The XR Week Peek (2021.12.13): Horizon Worlds is now in open beta, Among Us VR is coming, and more!

This has been a pretty interesting week for me, having spoken at XR Safety Week and Stereopsia, and having published two cool articles about creating innovative SteamVR controllers and using Application SpaceWarp in Unity to almost double the framerate of your application.
 
 But now, before starting the new week, it’s time to look back at the most important news of the previous one!

Top news of the week

Horizon Worlds goes open beta

Finally, after two years in the works, Meta has decided to open the gates of its social VR space Horizon Worlds (previously known as Facebook Horizon). Or at least, sort of: the experience is still in beta (so this is officially an open beta stage) and it will be accessible without an invite only in the US and in Canada. Ah, and you must be 18+ years old.
 
 The North-America-only limitation is quite a bummer for us Europeans, but honestly, as a developer, I understand the will of making an incremental deployment to be sure that everything works before expanding the product to many countries. I just hope that this phase will be quite short and in Q1 next year we all will be able to access it. What puzzles me a bit more is the 18+ years old requirement, given the fact that the RecRoom-esque style of Horizon well fits with a teenager audience. But I guess there were some legal reasons for that.
 
 I have read some reviews of the journalists that have been able to visit the world in preview, and no one of them wrote an excited article about it. Horizon World is more or less what we all expect from it: a clone of RecRoom with intuitive and simple creation tools, that at the moment let you just add basic geometric shape and some logic. At the moment there are already a good number of worlds to visit, and some fun attractions that the first-time visitors of Horizon can enjoy, and maybe decide to stay.
 
 It’s showtime, then. Horizon is the third social VR product that Facebook/Meta is building, and after the total failure of the past two, it’s time to see if this time it will be able to stick. For sure Meta has infinite money and an impressive number of already existing users to convert, but it has to compete with applications like VRChat and RecRoom that are already established in the market, without offering anything new or better. Plus, almost no one trusts Facebook, even if it has changed its name, so the company has also a reputation hurdle to face when compared to the competition.
 
 As usual, the market will decide, and the market is unpredictable. Will people start using Horizon every day and create a big community there? If it is the case, it will be a success. Otherwise, I guess Meta will have to perform another try…

More info

Other relevant news

Among Us VR is coming

Innersloth has unexpectedly announced that the popular game Among Us is getting an official VR version. It will be developed with the support of Schell Games and have similar features to its 2D version: tasks to perform, sabotages, deceptions, emergency meetings, and sus people.
 
 The release date has not been announced, but probably it will happen next year. We instead already know that the game should be available for Quest, SteamVR, and PSVR with cross-play enabled.
 
 I think this piece of news is super-important because Among Us has been more than a game, it has been a cultural phenomenon during the pandemic: not only the number of players was huge, but everyone was talking about it online. The fact that the studio behind such a popular game has decided to have a VR port is the sign that Virtual Reality has started to become interesting for famous indie studios. And the fact that there will be a VR version of this important game will give virtual reality even more awareness and popularity inside the gaming community.
 
 This announcement is not sus, it is just great 🙂

More info

Microsoft and Samsung may be partnering for an AR device

According to Korean media, Samsung Electronics is working with Microsoft on a new augmented/mixed reality project “involving HoloLens”.
 
 We don’t know what all of this means, but the most probable scenario is that the two companies are working together for the next generation of HoloLens AR glasses, probably the one that should target consumers. Samsung is one of the most famous suppliers of components for electronic devices (e.g. it manufacturers the screens used by many headsets), but also one of the most important manufacturers of consumer-oriented gadgets (e.g. smartphones and smartwatches) and of XR headsets (e.g. Samsung Odyssey+). It is not clear if the partnership sees Samsung only as a supplier or the full manufacturer, we only know that the two companies are going to collaborate.
 
