenXR
Late to the party after Oculus and Microsoft already released prototypical implementations, but finally Valve has implemented OpenXR into its runtime SteamVR. The implementation is still in beta and must be manually enabled joining the dedicated SteamVR beta branch, but it should work in 95% of cases according to Valve.
This is a great piece of news: OpenXR is the standard that will reduce the fragmentation of the VR ecosystem, increasing the compatibility between different headsets, runtimes and applications. Now that Valve has joined the party, all major VR runtimes support it, and this is a good sign that the standard is being adopted and can finally lead to the end of current “far west” of the VR market.
The first noticeable benefit will be that people with Blender 2.83 will finally be able to enter into their VR models also with the great Valve Index.
More info (Post on Road To VR)
More info (Post on Upload VR explaining how to enable OpenXR)
Snap celebrates 170M daily users and introduces ML-based filters
At its 2020 Snap Partner Summit, Snap, the company behind the popular social media Snapchat, has made some very interesting announcements, that confirm that it is one of the most important companies in the AR landscape.
The first one is about numbers: Snap has claimed that more than 170M users use augmented reality on its platform every day. And these people use AR around 30 times per day. Look at these numbers again: while we are all dreaming about AR glasses and experimenting with cool niche AR gadgets like the Nreal Light, 170M people are already using augmented reality on their phones. If this is not mainstream adoption, I don’t know what it is.
You may say that this is quite a dull AR, since it is mostly facial AR filters, but you don’t have to underestimate the big AR platform that Snap is building. Snapchat can already exploit the camera to recognize popular buildings, some objects, to find and substitute your floor, and even to solve your math equations. And at the summit, it has just announced other amazing features.
The most surprising functionality that has been added is the possibility to create ML-based filters. This means that you can now embed your ML classifiers inside Snapchat to detect whatever object you want. Snap is not providing all the classifiers itself anymore, but it is now opening this to creators, de facto creating a store of classifiers. This is quite a genius move, so the company can exploit the power of the community instead of trying to fight the AI superpowers of Facebook alone. This is also a powerful move for marketing usage of Snapchat: do you want to start a marketing campaign for your jewelry brand on Snapchat? Find someone that can make a classifier for the ring finger, and create a filter that can put a ring of your brand on the finger of your users! Startup Wannaby has already partnered with Snap to offer feet-detection classifiers for you to add shoes on your filters.
And it’s not over: now the lens system can detect the breed of dogs; it can activate filters just by using your voice. And especially, it now lets you paint your surroundings for others to see.
Basically, you can take a part of a street and for instance paint all the buildings of that street with a filter that all your friends will be able to see in that exact location. Apart from its business implications for marketing, I want you to stop for a moment and think about this feature: isn’t it the AR Cloud? Yes, it is. Rough, and it works only in big places, but it is that: a persistent and shared AR feature. Snap is probably the first big company releasing an AR Cloud solution into the wild. This is a move that you must not underestimate. Also because you have to consider that with 170M users using this camera-based app, it won’t be that difficult for Snap to gather data to build the AR Cloud.
And yes, remember that Snap also makes glasses. Keep an eye on Snap. Or maybe both your eyes.
More info (Snap’s announcements)
More info (ML filters in Snapchat)
IVAS reaches version 3 of the prototype
The coronavirus has not stopped the US Army from working on the smart helmet based on HoloLens 2 to increase the lethality of troops. Thanks to a smart adaptation of the building and testing chains, the prototype of the IVAS (Integrated Visual Augmentation System) has so reached version 3.
If you open the link, you can see that the smart helmet looks pretty badass, and now the HoloLens 2 are completely integrated into the military helmet. All of this has been possible thanks to 23,000 hours of Soldier feedback gathered during the tests of the prototype version 2. And the work is not over: the Army is already working on a v4.
(Thanks Davy Demeyer for the tip)
Someone is working on a Linux driver for the Oculus Rift
Indie developer Thaytan is working on a Linux driver for the Oculus Rift. The project is opensource on GitHub and he’s asking for donations to carry it on.
