The XR Week Peek (2021.03.08): Microsoft launches Mesh, HTC and Pico tease new hardware, and more!
Happy Women’s Day to all the women in XR! I think the spirit of this day is to show our men’s appreciation for what women do and our support for their future goals. So tet’s take a moment to appreciate all the amazing women we have in our community: journalists, CEOs, developers, or even just enthusiasts! There are many women in XR I personally know and I’m honored to have them in my community because they are incredibly smart and passionate. Most of them have also always supported me when I had the opportunity, and I did the same when I could.
I’m very happy to be part of such an inclusive community and I wish you all women a great Women’s XR Day. You are all fantastic! Here you are my flower for you!
Top news of the week
Microsoft announces Mesh, an XR collaboration platform
Alex Kipman promised us a Microsoft Ignite conference with an amazing level of immersion, and he kept his word. The conference was held in Altspace VR, but it was not like the usual Altspace meeting, because first of all his avatar (and some other ones) were made with volumetric capture, and then the visuals of the surroundings were amazing and some parts were even interactive. Especially the first feature made most people go in awe: volumetric videos are very expensive, so they’re typically not used during XR events. But since Microsoft owns one of those studios (and using it costs around $100K/day if I remember well!), they had no problems in using it.
The result was the one of having Alex Kipman as if he was really in front of you, a fantastic immersive feature for an XR event. Some people wondered if the avatar moved in realtime with the real Alex, but the answer is no, of course, he was pre-recorded. This is also confirmed by the Wired article, where the journalist states that he has been able to see the conference in preview before the general audience. Recorded or not, the result was so cool that videos of Ignite conference became viral in all the XR community.
During this amazing conference, we had also an amazing announcement: the Microsoft Mesh platform. I admit I was pretty confused about what Mesh was since the various people in the community seemed to talk about a collaboration platform like Spatial. Actually, it is not a new Spatial, it is much more: it is an XR collaboration platform, but not in the sense of “application”, but in the sense of “SDK”. It is not an app, but a tool to build apps.
Microsoft Mesh is a full suite of tools to let you build your multi presence collaborative XR application. It features APIs that offer:
- Local multi presence (people in the same room seeing the same holograms) or remote multi presence (people from all over the world that meets in the same place);
- Communication and interaction with all these people: voice communication, 3D object manipulation, and sharing, etc…
- Avateering system that can show avatars with different levels of fidelity (cartoonish, but also volumetric);
- Secure login system;
- Cross-platform support: HoloLens, VR headsets (including the Quest), mobile phones, PC;
- Cloud rendering, so that even complex scenes can be rendered on mobile devices;
- Unity SDK, with Unreal one coming soon;
- Security and privacy.
All of this running thanks to the power of the Azure cloud. Basically, if you pay for the Azure Cloud, you can have all the building blocks to create easily a multi presence experience that runs on all devices for all people easily. If Microsoft commits to building this platform and doesn’t abandon it (a la Google), it can become an incredible tool for us developers. Building such a multiplayer system is very complex (multiplayer always creates problems during development), and having a system with all the above features out of the box would let all developers create the barebones of a multiplayer XR space that runs on all the devices in some days. Microsoft is trying to build a platform of tools that all work through its cloud. It’s trying to set a standard for multiplayer experiences.
Of course, it is also building its own applications based on the platform:
- AltspaceVR will be rebuilt using Mesh;
- Microsoft Dynamics 360 will use Mesh in the future;
- The journalists have been able to meet with the Microsoft team using a multiplayer experience dubbed “Fenix”, and maybe this can be a new product.
The feedback we had from journalists on these systems has been pretty positive. Of course, while Upload’s Ian Hamilton was amazed by the possibility of meeting people in AR like if they were in real life, the journalist of a more mainstream media like Wired complained about the current difficulties of setting up an XR system. We know, XR is still not there. But we’ll get there.
