The XR Week Peek (2022.05.09): Meta to release four VR headsets, NFT sales are going down, and more!

I feel better than last week, so I’m back to business with the usual newsletter. But I’ve still to fully recover, so every hug you send me is still highly appreciated!
 
 I’m also sending good vibes to my friends in China who are facing lockdowns. I know the situation is not the best now, but I hope things will get better soon. I hug you.

Top news of the week

Meta to launch four VR headsets before 2024

According to a report by The Information, Meta is going to launch four VR headsets from now to 2024:

• The first one is Project Cambria, which is going to be released this Autumn, probably at Meta Connect
• Then there are two Quest headsets, codenamed Stinson and Cardiff, to be released in 2023 and 2024. One is probably the Quest 3, while the other is not clear if it is a higher-end version (Quest 3 Pro) or a lightweight one (Quest 3 Lite, maybe without controllers)
• In the end, there is the successor of Cambria, codenamed Funston, to be released in 2024.

The report says that this is just the roadmap for VR headsets. In the meanwhile, Meta will also launch various smartwatch models and AR glasses.
 
 According to the same report, Cambria should be priced at $800, but Meta has immediately dismissed this claim saying that the headset will be significantly more expensive. We can so expect a price of $1000+ for the device, which at this point is clearly aimed at professionals, the same target of people of the upcoming Apple headset.
 
 The Information goes on to say that Meta also plans to ship its first generation of true AR glasses, Nazare, in 2024, followed by the more advanced second and third-generation models in 2026 and 2028 respectively.
 
 I have to say two things about this report. The first one is that something sounds a bit odd to me. Launching so many devices (smartwatches, VR glasses, AR glasses) in so small time may be confusing for users, so I’m not so sure that this will be the actual strategy by Meta. And for sure a claim that the 3rd generation of its AR glasses will be released in 2028 can’t be completely true, because a 6 years projection in such a new growing field like XR (where you don’t even know what is going to happen in 12 months from now) is just speculation. The fact that also Meta has immediately clarified that the suggested price for Cambria was wrong means that not all the information contained in the report are correct.
 
 But since I know that The Information’s journalists are reliable, I’m pretty confident that part of the information is correct and this is a possible strategy that Meta is at least discussing. And considering that these last 3 years it has not rushed in releasing new devices, the fact that they plan to release so many in such a short time shows that they are ready to face an upcoming fierce competition (by Apple, Pico, and others). Meta knows that the race for XR domination is becoming hot, and is preparing to add more fuel to its engine.

More info (Meta to launch four headsets before 2024 / Road To VR)
More info (Meta to launch four headsets before 2024 / Upload VR)
More info (Cambria to be priced more than $800 / Road To VR)
More info (Cambria to be priced more than $800 / Upload VR)

Other relevant news

Web3 is going towards its trough of disillusionment

After the hype about NFTs, crypto-sales, and the whole Web3 world, the technology seems to be going towards its trough of disillusionment, following exactly what the Gartner Hype Cycle predicts for every new tech.
 
 The first sign of it is that NFT sales are down 92%: according to the Wall Street Journal, NFT sales have dropped from a daily average of 225,000 to only 19,000, and that number continues to decline. Even more interesting is the fact that the value of NFTs themselves is declining. The first-ever tweet from co-founder Jack Dorsey was sold for $2.9 million last year in March, but when it went to auction again, the bids didn’t go above $14,000. Please read it again: something that was worth $2.9M one year ago, now is not even worth 1% of its original value. The bubble is clearly bursting.
 
 Actually, this week had also a piece of big positive news for the whole ecosystem: Yuga Labs, the web3 company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club, has just raised more than $300M in what was considered the “largest NFT mint in history”. The money was collected to crowdfund its upcoming game “Otherside”.
 
 This for sure looks like a big win for the Web3 world, but I think it also hides a lot of actual issues behind it:

• Money was given for a game that is not even clear how it works. And if someone is giving money for a game that doesn’t know how it is, it means that is not buying the game, it is just speculating money. So this is just another speculative virtual world;
• The minting was so successful that it disrupted the whole Ethereum blockchain. When you have a transaction on Ethereum, you have to pay an additional fee, called a gas fee, basically to pay for the use of the blockchain. Since there were so many transactions, gas fees skyrocketed, and people had to pay in gas more than they paid for the actual land. This proved once more how the current blockchain structures are still full of issues;
• All the assets that people bought as NFTs are stored on the game’s servers, so as usual people did not buy anything, just a certificate that they own “a link to something”;
• All this blockchain trend is about decentralization of finance, and having wealth distributed in a more healthy way. And who is there behind Yuga Labs? Andreessen-Horowitz, one of the most powerful VC firms in Silicon Valley. This doesn’t seem to me distributing wealth in a new way, it seems more like faking it while giving money always to the same people.

Now I wonder: when there will be articles about Web3 being dead? 6 Months? 1 Year? I’ve seen this already with VR, and I’m sure it will happen again with Web3 and the metaverse, too. And in this case, it will be beneficial, because so we will get rid of all the speculator cowboys and maybe we can find a real use for these technologies which are actually very interesting.

