The XR Week Peek (2020.12.08): Medal Of Honor close to launch, Snapdragon 888 announced, and much more!
It’s the day in which in Italy we prepare the Christmas tree and I send an enormous hug to all my family.
That said, let me tell you the most important XR news of the last week.
Top news of the week
Medal Of Honor is close to launch but it won’t be the new Alyx
Medal Of Honor: Above And Beyond is one of the most awaited VR games of 2020. Oculus and Respawn Entertainment teased it in 2017 at OC4 describing it as an AAA war game. Throughout this year, we got always more info about it: at first the name, then the setting (WWII), then compatible platforms (both Oculus Store and Steam), and finally, this week, even some info on the multiplayer modes. The game features a long single-player campaign, plus various multiplayer modes, that are all variations of the deathmatch or domination gameplays.
Some gameplay preview short videos are now being published online, and it is clear from them that the graphics have a very high quality, the interactions are natural and possible with many items in the world (you can for instance type on a typewriter using your index finger), and the realism of war is preserved. These are all positive signs that make us believe that this will be a great VR game.
But actually, we had in the last 2 days much negative info, too. The game requires insane specifications, like 340GB of free hard drive space to install the game (I would need a new hard drive for this), an RTX2080, an i7 CPU from the 9th generation, and 16GB RAM. The game may work also on inferior hardware, but glitches may happen. We always say that we need VR to be more accessible to succeed, and then this game arrives with the purpose of becoming a hit, and it requires insane hardware that very few people have. I work in VR and I don’t have a computer with all those specifications, so I’m not able to play it… and of course, I won’t buy a new PC just to play a game, so I will personally skip it.
If this was not enough to prevent people from buying the game, the first review articles I have read about the game are not enthusiastic: IGN and Road To VR highlight many bugs and a not-so-smart AI for the enemies, while Upload says that the multiplayer mode feels a bit shallow because it has no ranking system. Everyone agrees that the game is good, but no one has had that “Wow” effect that every one of us has experienced from the detail level of Alyx.
The premises of this game are good, but it seems it won’t be a milestone for VR like Half-Life: Alyx.
More info (Medal Of Honor multiplayer trailer)
More info (Details on multiplayer modes)
More info (Some early footage from the game)
More info (Recommended specs)
More info (IGN’s preview of the game)
More info (Road To VR’s preview of the game)
More info (Upload VR’s preview of the game)
Other relevant news
New Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 could boost 5G XR
Qualcomm, the company producing the reference designs upon which all the major XR headsets are based upon, has just announced its new flagship chipset: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. Compared to the Snapdragon 865, the chipset installed inside the Oculus Quest 2, the 888 (a number that seems chosen to make Chinese people happy) has 25% more CPU power and 35% more GPU power. If it is not enough to make us happy, it supports 144Hz gaming and the 5G modem is not anymore an external chip, but it is already integrated inside the main chipset, meaning that all devices integrating this 888 chipset will be for sure 5G-ready.
Qualcomm is now targeting mobile phones for this new chip, but it wouldn’t surprise me if in the next months they could announce a new XR reference design based on a modified version of its, enabling more powerful and more connected XR headsets.
More info (First look at Qualcomm Snapdragon 888)
More info (Snapdragon 888’s features)
NVIDIA RTX3060 Ti is only $400
With the new RTX30 series, NVIDIA is working hard to democratize powerful graphics cards, fighting its competitor AMD hard also on the price side.
The just-announced low-tier RTX3060 Ti, the least powerful of the series, is only $400, but it is more powerful than an RTX2080 Super, both for VR and non-VR games. This low price will be very important to let always more people being able to afford a powerful VR-compatible PC or Laptop.
