The XR Week Peek (2019.14.09): a new powerful Vive Focus appears, Facebook Connect is coming, and more!
This week has been incredible for me because of the Venice VR Expanded worlds on VRChat I have developed with the VRrOOm team. It’s been a great adventure, and I’m very proud of having been part of it. I hope you have found the time to visit it!
This week in VR had interesting news as you will see here below, but a new amazing week actually awaits us! In two days there will be the Facebook Connect, an Apple event and a Sony event about PS5! And the day after the RTX30 graphics cards go on sale… It’s going to be a great week for us all.
BREAKING UPDATE
After having published this post, Facebook has revealed the Oculus Quest 2, powered by the Snapdragon XR2 reference design with 6GB RAM and a 4K display! If the price is $299 and $399 for this marvel, it is a steal!
Top news of the week
Data about a new Vive Focus device appear on GeekBench
Geekbench has just published the scores for a new Vive Focus headset, indicating that a new standalone headset by HTC is coming.
What is interesting is that this device is based on the amazing Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 platform. If you remember well, this platform is based on a modified version of the Snapdragon 865 (3 generations after the 835 of the Oculus Quest) and supports features like eye tracking, high-quality passthrough AR, and 5G. The XR2 platform represents a generational leap for standalone XR and while I expect the first models to be a bit expensive, it finally introduces many features that will make VR on a standalone very powerful. Also, its support for 5G and fast AI can create that convergence that will make the whole XR space go further.
We don’t know much about this new Vive Focus device, but we have some specs: it runs Android 10, it has 6GB of RAM and a 8-core processor. In the Geekbench comparison, it completely destroys the Oculus Quest: the multi-core score of the Quest is 774 while the one of the Focus XR2 is 3417, almost 5 times much. This may explain why Oculus is launching so fast a new iteration of the Quest: because of XR2, the competition is ramping up very fast.
Will this new Focus compete with the Quest? It’s hard to tell, but my sensation is no for the average consumer, yes for the prosumer. Quest has still the best library of content and the best price. No one is going to beat the $299 price tag of the new Quest S, and this new Focus will hardly cost less than $599. But for sure HTC wants Oculus to feel the competition, if this “leak” on the new Focus has “casually” happened some days before the launch of the new Quest…
More info (New Vive Focus)
More info (New Vive Focus vs Original Quest)
More info (Editorial on VentureBeat about the XR2 platform)
Other relevant news
Oculus Connect is starting and a new Facebook AR/VR logo appears
On Wednesday, September 16th at 10 am PT (7 pm CEST) the digital Facebook Connect is going to start. The program has been published and there are various talks about gaming, social, and technology. The first speech will of course be the keynote where we will listen to many important announcements, among which most probably the launch of the new Quest and of Facebook Horizon. Also, IMLxLAB is going to show us the new Star Wars experience.
John Carmack has teased that at this new Connect there will be announced features that he foreshadowed during his unscripted talk from last year. What he is talking about is unclear, but I guess that this new Quest will have some feature he was talking about, like a high 120fps framerate.
While the hype of the Connect is high, on Reddit a self-proclaiming FedEx employee has published on Reddit the photo of a box that passed in front of him. On the box, there is a new “Facebook AR VR” logo and all the community started wondering what it is for. Personally I don’t think that Facebook wants to remove the Oculus logo so abruptly now, but given that the Facebook Reality Labs logo has already been revealed, it’s not clear why a new one is needed. And when the photos of the new Quest S have been “leaked” (I always suspect these leaks are controlled) the logo “Oculus” on the headset has been obscured as well, and this makes me think that there could be a change in the “Oculus” logo that the leaker didn’t want to reveal. But I believe more in a “Oculus from Facebook” writing than a complete change. But let’s see in a few days…
More info (Facebook Connect start time)
More info (Carmack talks about the new Connect)
More info (ILMxLAB teases we’ll know more about Star Wars Tales at FC)
More info (New Facebook AR VR brand)
More info (Discussion on the new Facebook AR VR brand)
Apple teases AR for its next event and invents the “SR” acronym
One day before the Facebook Connect, Apple is going to hold an event where the launch of a new product is expected. What intrigues us of the XR communities is that the time of the event is hidden as an AR easter egg in the invite to the event.
Some people are so expecting an AR-related announcement. Honestly, I wouldn’t hold my breath for an AR glass, most probably Apple is going to announce it in the next months, but it is more probable that some new AR-related feature, like Lidar in the upcoming new iPhones, will be announced. Lidar would make AR more stable and efficient in all iPhones, for a more realistic XR experience in preparation for the upcoming glasses.
Another interesting thing to notice is that reading a patent from Apple, it is possible to read that in Cupertino they refer to AR+VR not with XR but with SR (Simulated Reality). After that discovery, it has started a big debate in the communities about if now we all should call it SR. Personally, I don’t know: I just think that if we could stop inventing a new acronym every 2 months it would be great, considering that our customers are already confused enough with only AR and VR. Inventing new names is not beneficial to the market, it only creates confusion.
