The XR Week (2020.11.16): HP Reverb G2 still haunted by WMR tracking, Quest 2 update brings 90Hz, and more!
It’s a very busy working period for me, and I’m sorry if I’m being very irregular in writing blog posts or in answering on social media… but I’m really tight on time! Things should be better after half of December, please be patient.
This week I’ve anyway found the time to enjoy the artistic piece Finding Pandora X and to work on organizing my session at the Virtual Reality Day (more on this later on in this newsletter). I’ll keep doing whatever I can for the VR community!
And now here you are the best XR news of the week to keep you informed…
Top news of the week
First reviews of the HP Reverb G2 highlight non-optimal tracking
The first units of HP Reverb G2 are being shipped, and we can so start reading the first impressions on the device by the first users and reviewers (journalists, YouTubers, etc…). And I admit I’m a bit disappointed by what I read.
The Reverb G2 confirms the same great visuals of the first Reverb: the pixel density is very high, so high that it is quite impossible to spot the pixels of the screen… as I described in my review of the Reverb 1, the SDE becomes more like a noise that you perceive on the screen when you move your head. The first Reverb had some problems with red smearing, while this one has not. HP has fixed many of the visual problems of the headset, and Microsoft has just released a patch on Windows 10 that aims at solving many visual issues of all WMR headsets (like Chromatic aberration). This means that the visuals of the Reverb G2 are impressive.
Thanks to the partnership with Valve, the comfort of the headset has been improved, and the audio is now provided through off-the-ear speakers that can inject into your ears high-quality sound. In the end, this headset provides great visuals and sounds.
BUT, the tracking is still lacking. HP still uses WMR tracking, and while it has improved the controllers’ ergonomics and has also added 2 more tracking cameras to improve the tracking FOV, the quality of the tracking is still mediocre, especially when the controllers are close to your head, when you put one controller in front of the other, or when there is too much light in the environment. This is a big bummer because controllers’ tracking has always been the biggest problem of WMR headsets and seeing that it hasn’t been solved now yet is very disappointing.
Other common complaints are that some materials of the device look cheap (the cable ring has already broken to some reviewers) and that the FOV is just in line with other headsets on the market (114° diagonal) and inferior to the one of the Pimax or the Valve Index.
All in all, the common consensus is that this is a great headset if you’re looking for just high resolution (e.g. to play simulation games) or if you don’t need to play games where controllers tracking is fundamental, like competitive shooters. It is not as good as the Valve Index, but it is also much cheaper. As always, if you have to buy it or not, depends a lot on what you have to do. But honestly, I expected a bit more… it’s a bit weird that Microsoft hasn’t solved its biggest pain point yet. Someone says that this is solvable through a firmware update, and I hope so.
More info (Windows 10 update improves the visuals of the Reverb)
More info (The cable clip of the headset is easy to be broken)
More info (Sebastian Ang explains some problems of the tracking of the controllers)
More info (A redditor writes his first impressions on the headset)
More info (Cas and Chary’s review)
More info (Tom’s Hardware review)
Other relevant news
Oculus Quest 2 gets a huge update
Oculus has just started rolling out the update to the Quest runtime v23, that introduces a lot of new features and improvements to this device:
- All the applications in the headset can now run at 90 Hz (including the passthrough vision);
- Oculus Link upgrades to 90Hz as well and finally exits from beta. I hope that this means that all its stability problems have been solved (but I doubt it);
- You can now finally gift games to your Oculus friends on the Store;
- You can cast the visuals of the Quest on your PC via a web browser, provided that you use Chrome or Edge;
- There is now Oculus Move fitness tracker;
- In the USA and Canada, there are improvements to the voice commands engine
- There are new slight improvements to the visuals, that can so now appear crisper.
All in all, this big update is useful to finally give full power to the Oculus Quest 2. In the meanwhile, John Carmack has said that we must be excited about the new Infinite Office because Facebook really wants to make Oculus Browser a productivity tool. Boz instead clarified that the passthrough MR mode will take a bit of time to be made of the proper quality and we must be patient (I think this means that it will be released in 2021).