The card has been launched on the 2nd of December, and these are its main characteristics, compared with the ones of the other RTX30 cards (this table is courtesy of Road To VR):
| RTX 3090 | RTX 3080 | RTX 3070 | RTX 3060 Ti | |
| Price | $1,500 | $700 | $500 | $400 |
| Release Date | September 24th, 2020 | September 17th, 2020 | October 29th, 2020 | December 2nd, 2020 |
| CUDA Cores | 10,496 | 8,704 | 5,888 | 4,864 |
| Boost Clock (GHz) | 1.7 | 1.71 | 1.73 | 1.67 |
| Memory | 24GB (GDDR6X) | 10GB (GDDR6X) | 8GB (GDDR6) | 8GB (GDDR6) |
| Connectors | 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a |
Varjo announces VR-3 and XR-3 headsets
Varjo is one of the most original companies producing XR headsets: it makes devices that have in the center of the field of view a very-high-density display, in which the screen door effect doesn’t exist and VR feels like reality. It also produces a modified version of this headset with two color cameras on the front plate to have high-quality passthrough AR. These headsets are great, but they are incredibly expensive because they are aimed at the enterprise sector.
Now Varjo has announced the new edition of these headsets, dubbed VR-3 and XR-3. The improvements of this new version, if compared with the previous one, are great: the central high-resolution microdisplay is now bigger, the field of view is wider (around 115° horizontal), and the standard display that you use in the periphery has more resolution too. They also feature eye tracking, hand tracking and now the XR-3 version has also added a Lidar camera for environment scanning and a custom-made inside-out tracking algorithm.
The headsets are still pricey, but they cost much less than before: VR-3 is priced at $3200 and XR-3 at $5500 (both of them also require a yearly subscription). It is a lot, but it is HALF of the price of the previous version while adding all the features described above. Varjo now is considering the possibility of also targeting the “prosumers” market, and I would find it very interesting if also smaller companies could use this marvel.
Google shuts down Google Poly
Google is continuing its tradition of killing all the interesting AR/VR projects it kickstarted and this week has killed Google Poly, the community-driven 3D objects database. Poly was used by many indie studios, and it was an invaluable tool for prototyping (I used it myself a lot) or for storing the 3D assets produced in VR by artists. Notwithstanding this, it probably became useless now that Google is mostly opting out from VR, and so it will be officially shutdown at the end of June 2021.
The community of creators is pretty sad about this decision and has started a petition to keep Poly alive by making it Open Source and gifting it to the community. That would be a great idea, and it would help many XR creatives, but I’m not sure it is going to happen, also because hosting that many models would require many donations to pay for the cloud storage.
In the meanwhile, people interested in a database of XR objects can use alternative services like Sketchfab.
More info (Google shutting down Poly)
More info (Sketchfab as an alternative)
More info (Petition for Google Poly)
Nreal Light launches in Europe in Spring 2021
After many delays, finally, we have some more info about when Nreal Light will come to Europe, after a successful launch in Asia this year. According to Vodafone, which has just become an official distributor of the Chinese AR glasses, the Nreal device will be available from Spring 2021, beginning from Germany and Spain to then arrive in all European countries where Vodafone is available. We have just to wait some months to put our hands on Nreal glasses!
News worth a mention
Looking Glass launches Portrait edition
Looking Glass, a company producing holographic displays, has just launched its smallest product, the Looking Glass Portrait, which has the dimension of a frame that you can put on your desk, but it lets you load on it 3D objects and 3D photos, for a very realistic effect. It costs $199 if you get it on Kickstarter now or $349 if you buy it at its full price. A very cool gadget for this Christmas.
More info (Looking Glass Portrait)
More info (Official Kickstarter page)
Wacom unveils VR Pen
Wacom, excellence in the production of drawing tablets, has just teased the upcoming release of the VR Pen, a gadget that can work with every VR headset (because it features a proprietary tracking solution that you add on the HMD) and that lets you draw virtual lines in the air or on a surface. The device seems very ergonomic, and an analog trigger button that you use with your index finger lets you decide how the stroke must be wide so that to simulate the different pressures of the pen on a surface. I can’t wait to know more about this, because it can be an invaluable tool for creators.
