The XR Week Peek (2022.06.13): Apple doesn’t show its AR glasses at WWDC, Meta delays its AR plans, and more!
I’m finally back in Turin! I miss a bit the joys of traveling and especially all the amazing people I met, but I have a lot of cool things I have to work on here, so I’m glad I have again the time to do them! And regarding this… would you be interested in working with me? We at VRrOOm are hiring to do our innovative XR events, check the “Friends” section of this newsletter if this opportunity can interest you!
Top news of the week
Apple has not announced any glasses at WWDC
Every year, we have the same ritual: we wait for an event by Apple, hoping to hear some news about an upcoming XR device, then nothing happens in this sense, we are disappointed and so we hope for a new reveal next year. This WWDC has not been an exception in this sense, and now all the Apple analysts (including Kuo and Scoble) already envision a reveal of the Apple headset for January 2023. This time will be the right time, they say. It’s since 2017 that I hear about how Apple is going to disrupt XR, I guess that sooner or later “the next year” is going to happen…
By the way, even if Apple has not announced any glasses, it has kept releasing features that enrich its potential XR ecosystem. Some of the main news in this sense from WWDC have been:
- The announcement of the M2 processor, which is even more powerful than the very successful M1. Codenamed Staten, the M2 is rumored to be the main processor powering Apple’s upcoming mixed reality headset
- In the next iOS16 update, it will be possible for iPhone users to scan their ears with the depth camera of their phone to improve the spatial audio performance of their device. Most probably this “scan” operation recreates the HRTF parameters of the head, something which will be of paramount importance to let future AR glasses recreate spatial sounds that will feel real
- Metal 3 low-level graphics libraries will improve the performances of games thanks also to the inclusion of upscaling functionalities
- ARKit 6 is going to add even more features to the already great AR library by Apple. It will be possible to shoot 4K videos of the augmented applications, body tracking has been improved, and the system will be able to perform better environment understanding
- The new ARKit features will be used by a new tool provided by Apple for all its iPhone users: RoomPlan. RoomPlan is an app that scans your room and identifies where are the pieces of furniture and what is their size. It can scan your room and identify its boundaries and its pieces of furniture automatically. This is exactly what the new room setup of Quest asks you to do manually, but performed automatically by just scanning your room with your phone. You can imagine the potential of such a tool when combined with a mixed reality headset (you could change some furniture in your house, or re-create a virtual environment that has the same shape as your room)
As you can see, these are many little pieces of the puzzle that will lead to the release of not only the Apple glasses but the full Apple XR ecosystem.
More info (The most important announcements from WWDC)
More info (M2 chipset announcement)
More info (Metal 3 release)
More info (HRTF function scanning)
More info (ARKit body tracking demo)
More info (RoomPlan announcement)
More info (RoomPlan demo)
More info (ARKit 6 functionalities)
More info (Apple headset now rumored for 2023)
Other relevant news
Meta delays its plans for AR glasses
Some weeks ago, I teased you that Meta was going to change its plans about hardware, because the recent drop in revenues forced it to be a bit more cautious with its spending for “the metaverse”. A report this week shows how these changes have been quite important:
- The first version of the “Project Nazare” glasses will be still released in 2024 as originally planned, but it will be targeted only at developers (a bit like today’s Snap Spectacles). Only the second edition in 2026 will be actually released to the market. This shows once more how our road towards mainstream AR is still very long
- Next year the company should still release the Hypernova smartglasses, very likely an upgraded version of Ray-Ban Stories with a display to show contextual information
- The Portal video communication appliance will become a device dedicated only to enterprises. There will be no more release of a Portal device for consumers
- The rumored upcoming smartwatch with two cameras has been canceled because the company couldn’t fit in an EMG sensor. EMG technology (the one by CTRL+Labs) is the one that Meta has identified as the best of XR interactions, so it is crucial for the company to integrate it inside its smartwatches.
Meta has not officially answered this report, but Andrew Bosworth, the CTO of the company, has indirectly commented on it: “ We’re going to ship wrist wearables and AR glasses that bring completely new tech — like EMG — to market. The path to groundbreaking products is not a straight line. As is common in our industry, we iterate on multiple prototypes in parallel & shift resources as we learn”. Reading between the lines, he has confirmed the rumors but stated that Meta will still work hard to release its AR glasses with EMG-wrist device to control them. This is anyway good news. But it seems that the path to get there has proven to be much more difficult than originally thought.
More info (Report on new directions for hardware at Meta)
More info (Meta smartwatch canceled)
More info (Portal will be aimed at B2B)
The Upload Summer Showcase brought news about VR games
Like last year, also this year the Upload Summer Showcase has brought some interesting news about VR games. As usual, this event hasn’t delivered any mind-blowing announcements, but a big series of small news about VR games. The idea is that by announcing much news together, it is possible to give more resonance to the VR gaming ecosystem. And this is something good, so I appreciate what Upload is doing.
