The XR Week Peek (2020.08.31): Oculus becomes Facebook Reality Labs, Horizon gets revealed and more!
This week we have lots of news about Ocu…ehm Facebook! But before digging into them, let me invite you to the official Venice VR Expanded world that I helped building inside VRChat that kickstarts September, 2nd! More info in the article below.
Top news of the week
Facebook Connect is coming September, 16th Oculus de facto rebranded as Facebook Reality Labs
Oculus is de facto no more. It is now just the brand of a hardware product (for now) and nothing more.
This week, Facebook has finally announced the date of the Oculus Connect 7, which is September, 16th. You will be able to attend the conference for free inside Venues or on the Facebook page of Facebook Reality Labs. But it won’t be called Oculus Connect 7, but Facebook Connect. Boz has explained that the conference won’t be only about Oculus (whatever this name means now), but it will also be about SparkAR, Portal, and all the other innovative projects by Facebook. It will be the conference through which Facebook will talk about its most innovative products and research about immersive realities and beyond.
All the people that were working on AR/VR inside Facebook now have a new group they belong to: “Facebook Reality Labs”. This was the previous name of the AR/VR research division guided by Abrash, that now gets rebranded as “FRL Research”. Facebook Reality Labs is de facto the new name of Oculus, which previously was the division of Facebook working on immersive realities. Boz says that the new name is meant to re-organize the internal resources of Facebook working on XR: now whoever works in AR or VR will be part of the Facebook Reality Labs. I admit that it has sense: having the AR and the VR divisions under different names would be weird. But at the same time, seeing the Oculus name disappearing from everywhere makes me incredibly sad. I miss the old Oculus with its Oculus Share and CEOs with flip flops.
Facebook says that the name Oculus will still survive in their products, but I wonder who believes their promises anymore. I think it may survive in the new Quest (maybe), but I’m quite sure that their AR glasses will be branded as Facebook.
While we cry over the death of Oculus, we are anyway intrigued by what will be announced at the Facebook Connect: for sure we will discover more about the new Oculus Quest and Facebook Horizon! And while all the conference will be pre-recorded, the god John Carmack will speak live as always, giving us many technical details on his work (that many of us won’t understand). It will be a fun moment for all the community.
More info (Official post about Connect and FRL)
More info (News about Oculus renaming)
More info (John Carmack speaking at Facebook Connect)
More info (Zuck declaring he’s committed to AR and VR)
Other relevant news
We have the first peek on Facebook Horizon
Facebook has lifted the embargo on Horizon and so we have started seeing the first reviews and videos about it.
Thanks to all this online material, we now know this info about it:
- It seems a lot Rec Room for now;
- It is deeply built on the Facebook framework, but you can still use your Oculus username and friends;
- The graphics are cartoonish and pretty simple;
- Everyone in Horizon can build worlds easily by using some internal creation tools in VR. Imagine something like Anylands, Google Blocks, etc…;
- Worlds can be interactive, and you can develop interactions without needing to know how to code;
- The mini-worlds that you create can support up to 8 people;
- There are very strong moderation tools, and Facebook will supervise all that happens in its metaverse, banning everyone that doesn’t adhere to the community guidelines;
- Facebook will add more people to the beta program in the upcoming weeks.
I’ve already written my opinion about it and I have linked it here below. In short, I find it a bit underwhelming for what I expected. Especially the simple graphical style and the limited number of supported people make it unusable for enterprise uses like VR events or concerts. And the moderation tools look like a scary Big Brother where you may always be controlled by some person from Facebook. I see these as big problems that may prevent Horizon from being successful.
But at the same time, some people that have tried it are enjoying their time there, and everyone praises the creation tools that let you create nice interactive worlds with ease and without knowing how to code.
It’s a bit too early to judge Horizon: let’s see how it will evolve in the upcoming months to understand it can become a hit or a miss.