Some good news for the VR ecosystem
VR is dead. It is so dead that this week:
- Half-Life: Alyx has surpassed the 2M downloads;
- Quest 2 has had huge sales and now Oculus controls more than 53% of the headsets on Steam;
- 1.9% of users on Steam now have VR;
- The total spending on VR Content in 2020 will pass the $1B mark;
- It has been revealed that Travis Scott’s performance in Fortnite grossed in merchandise and other stuff around $20M. For comparison, a physical concert of the same artist usually gross less than $2M. This proves the enormous value of VR events.
More info (Half-Life: Alyx sales)
More info (Quest 2 sales)
More info (VR spending in 2020)
More info (Travis Scott’s earnings)
Facebook is keeping being accused of unfair competitive practices
An article on Bloomberg summarizes all the bad practices that Facebook is having in VR, taking all the best ideas from the startups in the market, copying them, and providing them in a better and cheaper way, preventing the others to compete properly. This comes in a moment where all the IT behemoths (Google, Amazon, Facebook) are under the scrutiny of the US government, and some rumors say that Facebook could be sued by 40 states in the US for all the shady practices of the latest times (regarding VR and not). Let’s see if this will force it to change its behavior.
More info (Article on Bloomberg)
More info (US states suing Facebook)
Rec Room starts creating its internal economy
Rec Room is now enabling creators to produce virtual goods that can be sold to other users in exchange for Rec Room currency. Considering that the company is planning to let people convert Rec Room currency into real money in the future, and considering the success of the platform, it is possible that in the future some people may live out the production of content for this social space.
AR Mario Kart rollercoasters are coming to Japan
Nintendo and Universal are opening in Osaka the Super Nintendo World theme park, and inside it of course there are many attractions dedicated to Super Mario. One of them is a rollercoaster that you can enjoy with an AR headset on that will make you compete with the other visitors like if you all were doing an AR Mario Kart match, just on a binary. You will be able to toss turtle shells and run to the finish line trying to win, and writing all of this I wonder why I’m not born in Japan 🙂
Cognixion One is an AR headset that reads your mind
Cognixion One is a standalone AR glasses that integrates a BCI module that tries to understand what you are thinking and then it can say those sentences for you, or it can send them to Alexa so that you can use your thoughts to control your house.
This can be mindblowing for disabled people, but I’m a bit doubtful about how it does work, since BCIs at the current stage can’t read your mind yet. Maybe it can detect what sentence on the display you are focusing on, or it can just understand your thoughts among a preset of a few ones.
Facebook shuts down Sanzaru Games’s games
Facebook has just killed Ripcoil and Marvel Power United VR, two of the most famous games from Sanzaru, the studio it acquired some months ago. The games’ multiplayer system was not going that well, so this decision is understandable. Facebook is also being very honest in refunding the games to whoever has bought them in the last 6 months.
What worries the players, though, is that the games will be completely removed from their library and they won’t be able to open them anymore, not even to play the single-player campaigns. This is a quite weird decision, and once again makes us feel that Facebook is a company that keeps the whole control of its platform, without giving any power to the user.
Some news on content
- Pistol Whip 2089 is out and from the reviews it is awesome;
- Contractors is now available for Quest;
- Frostpoint has been released, but it feels mediocre.
More info (Pistol Whip 2089)
More info (Contractors)
More info (Frostpoint)
News from partners (and friends)
Resight is organizing a contest for XR content. Here you are the description that they provided me:
ReSight’s AR app competition is about helping developers and creators achieving a working AR spatial app. We are an infrastructure AR startup with a SDK that performs swift relocalization, highly regarded users privacy and no coding hassle. The competition takes submissions that range between ideas and working apps from developers and non developers and gets it to a functioning spatial app with ReSight’s SDK, and the help of top AR leaders from around the world. We award the winning app with a prize worth of up to 5K$, while all rights for the app remains of the developer.
If you are interested, click on the link below and get more info about it!
BT Sport is innovating how sport is broadcasted so that to offer a more immersive experience during the pandemic. Discover all its strategies in this detailed article.
Some XR fun
2020 in a nutshell
Thanks for making me feel your love
A big thank to all of you of the VR communities that make me feel your love and your warmth all the time. I really appreciate that. If you want to also support me with money, feel free to clicking the link below and becoming a Patron of mine.
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