The XR Week Peek (2021.08.02): Facebook creates Metaverse group and prepares to launch its smartglasses, and more!
The metaverse is the buzzword of the moment, so last week I made a stupid meme about it (you can see it on Twitter), and then yesterday I realized it had gone viral. If I had known people could like it, I would have not made it in 5 minutes with Microsoft Word, lol. It has been featured on Forbes, and shared on various social media, with some people sharing it with me again not knowing it was actually mine. What a fun thing, this is the power of the intern… no, sorry, of the metaverse.
(And if you were wondering, yes, I’m very happy about the two amazing gold medals that Italy won yesterday at the Olympics!)
Top news of the week
Facebook Reality Labs creates a group focused on working on the “metaverse”
Zuckerberg said last week that he wants in 5 years Facebook to become a “metaverse company” and this week he started taking action in this sense: he has created a group in the company focused on “building the metaverse”.
The group is composed of executives that come from different teams within the company because the metaverse should be the transformation of the whole Facebook in an immersive setting. The leader of the group will be Vishal Shah, Instagram VP of Product, that will report directly to Andrew Bosworth. Vivek Sharma, head of Facebook Gaming, will lead Facebook Horizon, while Jason Rubin, who has been head of AR/VR content, will lead the group’s content team. Facebook is going to hire many employees that will work together with these top-notch executives.
The whole team will work together towards “the metaverse”… whatever this means. Because actually, as my meme mentioned above highlights, nowadays “metaverse” is used as a buzzword, to mean whatever thing from a multiplayer game to a social network. David Heaney has written a good article on Upload VR where he tries to hypothesize what could this group of people work on, but in the end, he has no idea as well of what can be the most probable outcome.
And honestly speaking, I think they have no idea as well. An article on New World Notes mentions an insider revealing that Horizon is still in beta because the project is in a quite confusing status. It seems that Facebook has changed its mind many times on its social VR experience and also the fast turnover of Facebook employees is not helping it to have a clear direction. Facebook is good to integrate other products (e.g. Instagram) to rival competitors that are proposing features that are taking foot (e.g. TikTok), but it seems a bit less capable of creating a product defining the trends itself, according to the insider. And the fact that Horizon has just changed its head may be a confirmation of this rumor.
My personal opinion is that if they have not declared a clear purpose, and have united so many executives from so different fields, the idea is the one of exploring different solutions. They have stated they will follow the latest trend, but still don’t know how, so the team should try to understand what is the best direction to follow (and if that direction includes Horizon or not). It sounds like a group that has to work on social AR/VR and experiment with different solutions. I guess we’ll hear more about it in the upcoming months.
More info (Facebook’s metaverse group)
More info (David Heaney’s editorial on the group)
More info (Insider rumor on Horizon)
Other relevant news
Facebook’s next product to launch will be the smartglasses made together with Luxottica
Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed to his investors that Facebook’s next XR product will be the AR glasses made together with Exilor-Luxottica. The glasses had been announced at Facebook Connect for a 2021 launch, but since then we have had no news about them.
Zuck has defined them as “A stepping stone towards full augmented reality glasses”, even if they will be nothing more than smart glasses that enhance the functionalities of a phone.
We have no idea of the expected launch date, but I would bet for a full announcement at Facebook Connect 2 this year. We are also all waiting for news on a Quest 2 Pro… I wonder if Facebook will ever launch two devices during the same conference… it looks like a suicide move, so probably one will be announced (Quest 2 Pro) and the other launched (AR glasses).
Facebook announces 128 GB Quest 2 with silicone cover
Facebook has decided to address once for all the problem of the skin irritation that the facemask of the Quest 2 gave to some people. It has suspended the sales of the Quest 2 until August, 24th, and when the device will come back, the lowest tier of the Quest 2 will feature 128GB instead of 64GB, and all Quest 2 boxes will come with a silicone cover inside. The new cover will be fundamental to help all people having adverse skin reactions, that can so wear it and avoid touching the facemask. Whoever has already bought a Quest 2 is eligible to have a free silicone cover as well.
This way, Facebook solves once for all this problem, that anyway was affecting a very limited number of people. It has also exploited this to enlarge the storage of the Quest 2, because 64GB, with all the newest big games, was starting to feel very limited (I have filled all the space already, for instance). I think they handled all this situation in the best way possible.
It is very interesting that because of this recall, Facebook shared some data about how many facemasks were affected: it says 4M in the United States, around 170K in Canada. In Japan, the number is around 80K. Some people have tried to use these numbers to estimate the number of sold Quest 2: NWN for instance thinks that this means that at the moment there are around 5–6M Quest 2 headsets worldwide. But Upload VR highlights that since these numbers include not only the sold Quest 2 but also the various comfort kits (that include 2 covers each), it is impossible to use these numbers to estimate the sales of the Quest 2 in a reliable way.
What I think we can extrapolate are relative data and in particular, the fact that the Quest 2 is more popular in the USA than in Canada and Japan: 4M of sold gaskets in USA vs 170K in Canada and 80K in Japan mark a huge difference. Even if we normalize the population of the various countries to the population of the USA, we obtain that in Canada there have been less than half of sold Quest in percentage, and in Japan 1/16th of the headsets sold in the USA. Facebook seems so very strong at home, but its efforts of entering the Japanese market are not paying as expected. I would be curious to discover the numbers for the EU as well, but I haven’t found them anywhere.
