The XR Week Peek (2021.04.12): HTC and Pico are ready to launch new VR headsets, and more!

This week has been pretty crazy: It all started with Facebook approving my silly The Unity Cube application (an application with just a cube) on App Lab. I’ve written a post to spread the news, highlighting the lessons learned from this app that I made to test the App Lab process and promote freedom for us developers and creatives on the stores. Unexpectedly, the news got the interest of many, and it has been featured on Road To VR, Forbes, FReality Podcast, and others! The cube has a 4.5 score on the Oculus App Lab now. It’s been fun (you should read the reviews that people are writing!), and I plan to write a post this week or the next one about this amusing launch and all the lessons learned! In the meanwhile, if you can, go giving 5 stars to the cube on App Lab… who knows if Facebook may consider promoting it on the main Oculus Store…

Top news of the week

HTC is teasing a new headset

HTC is teasing a new piece of hardware again, and this time most probably it will be a VR headset. In a tweet, it shared the photo of a tiny piece of the device, accompanied by the sentence “now that the accessories are out of the way, let’s get down to business.”
 
In the photo, it is only possible to see a tracking camera on the corner of the front of the device, which makes us think about a camera layout similar to the one of the Oculus Quest, and the turn on/off button. Not much, honestly. The sentence, as highlighted by Road To VR, may be a reference that it will be an enterprise headset. HTC loves playing with the words, so “get down to business” can be a reference to the fact that it is a “business headset”. This would be perfectly in line with HTC’s best expertise, which is in the enterprise sector (do you remember when all LBEVR venues used Vive Pros?).
 
Regarding the specifications, we can get the best information from an old leak on GeekBench, that talked about a Vive Focus powered by an XR2 chipset. If this is the case, we can think about a device that is more or less in line with the Quest 2 (probably slightly better). As for the price, don’t expect anything cheap: if it is for companies, I expect the double of the Quest 2, probably $600… $500 if in Taipei they want to be generous.
 
For the Vive Tracker, HTC needed 7–10 days to go from the first teasing image to the official reveal, so I guess we’ll know about this Vive Focus XR2 before the end of the month. I hope it will be good because we need competitors to Facebook also in the enterprise space.
 
Besides the new headset, according to DigiTimes, HTC is going to launch soon also new 5G phones. I think that HTC will do something with them regarding AR or VR too. There are many hints about this. First of all, even the original Vive Focus was able to connect to the phone to let you use your 2D apps on a giant screen, and this proves that HTC loves connecting the phones to XR features. Then, the Vive Cosmos had to work with a phone originally, before that feature was put to a halt. And finally, HTC’s EMEA General Manager Graham Wheeler has predicted the “rise of All in Two devices”… and since executives’ predictions always talk about what a company is doing… well, I would expect they’re experimenting on that. Exactly what AR/VR features are going to come with these phones, I don’t know… maybe you will be able to connect this new headset to your phone so that to exploit 5G and so cloud rendering? That would be a great feature, honestly. But who knows, maybe I’m just daydreaming.

More info (HTC teasing a new device)
More info (Vive Focus XR2 leak)
More info (Digitimes mentioning HTC 5G phones)
More info (HTC EMEA General Manager talking about All-In-Two headsets)

Other relevant news

Pico teases the Neo 3 and announces its launch date

If HTC just teases a corner of its new headset, Chinese vendor Pico is being more explicit: it has shown a photo of its new Pico Neo 3 headset and announced its launch date.
 
From the photo, the Neo 3 looks like a Quest 2 with the colors of the Pico Neo 2.There are 4 tracking cameras in the corners, and this means that Pico has switched from its usual dual-cameras layout. With the Pico Neo 2, I’ve noticed that Pico at the moment is taking inspiration from the best designs of the Quest, and it is continuing this trend with the Neo 3. As for the controllers, they look like a mix of the Oculus Touch and the controllers of the Vive Focus Plus, with some important ergonomic adjustments.
 
This Quest-Focus-Neo mix will be launched in China on May, 10th 2021. I’ve confirmed with the company that the launch will regard only China at the moment, with Western SKUs coming in the second half of the year. In China, the headset will be sold as a consumer device, and in fact, Pico is investing a lot of money to attract content producers and introducing them to the Chinese market. If you are a game developer, contact Pico now (or ask me for an introduction) to discuss this potential opportunity. In the West, I’d bet it will be an enterprise headset, but this has not been officially clarified yet.
 
