I wish you are having a great day and a great week! This week I’ve been pretty busy with my dev work, but I also had some great moments: I had the pleasure of attending an XR-related event dedicated to women here in Turin; of being interviewed by the awesome Rene Schulte for his podcast (you can watch the interview here); and to taste a bit of an amazing tiramisu liquor (not before the interview of course :P).
But enough talking about me… let’s dig into the best AR/VR news of the week!
Top news of the week
Meta Quest 3 leaks show a lightweight mixed reality headset
The serial leaker Brad Lynch has shared on his Youtube channel what he claims are CAD renders of the upcoming Quest 3. Brad is known to share many rumors in the ecosystem, and some of them prove out to be true, others not, so take whatever I’m saying next with a huge grain of salt.
According to the leak, the Quest 3 has a similar design to the Quest 2, sharing with it all the comfort flaws of being front-heavy. The headset would anyway take from Quest Pro some important advancements, like the use of pancake lenses, so it would be lighter and smaller. The internal chip would be the second generation of Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2, which would guarantee a performance jump over the Quest 2.
It’s relevant that the device wouldn’t feature any kind of face and eye tracking, but would have RGB passthrough and a depth sensor, so that to be able to offer detailed mixed reality and high-precision environment understanding. This would be a total pivot for Meta, which would so migrate away from the social importance of having eye and face tracking to compete directly with Apple in offering a consumer device totally dedicated to mixed reality. It’s not the first time that companies change their products because of Apple, but it is quite rare that they do that even before Apple launches its product. This would show the fear that Meta has for its upcoming competitor.
I’m pretty sure that the CAD render is genuine, but we don’t know if it relates to an internal prototype or to the final product. For sure, if this was the Quest 3, it would be a bit disappointing. It looks even more uncomfortable than the Pico 4. But these 8 years in VR taught me that the technology evolves more slowly than we would like to, so this would be a reasonable evolution for the Quest. We’ll see.
More info (Leak announcement video by Brad Lynch)
More info (Summary of leak on Road To VR)
More info (Summary of leak on Upload VR)
Other relevant news
Lenovo announces ThinkReality VRX headset
Lenovo has announced a new headset. It’s like its 357th one. Luckily I don’t cheer for every launch of a Lenovo headset, otherwise, I would be drunk every day of the year.
Jokes apart, Lenovo’s new hardware, dubbed ThinkReality VRX, has innovative features you have seen in no other headset launched these weeks: Snapdragon XR 2 chipset, pancake optics, RGB passthrough. Yeah, I’ve actually not stopped joking.
What is truly interesting is that this device is not aimed at the consumer market, but directly at the enterprise one, which is the usual target of the Lenovo ThinkReality line. At the launch event, Lenovo talked about the “Enterprise Metaverse” and talked about use cases like training, virtual collaboration, design, and engineering. It will also support NVIDIA CloudXR for integrated cloud rendering of the applications.
I’m curious to see how this will compete against Quest Pro and Pico 4 Enterprise.
More info (Lenovo Thinkreality VRX)
More info (CloudXR on ThinkReality VRX)
More info (Headset launch video)
D-Link VR Air Bridge brings high-quality wireless streaming to your Quest
After so many rumors, finally, D-Link and Meta have announced D-Link VR Air Bridge, a new Wi-Fi 6 dongle that should provide high-quality connection between your PC and your Quest 2.
VR Air Bridge is meant to create a dedicated wireless connection for your Quest 2. You connect this device to the USB port of your PC, and then you connect your Quest to the Wi-Fi 6 network offered by it. Since this connection is a “high-throughput and low-latency dedicated point-to-point Wi-Fi link”, and the communication between the headset and the PC happens via Meta’s proprietary VR algorithms for low latency wireless connectivity, the whole system should offer to you unprecedented quality in your wireless PCVR experience.
There is no clear information on the launch date and the price of this device, but it seems like a good solution for those who have poor performances at home with systems like Virtual Desktop and Air Link.
More info (VR Air Bridge on Road To VR)
More info (VR Air Bridge on Upload VR)
Pico 4 launches in China, while new info is shared in the West
Last week we assisted to the launch of Pico 4, the first believable Quest 2 competitor. This week I have new interesting things to share about this device.
