The XR Week Peek (2020.10.12): Quest 2 is launching, dogs use AR, and more!
We are all waiting for the Quest 2 to arrive in our inboxes and we are all pretty excited about it! No big news this week, but expect thousands of boxes and reviews coming out from tomorrow on. As a European, I won’t get the Quest on 13th (damn) but only on 15th, so expect a review about it for this Friday/Saturday… I know it’s too late and everyone will have already published bazillion posts about it, but make me happy and read it anyway 🙂
Top news of the week
The Quest 2 is going to be launched
The Quest 2 is going to be released tomorrow and Facebook is preparing for the big launch. Many partner stores like Best Buy have already received hundreds of boxes and are ready to start selling the headset from tomorrow. Shipping will start tomorrow in the US and the next days in the rest of the world. Many people are getting ready to receive their new toy.
Game developers are also preparing for it: popular games like SuperHot, Red Matter, and Arizona Sunshine will publish new updates to take in count the new horsepower of the Quest 2. This is great news for the customers of the Quest 2, but it poses some doubts about the retro compatibility of the Quest ecosystem that Zuck promised at OC6: if the Quest 2 is much more powerful than the Quest 1 and the Quest 1 is discontinued, has sense for developers to keep producing software that is compatible with Quest 1? My guess is: in the short term yes, in the long one no. So, sooner or later, all content will be made only for Quest 2.
Facebook has started today enforcing the “Facebook login” rule, asking Oculus users to merge their Facebook and Oculus accounts. The community is not happy with this news, but another piece of news spread this week by VR magazines has given us some hope. A report and recommendations prepared by a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on antitrust law suggest that Facebook is trying to establish a monopoly and is being anticompetitive. It states, among other things, that “The company used its data advantage to create superior market intelligence to identify nascent competitive threats and then acquire, copy, or kill these firms”. The report also suggests taking action against this.
VR people think that this may mean that Facebook may have to remove its mandatory Facebook login, also because other countries (like Germany) are raising similar concerns. Personally, I believe that it may even happen, but in a too little, too late fashion. Even if Facebook were forced to remove this rule, the decision may need some months to arrive, and in the meantime everyone would have already merged its Facebook account, so it would be useless for most of us. At the same time, Facebook could have an approach similar to the one that Google has with Android: theoretically you can use an Android phone without a Google account, but good luck in doing it: since my phone is Chinese, I don’t have Google services and I can assure you that it is a true pain in the a**. So I imagine a Quest 2 where you can avoid having a Facebook account, but you can’t use the Oculus Store, or all the most important apps and games, and so you are de facto forced to use it.
Together with the Quest 2, also its new accessories are launching (like the official carrying case), so let me also link to you some reviews about them!
More info (Quest 2 boxes arrived at Best Buy)
More info (Arizona Sunshine and other games getting ready for Quest 2)
More info (SuperHot being patched for Quest 2)
More info (Oculus enforcing Facebook’s login)
More info (Report on Facebook’s anticompetitive practices)
More info (Quest 2 carrying case review)
More info (Quest 2 Elite Battery Strap review)
Other relevant news
NVIDIA takes Cloud XR to AWS and reveals other news
At GTC, NVIDIA has revealed a bunch of interesting news:
- New enterprise NVIDIA RTX A6000 and NVIDIA A40 graphics card have been revealed. These new powerful RTX graphics cards are meant for workstations and servers and will help the workflows of many companies;
- Cloud XR servers are now available on AWS. If you want to experiment with XR cloud rendering, you won’t need to buy a powerful workstation and experiment with the settings anymore: you just buy a dedicated EC2 machine on AWS supplied by NVIDIA and everything is ready out of the box. You activate the machine, pay for its usage and you can have cloud rendering. This, together with 5G and Wi-fi 6, could help the spread of cloud rendering;