More info (NFT sales being down 92%)
More info (NFT market is crashing)
More info (Yuga Labs raising $300M)
More info (Yuga Labs’s money shows the problems of Web3)

Meta to freeze hires

As I’ve told you in my latest editorial, Meta is not living its best moment ever: the company has trouble growing its userbase and is facing various issues with regulators and new rules of the operating systems (especially new privacy rules on iOS). For this reason, it has lost more than $200B in stock value a few months ago.
 
 These losses are starting to have their effects: it seems that the company will slow down or entirely pause hiring for most of its mid- or senior-level positions. And this is happening weeks after it paused hiring for lower-level engineer positions, too. It seems that this change will mostly affect the people working on the social media branch (the “Family of Apps”), while the Reality Labs branch is still on a hiring spree. But it shows that Meta is not anymore in a period where it can spend all the money it wants, and if this trend continues, I’m sure also Reality Labs will be affected.

More info (Meta orders hiring freeze)
More info (My editorial on Meta’s issues)

Google acquires Raxium

The news about Google being willing to acquire Raxium had been leaked a few weeks ago, but now it has become official.
 
 The Big G has so acquired the MicroLED manufacturer for an undisclosed amount, which according to The Information, is around $1B. The technology of the company should be used to manufacture next-gen XR glasses. According to Road To VR, Raxium is able to build impressive small displays: “While conventional Super AMOLEDs found in smartphones measure around 50 µm per pixel, Raxium says it’s shrunk its microdisplays to feature µLED measuring 3.5 µm per pixel”. This is the ideal size to embed the device in a small AR glass.
 
 This reminds us once more that we should not forget Google when we talk about the race for AR domination: Meta and Apple are the most important participants for now, but Google is going forward with its “Project Iris” with very strategic acquisitions, like the one of North, and now of Raxium. All the most important tech companies are acquiring display manufacturers to participate in this race (e.g. Snap has bought Compound Photonics, Meta has established a strategic partnership with Plessey), and Google has just done this important move, too.

More info

News worth a mention

Meta’s Codec Avatar 2 are impressive

Meta is keeping working on its realistic human avatars dubbed “Codec Avatars”. As I’ve reported last week, it has experimented with a custom chip that lets them run on a mobile headset like the Quest: considering that the Quest is the leading platform, it makes sense that Meta is experimenting with how to make them run on a mobile device.
 
 The unexpected news, though, is that Meta has now upgraded the (already impressive) work it was doing on Codec Avatars. At an event about virtual beings in April, it has shown what it has called Codec Avatars 2.0 and the results are definitely stunning. The person talking, if not for a slightly uncanny sensation, looks totally real, even if he’s a digital human reconstructed in real time from the real person wearing a VR headset on his head. I’m seriously impressed by it. You should watch the video linked below.

More info (Custom chip for Codec Avatars)
More info (Codec Avatars 2.0)

Meta kills Venues

Meta has decided to shut down the Horizon Venues app in June this year. All the events that should have been held in Venues will be held in Horizon Worlds, instead. I can’t say I’m surprised, considering the very limited scope of Venues and the mediocre success it was having.

More info

Niantic to launch its Visual Position System

At Lightship Summit on May 24th & 25th in San Francisco, Niantic may launch its City-Scale Visual Position System. This is a feature that lets users of an application built with the Niantic Lightship SDK know their location in a city with centimeter accuracy. And if multiple users are in the game, since the system can locate them inside the same city, the application knows also the position of one with regard to the others. This AR-Cloud feature is a step forward for our future mixed reality world, which must be shared and persistent. The VPS is a stepping stone to allow for both.

More info

Some news on the metaverse

Some relevant news about the M-word from this week:

• Spotify has launched its permanent world inside Roblox with the announcement of “Spotify Island,” a place where artists and fans will gather to play interactive quests, unlock exclusive content and buy artist merchandise;
• According to a study, the next generation of children will spend around 2 hours 45 minutes per day in virtual reality. The article that I link below is also full of numbers and statistics about VR: for instance, it states that “two-thirds (62 percent) of parents of children aged 5–10 don’t currently understand the metaverse” (personally, I don’t find it worrisome, since no one of us understands the metaverse anyway);
• Epic partnered with Microsoft to offer Fortnite via the web streaming of Xbox Cloud Gaming. Thanks to this solution, it is also possible to play Fortnite on Android and Apple phones. Outstanding move!
• The Cannes Film Festival will have an installation inside Fortnite, built by its sponsor partner Brut. I’ve found it particularly interesting because I find Fortnite and Cannes being two very different worlds, but thanks to the power of the M-word, they are coming together.