First of all, Pico 4 has been launched in China, priced at 2699 yuan and 2999 yuan (with a 200 yuan discount at launch). The Pro model, which in China is sold as a consumer device, too, is going to be offered at 3999 yuan. This is around 562 USD, but you shouldn’t make a comparison: in the West, this device will be sold as an enterprise device, so surely will have a higher price because it won’t be sold undercost, and you should take into count also all the related enterprise services included in the price. I’ve been told that Pico is all over Douyin (the Chinese TikTok), so Bytedance is doing its best to create its “Quest moment” in China, selling a good device for a quite low cost. It has even created pop-up stalls to make people try the headset and eventually buy it.
Bytedance is trying to expand also in Japan, launching the Pico 4 with the support of many influencers.
In the West, instead, we start having the first reviews of the device. Some influencers have already received it, and are starting to share their impressions. Yesterday I have been able to find a review of the headset, plus a teardown video, and a through-the-lens video of the RGB passthrough. Very soon I guess we’ll see the reviews of the most famous YouTubers.
I can’t wait to see the amount of success this device will have. Will Bytedance be able to dominate the Chinese market and at the same time compete with Meta? Only time will tell…
More info (Pico 4 and Pico 4 Pro Chinese price reveal)
More info (Pico 4 on sale on JD)
More info (Pico 4 stand in China / 1)
More info (Pico 4 stand in China / 2)
More info (Pico launched in Japan)
More info (Pico 4 review)
More info (Pico 4 passthrough through the lenses)
More info (Pico 4 teardown)
News worth a mention
Nreal Air is now on sale in the US
Chinese manufacturer Nreal is now selling its smartglasses Nreal Air, meant for media consumption, in the US. The device is available on Amazon for $379.
Some news on the metaverse
Here you are some relevant articles about the M-word from this week:
- Walmart has just launched its own world on Roblox, to promote the product it sells in an innovative way
- Apple has just allowed the sale of NFTs on the App Store. But NFTs should be bought with fiat currency and Apple will take a 30% cut out of them. It’s a positive thing, but absolutely not what we want from a decentralized future
- A good article on Cointelegraph invites the Web3 community to distance itself from The Bored Ape NFT JPEGs and focus more on the real potential of NFTs
- Neal Stephenson gets interviewed by New World Notes, and his company Lamina1 announces a new conference about the metaverse
More info (Walmart on Roblox)
More info (NFT on App Store)
More info (The real value of NFTs)
More info (Interview to Neal Stephenson)
More info (Lamina1’s upcoming conference)
AI generative art goes beyond images
AI-generated art is one of the big trends of the moment, and even if it is not directly related to XR, it is a field that has points in common with immersive realities. We are all used to reading about Dall-E image generation, and this week, the powerful generative art engine has been made widely available to the public, and people can also start experimenting with it for free.
But AI generation goes beyond just images. Meta has announced Make A Video, an engine which is able to produce short videos starting from a description. And a new research project has managed to create animations of a humanoid avatar starting from a description, too. I can’t wait to see what other things can be created just starting from a description.
More info (Dall-E general availability)
More info (Meta’s Make A Video)
More info (Animations from description)
Tim Cook avoids the use of the world “metaverse”
Tim Cook has spoken again about XR and told again that AR will be revolutionary for our lives. But he avoided using the word “metaverse”, because “he’s not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is”. Then he proceeded to describe the metaverse as a VR world you live in 24/7.
Considering that the metaverse is absolutely not a VR world where you spend your whole life in, I can argue that it is not only the average person but also Tim Cook itself doesn’t know what the metaverse truly is.
I think his purpose is only to make his company distinguish itself from Meta, which is currently overusing the M-word and promoting its VR headsets. Apple, as usual, is trying to be different by doing the opposite of what the others are doing. Apple is working in a shady way: in the third article I link you below, you can read about some tactics it employed to make the AirPods succeed, and reading it, I had the confirmation that the Cupertino company is not the saviour we are waiting for, but just another company seeking profit at all costs in our space.