- Omniverse, the collaboration tool for artists, enters open beta. Omniverse is an incredible solution that lets many artists work remotely together on the same project using different programs in a very smooth way. The change made by one user in its program (e.g. 3DStudio Max) gets immediately reflected in all the other programs of all the other users (e.g. Unreal Engine and Photoshop), as it happens in Google Docs when many people edit the same document at the same time. Omniverse can improve the way of working of creative teams a lot;
- It has revealed Maxine, that is like Zoom on steroid. Thanks to AI magic, this conferencing system can adjust the face and the eyes of the participants so that they look as if they are always looking at the other participants in their eyes;
- The CEO Jensen Huang has revealed that the supplies of RTX30 graphics cards will be little for all 2020 and people will most probably have to wait until 2021 to get one. That’s quite sad news, but I guess that someone at AMD is just popping champagne because of this…
More info (Main news by NVIDIA)
More info (Maxine)
More info (RTX30 cards’ supply issues)
The US Army is experimenting with AR goggles on dogs
The prize for the weirdest news of the week goes to a piece of news from Business Insider that details an experiment by an entrepreneur that loves dogs about creating sort of AR glasses for dogs. These glasses should help dogs in collaborating with their fellow humans in the Army or in the Police. Contrary to the news about cows using VR in Russia, this news is real and it is also accompanied by a pending patent.
The idea is actually not bad: thanks to the installation of AR glasses on dogs, the policemen and soldiers can collaborate with them better by:
- Having a camera installed on the dog’s head that lets the user see what the dog is seeing (it seems that it was a big problem in some contexts);
- Having a transparent display in front of the dog that can show him an indicator showing him what he should care about.
Thanks to this, the soldier can collaborate with the dog remotely, guiding him even if he stays safely inside a van, while the dog goes to check a bomb for instance (poor dog). It seems that after 3–4 weeks of training, the dog gets used to using AR.
The news of course has attracted a lot of funny comments, like “these dogs have better hardware than me”, or the invention of new terms like “Dogmented Reality”, or “AR Doggles”. I love the internet.
LiDAR on iPhones and iPad can make scanning 3D objects a commodity
A video that got popular this week has a bit shocked me: in it, you can see a user pointing its Lidar-powered iPad towards some objects and in like 2 seconds being able to reconstruct an exact clone of that 3D object, fully meshed and textured.
The author of the video has used a free app available on the Apple Store and with it, it was able to scan 3D objects with a quality and a speed never seen before. Of course, the resulting mesh was not optimized and was full of little problems, and the result only included the portion of the object visible by the iPad, but anyway the results were amazing.
Lidar sensors make this possible and it feels like magic. If this finds a practical application, it could be the killer application that makes Lidar worth having. Anyone could scan any 3D object without any prior knowledge and without any effort.
News worth a mention
Google and Snapchat release features that aim at the AR Cloud
The AR Cloud is the Holy Grail of mixed reality and all the most important companies are working on it. This week, Google and Snapchat have released two features that clearly aim at it:
- Google has released “Persistent Cloud Anchors”, letting developers create cloud anchors that are persistent in time. This means that as a developer now I can create an ARCore application that shows an augmentation in exactly one place that I choose (or that my users’ choose) and that augmentation will be seen by everyone that launches my app and point their phone to that place;
- Snapchat has launched its “Local Lenses” feature in Carnaby Street in London. If you go there, you can start augmenting the street with whatever you want, but the interesting thing is that you see the augmentations that all the other people have left before you, and you can also see what the other people there together with you are doing. Imagine it like Google Docs, but for decorating a place in AR. It is impressive. All my readers in London, let me know how it is!
More info (Google Persistent Anchors)
More info (Snapchat Local Lenses)
NReal has sold 1000+ glasses in Korea
Chinese brand Nreal has just revealed that it has sold more than 1000 headsets in just 30 days by selling the device just in Korea together with LG.