More info (Quest runtime v23)
More info (Oculus Link exits from beta)
More info (Quest can now cast to PC browsers)
More info (John Carmack talks about Infinite Office)
More info (Boz says to be patient about the passthrough vision)
The Oculus Quest 2 jailbreak was probably fake
When the XRSI reported that a community member successfully jailbroke the Oculus Quest 2, I was rather happy. I don’t like the Quest being a closed ecosystem, and I don’t like the Facebook login stuff, and I was glad that the community was sending a clear message to Facebook that we could make the device free ourselves. But my happiness has been very ephemeral.
A report that appeared on Reddit and confirmed by Upload VR seems to point to the fact that the jailbreak was not real. It is true that some community members reported that they’ve been able to install another operating system on the Quest, but it seems that their steps are not replicable or that in any case, they don’t take the hacker to take full control of the device as root, and for sure they don’t unlock the bootloader (condition necessary to make the hack less easily patchable by Facebook).
The actual situation is a bit unclear because the Reddit whistleblower wants to be anonymous and so can’t speak openly about the matter, and at the same time, XRSI continuously claims that it wants to protect the identity of the hackers and so doesn’t detail exactly what has happened as well. The rumor talks about a Windows XP installation on the device, something that is impossible on a Quest, but XRSI negates this claim. Anyway the source talks about many red flags in the verification process and XRSI seems to confirm it when it defines the procedure “not as straightforward and regular as they must be”.
What is sure is that the situation is very confused and most probably we won’t see the details of any Quest 2 jailbreak soon. I have also personally been disappointed by XRSI that has claimed such an important thing like the root access to a Quest, something that all the community was waiting for, without having properly verified it before.
More info (Fake jailbreak on Road To VR)
More info (Fake jailbreak on Upload VR)
PSVR 2 may have been delayed
While the PlayStation 5 is forecasted to sell almost 18M units before March 2021, becoming the fast-selling console in history, there are no signs of a PSVR 2 headset on sight. Sony has just clarified that VR “games with unlocked framerates or dynamic resolution up to 4K may see higher fidelity” on PS5, and some games like Blood&Truth and Firewall Zero Hour have been patched to introduce this feature, but it is not enough for the PSVR community. When can we expect a PSVR 2 headsets? And is there a PSVR 2 headset? Well, I don’t know, but in a random interview with a developer, I seem to have found some answers.
Blair Renaud is a developer that is building an amazing cyberpunk VR game called Low-Fi and since the Kickstarter campaign of the game has been very successful, he’s developing the game for “next gen PSVR” as well. Upload VR has interviewed him and in the interviews appear some sentences that are very informative on PSVR
When asked about the fact that Low-Fi is the first PS5 VR game, Blair answered with: “I can’t speak to anything about a possible PSVR 2 outside of saying that if/when it becomes available, we fully intend to port LOW-FI to it.”. This is a clear PR answer to dodge a bullet, and reading between the lines, I understand that he knows something about a PSVR 2 headset, but he can’t reveal it. If you asked me about the PSVR2, my wording would be “I have no idea on when it will come out” not “I can’t speak about it”… because the second one aims to the fact that I know about it, but I’m under NDA and I can’t speak about it.
This is confirmed by the next question, where he is asked if he knows about the plans for a PSVR 2. “Yes, but I can’t speak to them. Nor am I sure that they haven’t changed. Recent announcements indicate that they may have.”. It so seems that Sony told him about PSVR 2, but now, after Jim Ryan told him that probably PSVR won’t come to light in 2021, these plans have probably changed. So probably he was told about a possible launch in 2021 and now this is not true anymore.
If all of this is true, it confirms that PSVR 2 is there, but it is launching later than expected. But be careful that all of this is just a speculation based on the vague words of a dev.
More info (PlayStation 5 sales forecast)
More info (Update for PSVR games on PS5)
More info (Firewall Zero Hour and Blood And Truth get patched for PS5)
More info (Interview to Blair Renaud)
Nreal launches Nreal Light in Japan
As I had teased in one of my last articles, while Nreal is having some issues in shipping the device worldwide due to the high demand, it is performing very well in launching the consumer version in Asia thanks to a strong partnership with LG.
Thanks to a partnership with KDDI, the Chinese company has just launched its Nreal Light headset in Japan. Nreal Light is slated to cost ¥69,799 (~$663 USD) and can be bought online or in KDDI brick-and-mortar stores throughout Japan. In the communication, it is emphasized that it is able to work with 5G phones from different brands like Sony and Samsung.