More info (Tim Cook talks about AR / 1)
More info (Tim Cook talks about AR / 2)
More info (Apple and its strategies to make AirPods succeed)
Discover Raindance Immersive
Raindance Immersive, the VR-related part of the Raindance Film Festival, is taking place from October, 26th to November, 26th. On its official website, you can discover the experiences that have been selected and I’m honored to say that also two made by us of VRrOOm made it to the list.
BoneLab launched with great success
BoneLab, the sequel of Boneworks, has been launched on Quest Store and Steam with great success. It has been Brandon J Laatsch himself who confirmed this to me over Twitter, stating that “it’s clearly doing well at an unprecedented level”.
The game is having also good reviews around, and it is being appreciated a lot, especially by people that loved the physics interactions of Boneworks. The game is exactly messy as Boneworks, though, so if you are not a fan of the genre, then probably it is not for you. It has bonus points for the community for being very moddable, and has also very good graphical quality on Quest. It’s good to see hype in the community again for a game!
More info (BoneLab review on Upload)
More info (BoneLab moddability)
More info (BoneLab PC vs Quest)
More info (BoneLab having huge success)
Some news on content
- There is now a VR mod for “Trombone Champ”, one of the silliest games around
- Indie racing game RUNNER is headed to the official Quest Store on October 6th
- Upload has reviewed Into The Radius, highlighting its realism, but also its frustrating moments
- Upload has gone hands-on with Hubris: visuals are very cool, but combat is a bit disappointing
- Fun game Beers and Boomerangs to be out on November, 10th
- There will finally be a sequel for Affected: The Manor, called Affected: The Asylum. Affected has probably been the first horror application I’ve tried in VR, so I’m pretty excited about this news
More info (Trombone Champ)
More info (RUNNER)
More info (Into The Radius)
More info (Hubris)
More info (Beers and Boomerangs)
More info (Affected: The Asylum)
Other news
Zuck has teased a fencing game for the Quest Pro. Not the best way to showcase mixed reality, IMHO
Interesting article detailing some advancements in OLED displays for XR
Meta confirms a total hiring freeze for the company
A very interesting application mixes AR and sound cues to guide visually impaired people in navigating a city
Nox VR is like a cardboard with a brain-computer interface
News from partners (and friends)
CREAL showcases the capabilities of its display
Lightfield company CREAL has published a new trailer that showcases the capabilities of its display (which I reviewed in this article). One of the samples is a giraffe in the hands, which clearly recalls the elephant in the hands of Magic Leap. But this time, it’s for real.
Some XR fun
I discovered there is a website that records all the projects killed by Google. It’s a pretty crowded graveyard…
Funny link
First-time players in Bonelab be like…
Funny link
Half-Life did it better
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
- GenVR
- Eduardo Siman
- Jonn Fredericks
- Jean-Marc Duyckaerts
- Reynaldo T Zabala
- Richard Penny
- Terry xR. Schussler
- Ilias Kapouranis
- Paolo Leoncini
- Immersive.international
- Nikk Mitchell and the great FXG team
- Jake Rubin
- Alexis Huille
- Raghu Bathina
- Chris Koomen
- Cognitive3D
- Jennifer Granger
- Jason Moore
- Steve Biggs
- Julio Cesar Bolivar
- Jan Schroeder
- Kai Curtis
- Francesco Strada
- Sikaar Keita
- Ramin Assadollahi
- Juan Sotelo
- Andrew Sheldon
- Chris Madsen
- Horacio Torrendell
- Andrew Deutsch
- Fabien Benetou
- Tatiana Kartashova
- Marco “BeyondTheCastle” Arena
- Eloi Gerard
- Adam Boyd
- Jeremy Dalton
- Joel Ward
- Alex P
- Lynn Eades
- Donald P
- Casie Lane
- Catherine Henry
- Qcreator
- Ristband (Anne McKinnon & Roman Rappak)
- Stephen Robnett
- Sb
- Enrico Poli
- Vooiage Technologies
- Caroline
- Liam James O’Malley
- Hillary Charnas
- Wil Stevens
- Brian Peiris
- Francesco Salizzoni
- Alan Smithson
- Steve R
- Brentwahn
- Pieter Siekerman
- Simplex
- Matias Nassi
And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by Brad Lynch)