More info (Apple’s AR easter egg)
More info (How to find the Easter Egg)
More info (Why Apple chose Flash Lidar)
More info (“Simulated Reality” term used in a patent)
Relativty is a cheap opensource headset
I’m very happy to say that this week the important news are not only from big players like HTC and Apple, but also from two guys that from when they were 15yo worked on an opensource headset because they couldn’t buy a commercial one.
The result of this work is Relativty, a headset built by Max Coutte and Gabriel Combe that you can build yourself for $200. It requires some soldier mastering, it is a product that you really have to craft yourself, but this means that you can also create it with the features that you want. Max says you can also use 120FPS 2K displays for instance.
The headset firmware supports SteamVR and positional tracking is there, even if it is rough and experimental. All the project is on GitHub and there is a Discord server for who needs some help.
I love this project first of all because it is the fruit of the passion of two guys. And then because being so cheap it could help students from less fortunate areas of the world in building their own VR headset and use it for educational purposes for instance.
News worth a mention
Oculus to require SMS or Credit Card authentication for developers
Oculus, that is, Facebook has just decided that people willing to become developers and so sideload applications on their device have to provide their phone number or credit card number for a more secure authentication.
While this seems an implementation of a 2-factor authentication (and so it is a positive thing), and some other platforms in a way or another get your credit card number, given the recent backlash of the community for the Facebook login I would have avoided adding these new requirements now. The impression that it gives is that Facebook wants to get more data about you even if you don’t adhere to the Facebook login policy…
XRSI releases guidelines to secure privacy in AR/VR
The no-profit XRSI association has just released a 45-pages document detailing a set of guidelines that companies have to follow to guarantee transparency and privacy towards their users. The framework is also compliant with all the various privacy regulations like GDPR and is fundamental in a time where the new Facebook login policy poses a big threat to the privacy of users.
Publishing this news I had a little debate with the proposer Kavya Pearlman on Twitter. I personally think that this framework is very important and very well written and that it is great that XRSI is caring about privacy in XR. At the same time, I’m afraid that since companies like Facebook live by harvesting our data, it will be difficult to enforce a real respect for our privacy. Kavya answered me that she’s confident that through the XRSI network and her determination, she will be able to do that. Good luck to her.
Facebook works on Diminished Reality
Facebook and Virginia Tech University have just proposed a technology called “Flow-edge Guided Video Completion” that aims at reconstructing missing regions of a video. In the presentation of this technology, it is possible to see that with this technology it is possible to remove objects inside a video, like a person walking on a landscape, while making the video appear perfect. The video seems like it has been shot without that object inside.
If this technology evolves, it could be used in conjunction with passthrough AR to obtain diminished reality, which is the ability to remove objects from your vision. Imagine that you are afraid of spiders and your XR glass removes them from your vision, that could be useful.
Fashion brands are investing in digital clothes
Fashion and Luxury brands are now investing in producing digital goods. In a world where our online appearance is always more important, and that will become fundamental when we’ll all live in the metaverse, fashion brands should not rely only on physical clothes. Wearing a Gucci purse digitally can give you the same reputation boost to your avatar that a real one gives in real life, and so the digital economy of fashion is now starting to ramp up.
Minecraft arrives on PSVR but not on Quest
The very popular game Minecraft is arriving on PSVR. During this month, a free update of the game on PlayStation will add PSVR support. Many of us wondered if this meant also that Quest support is coming, but Mojang answered that it is not going to happen soon because a porting on Quest would require a complete rework of the locomotion mechanic.
More info (Minecraft on PSVR)
More info (Minecraft not on Quest)
Ubisoft announces 2 VR games
Ubisoft is the AAA studio that is committed the most to VR. Apart from the secret AAA game they’re building together with Oculus, the French company has just announced:
- AGOS (A Game Of Space), a game where you should guide your spaceship in an interstellar journey;
- Far Cry VR, an LBVR game that will be distributed in all Zero Latency arcades.
More info (AGOS) More info (Far Cry VR)
PlayStation discounts over 100 VR games
Over 100 VR games are currently on sale on the PlayStation store thanks to a PSVR Spotlight Sale which goes from now until September 24th. You can buy at an affordable price games like Audica, Apex Construct and Blood And Truth!
Some news on content
- Virtual Desktop to support Mac soon;
- We have now a detailed gameplay video of Zenith;
- A famous modder is bringing Doom 3 to the Oculus Quest!
More info (Virtual Desktop)
More info (Zenith)
More info (Doom 3)
News from partners (and friends)
LBVR content distribution platform Springboard VR has partnered with Carole Baskins to bring a video about tigers to its centers. Carole Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue VR will be distributed in all Springboard VR Arcade centers to spread the awareness about wildlife and how to preserve it. A very positive initiative in a very negative year for LBVR. Learn more As I told you, I’ve been one a member of the staff of the Venice VR Expanded event. Here you are some articles about some nice experiences you could have tried on Viveport and Oculus Quest.
Learn more (Experiences on Viveport)
Learn more (Experiences on Oculus Quest)
Some XR fun
We VR fans see VR everywhere
Funny link
Not everyone likes Facebook Horizon avatars
Funny link
The ragdoll management in Half-Life: Alyx may become hilarious!
Funny link
What if Van Damme used VR?
Funny link
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(Header image by James White)
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