More info (Spotify)
More info (Children in the metaverse)
More info (Fortnite on Xbox Cloud Gaming)
More info (Cannes on Fortnite)

Some news on research projects

Some relevant news about interesting research projects in XR:

• NVIDIA and Stanford University have created a prototype of holographic VR glasses which have impressive features. First of all, their optical system is only 2.5mm thick (so it’s like a pair of sunglasses), and then being the display holographic, so truly 3D, it offers a solution to the vergence-accommodation problem. The field of view is only around 22°, but the researchers already thought about a way to expand it to 120°. This all looks very intriguing, but it’s still a research project;
• Researchers at Carnegie University have developed ControllerPose, a system to detect the full body of the user by just having a fisheye camera installed on every VR controller. According to the researchers, with this setup, it is possible to somewhat detect the pose of the body of the user 70% of the time. This is amazing because it lets you have full-body tracking with no external hardware in your room. But it is still disappointing because a system working only 70% of the time is not usable;
• Reality Labs Research has posted a new interesting paper on how to reliably detect the position of someone speaking around you using visual and audio cues;
• Fascinating and creepy research shared by New Scientist shows how it is possible to physically redirect the attention of the user in virtual reality via electrodes on his neck. By “redirecting the attention” I literally mean the system physically forcing your neck to rotate to look in a certain direction. This can be useful in certain applications (e.g. safety), but totally cringy in others (e.g. advertisement).

More info (NVIDIA glasses)
More info (ControllerPose)
More info (ControllerPose official website)
More info (Speaker localization)
More info (Attention redirection via electrodes)

Dating in VR gets real

This week I’ve heard about two projects aimed at making people meet in VR.
 
 The first one is Flirtual, a dating app (not a VR experience) meant to make you find other VR people to date. Imagine it a bit like a Tinder for VR people, where you share what are your interests and select a picture of your avatar. The app helps you find other people you may match with and then you can meet in your favorite VR social environment.
 
 The second one is Paire VR, which wants to replicate Omegle in VR. Thanks to this system, you can find random strangers to talk with in 1-on-1 sessions in virtual reality. The idea is nice, but we know that Omegle and Chatroulette became also places full of perverts, so I’m a bit concerned about the safety of this app.

More info (Flirtual)
More info (Paire VR)

Some news on content

• Beat Games has released the new Electronic Mixtape DLC for Beat Saber
• Raicuparta is working on a VR mod for the game The Stanley Parable
• Upload VR went hands-on with the VR mod of The Elden Ring: while not perfect, it lets you play this iconic game in VR
• Smash Drums adds 5 new songs in Volcano Update
• Liteboxer adds a free tier: it is so now possible to play a part of it for free. A good thing for the VR fitness ecosystem, considering that most games have a hefty subscription price
• A guy claims that there is a Harry Potter VR game in the works for PSVR 2. I don’t know if it is true, but I want to hope
• There is a big Serious Sam VR bundle now available on Steam

More info (Beat Saber)
More info (The Stanley Parable)
More info (Elden Ring VR)
More info (Smash Drums)
More info (Liteboxer)
More info (Harry Potter for PSVR 2)
More info (Serious Sam VR Bundle)

Other news

According to AR Insider, Meta may have sold around 9M Quests up to now

Learn more

The latest news about the chip shortage issue is that now we lack chips for chips-making machines

Learn more

A guy has made a documentary on the dark side of VRChat, including sex and other kinky stuff

Learn more

News from partners (and friends)

Come and watch The Spatial Show!

A group of crazy people, under the command of Ori Inbar, has created The Spatial Show, a fun show about the metaverse, with lots of jokes and puns about VR and NFTs. The first episode ever will premiere on Wednesday, May 11 at 12 pm PDT. You can’t miss it… also because one of the cast members is me!
Learn more

Enjoy HoverBlade

HoverBlade is an indie game about racing on hovercars. It is rough around the edges, but it seems fun. Every Tuesday at 7 pm the team behind the game organizes public races so that to have fun with the community… and if you like racing games, it can be an interesting experience to try!
Learn more

Apply for Wise Guys XR

If you have an interesting AR/VR startup, you have time until May, 11th to apply for the new Wise Guys XR accelerator program to get investments and support for your company!
Learn more

Some XR fun

Well, with all those kids around, it is for sure psychological horror…
Funny link

Probably the subreddit /r/oculus should change to /r/meta. Maybe…
Funny link

Crypto and NFTs offer lots of variations…
Funny link

Donate for good

Like last week, also this week in this final paragraph I won’t ask you to donate for my blog, but to the poor people that are facing the consequences of the war. Please donate to the Red Cross to handle the current humanitarian situation in Ukraine. I will leave you the link to do that below.
 
 Let me take a moment before to thank anyway all my Patreon donors for the support they give to me:

• DeoVR
• Raghu Bathina
• GenVR
• Eduardo Siman
• 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
• Donald P
• Casie Lane
• Renan Paglinawan
• Sb
• Enrico Poli
• Vooiage Technologies
• Caroline
• Liam James O’Malley
• Paul Reynolds
• Hillary Charnas
• Wil Stevens
• Brian Peiris
• Rhys Coombes
• Francesco Salizzoni
• Alan Smithson
• Steve R
• Brentwahn
• Simplex
• Matias Nassi

And now here you are the link to donate:

Support The Red Cross in Ukraine

(Header image by Meta, leaked by Basti564)