 According to the rumor, the collaboration should end in 2023, with the first product launched in 2024, a year that is compatible with a consumer-prosumer release of an XR device. Apple is entering the XR field, and Facebook is currently dominating the VR market. It makes sense for Samsung, which is great in manufacturing hardware, to partner with Microsoft, that is doing a good job in creating a platform for XR, to compete with the other companies. I think it can be a great partnership between companies with complementary skills and that together can design a headset that is beautiful and efficient.

More info

Apple headset may be very lightweight

According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the upcoming Apple visor should weigh around 3–400g, which is much lighter than current headsets on the market, including the Quest 2. A second model would be already in the works, and it should be even smaller and lighter. If you pair this rumor with the one about the high computational power and the big screen resolution, it seems that Apple is cooking a great high-end device. The expected sales of these devices are around 3M units in 2023 for the first generation (to be launched at the end of 2022) and around 10M in 2024 for the second generation.
 
 But apart from the hardware, what Apple is doing on the software side may also be intriguing: a new job listing from the company has been published to look for an “AR/VR Frameworks Engineer” that should have the role of “developing an entirely new application paradigm”. It is not clear what it does mean: it can be that Apple is looking for a low-code/no-code solution for creators that want to use its headset, or something involving cloud streaming of applications, or just a toolkit to help developers in creating apps by having the main features of an app already ready out-of-the-box.
 
 What is clear is that Apple is taking its venture in the XR market very seriously and is working on all the pieces to create a successful headset.

More info (Rumors on upcoming Apple MR headsets)
More info (Apple hiring an AR/VR Frameworks Engineer)

Epic Games releases Matrix Resurrections tie-in experience

Epic Games has released a tie-in experience for the upcoming Matrix Resurrections. It is a big showcase demo for its Unreal Engine 5, and I have to say it is pretty impressive. A small team has crafted the experience that includes the quasi-realistic avatars of Neo and Trinity, and a great action scene happening in a city that is a bit bigger than Downtown Los Angeles. While many people focused on the avatar of Neo, that was cool thanks to the use of Epic MetaHumans (even if a bit uncanny), I was amazed by the fact that with UE5 the team has been able to create an alive city. After the main action involving explosions finishes, you can stay there and enjoy the whole city: you can walk around, drive cars, etc… and enjoy an enormous city that is full of cars, pedestrians, etc… that are moving around using the AI tools provided by Unreal Engine. The engine is able to build and simulate cities automatically by just having some parameters provided by the developers. This is totally impressive, also because the graphical quality of the real-time rendered city is fantastic. We are all talking about the m**averse, and for sure the ability to build entire alive cities that can be visited in multiplayer will be an important brick in the whole m**averse construction.
 
 All of this impressed me, but there are two problems. The first one is that the experience is available only for Playstation and Xbox. So no VR and even no PC, and this is a pity. It would have been amazing to enter this world in VR, but I have to say that it probably is too big and complex to render for whatever headset. The second one is that the experience is single-player so at the moment it’s something to be just enjoyed alone. It would have been amazing to hang out together in the city of The Matrix…
 
 Together with the experience, there has been also an interview that The Verge has had with Keanu Reeves and Carry-Anne Moss. The interview features some interesting parts, like when Keanu says that the metaverse is not something from Facebook, but it comes from much before Zuckerberg (thanks Keanu for reminding this). Or when he laughs at the idea of NFTs. Or when he says that he’s ok that his fans may have sex with his avatar in VR. I don’t know if I wanted to know this information, and I don’t know what to do with it now that I know it. Then I’m also left with a question: after those passionate moments, does Keanu’s avatar says “You’re breathtaking”?

More info (Full walkthrough The Matrix Experience)
More info (New trailer for Matrix Resurrections)
More info (The Matrix Experience is not available for VR)
More info (Why The Matrix Experience is technically impressive)
More info (Epic detailing how it has built the experience)
More info (Keanu on NFTs and Facebook’s m**averse)
More info (Keanu and VR adult entertainment)

News worth a mention

Sony shows prototype headset with dual 4K display

During the Sony Technology Day showcase, Sony has shown a prototype of a headset with two 4K micro OLED displays. The headset is still a prototypical stage and it doesn’t seem related to PSVR. This shows that Sony corporation (not only PlayStation) is working as a whole on XR, and this may bring more intriguing devices and components to the market in the future.