This AR glass is one of the most interesting augmented reality devices on the market, and I’m a bit envious that my Japanese friends can already buy it.
News worth a mention
Neos VR now lets you exchange files in a natural way
Neos VR is one of the most impressive social VR worlds, especially considering that is being developed by a tiny group of three developers. In one of its latest updates, there is a new interesting feature that lets you share files with your peer in a very natural way. Files appear as 3D elements in the scene, and to share them, you have just to grab these elements with your hands and give them to the other person. When he/she grabs them and triggers them, the file gets transferred to his/her computer.
This is a very nice UX, also because it replicates what happens in real life, where you just give an object to another person to transfer its ownership. And this is what I hope to see in the future metaverse, something that is natural and simple to be used.
Fall VR Bundle gives you amazing VR games for only $17
Humble Bundle is a very popular digital store of game bundles, and sometimes it also publishes bundles of VR games. And its latest one, the Fall VR Bundle, can give you many fantastic games for very little money.
With less than $1 you can already take home 3 good games like A-Tech Cybernetic and Killing Floor: Incursion, but if you take the full package at $17, you can play amazing games like Creed: Rise To Glory and The Walking Dead: Saint and Sinners. What are you waiting for? Go buying this bundle now!
Oppo teases new AR glasses
Oppo is a Chinese smartphone brand that is gaining popularity also here in the West. And after revealed last year that it was going to invest 50B RMB (7.6B USD) in research and development, it has just teased that tomorrow November, 17th, it is going to reveal its new model of AR glasses. We don’t have many info about them, but the fact that they will include waveguide displays according to rumors make me think that they are something more than all Nreal clones that there are out there. I’m very intrigued, and I will look at this launch with much attention.
VR Awards winners revealed
Every year the VR Awards select the best VR people and companies. This year, the final ceremony has been held inside VRChat and has seen as winners Valve (for Half-Life: Alyx and the Valve Index), Qualcomm (for its technological innovations), Thrillseeker (for his Youtube channel), and many other people and companies that you can discover on AIXR website. I’m glad of having been a judge also this year and I want to compliment all the winners!
Ernest Cline is thinking about a prequel to Ready Player One
Ready Player Two is ready to be distributed to the bookstores in 8 days, but Ernest Cline seems inclined to not stop the series here. According to an interview he has just performed, the author now wants to take a break, and then complete the trilogy of Ready Player One with a prequel where it is detailed how the Oasis has been created. Will it be called Ready Player Zero?
Facebook asks developers to care about accessibility
Every developer that wants to publish on the Oculus Store must abide by some guidelines and there are some official checks to follow before sending the app for review to Oculus. Facebook is now adding to these mandatory checks some optional checks that aim at making sure that the app has accessibility features so that the biggest possible number of people can play it. It has also published a video suggesting how to design an app with accessibility in mind.
This is all great, but as a developer, I think that it would be much better if Facebook itself implemented these features inside its SDK so it would be much easier for us to offer them.
BHaptics announces TactSuit X Series haptic vests
BHaptics is a well-known brand for VR haptic devices and it produces affordable gadgets that have a good quality (read my review here). This week has announced the launch of a new series of haptic vests, the TactSuit X, that can offer you a VR haptic vest for as low as $300.
Build your own smartglasses
I’ve found a very interesting post where a guy decides to manufacture himself a pair of smart glasses that can help him navigating better the city. While the result is pretty rough, I found the whole process interesting… if you’re a maker, I’m sure you will appreciate it!
Google releases the Objectron dataset
If you are a researcher in computer vision or machine learning, you’re always looking for datasets including high-quality photos and videos, with related ground truth data, that you can use to train your ML systems. In this case, you may be happy to know that Good Guy Google has just released Objectron, a big reliable dataset that you can use to train your system to recognize some kind of objects, including photos, videos, and all the ground-truth camera data that you may need.
Cornell University experiments with flexible gloves
A team at Cornell University has developed a fiber-optic sensor that combines low-cost LEDs and dyes, resulting in a stretchable “skin” that detects deformations such as pressure, bending, and strain. This means that it is possible to create flexible gloves that can track the pose of the hands of the user and also detect when something is touching them.
