The XR Week Peek (2021.11.29): Black Friday deals, investments in Niantic, and more!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you all American friends have celebrated it with your families and have eaten a lot of turkeys (or whatever vegan alternative), enjoying good times with your peers. If you were wondering, we in Italy do not celebrate Thanksgiving, but I would love one year to participate in its celebration hosted by an American family. Who knows, maybe next year 🙂
 
Before leaving, I have to tell you that in a few days I will be hosted by a podcast organized by Deltatre Innovation Lab, where I’ll meet again my partner in crime at Immotionar! Here you are all the platforms where you can watch/listen to it:

• Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.it/e/biglietti-arvrxr-under-the-xmas-tree-217582474037
• Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/276868047714907
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hmF5N346Z8
• Facebook Live: https://www.facebook.com/108960177483382/posts/439999894379407/
• Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/DILA_social

Top news of the week

Enjoy Black Friday deals!

Due to Thanksgiving, this week we had almost no really relevant news for the industry. So let’s enjoy the good that Thanksgiving has given to us, that is the sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday! Almost all VR companies are proposing some interesting discounts, with most of them lasting even some days after today. You can buy headsets at a discounted price, or accessories, or even lots of games on Steam, Viveport, and Oculus Store!
 
Here below I have selected some news articles that talk about some cool offerings that you can exploit these days. I recommend you especially the last two links that contain a collection of many discounts from many different brands. Enjoy!

More info (Steam Autumn Sales)
More info (Black Friday Oculus Store)
More info (Bean Stalker game discounted)
More info (VR Wave Prescription Lenses)
More info (XR Bootcamp offering a free course)
More info (Upload VR’s roundup of all known deals)
More info (Road To VR’s roundup of all known deals)

Other relevant news

Niantic receives $300M of investment

Niantic has been given a $300M Series D investment which now sets the company at a $9 billion evaluation. This fresh new money is given to build what Niantic calls the “real-world metaverse”, which is just a fluffy sentence to say that the mission of the company is to build AR geolocated content with social components.
 
Niantic has just released its Lightship SDK to let external developers create this kind of content, and see what the community can create with it. Some companies have already announced they are working with it, and a piece of news from this week is that Fold will build with Niantic “Fold AR”, a game similar to Pokemon Go, but where instead of catching Pokemons, you catch cryptocurrencies. This is weird in my opinion, but it’s interesting to see that different companies are trying different kinds of solutions, and maybe one of them will stick like Pokemon Go.
 
I think this news about the new rounding fund is interesting because it gives Niantic new money and credibility to become a serious competitor of all the major companies in the rush to our immersive future. The company already has a very precious asset, that is the AR Cloud, the reconstruction of the mesh of a great part of the world, thanks to the millions of players that play Pokemon Go every day. It is building the reference design of AR glasses and has a valid SDK for building outdoor AR experiences. It is not as big as Facebook, but I think it is a company to keep an eye on.

More info (Niantic receiving an investment)
More info (Fold AR)

Apple XR headset may have great processing power

This week I’m so desperate that there is no news to write about that I’m even sharing a rumor about the Apple headset.
 
According to the reliable Ming-chi Kuo, that is reliable because it says one thousand different things about the future Apple XR products and so some of them will of course come out to be true, the upcoming Apple MR visor will be a standalone one, hosting two chips, one to handle the data of the sensors, and the other one to give computational power to the applications it runs. This second chipset should be as powerful as the M1 chips that are present in current Macs. This headset would so have a quite big processing power, being able to deliver far better experiences than the Oculus Quest.
 
Mr. Kuo says that the headset has “at least 6–8 optical modules to simultaneously provide continuous video see-through AR services.” The visuals would be provided by two 4K OLED microdisplays from Sony. If this is confirmed, we are talking about a next-gen device… and this could explain why Facebook is rushing to release Project Cambria next year.
 
Mr. Kuo says that the headset should be released in Q4 2022. I have to say that I have heard the rumor about the chipsets and the 2022 release date also from other sources, so it may be that this is truly one of the options that Apple has in mind. But remember that Apple has also a long history of changing its minds on future products, so don’t trust any of these rumors.

More info

Read the postmortem of Eye Of The Temple

Eye Of Temple is one of the most famous indie VR games on Steam, and it has just been launched out of early access. Its sole developer, Rune Skovbo Johansen, has published a postmortem post about the launch to talk about his experience with the game, and I think that it is an article worth reading.
 
It is important because it sheds light on how is the true life of most VR indie developers. While Meta loves talking about the games that are making $10M in revenues and most articles are about successful games, almost no one talks about what happens to the majority of indie developers, that have a much more difficult life.
 
Mr. Johansen tells us that even if his game is a successful one, most probably the earnings from Steam won’t be enough to cover all the development costs of the game. He shows how it is difficult to gain visibility for an indie game, and how everything is hard to perform while you are on a budget. It shows that while VR is becoming successful for some, most developers are still in survival mode.
 
If you want to see how is the true life of a VR developer, take some time and read this post. And remember: we are talking about a game almost everyone in the VR communities knows… most VR indies are in a situation even worse than this one.
 
