The XR Week Peek (2021.01.25): Facebook plans “a big shift” in privacy, Apple VR headset rumored, and more!
Happy Monday everyone! A new week has passed by, and it has been a quite good one for me: I’ve been featured again on Authority Magazine and I’ve launched a new series of videos on my Youtube channel where I answer the questions of the community.
For XR, instead, it has not been a special week at all: we had a bunch of nice news, plus the usual articles saying “Oh, VR is not mainstream yet, it will never be blablabla”. Here below you will find the summary of the news of the first kind. For the second kind of articles, well, look online, and I’m sure you will find some journalists who say that VR is just a fad while donning their Cardboards.
Top news of the week
FRL head aims at performing a “Big Shift” in privacy management
This week it has been leaked a memo by Facebook Reality Labs’s head Andrew “Boz” Bosworth proposing a new way of conceiving privacy at Facebook.
In this memo, Boz proposes “a big shift” in privacy management: from now on, Facebook should work so to guarantee the maximum of privacy to the user. Only a minimum of the data should be shared with the online servers and most of them should be handled locally; the applications and the communications should be secure; the user must have all the control among what data of his/hers gets shared and what not. And in any case, developers should try to make things work assuming that little or no data gets shared with the system.
Boz wants that Facebook becomes an excellence in privacy management, that it handles privacy with stricter standards than the ones that the law requires, with superior quality than the ones of the competitors. He wants that people start trusting Facebook, following a route similar to the one followed by Microsoft, that went from a company that no one trusted security-wise (Windows Me was a virus disguised as an operating system) to a company that is considered good in making software (Windows 10 and Azure are very good solutions).
I have a mixed feeling about this. First of all, I’m glad that Facebook noticed that the community wants guarantees on its privacy regarding AR and VR and so now its executives start caring about it. This new attitude by Boz is to be applauded, and I compliment him for having proposed it.
On the other side, I don’t believe in this “leak” that comes timely after the last week Boz, Carmack, and others talked about how Facebook has to be trusted privacy-wise. Furthermore, the comparison with Microsoft doesn’t hold well: Microsoft was a software company that just didn’t have high standards, so it made products with many bugs. Facebook is an ad company, so its job is collecting data to provide personalized suggestions: its competitive advantage is having very good profilations, and marketers love Facebook for this. Facebook doesn’t collect data because of errors of its, it collects data because it is its job to do this. So I find it hard to believe that it will ever be considered trustworthy data-wise. The best we can hope is that it doesn’t collect data that is too personal and that it doesn’t share data with 3rd parties.
Anyway, let’s see how things will go. I believe everyone deserves a second chance, so let’s see how Facebook will behave in the next months.
Other relevant news
Apple way be working on a VR headset
According to Bloomberg, next year Apple is going to release a VR headset with limited passthrough AR functionalities. The device, internally codenamed as N301, should be a high-end premium device, containing Apple’s “most advanced and powerful chips”, so we can speculate it’s a standalone headset, and a fabric covering. The HMD should be targeted to prosumers and Apple expects sales in the order of magnitude of one Apple headset per day, per store.
This is all the information that we have, and honestly speaking, I don’t believe it that much. People started screaming at the “Oculus Quest competitor”, but I wonder why Apple should release a VR headset with just limited AR features after it has repeated for years that it doesn’t care about VR. And why it should sell an expensive competitor of the Quest, when Facebook has a headset that is cheaper and already has a big software ecosystem. Personally, I don’t think this is true: the only possibility is that this is a pro device that helps professionals (like 3D artists, movie makers, etc…) that are now in the Apple ecosystem to do their job better thanks to XR.
I’ve already heard the rumor about a hybrid VR/AR visor, and I find it a possibility, but I would find it weird that Apple releases a VR headset with “limited AR” after all the big expertise in AR it has gathered with ARKit.
Anyway, as Robert Scoble says, there are many XR prototypes inside Apple now: they are verifying what works and what not, and this can just be one of them that will be discarded or that will heavily be modified before reaching the market. We’ll see.
Gabe Newell explains Valve Index shortages, and more
The GabeN is currently in New Zealand, enjoying a lockdown-free life (New Zealand has zero Coronavirus cases). In an interview with a local magazine, he has talked about many topics, including the thought about moving all Valve employees to New Zealand, how is his life lately, and if he’s going to release Half-Life 3 (he didn’t answer, of course).
For us XR fans, there has been some interesting information too. Gabe has for instance said that Half-Life: Alyx has been a great game for Valve, and after it, the company has discovered again the passion for making single-player games. It has also confirmed they’re working on some games, but when the reporter asked about the codename “Citadel” (the leaked codename of an upcoming asymmetric VR game), he said that he doesn’t know about it (but could he answer something else?). Anyway, this seems to confirm that Valve is working on new VR games after the big success of Alyx.