Microsoft has also announced a partnership with Niantic, and they even showcased a “Prototype of Pokemon Go with HoloLens 2”. This “prototype” actually was just a video with 2 people and 2 Pokemon in AR, and we don’t even know how much was faked and how much was real… but the important thing is the partnership here. Microsoft has amazing cloud services that can let developers build multi presence applications, one of the best AR glasses, and great local localization and mapping services. Niantic is building a map of the mesh of the world and has millions of worldwide users. If they partner, they can build together a full AR Cloud system, with great localization at coarse scale and fine local scale, multiplayer, and avateering. They could build together something that could seriously compete with Facebook and Apple: let’s keep an eye on them.
In the end, it is interesting to read on Wired that according to Kipman, the demand for HoloLens 2 is 4–5x the one for HoloLens 1. This makes me estimate sales in the 200–250K order of magnitude. Not bad at all for an expensive enterprise toy. And he somewhat confirmed they are also experimenting on possible future consumer products…
More info (Official article on Microsoft Mesh)
More info (Building blocks of the Mesh platform)
More info (Launch video of the Mesh platform)
More info (Wired goes hands-on with Mesh)
More info (Upload goes hands-on with Mesh)
More info (Microsoft announces partnership with Niantic)
More info (Clip of the Ignite Conference / 1)
More info (Clip of the Ignite Conference / 2)
Other relevant news
HTC is teasing the launch of a new hardware
With a tweet, HTC has just teased the upcoming launch of a new device. The tweet shows a grey Vive logo and the caption “It’s your move”.
It’s clear they’re rising the hype for a new device, but it is not clear what it will be, nor when it will be launched. It may be a new standalone device: we know that HTC is going to launch a new headset this year: Mr. President told this to me during the Virtual Reality Day and has confirmed this in other various public interviews. But at the same time, why the “It’s your move” caption? Because of the freedom of movement guaranteed by the headset?
Another theory is that it is because they’re not going to launch a new headset, but a new tracking system, and so you can move and be tracked in VR. The Vive Tracker is now pretty old and new alternatives from companies like Manus and Tundra Labs are going to be launched, so it could be a good idea to renew it a bit.
This second theory is the one I believe the most also considering the two other more recent tweets from the company: one asks “What would you do with 70% more energy?” and the second “Is your footwork fancy? We want to see your dance skills! Post your VR dance clips below”. The last one is the most explicit of them all. So, it seems that they are going to launch a Vive Tracker with 70% more battery time than the first one. That’s cool, I can’t wait to discover more of its features. I especially also hope that it will be cheaper than the first version…
More info (HTC is going to launch a new hardware)
More info (Second tweet from HTC) More info (Third tweet from HTC)
Pico Neo 3 is coming in Q2 2021
Chinese VR manufacturer Pico has just got a big round of financing of 242M yuan (circa 37 million dollars) to continue developing its hardware and software platforms. Pico is a VR startup that is growing up well, and I think this money is deserved.
UPDATE 2021.03.09: Pico has clarified that 37M dollars are just for the B+ round, the total B round was around $56M
In the article on Yivian announcing the news, there are many people from Pico saying the usual boring press statements. But at a certain point, Pico CEO Zhou Hongwei says “We will launch a new generation of all-in-one product Pico Neo 3 in Q2 this year and continue to introduce global high-Quality VR games and applications.”.
This is pretty big news for the enterprise XR world: Pico Neo 2 launched last year and it was one of the best enterprise VR headsets, and they are already launching the third generation! Maybe the release of the Quest 2 has forced them to level up the game. We have no further details on this, and while I think this won’t be a Quest competitor (Pico is too little to compete with Facebook), it could be an amazing headset for enterprise users. Let’s wait to have more news about it.
Google stops selling Cardboard viewers
Google had already abandoned the Daydream and Cardboard platforms, leaving the source code for Cardboard to the community to maintain. But it was still selling the cardboard viewer on its website, probably to get rid of leftover stock. Now that the stocks are probably over, the store page of Cardboards doesn’t exist anymore. Google is completely done with Cardboard.