If the numbers are real, they are impressive: HoloLens 1 sold 50,000 headsets worldwide during its lifetime, Magic Leap has sold less than 10,000 glasses… and these companies had bigger funding than Nreal. This may prove that a small and fashionable glass has great potential also for the mainstream public.
Anyway, I would take this number with a grain of salt. After the initial hype, the announcement post has been removed from all Nreal’s social media profiles, and this makes me think that it may have had some errors in it.
Zappar unveils cheap AR viewer for $40
AR glasses are still very expensive, so many people can’t afford to buy them. Zappar is trying to come to the rescue with a new version of its ZapBox headset: a cheap lightweight shell inside which you can put your smartphone to enjoy some kind of augmented reality. There are also two simple 6DOF controllers through which you can interact with the augmentations.
ZapBox is like a Cardboard for AR, that for only $40 lets you enjoy AR. It is a very nice idea, and if you like it, you can support it on Kickstarter.
More info (Kickstarter page)
More info (Article on Upload VR)
15% of Star Wars Squadrons’s players played it in VR
EA has shared on its social media some statistics about Star Wars Squadrons, its latest successful game, that can be played both in VR and on a flat-screen. One of these data is very interesting: 15% of the game players have played it in VR. This is an amazing percentage: according to Steam, only 2% of Steam users have a VR headset… 15% means that the right type of game can attract many VR users and this may be appealing for some game studios that until now have ignored VR.
Humane may be a startup to keep an eye on
This week some outlets have reported that startup “Humane” has received $30M of funding to create some new technology, dubbed as “the next iPhone”. Details are almost inexistent, but the company has many important people endorsing them like Cathy Hackl, Hart Woolery, and Robert Scoble.
The only one revealing some details has been exactly Robert, that has defined it as “It is a device you clip onto your shirt that watches and listens to you and talks back. The demo is amazing, I hear. New kind of AI inside”. This seems very interesting and I can’t wait to have more details about it, but the company says that these are coming only next year.
More info (Read the article plus the comments to my tweet)
Someone has made a WebAR exporter for Unity
Do you remember the WebXR exporter by Mozilla? I have detailed it in this post, and it was very cool because it let you create WebVR experiences directly from the tool that we develop always use, that is Unity. Notwithstanding the “WebXR” name, though, it only worked with VR.
Now a developer has tweaked the code and made it also compatible with AR. This means that, even with many limitations, you’ll be able to create WebAR experiences from within Unity. This is so cool!
More info (Reveal tweet)
More info (GitHub repo of the exporter)
Palmer Luckey is building “The operating system for war”
If you were a fan of Palmer Luckey and you were wondering how is he doing, Wired may satisfy your curiosity. In a recent article, it investigates the work that Palmer is doing in the defense sector, creating a solution that mixes AI, drones, and XR to coordinate different tools, sensors and people in the Army. Wired defined it as “The operating system for war” and the name sounds pretty scary.
I found it curious that the article mentions that in his company he still uses Oculus headsets. I thought he didn’t want to have any relationship with Facebook anymore…
The synopsis of Ready Player Two has been revealed
The sequel of Ready Player One is coming in one month and finally, we have some more details about it. It seems that in the Oasis there is a new Easter Egg that gives amazing powers to whoever finds it and the destiny of mankind is at stake again…
MRTK now supports Oculus Quest
MRTK is one of the most popular libraries to develop cross-platform AR/VR content and this week it has announced official support also for Oculus Quest. This is a great piece of news for us devs…
Population: One gets mixed feedback
“Population: One” is a battle royale game that has been announced as one of the launch titles of the Quest 2. Since the battle royale genre is very popular these days, everyone was quite hyped about it.
The first reviews and impressions for the community are quite mild, though. While Upload VR has appreciated the game, Road To VR has blasted it, especially criticizing the fact that its UX is absolutely unsuitable for VR, and it seems a porting taken from a 2D game. Some people in the community find its price of $30 a bit too high for what it offers and there have been also critics for its microtransactions system, even if the devs are clarified that it just offers beautifications.