More info (Official blog post on Horizon)
More info (Review by Road To VR)
More info (Review by Upload VR)
More info (Review by Engadget)
More info (Ben Lang’s editorial on the creepy moderation tools)
More info (My opinion about it)
More info (You can use your Oculus ID on Horizon)
More info (More people will be added to the beta)
More info (Some screenshots about it)
More info (Facebook Horizon gameplay video 1)
More info (Facebook Horizon gameplay video 2)
More info (Facebook Horizon gameplay video 3)
More info (Facebook Horizon gameplay video 4)
References to “Infinite Office” found inside the Oculus Quest runtime
Developer Gerald McAlister has found new interesting info while digging inside the Oculus Quest runtime. These are references to future features that Oculus may implement or just to some experiments that Oculus is conducting internally.
The most intriguing one is the one to the “Infinite Office” that would let you use your Quest as an office tool through which you can operate on different windows and write on it through your Keyboard that you would see in passthrough mode. There’s also a reference to a whiteboard that you can use together in AR/VR and in real life.
There are new references to colocation, that could allow multiple people with the Quest to play together in the same space, or maybe work in the same space.
And there is also a new tutorial about the couch mode, that could let you identify where is your couch in the Guardian so that you can sit on it while in VR and enjoy 3DOF content.
It’s impressive what Oculus is working on… let’s see when these things will be released!
Apple acquires startup SPACES
In a quite surprising move, Apple has acquired Spaces, a startup previously working in the LBVR sector that after the COVID outbreak managed to quickly pivot towards the creation of multi presence VR collaboration tools.
Everyone is wondering what this acquisition is about: while other previous similar operations by Apple had a clear purpose (e.g. Akonia), this one left all the community puzzled. Someone says that it is for the avateering technology that Spaces was working on; others say that it is for the very talented team. What is sure is that Apple continues to slowly build its AR and VR technology, so that one day it could come out with something amazing.
More info (Apple acquires Spaces)
More info (Editorial on VentureBeat)
Elon Musk unveils the new evolution of Neuralink
It is no secret that Elon Musk is working to revolutionize the Brain-Computer Interfaces sector with its startup Neuralink. Last year, when the company came out from the stealth mode, his presentation made a lot of buzz. 3 days ago, Elon has announced the latest developments of his product. And while less exciting than the ones of last year, they are interesting anyway.
Neuralink technology has evolved, and now it only consists of a tiny device that is more or less big like a coin that you install in your skull and lets the system read the data from many of your neurons. It has already been successfully tested on pigs, and on some pigs, it has been installed and removed without creating damages to the brain.
The device can connect via Bluetooth to a phone, where the data of the brain can be analyzed. The brain data of the pig, whose sensor was installed in the motor area, was streamed to a phone where an AI algorithm was able to correctly predict the pose of the limbs of the animal without having any other data. This is a very interesting result.
Neuralink has just obtained the approval by the FDA to start experimenting on humans, and tetraplegic people will be the first to try the device.
The road to the Matrix is still very long, but it is great to see that there are first interesting results in these technologies. And even if Elon fails, the buzz it is creating around BCIs will make more people and investors interested in the field, for a more successful ecosystem.
More info (Neuralink Keynote)
More info (Article on TechCrunch)
More info (Article on VentureBeat)
News worth a mention
Medal Of Honor releases during the Holidays 2020
After a long silence, Respawn Entertainment has finally released some new info about the upcoming AAA VR game Medal Of Honor: Above and beyond. The game is coming during the Holidays 2020 and will feature amazing multiplayer features.
There is now a new gameplay trailer and at the end of the video, you can see that there is mention of the Rift S and the Quest, but a tiny writing warns you that Quest works only through the Link. This is a PC-only game. But at the same time, Respawn has written on Reddit that it will evaluate a Quest port after the launch…
More info (Medal Of Honor release date)
More info (Medal Of Honor is not for Quest)
More info (Medal Of Honor may come for Quest in the future)
More info (Medal Of Honor multiplayer modes)
Ultraleap is coming to Qualcomm XR devices
Ultraleap (previously known also as Leap Motion) has struck a great deal with Qualcomm. Thanks to it, the XR2 Reference Design will feature as official hands tracking the one created by UltraLeap. Ultraleap has a very long expertise in hands tracking and hands UX and will for sure offer a great solution to all the standalone XR headsets that will stem from the XR2 reference design. It is important to notice that it won’t require dedicated hardware (like a Leap Motion sensor), but it will work out of the box with the cameras already installed on the headset.