This is the final nail on the coffin for Cardboard, a viewer that has sparked a lot of debates in the community because on one side it has helped a lot in creating awareness of VR (it is still the most distributed headset with 15M devices), but on the other side, it generated a wrong awareness, because people thought that VR was the crappy 3DOF one offered by that headset. Personally, I think that it did good more than wrong, and it made more people approach VR at a time when a headset required you to spend $1000, so I’m a bit sad for the end of it. But now it’s time for VR to shine with affordable standalone headsets…
More info (Google stops selling Cardboard)
More info (A positive opinion on Cardboard from the community)
More info (A negative opinion on Cardboard from the community)
Quest keeps sparking debates, but the sales keep being strong
Of course, there is news on Quest also from this week. The first one is the usual reminder that this headset is selling incredibly well. Now the Quest 2 is the most used headset on Steam, and it is not even marketed as a PCVR headset. Facebook is slowly gaining a monopoly also in the PCVR market, after having dominated the standalone one. In Korea, the second batch of Quest 2 that was offered by SK Telekom has been depleted in 4 minutes (!!). The Oculus companion app has been downloaded in total 5 million times, and this makes us think that the total sales of Quest 1 & 2 devices have probably been around 3–4 million, which would mean that the Quest 2 has surely sold more than 2M headsets until now.
The affordable price and the great content library are making the Quest a device to which it is impossible to say no. All of this notwithstanding all the debates it creates around it, like the one around its walled garden.
News of this week is that applications on the App Lab distribution platform can’t use Cloud VR services. The official explanation is that Cloud VR can’t guarantee a quality that is good enough for the user (e.g. latency can be high), and so these apps are not allowed.
I completely agree with this statement, Cloud VR services are not ready for a mainstream rollout, but the big problem is that App Lab has been made for EXPERIMENTAL apps, so it should let developers add experimental features. Otherwise… what would be the point of App Lab???
Facebook is imposing arbitrary rules to App Lab, that more than an open platform like SideQuest, looks like a B-tier of the Oculus Store. Probably Cloud VR services have been banned because they could make people circumvent the Oculus Store (you could connect to a cloud service and play all the PC VR games that you want and never buy games on the Oculus Store), or because Facebook plans to launch its own Cloud VR service in the upcoming times, so it doesn’t want the competition to steal its own market.
The last news regards the 120hz mode for Quest 2: we were so happy that it was going to arrive this month, that Facebook has changed its roadmap: now it is expected generically for Q2 2021 and with “low” confidence in delivery. And even if it delivers, Carmack says that only a few apps would be able to exploit it, because it is very demanding. We can put our champagnes back in the fridge 🙁
(Thanks Ilja Z for this tip, you are great!)
More info (Quest 2 is the most used headset on Steam)
More info (Quest 2 selling well in Korea)
More info (Oculus Android app having 5 million installs)
More info (Facebook disallows Cloud XR apps)
More info (The community talks about the ban of Cloud XR apps)
More info (120Hz mode for Quest 2 delayed)
More info (Carmack talks 120Hz mode for Quest 2)
News worth a mention
Rec Room plans giving $1M to its content creators
The Rec Room community is growing pretty steadily, also thanks to the great sales of the Oculus Quest. Thanks to this, the company has been able to create a healthy internal marketplace, where some people can create items that others can buy. All the transactions happen using Rec Room tokens, but recently the company made it possible to convert these tokens back to real money.
And given its big success, the company plans to give back this year more than $1M to content creators! This is an amazing piece of news because it means that some people will be able to make a living out of a VR experience, confirming again the health of the XR ecosystem.
Bank Of America to use VR training
VR training solutions are so successful that their adoption is not even news, but I think that this time I have to make an exception. Bank Of America has decided to implement VR training offered by STRIVR for its employees, and the scale to which it will happen is pretty vast: 50,000 EMPLOYEES will use this training experience. Be sure to use this use case in your next presentation about VR.
Stonx offers cheap SteamVR tracking
A Swedish teenager and two friends of his have founded Stonx, a startup that is building affordable trackers for SteamVR. The whole package should cost $165 for a full-body tracking solution, which is a very low price considering that a single Vive Tracker is worth $100.
Notice that the system is so cheap because it is not so accurate and resistant as the official HTC Vive solution, but for some makers and VTubers, this could be enough.
Build your multiplayer A-Frame experience
I’ve found a very detailed tutorial on how to develop your own multiplayer WebVR experience based on A-Frame. If you like WebXR, you should have a look at it!