My favorite news of the day has been the announcement of “What The Bat” a crazy game where you have to perform around 100 small missions about ordinary tasks that you have to perform using baseball bats instead of your hands. The trailer is hilarious and the game is pretty original, so I loved it.
Some other relevant news from it has been:
- Moss: Book II Launches July 21 On Quest 2
- We have a new trailer of Among Us VR that shows some intriguing elements of the gameplay
- We have a new trailer of the co-op VR shooter Gambit, with a tentative release date for “this year”
- Nerf Ultimate Championship releases on August 25, and in a new trailer you can see some cool gameplay shots of it
- Kluge interactive (the studio behind Synth Riders) has announced a new fighting game, Final Fury, set to release in 2023.
There have been plenty of other announcements, and I leave you here below the link to read them all. I wish the best to all the gaming studios that have announced something during this event!
More info (What The Bat)
More info (Moss: Book II)
More info (Among Us VR)
More info (Gambit)
More info (Nerf Ultimate Championship)
More info (Final Fury)
More info (All the news from the Upload Summer Showcase)
Alex Kipman leaves after the misconduct allegations
After the report of last week by Insider, in which Alex Kipman was accused of improper behavior at work, especially towards women, Alex Kipman has resigned from Microsoft. He will stay two more months to guarantee the transition and then will definitely leave.
I think the news is the final nail in the HoloLens coffin. There were already many rumors of the device line being abandoned by Microsoft, with many of the employees already flying towards Meta, and now, with the inventor de-facto fired from the company, most probably the HoloLens product line will die. Rumors already talk about a new AR headset produced by Microsoft in collaboration with Samsung that should substitute it, but we have no sure info about it.
After this move, the Microsoft Mixed Reality team gets actually disbanded: Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Hardware teams are being integrated into the Windows + Devices organization, while the Mixed Reality Presence and Collaboration teams will join the Teams organization. Microsoft will for sure keep pushing for immersive realities and “the metaverse”, but in a completely different way.
More info (Kipman resigning from Microsoft / Road To VR)
More info (Kipman resigning from Microsoft / Upload VR)
Bytedance keeps investing in XR
A new report by Protocol shows how Bytedance is doubling down its investments in XR.
First of all, its VR company Pico is now hiring to expand its presence in the US: there are currently 40 job listings for open positions in California. Most of these jobs are for a content-focused entity called Pico Studio, which shows that Pico is heavily investing to have compelling content for its headset. The company is also doubling down its investments to provide funding for developers to port their content from the Quest 2 to Pico Neo 3. Pico knows it needs a compelling content catalog if it wants to compete with Meta, and is working hard for it.
Also Bytedance’s most famous product, TikTok is continuing to implement XR features. The latest of them is TikTok avatars, digital avatars created from just a picture that represents the user and can be integrated into the filters applied on TikTok. They are a bit like Snap’s Bitmoji or Apple’s Memoji and it is not hard imagining how they could also become the user’s representation in a future mixed reality offered by TikTok.
More info (Pico investing in hirings and content)
More info (TikTok Avatars)
News worth a mention
Meta launches its Roblox competitor
Some months ago Meta acquired a tool called Crayta and now it is launching it as a service of the Facebook Gaming ecosystem. Crayta will be cloud streamed and will let players create environments and games that other players can visit. It is basically a Roblox competitor.
I’ve found this news very relevant because it shows that Meta is trying different roads for its “metaverse” end goal: on one side it is working on the VR social world Horizon, and on the other, it is now offering this multiplayer gaming ecosystem Crayta. I guess that the first one that succeeds (if any) will become the main focus of the company.
LAMINA1 aims at creating the best blockchain for the metaverse
LAMINA1 is a new startup that exited its initial stealth mode to announce its intention to create a new blockchain that can truly be the foundation of the original vision of the metaverse: carbon negative (so green), and able to support creators and not speculation. I admit I would have skipped this press release if it wasn’t for the names of the founding team, which are impressive:
- Peter Vessenes, the cofounder of the Bitcoin Foundation
- Neal Stephenson, the visionary creator of the word “metaverse”
- Tony Parisi, co-creator of VRML and GLTF, and the inventor of the “7 rules of the metaverse”
- As an advisor, there will be Rony Abovitz, the cofounder of Magic Leap
This is a collective of bright minds that for sure can create something meaningful together, that’s why I’m keeping an eye on this startup. I truly hope they can create a serious blockchain that can be the foundation for ownership and payment systems in virtual worlds.