Maybe we finally have a worthy opponent to the Oculus Quest hands tracking!
You can now try Google’s volumetric videos
At SIGGRAPH 2020 Google has finally presented its technology to record and stream volumetric videos, that is VR videos in which you can move inside. And the cool stuff is that it has also released a demo to the public, so that you can try it as well! I’m going to test it in the upcoming days, and I will let you know my impressions!
Oculus Medium is now officially Adobe Medium
VR sculpting tool Medium has just been rebranded from Oculus Medium to Adobe Medium, after the acquisition happened some months ago. The app is still free, but it is unclear how it will evolve from now on. Adobe is able to create great tools for creatives, so I’m curious to discover what will be its new direction. I’m a bit worried about the price: usually, Adobe software ain’t cheap…
Mozilla keeps betting on Hubs and Firefox Reality
We have some more news on the future plans of Mozilla after the massive layoffs of some weeks ago. It seems that in the XR sector they will mostly keep working on Firefox Reality and Mozilla Hubs, doubling down their efforts there. Almost all the other projects, like the XR viewer for iOS, will be abandoned.
MelodyVR buys Napster
VR startup MelodyVR has bought Napster, that after having been the temple of illegal music sharing, had become a legal music streaming service. Melody says that now it can offer a complete music experience, that ranges from music streaming to immersive performances. Let’s see how the integration will happen in the upcoming months.
Some viral videos
Two videos have become viral in XR in the last days:
- A store clerk in Japan that stays at home and thanks to VR moves a robot actually doing his job in the shop;
- An experiment about doing BMX biking with a real bike and a VR headset.
More info (Shop clerk)
More info (VR BMX)
Some AMAZING news on content
This week we had so much cool news on XR content that they would require just a separate newsletter only for them! Let me give you some hints on what has happened:
- We have now the release date of Hitman 3: January, 20th. Preorders are already open;
- We have the first real gameplay video of Start Wars: Squadrons. The images look pretty cool, this game is going to be a hit;
- Sam and Max are returning! Developer Happy Giant has just announced at Gamescom a new VR game based on these two very popular characters. As a fan of point-and-click adventures (who didn’t love Monkey Island?), I’m very excited about it;
- Ionia: Rhythm of the Universe is an upcoming indie game in a fantasy setting, whose graphics from the trailer look impressive;
- The Witcher: Monster Slayer is an upcoming AR game based on the popular gaming franchise. It will be another clone of Pokemon Go;
- Tower Tag is free to play this weekend;
- We have a new trailer of the upcoming horror game Wraith: The Oblivion. The trailer is very polished and the game looks amazing;
- Pistol Whip releases its HeartBraker update;
- Echo VR has finally officially launched on Oculus Quest! Let’s have fun with e-sports in VR!
More info (Hitman 3)
More info (Star Wars: Squadrons)
More info (Sam and Max)
More info (Ionia)
More info (The Witcher)
More info (Tower Tag)
More info (Wraith)
More info (Pistol Whip)
More info (Echo VR)
News from partners (and friends)
The Venice VR Expanded edition will be held mostly digitally this year through VRChat, Viveport and Oculus TV. There will be a related VRChat world that you can explore, and where you can enjoy the atmosphere of Venice. This world has been created by VRrOOm with the collaboration of us of New Technology Walkers and the artists of MID Studio!
Come and visit it, I’m sure you will enjoy it! From September, 2nd look for the VRChat worlds with the name “Venice VR” in the title
An unofficial BurningMan Festival event is going to be held on Somnium Space! Graphics may be a bit simple, but it seems a lot of fun!
Andreea Ion Cojocaru has made a very interesting video where she discusses with her digital avatar. If you like philosophical things, it is surely worth a watch.
Some XR fun
Hey, that new logo of FRL reminds me something…
Oculus loves the Rift S…
Thanos has snapped his VR fingers
Another amazing work by Daniel Beauchamp!
I reached 6000+ upvotes on Reddit with this GIF on the new Oasis by Facebook! Thank you all for your love!
Doooooooonaaaaaaate!
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