At the current stage of the project, he’s been able to make the Rift (both CV1 and S) to work as a 3DOF headset, and he’s also been able to connect with the controllers. Tracking doesn’t work yet, though, neither the positional one nor the one of the controllers.
It seems a very difficult project, and it is great to see someone trying to carry it on. If you want, try to sustain this guy in taking the Rift to Linux systems!
More info (OpenHMD project)
More info (How to donate for OpenHMD)
News worth a mention
We have new info on the HP Reverb G2
Ben Lang of Road To VR has published another article about the new headset from HP, where he highlights some of its best features, like the improved ergonomics or the off-the-ear speakers. The real deal is still the controllers, though, but Ben hasn’t had the opportunity to test them.
Elucis improves the way doctors look at medical images
Realize Medical has just launched Elucis, a software that makes doctors look and analyze medical images in VR. The standard way of analyzing CT scans or such is looking at them on a PC, sketching things on top of them. With Elucis, doctors can see the CT data from all angles grabbing them with a VR controller and then they can extrude a 3D model out of them, sketching in 3D so that to reconstruct the 3D models of the parts of the body of the patient. Reading the comments on Reddit, doctors would find it incredibly useful.
More info (Elucis Official website)
More info (Elucis Trailer)
Most people that don’t want VR don’t have a reason for that
A new interesting market research by Artillry shows that VR adoption is increasing, but at the same time highlights how there are still many people that don’t have VR, and among these people there are still a lot that don’t even want it. Most of the people that don’t want VR don’t have a clear reason, they just don’t want it. The most probable explanation is that they don’t even know what it is about: VR must be tried to be understood, and watching Youtube videos isn’t enough. They don’t want VR because they can’t understand the potential from just videos from inside and outside. We need more demos to increase the adoption of the technology.
Read all the recent AI and CV research from Facebook
On the occasion of CVPR 2020, Facebook has just published online a very long list of computer vision-related articles, many of which include also artificial intelligence features.
Amongst them, one of the most interesting is an algorithm to detect the 3D pose of a human from a single high-resolution photo.
If you are a researcher, give these papers a look.
More info (All CVPR papers)
More info (Reconstruction of human pose from a photo)
Sandbox VR lays off 80% of its staff
One of the sectors most impacted by the coronavirus has been of course LBVR: all venues have been closed and people are afraid wearing the headsets just worn by many other people. Many companies in the field are looking for alternate ways of surviving: some are releasing their games on Steam, some others have started renting the headsets with the games pre-installed to people at home.
Some others haven’t found a way to overcome this situation, and one of them is Sandbox VR: what was one of the most famous LBVR company now is making 0 revenues and so it has been forced to lay off 80% of its employees. This is a very sad news for all the ecosystem, and I also feel very sad for the people that now don’t have a job anymore.
More info (How LBVR companies are trying to survive now)
More info (Sandbox VR laying off 80% of its staff)
Unity details its MARS solution
In a blog post, Unity has detailed its MARS solution, that lets you create easily augmented reality experiences, even with little coding knowledge. The feature that I love the most is that it lets test your AR experience in fake real-world scenarios: there is a sort of simulator that lets you test in editor how your app can perform in different rooms or open environments, so that you can test it without having to build it.
It’s all cool, but it’s a paid solution: the price is around $600/year per developer.
Resolve lets you explore huge 3D models from your Quest
InsiteVR’s latest solution, called Resolve, lets AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) professionals explore 3D models of environments with other people on the Oculus Quest. Its most important feature is that it supports 3D models up to 500M polygons. The application can showcase these huge models on the Quest thanks to very aggressive optimizations that make the application render only what is actually visible for the user.
Mozilla releases WebXR viewer 2.0 for iOS
Safari on iOS hasn’t implemented WebXR yet, so iOS users can’t enjoy this amazing technology. For this reason, Mozilla has upgraded its sample WebXR viewer 2.0, transforming it in a lightweight browser for iOS that makes Apple users enjoy webpages implementing WebXR.