(Thanks Rob Cole for the tip)

More info

News worth a mention

Resident Evil 4 VR is the “Fastest selling game” on Quest

According to Meta, Resident Evil 4 VR is the “fastest selling game” ever on Oculus Quest. The classification is made on gross revenue generated in the game’s first week on the store. This shows that a high-quality game based on a strong IP and promoted with great marketing has the potential of selling very well in VR. Given its success, most probably Meta will decide to produce similar games in the future.

More info

Machine Learning can make real events become virtual

Jack Davis, who is a researcher in Machine Learning & Machine Intelligence at Cambridge University, has created an ML system that is able to reconstruct the 3D version of a sport event from its real footage. This is fascinating because it could let people enjoy in VR events that are happening in real life, or help also in creating phygital events of other kinds.

More info

Justin Bieber just had its concert inside Wave

Wave has just hosted its great digital concert of the pop star Justin Bieber. The company has abandoned VR, so the concert was enjoyable only via video streaming, but the quality of the CGI was very cool the same. The only problem is that this concert was just a solo performance, and it was impossible for people to enter inside and enjoy it together as it happens on Fortnite or VRChat.

More info

Read some interesting reviews

This week I have read some interesting reviews of XR devices:

• The Verge has reviewed Nreal Light glasses, that are coming to the US this week. The device is not bad, but the software ecosystem has its issues;
• Upload has reviewed Vive Flow. It is very sleek, but the phone interactions are a bit clunky, and the content is not top-notch;
• I have reviewed Ekto VR shoes, which are some motorized boots to walk in VR while walking in real life. The video about it got a bit viral on social media, so I thought it was worth sharing here too.

More info (Nreal AR glasses review)
More info (Vive Flow VR glasses review)
More info (Ekto VR boots review)

Some news about content

• Hitman 3 is coming to PCVR in 2022
• Two interesting documentaries narrated by David Attenborough are coming to Oculus TV: one is about plants and the other one about the origins of life
• Unplugged is coming to PCVR for Valve Index Controllers
• Neon Kite is an indie game about kite surfing with interesting graphics and mechanics
• “Ghostbusters: Afterlife ScARe” lets you fight ghosts in AR with your phone
• Lust For Darkness VR: M edition has been released on Steam: if you like games mixing exoterism, horror, and psychology, this title may interest you. The “M” version censors the sexual scenes, so this game is more for everyone.

More info (Hitman 3)
More info (Kingdom of Plants on Oculus TV)
More info (First Life on Oculus TV)
More info (Unplugged)
More info (Neon Kite)
More info (Ghostbusters: Afterlife ScARe)
More info (Lust For Darkness VR)

News from partners (and friends)

KLM keeps being at the forefront of VR innovation and has just developed aviation training in VR together with the Albeda Rotterdam The Hague Airport College and the Deltion College in Zwolle.
Learn more

Inner Light is a new upcoming VR experience to help you to meditate and relax. From the description, it seems very interesting.
Learn more

Some XR fun

Meta/Facebook/Oculus/Whatever
Funny link

Yes, I use Stack Overflow too
Funny link

The metaverse is already here… maybe…
Funny link

Half Life Alyx but the Gnome is alive
Funny link

M**averse problems
Funny link

It’s funny because it’s true
Funny link

Money doesn’t buy happiness…

…but helps in buying tools and services so that I can offer a better service to you! That’s why I have a Patreon page so that you can help me in improving this website and related channels. This week I have just bought a new light and microphone for my videos and podcasts (see unboxing here) and I have to thank all my Patrons for this:

• DeoVR
• Raghu Bathina
• Jonn Fredericks
• Jean-Marc Duyckaerts
• Reynaldo T Zabala
• Richard Penny
• Ilias Kapouranis
• Michael Bruce
• Paolo Leoncini
• Immersive.international
• Bob Fine
• Nikk Mitchell and the great FXG team
• Jake Rubin
• Alexis Huille
• Jennifer Granger
• Jason Moore
• Steve Biggs
• Niels Bogerd
• Julio Cesar Bolivar
• Jan Schroeder
• Kai Curtis
• Francesco Strada
• Sikaar Keita
• Ramin Assadollahi
• Jeff Dawson
• Juan Sotelo
• Andrew Sheldon
• Chris Madsen
• Tracey Wong
• Matthew Allen Fisher
• Horacio Torrendell
• Andrew Deutsch
• Fabien Benetou
• Tatiana Kartashova
• Marco “BeyondTheCastle” Arena
• Eloi Gerard
• Adam Boyd
• Jeremy Dalton
• Siciliana Trevino
• Joel Ward
• Alex P
• Marguerite Espin de la Vega
• Lynn Eades
• Sb
• Vooiage Technologies
• Caroline
• Liam James O’Malley
• Paul Reynolds
• Hillary Charnas
• Donald P
• Wil Stevens
• Brian Peiris
• Simplex
• Matias Nassi

If you want to help me, too, you can click the link here below, access my Patreon page, and choose your donation tier. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Support me on Patreon!

(Header image by Meta)