The XR Week Peek (2022.01.11): CES had some interesting XR announcements, new rumors on Apple and Meta, and more!

This has been the week of CES, and I will write tomorrow or the day after a full roundup only dedicated to this incredibly important tech event. So for today’s article, let me focus mainly on the non-CES-related news about AR and VR. And subscribe to my newsletter to not miss my upcoming CES roundup, which will contain all the news I’ve read about XR from Las Vegas!

Top news of the week

CES brought some interesting news about AR and VR

As I’ve said, I won’t focus this roundup on the announcements from CES, but for sure I can’t ignore the fact that CES happened, so let me tell you what has been in my opinion the most interesting news from there. I have to admit that I thought this CES wouldn’t have brought great news about XR, but actually, we had some nice announcements. My favorite ones have been:

• Sony Interactive Entertainment has revealed that the next PSVR headset will be called PSVR 2 and will feature 2K x 2K per eye, up to 120 Hz framerate, and 110° FOV. It will be the first consumer headset with eye-tracking and foveated rendering, and also the first one to feature haptics directly on the headset. It seems like a great tethered headset for the PS5. A Horizon game is coming for this new headset, and some rumors talk also about Half-Life: Alyx potentially be available in the future;
• HTC has announced the Vive Wrist Tracker, a 6 DOF tracker for the Vive Focus 3. This tracker can be worn on the wrist, for a more accurate hand-tracking experience, or be installed on external props (e.g. pistols). I think it’s amazing because it’s the first time that we have a tracker for a standalone headset, and we all know how much the Vive Tracker has been important for the whole ecosystem;
• Panasonic subsidiary Shiftall (and I underline: SHIF TALL, please don’t mix the F and the T) has announced the most lightweight SteamVR compatible headset. Called MeganeX, it features 2,560 × 2,560 per-eye resolution, 120Hz, and especially a design that reminds very bulky sunglasses. It weighs only 250g and is so very comfortable to wear. First impressions from CES are positive. The expected price is around $900
• There has been a lot of talk around the OWO haptic vest, a very lightweight T-shirt able to provide vibrational and electrical feedback directly on your skin. It is like bHaptics but more lightweight, and many people commented very positively about it. It should come for around $500 later this year.
• The WTF prize of this CES goes again to Shiftall for its “innovative” Mutalk device: it is a box that you put in front of your mouth to have a better social VR experience. With it on, your voice is muffled for people around you, but at the same time, people in VR can hear your voice better thanks to its noise removal. It is a positive outcome, but it comes at the price of you looking like Bane, the evil character of the Batman saga. It’s probably a good gadget for BDSM

More info (PSVR 2 Specifications)
More info (Half-Life: Alyx rumored for PSVR 2)
More info (Vive Wrist Tracker)
More info (Shiftall MagenX)
More info (OWO haptic vest)
More info (OWO interviewed by Youtuber Skeeva)
More info (Mutalk)

Other relevant news

New rumors on Apple and Meta devices

I know it may sound weird to you, but we have new rumors on Apple headsets and also about the future Meta Project Cambria and Quest 3.
 
 Regarding Apple, the super-reliable analysts have stated that the headset may feature three displays because just two are for losers. There would be one big display for the peripheral vision, and two high-density microdisplays for the fovea area of the eyes. The headset, which for everyone should have reliably come at half of this year, has been already delayed to a reliable release at the end of this year. And that’s it, until the next reliable rumor that will invalidate this one.
 
 But there is more! This week we have rumors also on Meta headsets. According to Youtuber Sadly It’s Bradley, Project Cambria should come half of this year (Q2 2022) and have MiniLED screens and pancake lenses. It should sell 2–3 million units in its first year. Quest 3, which could be announced at Connect 2023, should instead have micro OLED displays, and probably feature a custom Meta chip able to handle better VR workloads than Qualcomm’s ones. While the rumor on Cambria seems reasonable, I would take the ones on a “Quest 3”, its feature, and its release date not with a grain of salt, but with all the salt that you can find on the shelf of the supermarket closest to your home.
 