Regarding the Valve Index, GabeN explained that it went out of stock because one of the needed components came from Wuhan (yes, exactly that city…) and during the pandemic, Sony and Microsoft got all the supplies, so Valve had enormous problems in manufacturing the device. This explains the shortage of Valve Index headsets in all these months.
More info (Gabe Newell says Valve is working on new games)
More info (Gabe Newell explains Index shortages)
More info (Full interview to Gabe Newell)
Amazon acquires Umbra
Amazon has just acquired the Finnish company Umbra. Umbra has one of the most advanced technologies in the world to manage giant 3D models in the cloud and this technology was mostly employed for gaming, but it could be used for AR and VR as well. The details of the deal are undisclosed (as always).
This acquisition is very important because it fits well in the “AR Cloud” wars that I forecasted in my predictions for this year in AR. Managing giant models in the cloud could be very important both for cloud rendering and streaming of XR scenes to lightweight headsets, but also to manage in the cloud the mesh of the whole world. Remember that to have our distributed mixed reality world of the future, companies should have in their servers a perfect digital copy of the real world, so that it is possible to add augmentations to it. The management of this digital map of the world is very complicated, and the acquisition of Umbra can be useful exactly for this, representing an important piece of the AR Cloud puzzle for Amazon.
In my humble opinion, this shows that Amazon is working itself to some kind of AR Cloud service and it is running for the domination of the XR market, too.
(Thanks David for the tip!)
More info (Use Google Translate)
A new ID Software VR game is arriving
On the Australian Games Classification website is now possible to find the filing for a new VR game by ID Software. We don’t know much, just that it is codenamed “Project 2021A” and it’s a violent game with mild violent language.
The community has started dreaming about an official Doom or Quake game in VR, and for sure this is a game that will make an impact. If Bethesda is going to release a new VR game, it will have great visibility in all gaming communities, and it is a piece of great news for VR.
Who else is hyped?
(Thanks Ilja Zegars for the tip!)
News worth a mention
Wave shuts down its VR experience to focus on streaming
VR concerts company Wave has announced at the end of last week that it is going to close its VR experience to focus on CGI concerts that will be streamed as videos. The decision comes after the dismissal of Google Poly, a service deeply used by Wave, which would require the company to invest time and money to find and integrate a substitute.
Some people asked me for a commentary (since I make VR concerts as well), so here you are: when you do a VR concert and you stream it on video/social platforms, streaming viewers are at least 50x the number of VR users (usually, even more), so currently the big market is the one of streaming. That’s why a VC-baked company like Wave now focuses on where the money is. The problem is that the quality is somewhere else: whoever has seen our last concert in video and then inside VRChat, told me that the interactive version is way better.
VR concerts are amazing, but like everything VR, they will need time to hit the mainstream.
Aryzon now lets you print your AR headset
Aryzon is a Dutch company producing the cardboard of AR, a phone holder through which you can enjoy affordable augmented reality.
The viewer has always been in cardboard, but now the startup has created some STL models that you can 3D print yourself so that to have a more resistant and durable device made in plastic. The kit costs €25, to which you should add the price of the 3D printing process, which maybe brings the price of the whole device to around 60€. Still very affordable if you compare it with the price of other AR headsets, and very interesting for those who want to dip his/her toes into AR.
Virtuactions proposes LBEVR with Oculus Quest 2
East European startup Virtuactions is proposing location-based entertainment with the Oculus Quest. For sure you remember well the Dead And Buried demo at OC4: this company is exactly proposing something similar with a multiplayer shooter game in which 4–10 players can play together in a physical arena that can go from 60 to 400 m2.
I’ve read about many companies experimenting with this, but Virtuactions is one of the first that I’ve seen actually doing this. A system to let people play together in a venue with just a lightweight headset on and no backpacks, enjoying the freedom of movement and having fun. The system also includes a complete management service for the location owner, in which he can customize the headsets and the game maps.
A very interesting solution for the future of LBEVR (Location Based Entertainment in VR).
NVIDIA and AMD solve VR-related bugs
This week NVIDIA and AMD have solved some problems that hurt the performances of their VR users.
NVIDIA has finally released a hotfix for the stuttering problem that some of its RTX users were having while using SteamVR. A complete solution will require time, but for now, this fix should be enough for most people.
AMD, instead, has released a Radeon Software Adrenalin update that solved stability problems while using Oculus Link for many of its users.
This week, many VR users felt relieved.