More info

Meta sets Quest Day for 14th, promises to gift accessories for Quest

Since Meta has a lot of money to throw out of the window, it has decided to create a new kind of festivity, the Quest Day, weirdly set for December, 14th (weirdly because the Quest has not been launched on December, 14th). When this day will arrive, the company will gift some Quest accessories (it seems some merch from the teaser trailers) to some of its US users. This seems a pretty original way to keep Meta’s community engaged… let’s see what will happen on the 14th.

More info (Quest Day teaser e-mail)
More info (Quest Day teaser trailer)
More info (Quest Day official website)

Snapchat has just had its Lens Fest

Snap has organized this week an event called Lens Fest that has gathered lots of AR creators. There haven’t been important announcements in this event, but Snap has again underlined that its platform has many users and many developers and has announced some new upcoming tools for Lens creators.
 
 The company is also building out its own internal “AR innovation lab,” that has been called Ghost, and I think they should pay me the royalties for using this name…

More info

The smartglasses sector keeps improving

While we are all intrigued by full-fledged AR glasses, we should not forget that in the enterprise sector smartglasses are still doing very well.
 
 I want to highlight two interesting news from the smartglasses sector for this week:

• Realwear, one of the most important brands in the field, has announced the new “Navigator 500” headset, featuring impressive features. It has a 48MP camera with enhanced zoom capabilities, that works even in low-light conditions and supports auto-focus and image stabilization. It is also able to understand vocal commands in noisy environments, like the ones of factories
• Cisco and Google have joined forces and now Webex Expert on Demand, the platform for remote assistance by Cisco, will be available for Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2. This gives more power to Google Glass, that are not doing that bad in the enterprise environment after a total disaster as a prosumer device.

More info (Realwear Navigator 500)
More info (WebEx on Google Glass 2)

The m**averse hype is attracting investors

I hate this M-word hype, but I have to say that it is also bringing good things to our ecosystem. One of them is a new interest of investors towards immersive technologies: since the metaverse is the next big thing, now everyone is looking for a way to invest in it. Business-oriented magazines are talking about the metaverse as a MULTI-TRILLION DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY (caps required to underline the bullsh*tting happening around) and so many people are coming to exploit this opportunity.
 
 While I was speaking at Stereopsia, Lynx’s Stan Larroque said that after Zuck’s announcement of Meta, it was easier for him to speak with investors because now they want to invest in this metaverse stuff. “That guy is doing free marketing for me,” said Stan referring to Zuck, and this was one of my highlights of the week.

More info (Business insider about the metaverse)
More info (The metaverse being a multi-trillion dollar opportunity)

Meta updates the SDK for Quest

Good news for us developers: Meta has updated the Oculus SDK, and now it is possible to implement voice commands and spatial anchors in our Quest experiences. Spatial anchors make sure that an experience always shows the same objects in the same positions in your room notwithstanding how you configured your guardian, and I think they are interesting enabling features.
 
 The new update also brings hand tracking support in the Oculus OpenXR plugin. Now it is so possible to have a passthrough AR experience with hands tracking and the developers of the game In Da Hoop (now called Just Hoops) will be the first ones to exploit it. Have I already told you that I love this game?

More info (New update to Oculus SDK)
More info (Meta explaining the new features of the SDK)
More info (Hand tracking now available in OpenXR)
More info (In Da Hoop becoming Just Hoops)
More info (Just Hoops implementing hands tracking and Passthrough AR)

Magic Leap rebrands and kills the whale

Magic Leap’s transition to an enterprise company is now complete after this week the company has killed the last sign of its creative-oriented past. The logo has been completely changed, and the whale has been removed to leave the place to some boring lines.

