Welcome 2021! This is the first newsletter of the new year, and I hope it will just be the beginning of a wonderful year in AR and VR for all of you!
Top news of the week
2021 has been greeted by many virtual celebrations
Because of the pandemic, many people have been forced to celebrate New Year’s Eve at home skipping the usual rituals of the home party with friends or the big celebrations in a public plaza. It was impressive seeing at the TV news Time Square in New York being almost empty on December 31st. All of this fostered the creation of many virtual events, that let people enjoy their time with other people while making everyone staying at home.
In VRChat there were two big events of this kind: one was the official New Year’s Eve party: a 24-hours-long marathon featuring 24 electronic DJs; and the other one was the concert of Jean-Michel Jarre inside Notre-Dame that we have organized. The official event got at least double the visitors of ours, but our event was a cross-medial one (being available also on Youtube, and some international TVs) and so reached millions of people, that so were able to celebrate the New Year with an amazing show while being locked at home.
Because of the success of these two events, VRChat got a huge spike in viewers, and in fact, the servers crashed soon after the end of our concert. This proves how the attention towards virtual events is rising, and this kind of entertainment medium is becoming always more popular. Real concerts and public events are not possible anymore, so most of the singers are finding a new way to express themselves and are so experimenting with digital and virtual reality events. We all hope that this trend will go on also after the pandemic because in VR it is possible to do performances that are impossible in real life (like having a NYE party in Notre-Dame).
Talking about a purely digital event, the digital CGI show around the Space Needle in Seattle was surely beautiful. It was a long animation that augmented the building with colored 3D elements and beautiful shapes. Many of my VR friends shared it, and I agree with their enthusiasm: it was amazing, and while not immersive, it is surely worth a watch.
More info (NYE parties in VRChat)
More info (Video streaming of Jean-Michel Jarre’s concert)
More info (Animations around the space needle)
More info (Editorial on virtual events becoming always more popular)
Other relevant news
Tundra to propose a better version of the Vive Tracker
One of the smartest ideas ever had by HTC has been the invention of the Vive Tracker: a little puck that you can attach to an object so that to track it inside virtual reality. The Vive Tracker has been used in LBVR venues or to make experimental full-body tracking, especially in social VR spaces like VRChat. The Tracker is good, but since HTC has never had competition in the field, it has always been the same since the launch year. Luckily, things are going to change thanks to Tundra.
Tundra is a company that offers many devkits employing the same sensors used by the Vive wands and now it is going to launch a Kickstarter campaign about a new upgraded version of the Vive Tracker. This new tracker is 60% smaller, consumes about 50% less power, weighs 50% less, and has twice the battery life. Even more, it is easily attachable to objects and it costs less than the $100 price tag of the official Trackers.
I bet that this Kickstarter campaign will be an easy win for Tundra, and I’m happy about this, because so there will be more competition in the Trackers space and this will lead to cheaper and better products.
Vuzix launches a new version of smartglasses
The CES is very close and some companies have already started announcing new products. Vuxix is one of them and has just announced a new line of smartglasses, that has already won 3 Innovation Awards at CES.
We don’t have many technical details on this: in the PR statement, it is possible to read that the name is NGSG (Next-Generation SmartGlasses) and that they are “powered by one of the smallest micro-LED display engines in the world, in combination with Vuzix’ proprietary waveguides”. On the product website, there is also mention of integrated microphones and speakers. Of course, they work by being connected to a smartphone.
What is intriguing to me is the design: usually, the products by Vuzix doesn’t look sexy, because they are industrial products or glasses for prosumers, while in this case, they look cool. It is something that I would wear on the streets, and this trend of smartglasses make me confident of a future where we will all leave with glasses on our face.
More info (PR Statement about the new glasses)
More info (Teaser video)
Is VR safe to be used by kids?
Many kids have received a Quest 2 this Christmas and so the usual question has popped up again in the communities: is VR safe for kids?
Thanks to Oksana Borukh, I have been able to read a PDF about the matter. It is 2-years old, but it has been written by very competent people on the matter like Jeremy Bailenson of the University of Stanford. The whitepaper is a bit long, but by reading it you will be able to understand better the matter of kids’ safety in VR.
Some key points I have found:
- Kids should be supervised when using VR
- A kid using VR should have a session with a length in the order of magnitude of minutes, not hours
- The golden rule is: You shouldn’t make a kid try in VR what you wouldn’t make him/her experience in real life (so, no Gorn, please, unless you want to train a little gladiator)
- Kids under 5 years are not able to distinguish what is real and what is not, so VR is more “dangerous” for them
- Kids in scholar age may have false memories regarding things that happened in VR that they may recall as having happened in real life
- It is not clear if VR hurts the eyes of kids, and there are contradictory studies on the matter
- The limit of 13 years old for using VR has no scientific foundation, that is the number “13” doesn’t come from any scientific study.