More info (NVIDIA)
More info (AMD)
Some numbers about VR training
Axon Park has written on its blog a very long and detailed article on VR training. The article contains some useful stats that you can use in your presentation or to impress some potential customer, like for instance: “[surgeons trained with VR] made ½ the number of mistakes and [their training] cost 3,400% less than traditional learning methods”, or “VR [fire training] improved performance by 250%”.
A very interesting read for sure.
Haptic suits can be an advantage to pro gamers
I had never thought about it, but a video by Alex VR made me think: if a professional VR gamer uses a haptic suit, he can have an advantage over other gamers. Since the haptic suit makes him/her feel on the body where he/she has been hit, he/she can immediately react by aiming at that side and shooting there. This is especially useful if the shot is on the back. Without the suit, he/she should rotate the head and look where the enemy actually is. This means that all XR e-sports players should buy a VR suit.
XR Gamification can help you perform your daily tasks
A guy on Reddit turned its task of vacuuming the house into fun by making a VR game about it with the VR environment that is exactly mapped to his room and attaching a Touch controller on its vacuum cleaner. This way he can have fun while performing the cleaning. This can be a preview of how our life will become in the future, when with pervasive AR we can turn many of our boring tasks into games.
Get a Bender decal for your Quest
I’ve just discovered that there is a Bender sticker that you can attach to your Quest and make it very badass. Now I can’t thing about anything else.
Hitman 3 has been launched on PSVR
Hitman 3 has been launched, and PlayStation users have the advantage that they can also play it in VR. PC users can hope that a VR version will be released in the future, and the discovery of some strings related to Oculus in the source files of the game makes us hope about it.
The game has generally been acclaimed as good by the reviewers, but no one was very enthusiastic about it: the fact that the game can be controlled only by the gamepad is for sure an immersion killer for its players.
More info (Hitman 3 Launch Trailer)
More info (Hitman 3 Review)
More info (References to Oculus in Hitman 3 code)
Some news on content
- Ubisoft’s job postings point to the fact that Splinter Cell VR will have a multiplayer mode;
- Beat Saber launches an update that brings 90Hz to Quest 2. The Multiplayer version for PSVR is also close to a release;
- Wallace and Gromit AR experience launches on smartphones;
- Resident Evil 7 reaches 1 million VR users. This is an astonishing number for a game only available for PSVR;
- WW1 Warplane is a very good airplane fighting simulation that you can find on SideQuest;
- MakeReal has created a very interesting training app to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace;
- UploadVR has captured a gameplay video of Gorn on Quest and it is very nice;
- Population one is going to launch its Season 1 soon!
- Korg Gadget VR makes you create music while you are in VR;
- Dino Eruption is an indie VR game about dinosaurs launched on Steam;
- Yupitergrad is coming to Quest on January, 28th (the same day as Gorn).
More info (Splinter Cell VR)
More info (Beat Saber 90Hz)
More info (Beat Saber PSVR Multiplayer)
More info (Wallace Gromit AR)
More info (Resident Evil 7)
More info (WW1 Warplane)
More info (Make Real)
More info (Gorn)
More info (Population One)
More info (KORG)
More info (Dino Eruption)
More info (Yupitergrad)
News from partners (and friends)
I’m proud to announce to you that Awe Nite is back in Italy, exactly in the beautiful city of Florence. And it kickstarts with amazing Italian XR professionals as speakers!
Thanks to the passion of Cecilia Lascialfari, the neverending work of Ori Inbar, and a bit of my support, Awe Nite Florence has born to create a healthy community of AR and VR, that starts from Italy and arrives worldwide. In this first episode, we are honored to host 3 speakers from whom you can learn a lot:
- The famous VR entrepreneur Fabio Mosca
- The award-winning storyteller Omar Rashid
- The VR festivals pioneer Mariangela Matarozzo
The event is all digital (and in English), so you can join it from all over the world on January, 28th at 5pm CET / 8am PST.
Wolf 3D is an interesting company that creates avatars starting from a single photo. Now it is expanding its ecosystem so that you can keep your digital identity in many VR applications. This week they have announced a partnership with MeetinVR (a VR meetings company) and LIV (the service to make videos of you playing VR games). And new compatible platforms are arriving…
Learn more (Wolf 3D and MeetinVR)
Learn more (Wolf 3D and LIV)
Brazilian startup Mespper has just expanded its ecosystem that runs across Brazil and China. Thanks to a partnership with 720Yun, it will be able to have even more high-quality content for its management system powered by WebXR.
Learn more (Use Google Translate)
Some XR fun
What VR game is Bernie playing? Or is he watching SLR?
Ah, he’s playing Beat Saber!
I’ve discovered that “toilet paper tactical reload” is a thing in VR
Rec Room right now
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