I’ve seen Pico growing very well during these years, and I’m very curious to see what they are coming up with! I’m sure it will be an intriguing headset. 加油 Pico!

More info (Original news on Yivian)
More info (News on Road To VR)

HP Reverb G2 Omnicept edition launches for $1249

HP has just announced that the Reverb G2 Omnicept will be priced at $1249 and will be launched in May.
 
The Reverb G2 Omnicept is a special version of the Reverb G2 that is devoted to the enterprise sector. To the already great features of the Reverb G2, it adds eye, mouth, and heart rate tracking sensors, the ability to play sounds realistically through the HRTF function of the user, plus some tweaks to improve the ergonomics of the device. The data of these sensors can be used through the Omnicept SDK, which can not only read the raw values but also extrapolate more high-level information about the status of the user. The SDK is only free in its main features, all the rest should be paid (because it is an enterprise SDK).
 
I think the G2 Omnicept is a very interesting device for companies. The great displays of the Reverb already made it useful for those who performed prototyping and graphics, and with these sensors that can track the user, it can become very relevant also for psychology, training, marketing studies, and many other sectors. Through the heart-rate sensor, it is possible to understand how the user is tense, while the eye can tell what is the attention focus of the user, which is very important for the above applications. All sensors can be also used to give a more realistic look to the avatar of the player in social experiences.
 
The only drawback is the controllers’ tracking. So companies that need very precise controllers tracking probably should use another headset, like the Cosmos Elite, Varjo, XTAL. Technically also Pimax or Index, but these are not reliable enough in enterprise settings. For the rest, I’m sure this headset will thrive among companies!

More info

Neuralink makes a monkey play Pong

Neuralink, the BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) company by Elon Musk, has just shared an intriguing update. In it, you can see that they made a monkey play Pong with just the power of its mind.
 
Neuralink produces tiny brain implants. By adding them to the brain of the monkey (yes, they drilled its skull), they have been able to read the data of the motor area of its brain, the one that controls the movements. So, they performed a training session making the animal move a joystick and they gathered data until they understood the relation between the brain signals and the motions that the monkey wanted to perform. Thanks to this, they have gradually removed the joystick, substituting in the game the input of the joystick with the input of the mind signals of the brain of the monkey and in the end, the monkey was able to move the paddle just by thinking about moving it, without the need for the external hardware. Playing Pong with the power of the mind has so become possible!
 
This is a very fascinating piece of news, and as a fan of BCI, I’m amazed… and with me all the community. I have anyway to say that, as many have highlighted, this is not anything mind-blowing (pun intended) yet. As Mr. President highlighted, this brain-controlled Pong game is already possible with BMIs (e.g. Ctrl+Labs bracelet) without having to drill the skull. Plus, researches of this field have highlighted that similar experiments have already been performed many years ago. So there’s nothing new for the BCI community. What’s new is that Musk is much better at creating hype than the others, and thanks to this he will attract many funds and many brilliant minds, thanks to which he will actually innovate the sector, as he has always done.
 
“Follow The Money” is a good piece of advice someone told me some years ago, and Musk is now the richest man in the world. You know what I’m saying.

More info (Neuralink Monkey Pong on Road To VR)
More info (Neuralink Monkey Pong on TechCrunch)

Facebook discontinues the Rift S

The Rift S was already “a dead headset walking”, but now it is officially dead. The stocks of the headset are becoming empty on its main stores (Oculus website, Lenovo online store, Amazon US, etc…) and Facebook has stated that “it won’t replenish them”. Facebook is not producing it anymore, and if you need a Rift S, you should look at the websites that already have it in stock, or buy a used one.
 
The Rift S is the only headset that has become obsolete after just some months from this launch. The same Facebook killed it with the announcement of the Quest Link, so this announcement comes as no surprise.
 
It makes me a bit sad, though… I entered the VR field because of an Oculus Rift headset (the DK2, to be exact), and seeing the Rift line die moves me a bit. The creator of the Rift, Palmer Luckey, shares my feelings, and in fact, he shared a tweet with slightly angry vibes about this news. In it, he unveiled how a real Rift 2 should have been launched in the past… and this launch was going to happen twice, but the first time it was canceled, and the second one, it was substituted by the Lenovo not-so-exciting headset. The change of attention by Facebook lead to the departure of Brendan Iribe and started the final fracture of the old Oculus with the new Facebook.
 