Two new interesting demos for Quest hands tracking
This week two interesting demos employing Oculus Quest hands tracking have emerged.
The first one is another cool work by Daniel Beauchamp and shows a simple social ecosystem for Quest where you can naturally interact with hands and fingers with the other participants. It’s a very nice demo, but I have also to say that other social worlds like Neos VR already implement hands tracking in them.
The second one is an experience to teach sign language in VR, with a section for learning and another one for testing your knowledge. In the article about it, it is also possible to read how deaf people in VR have adapted to the limited interactions offered by controllers like the Touch, and have created a simplified version of ASL that works with Touch controllers. That’s fascinating.
More info (Networked Quest hands tracking)
More info (Sign language learning with Quest)
Cannes XR goes VR
The important event of Cannes XR goes fully virtual because of the coronavirus and will be held from June 24th to 26th on the platform Museum Of Other Realities. In total more than 55 XR pieces will be presented between projects in development and world previews.
Some news on content
- XREAL Games, the studio behind Zero Caliber VR, announces 4-Player co-op shooter called ‘Gambit!’, coming in 2021;
- Very original game Paper Beast is going to be released on PC this summer;
- Fast Travel Games announces “Wraith: The Oblivion — Afterlife”, a horror VR game;
- Internal logs of latest Minecraft release shows that there may be an internal demo of the software that can work on PSVR. This makes us hope for a future release on this platform;
- The Magic Elevator is an indie VR experience that takes you on a journey into 5 magical worlds created by artist Johan Pruys;
- Disney releases its VR short Myth: A Frozen Tale on Oculus Quest. You can buy it for $3;
- Oh Shape and Synth Riders partner for a Duo Fitness Pack.
More info (Gambit)
More info (Paper Beast)
More info (Wraith The Oblivion)
More info (Minecraft on PSVR)
More info (The Magic Elevator)
More info (Myth: A Frozen Tale)
More info (Oh Shape and Synth Riders)
News from partners (and friends)
This year the VR Awards will be held completely in VRChat! AIXR, the association behind the VR Awards is also asking for the help of the community to build the VRChat world to host the virtual event. If you want to help them, there is a dedicated Google Form where you can apply.
Learn more (Virtual VR Awards announcement)
Learn more (Call for support for creators)
I’ve just given a read to the latest book by Charlie Fink about virtual events and meetings solutions and I can tell you that it is one of the most complete collections of the solutions available on the market, both in VR and not. It will be a precious resource for my consultancies and if you’re in the same sector, I advise you to give it a look.
My friend Jan Horsky, one of the most talented VR men of the whole Czech Republic, and his company are going to launch Machizzle, a very interesting VR puzzle game. It will be presented soon at the Steam Game Festival, and I invite you to give it a look!
Some XR fun
VR can make you happy. Well, maybe.
PS5 is not the best console that has been announced this week.
“The Price Is Right” TV show tried to ask how much a Magic Leap One headset is worth of, and someone has even answered 1 dollar!
(Jokes apart, this can also show the perceived value of AR glasses. Thanks Cathy Hackl for pointing this out)
Sometimes Oculus assistance is not very helpful.
Support The Ghost Howls!
Every week, I am very pleased to see that new people decide to donate to this blog: it flatters me to discover that there are people that appreciate what I do and want me to keep doing it.
I want to sincerely thank all people that have made this choice and that make these newsletters possible:
- DeoVR
- Michael Bruce
- Ilias Kapouranis
- Paolo Leoncini
- John Fredericks
- Immersive.international
- Bob Fine
- Jennifer Granger
- Jason Moore
- Steve Biggs
- Niels Bogerd
- Julio Cesar Bolivar
- Jan Schroeder
- Kai Curtis
- Francesco Strada
- Sb
- Vooiage Technologies
- Caroline
- Liam James O’Malley
- Matias Nassi
And I invite you to do as they did, by clicking the button here below!
(Header image by Sony)
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.