More info (Review on Road To VR)
More info (Review on Upload VR)
More info (The devs answer to the critics on microtransactions)
Some news on content
- Blair Witch Project arrives on Oculus Quest to let you feel terror in VR for this Halloween;
- Phasmophobia keeps being the horror game of the moment;
- Hand Physics Lab is going to receive a big update that improves even more hands interactions;
- A redditor has made a VR experience to help you stretch your neck while you are at your PC.
More info (Blair Witch Project)
More info (Phasmophobia)
More info (Hands Physics Lab)
More info (Neck Pain)
News from partners (and friends)
Fivars festival is launching this week and you should give it a look. Here you are its main points:
- The 6th annual FIVARS — Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories is set to run from October 7th to November 2nd 2020.
- It Features over 35 expertly curated selection of immersive experiences from around the world (Many North American & World Premieres).
- FIVARS developed a custom platform powered by the Janus open source framework and Amazon Web Services (also the engine behind Netflix and Hulu).
- The FIVARS 360° Theatre is optimized for instant-on playback of 4K surround content with spatial audio and pushes the envelope of what virtual festivals can become
- The 360° Theatre requires no proprietary downloads or additional software. Just a ticket and a curiosity about the world today and the stories told by its leading content creators.
As an Italian I’m proud to say that this week we have a Virtual Reality festival happening in Rome in the wonderful frame of the Villa Maraini building. The event is called VRE (Virtual Reality Experience) and it is going to feature very interesting 360 movies and VR experiences!
This week until October 18th you can enjoy the London Film Festival, that this year is held all in VR in a custom platform called The Expanse. It is very interesting that they haven’t used one of the usual platforms (VRChat, MOR, etc…) but they have used a new space.
Thanks to LFF, you can also enjoy many VR artistic experiences for free, so check it out!
Some XR fun
When you have to leave VR and you don’t want to
Zuck wants you to login via Facebook
Lorem ipsum?
I don’t know what to say this week to convince you to donate money to me on Patreon, so let me try with a Lorem Ipsum text and let’s see how many of you will donate!
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Phasellus vestibulum, nulla et tempor scelerisque, purus eros aliquet augue, eget commodo ex odio eu quam. Sed eget turpis ut mi fringilla iaculis molestie in massa. Integer convallis metus ante, quis tempus dolor sollicitudin a. Integer quis tellus diam. Sed a magna pulvinar, commodo diam et, ullamcorper nisi. Aliquam porttitor, sem sed bibendum varius, ipsum ligula mollis mauris, nec porta enim est in magna. Aenean vitae consectetur nunc, in dignissim justo. Ut elementum vitae felis at bibendum:
- DeoVR
- Jonn Fredericks
- Ilias Kapouranis
- Michael Bruce
- Paolo Leoncini
- Immersive.international
- Bob Fine
- Nikk Mitchell and the great FXG team
- Jennifer Granger
- Jason Moore
- Steve Biggs
- Niels Bogerd
- Julio Cesar Bolivar
- Jan Schroeder
- Kai Curtis
- Francesco Strada
- Sikaar Keita
- Ramin Assadollahi
- Jeff Dawson
- Juan Sotelo
- Sb
- Vooiage Technologies
- Caroline
- Liam James O’Malley
- Paul Reynolds
- Matias Nassi
Curabitur non euismod neque, vel luctus velit. Ut ut sem purus. Proin suscipit nisl ut urna porttitor, ultrices sodales diam dignissim. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Sed pharetra interdum ante. Phasellus elementum quis sapien non dapibus. Sed blandit risus id nisi sagittis molestie. Duis consectetur, risus nec sagittis volutpat, risus massa vulputate odio, et ullamcorper nisi mi sed ipsum.
Etiam gravida convallis metus!!!
(Header image by Command Sight / US Army)
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