Press F to pay respect for the fallen Rift.

More info (Rift S discontinued)
More info (Oculus Rift 2 canceled twice)

Is Google collecting the pieces for an XR headset?

The news of the acquisition of Dysonics made some VR experts (like Tom Ffiske and Janko Roettgers) reason about the possible long-term XR strategy of Google.
 
It is not the news per se that is very interesting, but how it fits in all the schema of things. Dysonics was a startup working with 3D audio positioning and binaural sounds, and its technology could be used at first for the Pixel Buds, and then in future AR glasses. But Google has also another interesting project it is working on: it is codenamed Wolverine, and it is aimed at giving hearing superpowers to people. Basically, if you are speaking with someone else in a crowded place, the system can isolate only the sound of the person you’re talking with, and make you speak with him/her in a better way. If we mix it with Dysonics spatial audio technology, you obtain exactly a big part of what Abrash says is the goal of Facebook for audio augmentations in Facebook’s AR glasses in the next 10 years.
 
Google now is also working on its own chips, to be implemented in the next Pixel phones… and by making custom hardware, it could be easier to make them also more compatible for XR. It has acquired North, so now it has the expertise to build beautiful smart glasses.
 
It has one of the most used AR SDK (ARCore), it has implemented AR in some of its apps (like Google Maps), it has all the data necessary to create the AR Cloud (since with Google Maps it has mapped almost all the world), it is experimenting with the search of 3D elements, and has even produced many interesting WebXR experiments (some released this week are pretty cool). And let’s not forget it has control of the most used operating system… and knows also well how to make an audio assistant.
 
I mean, looking at all these pieces together, it seems to me that Google is completing the puzzle to produce its AR glasses. If it hadn’t made a disaster with all its recent innovative projects (Google Glass, Daydream, Google Poly, Tiltbrush), I would say that everyone should beware of what Google is doing…

More info (Google acquires Dysonics)
More info (Google X’s Wolverine project)
More info (Google producing its own chips)
More info (Google’s new cool WebXR experiments)

News worth a mention

Follow NVIDIA GTC and E3 online for free

Today NVIDIA is holding its annual GTC conference, online and for free. In the keynote, it is expected that Jensen Huang is going to announce some news about AI (and maybe XR), and I’m curious to see what he is going to say. NVIDIA has sent me some cool merch to invite me to this event, and I’m so pretty happy to participate in it 🙂
 
Also, the E3 is going to be online this year. It will be from 12 to 15 June, and it will be free. I expect from it many pieces of news about upcoming games, and I also hope for some reveal about amazing VR games! I can’t wait.

More info (Info and registration to GTC)
More info (Unboxing of GTC merch) More info (Info about E3)

Epson and Razer present new smartglasses

Thanks to Tom Emrich and his amazing AR Roundup (subscribe to it if you don’t read it), I have discovered that some weeks ago I have missed the announcements of two new smartglasses:

• Epson has announced its new Moverio smartglasses. They are a very niche product used in the enterprise sector, and the new model is a slight improvement on the previous one. The press release talks about A WIDE 34° FOV and this makes me chuckle a bit;
• Razer has presented its Anzu smarglasses: priced at around 200€, they will offer audio augmentations, a bit like the discontinued Bose Frames. Let’s see if these ones will be more successful.

More info (Epson Moverio)
More info (Razer Anzu)

A VR maker has created Virtual Reality Gloves with just $22

With the nickname of “Lucas VRTech”, a very young maker has been able to create DIY Virtual Reality gloves that are worth just $22! And these gloves are compatible with SteamVR, so you can use them to play Half-Life: Alyx… isn’t this very cool?
 
He has shared its prototyping process on Youtube and also distributed for free to the community the instructions on how everyone can build them for him/herself. An amazing gift to the community by a fantastic guy!

More info

Read two interesting hardware review

Reading my favorite VR magazines, I’ve found two reviews that may be worth a read: Upload’s VR Jamie Feltham going hands-on with the HoloLens 2 and the amazing YouTubers Cas&Chary reviewing the Senseglove Nova!