Gorilla Tag is the last VR phenomenon
It seems that many people want to reject humanity and return to monke. The indie game Gorilla Tag, which has been developed for fun by a solo dev has exploded in the last few days. It has gathered 42K players in the last two weeks and its success doesn’t seem to stop. It is very rough and limited, but the vocal chat, the use of the “monke” trend, and the original locomotion mechanic where you throw yourself with your arms make it a very fun game. Unluckily for the dev, currently the game is all free, so this success isn’t translating in money through which he can hire people to develop the game. I hope he will be able to monetize it because he deserves to have a return from this great success!
Sony announces new games for PSVR
After having announced it is working on a PSVR2, Sony has confirmed its interest in VR announcing new titles for its virtual reality console:
- Doom 3 VR, that wasn’t available for PlayStation (people on PC and Quest could use DrBeef’s mods);
- After The Fall by Vertigo Games, which looks like a cool action game about shooting zombies. Interestingly, this game will also launch on “Unannounced VR platforms”, which makes us think it will be available for PSVR 2 too;
- I Expect You To Die 2, the sequel of one of the best VR games;
- Fracked, a new game by nDreams that from the trailer seems to feature many interesting locomotion mechanics;
- Song in the Smoke by Galak-Z developer 17-Bit. It’s a VR survival game that focuses on crafting, hunting, scavenging, and exploration;
- Zenith, the MMO VR world that has been in development for a while.
Among these titles only Doom 3 and Fracked are PSVR exclusives, but all of them look very interesting. I can’t wait for them to hit the market.
More info (All announcements by Sony)
More info (Doom 3 VR)
More info (After The Fall)
More info (After The Fall on announced platforms)
More info (Fracked)
Some news on content
- The Climb 2 is now out on Quest and it is a great game like the first one;
- Wraith The Oblivion from Fast Travel Games is going to offer a new kind of VR horror made by fewer jumpscares and more scary atmosphere. It is going to launch on Oculus headsets on April 22nd and on SteamVR on May 25th;
- Upload has reviewed Crashland and it seems to be a good game;
- Impulse Gear teased it is working on a new game due to be released in 2021;
- Resolution Games has released a cool trailer for its upcoming dungeon crawler Demeo;
- The Secret Of Retropolis seems to be a nice VR indie game inspired by old point-and-click adventures.
More info (The Climb 2 review on Road To VR)
More info (The Climb 2 review on Upload VR)
More info (Wraith Release Date)
More info (Fast Travel Games talks about Wraith)
More info (Road To VR goes hands-on with Wraith)
More info (Crashland review)
More info (Impulse Gear’s new game)
More info (Demeo) More info (The Secret Of Retropolis)
News from partners (and friends)
The AR/VR company MetaVRse of the influencer Alan Smithson has just announced a very interesting new service called Virtual Showcase, a web-based cool virtual space where you can showcase and sell your products. In a time where virtual fashion is on the rise, this looks like something that could have a good market.
XR Access is a community committed to making virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (XR) accessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility is a very important theme we should always talk about in our technology circles and I’m very glad that these kinds of associations exist, and to support them.
SXSW is going virtual with VRrOOm! Finally, I can unveil one of the big projects I was working on: SXSW. This important American event can’t happen in physical space because of the coronavirus, so the organizers decided to do a version that can work in virtual reality. We of the VRrOOm team have been very happy to help them, and from next Monday you all will be able to experience it from PC, PC VR, and Quest from inside VRChat! Let me tell you that the 3D artists have made an amazing job and the visuals are gorgeous, you can’t miss it 😉
The video of our AWE Nite Florence about Virtual fashion is now available! And don’t miss our upcoming event that is going to be on March, 25th that will be about “XR in “… I’ll tell you next time!
Learn more (Video about Fashion in XR)
Learn more (Registration to our next event)
Some XR fun
Sony seems to be patenting bananas as controllers for the next-gen PSVR! (Actually, while this seems funny in the beginning, it could be an interesting idea to use real objects as controllers of XR peripherals)
MyHeritage’s system to animate photos is pretty cool, but it becomes a bit creepy when you try to animate objects like statues
VR: Expectations vs Reality
Play VR and save the world
Every time I use VR before working
Slim Shady knows how it is playing Gorn in a small space
Give me a P, an A, T, R, E, O, N!
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