Half-Life: Alyx adds developers commentary
As it is a tradition from Valve, Half-Life: Alyx has now developers commentary. Basically, you can replay the game and see in certain points a headset: if you put it on your head, you can listen to the developers of the game explaining some behind-the-curtains fact about that scene. There are more than 3 hours of commentary of Alyx, and if you’re a fan of the saga, I’m sure you will love it.
Considering that to hear to them, you have to have won the game at least once, this is also a smart way from Valve to increase the replayability of the game.
Medal Of Honor: Above and Beyond could land to Quest 2
Respawn Entertainment has just released a new trailer for Medal Of Honor: Above and Beyond, one of the most awaited VR games of 2020. But the most interesting news is that answering to a Reddit AMA, the team has said that it is thinking about porting the game to Quest, but this may happen only after the PC version will be released. Respawn doesn’t want to compromise the PC quality to favor a Quest porting (thank God), and it will just evaluate if and how a Quest version will be available after the launch.
More info (New trailer of Medal Of Honor: Above And Beyond)
More info (Respawn on the Quest porting)
Population One may become one of the most popular VR games
Battle Royale is a genre that is becoming always more popular, and this trend seems confirmed also in VR. The recently released battle royale game Population One is becoming always more popular in the VR community, and I’ve already talked with many people that are becoming addicted to it. Also Upload VR in this review highlights how it is cool. If they only add some additional maps and fix some little problems here and there, this game can literally boom.
Some info on content
- We have some new footage of Sam and Max VR! I can’t wait to play this game!
- Elite Dangerous will be free to download (and keep) on the Epic Store this week!
- Beat Saber: BTS DLC is now available;
- Contractors is coming to Quest on December, 3rd;
- Tarzan VR is coming tomorrow (November, 17th). It will be an episodic game and on that day only the first two episodes will be released.
More info (Sam and Max)
More info (Elite: Dangerous)
More info (Beat Saber BTS DLC)
More info (Contractors VR)
More info (Tarzan VR)
News from partners (and friends)
Bob Fine is organizing the 4th edition of the Virtual Reality Day, a 24-hours event all dedicated to Virtual Reality, all in Virtual Reality! It is a fantastic idea, and I’ve always loved it since the first time I have discovered it some years ago.
This is why I felt very honored when Bob asked me to be one of the hosts of the event, and to moderate part of it inviting speakers from Europe. I did my best and I invited very high-profile people, all from different European countries (with the exception of one from China…), being also sure to not invite always the same influencer names. So here you are the VR professionals that will speak in my session (all times are in UK time):
11 am — 11.30 am: Gianluigi Perrone, VR storytelling (Italy)
11.30am — 12pm: Ivan Varko, VR video streaming (Slovenia)
12 pm — 12.30 pm: Gijs Den Butter, VR haptics (The Netherlands)
12.30pm — 1pm: Louis Cacciuttolo, VR events (France)
4pm — 4.30pm: Alvin Graylin, VR technology and future (China/US)
4.30pm — 5pm: Rob Cole, VR ergonomics (UK)
Come listening to them and also to all the other famous speakers (like Lucas Rizzotto, Suzanne Lee, etc…) by coming to the Virtual Reality Day! The event will be held in Altspace VR and we can’t wait to see you there!
Discover the event and RSVP it (it’s free!)
The legend of VR psychology Giuseppe Riva has written a scientific article on how VR can help people overcome the anxiety of the pandemic and the lockdown, also suggesting a free 360 video to watch every day for this purpose. I hope this can help some of you in this difficult moment.
Some XR fun
Some furries have recreated Donald Trump’s Four Seasons grotesque press meeting in VRChat and it went viral! Trolling at its finest…
An alternate beginning for Half-Life: Alyx… an unexpected twist
People falling in VR are always fun
After Virtual Sickness now the problem of VR is Virtual Shitness
Eh, the good Gear VR times…
How we hope VR to be vs how VR really is.
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Every week I try to inform the VR community with these long roundups, and I write them every Sunday, even if I’m tired and very busy. I do that because I believe that we should help each other in this ecosystem.
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(Header image by HP)
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