More info

Participate in the AR/VR Suvery

SlashData is organizing an AR/VR survey and asked me some help in promoting it and I accepted because it is also an opportunity for you, since there are prizes to win. Here you are the description of the initiative:
 
 AR/VR creators, this survey is for you. Which tools and platforms are you using to build mind-bending creations? Take the survey to help the global community learn more about the skills and technologies necessary to succeed in 2021. The survey takes about 15 minutes and covers VR, AR, and mixed reality sectors. It’s available in English, Chinese (Simplified), Spanish, Vietnamese, and Russian, just pick a language you’re most comfortable with. In return for your effort, you could ender prize draws for a chance to win $500 towards your AR/VR project, a $100 Amazon voucher, $30 Gumroad ebook of your choice, swag, and more. If you have a few extra minutes, promote the survey for a chance to win additional $50, $100, $250 or up to $1,000 USD in cash. The survey welcomes creators of all profiles: no-code, developers, students, hobbyists, and professionals. Take the survey before it closes on January 31st.
 
 If you are interested in this initiative, click the link below and participate.

More info (Participate)

Vertigo Games has released After The Fall

The game of the moment is the just-released After The Fall. Vertigo Games has crafted a fun multiplayer action game that runs on all platforms, but according to reviewers, it is still a bit lacking on the content side (there are too few levels and with too few variations). It will be interesting to see how it will evolve over time.

More info (After The Fall review on Road To VR)
More info (After The Fall review on Upload VR)

Some news on content

• Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod is coming in January 2022
• Blaston’s latest update introduces new weapons and especially a passthrough AR mode to move in your room in full safety
• Beat Saber releases Lady Gaga DLC
• Art Studio VR is a new application for Quest that lets you paint realistically on 3D models like vases (and that’s very cool)
• There is a new available trailer for The Shore VR
• Gazzlers looks like an upcoming fun co-op shooter game with a nice Western touch
• HTC creates a store to sell NFT art pieces, and among them, there are also XR experiences
• Ultrawings 2 promises to be a very newbie-friendly flight simulator for Quest
• A prototype Passthrough AR app for Quest by Emanuel Tomozei opens your ceiling to show you the stars. It is very cool.

More info (Cyberpunk 2077 VR)
More info (Blaston)
More info (Beat Saber Lady Gaga DLC)
More info (Art Studio VR)
More info (The Shore VR)
More info (Gazzlers)
More info (HTC Vive NFT Store)
More info (Ultrawings 2)
More info (Quest Passthrough AR app prototype)

News from partners (and friends)

Professor Andrea Bottino of Polytechnic of Turin (my university!) is offering an interesting Ph.D. position about designing the best possible HUD of an automotive and realizing a working VR prototype about it. If you may be interested, check the link here below.
Learn more

OpenBCI, one of the leading companies about Brain-Computer Interfaces, is looking for an electrical engineer, mechanical engineer/industrial designer, and software engineers. While having experience with neurotechnology is a plus, it’s not required and XR experience is just as useful to help it in building its Galea solution. It’s an interesting opportunity and I think that if you are looking for a job in the XR field, you should check the open positions in the link below.
Learn more

Some XR fun

Excuse me what the f…
 
 (BTW if all people fluffing about the metaverse went on Mars, that would be great!)
 (Thanks Eloi Gerard for the tip)
Funny link

(Some) VR Youtubers in a nutshell
Funny link

Bill Gates knows de wei
Funny link

I’m going to buy a headset, mum… for research purposes
Funny link

The version of Matrix I would love to see
Funny link

Please…

… if you like what I do, consider supporting me on Patreon so that I can keep writing informative posts for the community!
 
 These are the people and companies that I thank a lot today for having made this roundup possible:

• DeoVR
• Raghu Bathina
• GenVR
• Jonn Fredericks
• Jean-Marc Duyckaerts
• Reynaldo T Zabala
• Richard Penny
• Terry xR. Schussler
• 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

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(Header image by Innersloth)