The XR Week Peek (2020.09.21): Quest 2 released, NVIDIA acquires ARM, Leap Motion 2 on sale, and much more!
What an exciting week for technology, with the Facebook Connect, PS5 price announcement, Apple event and the release of RTX30 graphics cards! Wow! What a time to be alive!
In the VR space we had little news apart from the Facebook Connect, so this roundup will be very short… but we had enough news with the Connect that they were enough to keep us entertained for the whole week 🙂 . Anyway, I managed to find some interesting news for you, so keep reading!
Top news of the week
Facebook releases Quest 2 and announces its smartglasses
I have already written two summaries about the Facebook Connect and for sure you already know the news, so I’ll keep it short. At Facebook Connect this week, Facebook has:
- Released the powerful Oculus Quest 2, powered by Snapdragon XR2, and with a 4K display. The price is incredibly low: $299;
- Announced that in 2021 it will release a pair of smartglasses made in collaboration with Ray-Ban;
- Teased the work it is doing in AR;
- Revealed that is working with Ubisoft for two AAA VR games developed around the IPs of Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed;
- Discontinued the Rift.
For more details about this and all the news revealed in the Facebook Connect, I suggest you read the detailed posts here below!
More info (Short summary of the key announcements of Facebook Connect)
More info (Long and detailed roundup of all the news from Facebook Connect)
Other relevant news
NVIDIA buys ARM for $40B
The biggest news of the week, the one that can have more long-term consequences, is the acquisition of ARM by NVIDIA. The cost of the operation has been around $40B. ARM will still be based on the UK, and will continue with its usual business of providing open electronics IP.
The news is so important because NVIDIA, which powers most VR-ready PCs, now has bought a company that has a complementary target market: mobile devices. ARM releases open chipset designs that get used in almost all mobile devices (smartphones, smart TVs, IoT sensors, etc…). Even Apple uses modified ARM chips. Acquiring ARM, NVIDIA will be able to operate not only on the PC and Server-side but also on the mobile and sensors side. It is a perfect strategy, that makes NVIDIA able to offer very comprehensive end-to-end solutions (e.g. an ARM chips can be installed on IoT sensors that communicate to a server where an NVIDIA card is used to perform machine learning on the data).
This acquisition is relevant for AR/VR because ARM designs power also all the standalone VR headsets like the Quest 2 or the Vive Focus Plus. What will this mean in the long run for NVIDIA? Is it possible that NVIDIA will start a new business in Mobile GPUs? Can NVIDIA become a competitor with Qualcomm in the mobile GPU sectors? Or will it become a partner and will help mobile GPUs in Snapdragon reference designs in growing even faster? Will we have NVIDIA GPUs in the Quest 3? These are all the questions that we should ask ourselves while reading about this acquisition. But only Jensen knows the answer…
You can finally buy the Leap Motion v2 accessory
The time for us XR developers to buy a Leap Motion 2 has finally come.
Leap Motion 1 has been used by almost every developer and researcher, both in VR and not. In VR it proved to be a very useful accessory, but the first sensor had many limitations regarding tracking FOV. Leap Motion released a second sensor some years later, but as Alex Colgan revealed me, it was not intended for sale, but only for integration in other headsets. While this decision was very smart on the business side because the major headset manufacturers were already building their hands tracking solutions (e.g. Oculus and HTC), there were some cases when this sensor could actually prove to be very useful for some experiments. And the fact that it was not on sale was frustrating.
Now the new parent company of Leap Motion, that is Ultraleap, has decided to finally put on sale the Leap Motion v2 for dev experimentation. The device is called “Ultraleap Stereo IR 170” and can be bought on official resellers for $250. Yes, the price is higher than the cheap Leap Motion 1, but this is also a far better device. If you are experimenting with Leap Motion devices (Noah Zerkin, I’m talking with you!) you should consider upgrading to this new one.
(Thanks Rob Cole for the tip!)
More info (Official page of the Ultraleap Stereo IR 170)
More info (Ultraleap product page on Arrow website)
News worth a mention
PlayStation 5 price has been revealed
Sony has finally revealed that PlayStation 5 is coming on November 12th (in America, Australia, Korea and other countries; rest of the world is on November, 19th). The price is $499 for the full edition, $399 for the digital edition.
Sony has confirmed once more than PlayStation 5 will work with the same hardware of the PSVR. No info has been given about the PSVR 2. Damn, I want to know something about it…
(BTW, I start thinking that Facebook leaked the Quest early the previous week so that the news on its price came before the news of the price of the PlayStation 5 since Facebook sees the Quest as a gaming console that competes with it)
Pico Releases Neo 2 Lite consumer device
Pico, the Chinese company behind the Neo 2 Eye, is releasing a version of its latest device targeted to VR consumers in China. The headset, dubbed Neo 2 Lite, starts at 3799 yuan (about $560) for a 64GB version and features a ‘4K HD screen’ with 6GB RAM and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. Basically, it costs more than the Quest 2, offering less computational power.
Before you start saying “overpriced device”, I remember you that it is the Quest 2 being sold dramatically undercost, it is not Pico asking for a too high price. Pico must make profits out of its headset. And anyway the Quest is not sold officially in China (but you can find it on Taobao of course :D), so they have to care less about its competition.
The good thing is that this headset comes with SuperHot included, and this is for sure a great game its Chinese customers will appreciate.
New Research Mode enabled on HoloLens 2
Microsoft finally enables Research Mode on HoloLens 2. If you’re not practical with HoloLens, Research Mode is that feature that lets you access low-level data from your HoloLens device. So apart from using the high-level data provided you by the runtime (e.g. the position of the headset), you can also access the quasi-raw data from the sensors (e.g. images from the tracking cameras, values from the IMUs, etc…).
This is a very important feature for all researchers and developers using the device and will enable many more uses in the academic field.
Ekto VR releases new locomotion boots
Startup Ekto VR has just announced its first product. It is a pair of locomotion boots that let you walk in real life to walk in VR: while you walk in a natural way, the boots slowly move backward, so you can walk in place to walk naturally in VR. They are intended for enterprise use only.
The devices are bulky, are complicated to use to walk in a direction that is not forward, and have many known issues. But it is an interesting experiment for a new startup, and I’m curious to see how it will play out in the long run.
IDC forecasts positive sales for VR headsets in 2021
Market analyst IDC has acknowledged a decline in the sales of VR headsets in the first part of 2020 (because of the pandemics and the affected supply chains), but it is positive regarding growth of the sales of VR headsets for the rest of this year and for the next one.
Some news on content
- Rec Room announces a big update with many new features;
- Someone recreated Among Us in VR inside Rec Room and it is fun;
- Cubism is a very nice VR game according to Upload VR.
More info (Rec Room)
More info (Among Us)
More info (Cubism)
News from partners (and friends)
Shooting Arena looks like a very fun shooting game in VR. It has been made by a bunch of guys wanting to create their LBVR venue, but then covid arrived and they had to change their plans. They so created this fun game that is available on SteamVR and SideQuest. Check it out!
A group of creatives is proposing a live motion capture VR opera based on the murder mystery steampunk opera “Miranda”. It can be enjoyed in VR and on standard desktop. This live experience is free and I truly suggest you to check it out, because it looks very interesting!
Some XR fun
Here you are lots of satyrical content over the Quest 2 and Facebook Connect!
Funny link 1
Funny link 2
Funny link 3
Funny link 4
Funny link 5
Funny link 6
Funny link 7
Funny link 8
Funny link 9
Someone made a parody of MRTV’s Sebastian Ang and it is hilarious!
Funny link
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