If you have kids, and you want them to try VR, I advise you to read this document.
A reality check on AR in 2020
Tom Emrich is one of the biggest personalities in the augmented reality ecosystem. He’s an investor, an evangelist, and an entrepreneur. And especially, he’s a great expert in technology.
He has written a long article on the most important trends in augmented reality in 2020, and I think you all should read it if you want to understand more about what is happening in the field. He highlights how the pandemic has accelerated the technology on many sides (for instance, the AR virtual-try-on features have skyrocketed) while slowed it in others (AR indoor navigation of public places is no more a priority if people are spending most of the time at home). AR is a widely used feature on smartphones now, while smart glasses are slowly growing, waiting for the big shots of 2023 (yes, Apple, I’m looking at you). There is a lot going on and this article is a big summary of what you should know.
News worth a mention
Gravity Sketch to become free for everyone
A piece of amazing news took the VR artistic community by storm this week: Gravity Sketch is going to become free starting from January, 25th 2021! In a long blog post, its belonging company highlights how it is going to create a free and paid tier of the program, letting so all hobbysts using the software for free. This is great for the community, and great for Gravity Sketch, which can so compete better with free software like Tilt Brush, Quill, and Medium.
Discover all the available VR locomotion methods
Some amazing researchers have collected and classified all the known VR locomotion methods, for a total of more than 100! There are all the most common solutions, like smooth movement and teleporting, but also some crazy ones like changing the gravity of the world using your fingers.
All the data is available for free to everyone on GitHub, so if you are doing some research in XR, feel free to use it!
The interest towards Oculus has grown up during the Holidays
Analyzing the data from Google and the subscribers of the VR-related subreddits on Reddit, it is possible to see that the interest in VR, especially the one branded by Oculus, has skyrocketed at the end of 2020. This has been possible thanks to the launch of the affordable Oculus Quest 2, and also to the massive marketing campaign that Facebook is carrying on.
More info (Subscriber count of subreddits)
More info (Google searches for “Oculus”)
XR experiences may extend the experience in theme parks
A Journalist of the Los Angeles Times has played the latest Star Wars experience produced by Oculus and while I’ve found its review uninteresting, I’ve found more interesting its point of view on how it can extend the experience of the Star Wars theme park that Disney has recently opened in the US. According to the journalist, while now XR experiences can substitute a physical visit to a theme park (where we can’t go because of the pandemic), in the future they can complement it. You could for instance continue at home in your headset a story you have started in the park, or have special goodies in the park because you have won a companion game on the VR store some days before. The possibilities are endless, for a good mixture of the real and the virtual that can engage the user a lot.
A woman has returned virtually to North Korea
The separation of the two Koreas, after the war, has been a very traumatic event, that has forced many people to separate from their families, relatives, and especially their homes. This is why is very touching that now an organization is trying to make some people that left North Korea 70 years ago experience again how was their house at that time thanks to virtual reality.
Some news on content
- HoloFit is coming to Oculus Quest, to make you stay fit in VR using gym machinery;
- Bigscreen has just released a big update on its Quest version. The CEO highlights that thanks to Quest 2, he’s seeing the core-metrics up 3–5x wrt some months ago;
- Mare is a stunning VR experience that is coming to Oculus Quest.
More info (Holofit)
More info (Bigscreen)
More info (Mare)
News from partners (and friends)
My friend Anne Snell is starting a series of videos on Youtube where she wants to speak openly about AR and VR, letting people ask her questions on the technology without fearing of seeming dumb. I think it’s a great idea, and while the videos are a bit rough for now, I totally support what she’s doing 🙂
My best of compliments to my friend and AR influencer Alan Smithson for the 150th episode of its XR For Business Podcast where he interviews every time the most important people of the XR ecosystem. I wish him to arrive at least at the 300th episode!
Some XR fun
The most popular Italian sport magazine shows a funny video about a person falling in VR. My main question is: why are there toilet papers on the Christmas tree?
WebXR developers know the pain
VRChat in a nutshell
This Quest 2 box is sus
This kid is great in playing Beat Saber. Or maybe not.
We’re in 2021, but this guy is living in 2077
Welcome the new year with a donation!
Please give me a big start of this year with a Donation on Patreon! It will help me in keeping my blog alive and improving it day by day.
This is the long list of people that has decided to support me up to 2020:
- 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
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- Sikaar Keita
- Ramin Assadollahi
- Jeff Dawson
- Juan Sotelo
- Andrew Sheldon
- Chris Madsen
- Tracey Wong
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- Sb
- Vooiage Technologies
- Caroline
- Liam James O’Malley
- Paul Reynolds
- Wil Stevens
- Matias Nassi
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(Header image by VRrOOm)