More info (LAMINA1 announcement post on Medium)
More info (LAMINA1 announcement press release)
Quest runtime v41 brings Social Home
With the upcoming update v41, Meta Quest Home will finally be social. You will be able to invite your friends and do some activities together, like watching 360 movies. This shows the ongoing efforts at Meta at making virtual reality more social. I’m honestly not that convinced by this feature, having seen similar features for PCVR headsets (Oculus Rift Home, SteamVR Home) never gaining ground, but maybe with Quest will be different.
Apart from that, there are some other interesting updates by Meta for Quest: a new blocking API could let you ban harassing people on all social apps where you could meet them; and finally Oculus Move is integrating with Apple Health.
More info (Horizon Home gets social)
More info (Quest system-wide blocking APIs)
More info (Quest integrates with Apple Health)
Quest 2 may have sold around 15M units
According to the analysts at IDC, Meta Quest 2 may have sold a total of 15M units since its announcement. This would be a huge result, for two reasons:
- It would confirm that Quest 2 has gone beyond the magic threshold of 10M units, which is important to start a virtuous circle of adoption
- It would mean that Quest 2 has sold more units than the last generation of XBox. This would be a mind-blowing achievement, that would position the Quest as one of the most important gaming consoles out there.
Of course, take these numbers with a grain of salt, because analysts’ predictions are always prone to errors.
Qualcomm wants to challenge Apple’s chips
We are all praising the great new M-series chips by Apple for being able to deliver high performances with very low power consumption and we are sure that they are going to bring great innovation when they will be integrated into XR headsets. I was wondering how Qualcomm was thinking about answering them, and from an interview with CNET, it seems that the CEO Cristiano Amon is quite confident that its company will be able to replicate similar performances starting from the end of 2023.
NFTs and their problems
According to some statistics, it seems that crypto-based platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox users count is plummeting, someone says even -96% if compared to their peak concurrent users count. If this is true, it doesn’t surprise me: the user experience on these platforms is still unripe, so the retention factor is still low.
Talking about NFTs and speculations, I’ve found a very interesting article on The Verge about the relationship between NFTs and copyright from a legal standpoint. Long story short: owning an NFT about something doesn’t give you the copyright about that thing.
More info (Gamefi activities collapse -96%)
More info (Users count on crypto-based worlds)
More info (Relationship between NFT and copyright)
Tribeca Film Festival is going to happen also in VR
The Tribeca Film Festival is returning both in the physical venue and in VR inside Museum Of Other Realities. The movie selection will also include various pieces in VR and even one experience inside the huge 65-inches holographic screen produced by The Looking Glass.
Two opportunities for XR creators
If you are a creator of XR experiences you may find these two contests interesting:
- LensList is organizing a contest about creating AR experiences using Niantic Lightship SDK and the Lenslist templates. Prizes are up to $10,000!
- DANGEN Entertainment is hosting a development grant program aimed at helping indie developers that are working on their dream projects. Apply with your game and get up to $25,000 to fund part of your development!
More info (LensList contest)
More info (DANGEN Entertainment grant)
Some news on content
- Ghostbusters VR is coming also to PSVR 2 and to Hologate venues;
- VR MMO Zenith is releasing its first big update with content worth many new hours of playtime
- Resolution Games has showcased an AR version of Demeo employing Snapdragon Spaces at AWE
More info (Ghostbusters VR)
More info (Zenith)
More info (Demeo)
Other news
Lumus Maximus proves to be one of the most interesting reference designs for AR glasses
Lynx is experiencing new delays and its R-1 headset will launch “this summer”
We have a new update on the Etee controllers: they should ship in the next two months
Cosmonius High is releasing a new update with lots of accessibility options
FXG’s Nikk Mitchell has reviewed the new KAT Walk C2
Looking Glass announces new 65 inches holographic display, the biggest ever made
Amazon now offers the possibility to try-on shoes in AR on its app
MRTK 3 has been released in preview
Mastercard now lets you buy NFTs without requiring you to own cryptocurrencies
News from partners (and friends)
VRrOOm is hiring!
You know that I am a member of VRrOOm, a French startup that is aiming at revolutionizing events in immersive realities (and at “making the world a better place”, as all startups say according to the series Silicon Valley). Things are going great lately, and for this, we are going to hire different figures including:
- Unity developers
- 2D/3D artists
- UI/UX designers
- Project Managers
If you are looking for a job and you are compatible with one of these figures… send us your curriculum. You may end up working with me and my cool and crazy team! Remote positions are available, in case you were wondering.
Apply for this job!
Some XR fun
The best summary of Apple WWDC 2022 so far
Funny link
Go home Baidu Translate, you are drunk
Funny link
I was reading the comments to this post about me and found them hilarious
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:
- Alex Gonzalez VR
- 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
- Catherine Henry
- 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
Disclaimer: this blog contains advertisement and affiliate links to sustain itself. If you click on an affiliate link, I'll be very happy because I'll earn a small commission on your purchase. You can find my boring full disclosure here.