 Talking about more reliable leaks, developer Luboš V with the support of Basti564 has found references of a multiplayer Oculus Home in the Quest firmware, so it seems that very soon the home space of the Quest will let everyone invite more people. This comes at the right time, with Meta already talking online about unifying all its social VR spaces: Horizon Worlds, Horizon Home, and Horizon Workrooms. I can imagine that Meta would like in the future to let you start with your multiplayer environment, and then let you use it as your hub before your join other people in external spaces either for leisure (Horizon Worlds) or work (Horizon Workrooms). Maybe all these systems will just fall under a single Meta Horizon umbrella. I’m just speculating, but it may have sense. It’s also interesting that the company is also evaluating to make people outside VR (e.g. from PC) to join its virtual worlds, too, so that to increment the user base.

More info (Apple XR headset to feature three displays)
More info (Quest 3 and Project Cambria leaks)
More info (Social Oculus Home is coming)
More info (Meta to unify its social VR experiences)

News worth a mention

Meta has canceled its XROS operating system

According to The Information, Meta has just canceled XROS, an internal project for building a custom operating system dedicated to XR that wasn’t based on Android. The team was composed of more than 300 people. Meta has answered the news saying that the company is still pursuing the goal of building a custom OS in other ways.

More info

Intel Vaunt was canceled for risks involving data privacy

If you have been in the XR field for some years like me, most probably you remember about Intel Vaunt. They were smart glasses that looked like regular glasses that were announced by Intel and seemed very promising. Then the project came to a halt, and Vaunt was abandoned without an apparent reason. This week, thanks to The New York Times, we got to know the reason, and it is pretty interesting. Let me quote the article:
 
 “We were giving away the hardware but making money on the data,” he said. “For every dollar of hardware, we were making three dollars on software and data sales.”
 This is why companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Meta are exploring similar technologies. For some, they might be a way of selling software and services. For others, they might be a way of selling ads, Dr. Bautista said.
 […]
 In 2018, Intel shut down the Vaunt project, before selling many of its patents to North, the start-up acquired by Google. Ultimately, Dr. Bautista said, the company felt it was just too difficult to answer the many questions surrounding the technology.
 Because of privacy regulations in Europe and other parts of the world, he said, the project could end up harming the bottom line more than it helped. The company estimated that 3 percent of its yearly revenues could be at risk, he said.
 
 I’ve found this story pretty disturbing. A headset manufacturer was able to make 3 dollars in software and data sales for each dollar of hardware and has shut down the product line because the new privacy rights of users could hurt its business. This shows you why Zuck is giving the Quest for a ridiculous price. Imagine how much money he will be able to make out of the data from the many Quest headsets that are out there.

More info

When will the “Metaverse is dead” articles come out?

I’ve been in the VR field for enough time to know that after the hype for a technology comes the trough of disillusionment, with many articles blaming it.
 
 I’ve already started seeing this trend for the M-word. This week I have for instance read two articles blaming the meta. One states that the m**averse is nothing new showing a terrible video from 2017, and the other underlines how the last 3 VR concerts made by Meta flopped, and so this should be a sign of how the Meta-verse is not coming.
 
 So basically online now there are both hype posts with unrealistic expectations on the m**averse and blaming posts saying that it is a big bullsh*t. Can’t we find a middle ground instead of just saying stupid things to catch likes?

More info (Metaverse blaming article / 1)
More info (Metaverse blaming article / 2)

Conferences are returning to digital

We thought we were doing great against the Covid, but the new Omicron variant has shuffled the cards in the deck, and so here we are again with many people in the hospitals. The result of that is that while at the end of last year, events in person were starting to be a thing again (e.g. I attended AWE in California), now many events are coming back to the digital format for safety reasons. News of this week is that both the E3 and the Sundance Festival will be online-only in 2022. What a true pity.