More info (Facebook announces 128 GB Quest 2 and silicone cover)
More info (How to request your free Quest 2 cover)
More info (Upload VR on the number of distributed facemasks)
More info (Only 80K recalled units in Japan)
More info (NWN’s estimates on Quest 2 sales)
Sony has sold 10M PS5 worldwide
Sony Interactive Entertainment, the only company revealing the numbers of its sold devices, has publicly announced that it has already sold more than 10M Playstation 5 consoles worldwide. It has defined the PS5 as “its fastest-selling console yet”, and this statement is even more powerful if you consider the complicated period for all the technological world because of the chip shortage.
I think these numbers are important also for us XR people because next year Sony is going to launch its PSVR 2 accessory for PS5, and the bigger the userbase of the console, the bigger will be the target market for PSVR 2, that can so hope to rival in some way the Oculus Quest 2 and maybe also trigger the interest of Xbox executives. Let’s hope it will keep selling well.
News worth a mention
Gabe Newell talks again about Steam Deck and VR
Gabe Newell has had an interesting interview about Steam Deck with IGN. In it, there were again mentions of VR.
First of all, GabeN talked about how he appreciates the Steam Deck to be an open platform because it is basically a portable PC. So he said that if you want to attach to it an Oculus Quest, technically you can. This was interpreted by some VR enthusiasts as a statement that Steam Deck can be used for PCVR on the go, but actually, this is only partially true: VR can work on Steam Deck, but its performances are not guaranteed at all.
Newell has also reminded us how Half-Life: Alyx has been important for VR at Valve (and VR in general), and how it has been important to understand that the right approach is developing hardware together with software, a lesson that has been applied to Steam Deck as well.
More info (Gabe Newell about Steam Deck and Oculus Quest)
More info (Gabe Newell about Steam Deck and Alyx)
VR is not the ultimate empathy machine
“VR is the ultimate empathy machine” is a powerful sentence that Chris Milk has pronounced during a TED Talk that has been quoted thousands of times in the VR communities. I’m sorry (but not sorry, actually) to tell you that it is not true.
New research confirmed what other people already suspected about the powers of VR: the technology can elicit strong sensations, but it can’t make you understand how it is being another person. Technically speaking, it improves emotional empathy, but not cognitive empathy.
The researchers say that “VR can arouse compassionate feelings but does not appear to encourage users to imagine other peoples’ perspectives. Further subgroup analyses revealed that VR was no more effective at increasing empathy than less technologically advanced empathy interventions such as reading about others and imagining their experiences. Finally, more immersive and interactive VR experiences were no more effective at arousing empathy than less expensive VR experiences such as cardboard headsets”. A few sentences that destroy years of marketing messages by VR companies.
(Kudos to Mathew Olson to have reported this news)
Read this review of the Varjo XR-3
My review hero Benjamin Lang has reviewed the Varjo XR-3, one of the most interesting headsets on the market, for sure the one able to deliver the best mixed reality experience. In his interesting hands-on analysis, he underlines how the headset is not perfect (it features pupil swim, for instance) but the mixed reality experience it can deliver is impressive.
Facebook is evaluating the integration of Oculus Move with Apple Health
According to a report by Bloomberg, inside the iOS Oculus app, there is the code to send the fitness data recorded by Oculus Move, the fitness tracker of the Quest, to Apple Health. This feature has not been confirmed by Oculus, so it seems something that the company is experimenting on.
This would be a piece of great news for whoever uses Oculus Quest in its fitness routine, and confirms once more how much Facebook is committed to pushing on fitness to sell VR to consumers.
Discover the VR lineup at Venice VR Expanded
Venice Film Festival has a big VR lineup this year, and it has just been completely revealed. This year there are not only VR experiences that participate to win awards, but also many out-of-competition works, and this includes also VR games like Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual.
Together with the team at VRrOOm, I am working on the development of the VRChat world associated to the festival, and I can promise you that you will love it 😉
Some news on content
- Amazing VR painting app Vermillion is now available for PCVR, and it will be released on Quest on Q1 2022
- Stride releases on Oculus Quest on August, 5th
- s&box, the sequel of Garry’s Mod, is most probably going to feature full VR support
- Upload VR has reviewed Winds And Leaves, but not in an enthusiastic way
- Upload VR has reviewed positively the puzzle game Arcsmith
- Upload VR has reviewed the rhythm game Ragnarock, and found some interesting mechanics in it
- There is a new gameplay video of Synth Riders on PSVR
- Help Club is a social VR world that let people look for help for their mental health issues
More info (Vermillion)
More info (Stride)
More info (Garry’s Mod)
More info (Winds And Leaves)
More info (Arcsmith)
More info (RagnaRock)
More info (Synth Riders)
More info (Help Club)
News from partners (and friends)
Rezzil, the company that works on professional sports training in VR and is going to launch the fitness app Player 22 on Quest, announced that it secured an investment round of over £2 million. Kudos to them!
Learn more
Jetpack Vacation is a cool indie VR experience where you play many minigames all on a jetpack!
Learn more
One of the best RPG experiences in VR, Vengeful Rites, is now out of early access on Steam, and there is a -20% discount if you want to grab it!
Learn more
My friends at AnotheReality have created a cool game about Tennis that is now on App Lab
Learn more
Chinese company Shadow Creator and UK company PhotonLens have merged to create amazing AR glasses in the future!
Learn more
Some XR fun
The metADverse
Funny link
If Facebook wrote honest posts on social media
Funny link
IOI in real life
Funny link
Ok, this is a terrible joke
Funny link
The weirdest VR hack of the day
Funny link
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