More info (HoloLens 2 review)
More info (SenseGlove Nova review)

Facebook details new research on holographic lenses

Facebook Reality Labs researchers have shared new methods for the design & fabrication of compact holographic lenses for XR headsets. Holographic lenses are considered to have great potential to make XR optics that are thinner and that offer a more realistic vision, so this should be considered as a great piece of news.
 
The article is interesting, but I find it funny that they chose the acronym HOE for Holographic Optical Elements. I can’t wait for them to find an acronym for the Dynamic Indirect Culling of Kinematics.

More info

Exploits some cool discounts for VR games!

There are some interesting pieces of news if you want to get some VR games at a discounted price!
 
In the latest Humble VR Sale, you can get games like Batman VR, SuperHot, Blaston, and Gorn at a very discounted price! But Humble doesn’t stop with that: Humble “Spring Into VR” Bundle gives you up to 8 VR games (including Borderlands 2, Job Simulator, etc…) for just $15!
 
If you are a Quest guy (or gal), instead, you can exploit a -25% discount code that Facebook offers you to buy a piece of content on the Oculus store! It works only once, so you choose wisely.

More info (Humble VR Sale)
More info (Humble Spring Into VR Bundle)
More info (Oculus Store Discount Code)

Discover the Top 100 VR influencers

Knowing who are the influencers in an industry is very important to understand what are the top voices to follow, and also the people to contact in case you have to promote a VR game of yours. That’s why I’m sharing with you the classification of the top 100 VR influencers that HTC Vive has created following its criteria. Most of them are Youtubers or journalists of online magazines.
 
And no, there is not my name inside. I go crying in a corner.

More info

Davigo is a very promising game

Davigo is a very promising asymmetric game, where one person is a big VR giant and the other player can play on a 2D device as a normal-size character that has to fight against the giant. The concept is very interesting and a GIF of its gameplay has even got more than 120K likes on /r/gaming… not bad for a VR indie game!
 
It has just entered its “Alpha 2” stage, so the official release is not close… but we all can’t wait.

More info (Road To VR talks about Davigo)
More info (More than 120K likes for it on Reddit)
More info (Official website)

Some news on content

• JoyWay has revealed AGAINST, its new game that seems a mix of Beat Saber, Pistol Whip, Stride and Gorn. It may be super-fun or super-confusing, depending on how they will manage to calibrate it;
• Some minutes of gameplay of Vertigo 2 have been revealed on Youtube!
• There’s a new gameplay trailer of Demeo;
• Alvo, a Counterstrike-like game for PSVR is finally going to be released this week, after a delay of like 2–3 years. Better late than never, I guess;
• On Upload, I’ve found a very interesting article about the origins of the new upcoming game MaskMaker, and how the creator was influenced by not only his father, but philosphy, and mimes;
• Upload has reviewed Traffic Jams, and it seems a nice game;
• Altspace releases a preview version for Mac, to evaluate the potentialities of that market. This is good because there are some people that only have Apple products, and they would like to join social VR events as well;
• An indie dev team created a VR game where you can play many sports, and it looks very cool!

More info (AGAINST)
More info (Vertigo 2)
More info (Demeo)
More info (Alvo)
More info (MaskMaker)
More info (Traffic Jams)
More info (Altspace on Mac)
More info (VR Sports game)

News from partners (and friends)

My friends at OverviewArk are looking for a CTO for an unannounced project. They’re very smart and passionate about the artistic side of XR, so if you think that you may be suitable for the role thanks to your VR expertise, contact them now! I’m sure you could do great things with them.
 
Click on the links to discover more about them and to contact them!
Learn more (Official website)
Learn more (Video about their vision of the future)

HomeAR has just raised $750k from local and international private equity to improve its product to allow for better remote sale of houses. HomeAR is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform designed to improve the sales, marketing, and customer experience for residential construction companies, allowing them to make potential customers see a house before the construction has even started happening.
Learn more

Some XR fun

How is being a VR game developer
Funny link

In the West, we have Alexa, in Japan there are life-sized Waifus that can assist you
Funny link

The choice we have to make every day
Funny link

The choice Zuck has given us
Funny link

Dilbert knows how the future metaverse will be
Funny link

The best conspiracy theory about VR
Funny link

True story about game developers, publishers, journalists, influencers, and gamers
Funny link

D-D-Donate!

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(Header image by HTC Vive)