More info (E3 Online)
More info (Sundance Festival Online)

Disney is working on glasses-free virtual installations

Disney was granted a patent for a Virtual World Simulator that enables multiple users to experience a 3D virtual world from multiple vantage points without the need of wearing any glasses. This has many advantages for Disney, the first of which is the fact that they don’t have to lose time to provide glasses to the users, fit them, train the users on how to use them, and then clean them up after use. This guarantees higher throughput of visitors through the park.

More info

WTF of the week: Cows with VR headsets (again)

It’s time to speak again about the Mootrix: a Turkish farmer has installed two headsets on a cow to show her green grass fields while she is in the stall and has noticed that she is producing more milk. I don’t know if it is true, I don’t even know if it’s good for the animal, I’m just sharing it for the absurdity of the news.

More info (Cows wearing VR headsets / 1)
More info (Cows wearing VR headsets / 2)

VRChat is what to use when you are distant from your girlfirend

Someone went to Reddit asking how to have some private time in VR with his girlfriend that is very distant away from him, and the council of experts has answered him that VRChat with some special hardware and some special avatars should do the trick. Not that these experts do that, it’s that their friends said so. And I’m sharing it for all of you that have friends with a distant boyfriend/girlfriend.

More info

Cooking Simulator VR is the best VR game of 2021 on SteamVR

The award for the best VR game of 2021 on Steam has been a total joke, with Medal Of Honor among the nominees even if launched in 2020, and the best game chosen being… Cooking Simulator VR! A game no one had ever hyped online. I mean in 2019 the best game was Beat Saber, in 2020 Half-Life: Alyx, and in 2021 COOKING SIMULATOR… I don’t know how we can go more downwards than this… who will win in 2022? PONG? The Unity Cube??
 
(PS Respect for the devs of Cooking Simulator, it is actually a good game. But it’s not the best PCVR game of 2021)

More info (Cooking Simulator VR winning a Steam award)
More info (The comment of Mike VRO on the news)

Microsoft Maquette gets discontinued

Maquette, Microsoft’s tool to prototype interfaces and interactions in XR, has just been discontinued. The company will still let people download it, but the development will be stopped and the source code won’t be opensourced. What a pity for a very interesting application.
 
 (Thanks Shachar Weis for the tip)

More info

Some news on content

• Lost Recipes, the new innovative experience by Schell Games that make you cook ancient recipes, is being released on January, 27th
• Avicii Invector, a musical game about the songs of the DJ Avicii, has just been released on Oculus Quest
• Cubism is now available in a special passthrough mode that makes the game very enjoyable to play
• A VR game based on Netflix’s sci-fi comedy series, Final Space, is in development
• Upload went hands-on with The Shore VR and noticed that there is still a lot of work to do to polish the game

More info (Lost Recipes)
More info (Avicii)
More info (Cubism)
More info (Final Space)
More info (The Shore VR)

News from partners (and friends)

I’m a big fan of Peco Peco and especially of its developer Julien Dorra, who always finds creative ways to promote his game and the whole indie VR community. This week, Peco Peco has added an experimental multiplayer mode, and to promote it, the studio is gifting 2 keys for every copy of the game you will buy, so you have immediately some people to play the game with for free! This is truly amazing. Check the link below to buy it: the offer lasts until January, 31st.
Learn more

I have been one of the judges of the XRMust Awards, about which the winners have just been announced! Check out the best experiences of 2022 which won the various categories clicking the link here below.
 (PS Special compliments for having won to the team behind Metamovie: Alien Rescue because I love them)
Learn more

Some XR fun

The best of metaverse from CES… sort of
Funny link

My meme about the M-word, expanded for 2022
Funny link

Be careful while you play in VR…
Funny link

Cats don’t like Beat Saber
Funny link

Metaverse is now in mainstream memes together with satanic rituals. I don’t know if it is a positive thing
Funny link

Metadonation

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(Header image by Shiftall)