Hello everyone! These days I’m literally crunching for my dev job, juggling many projects at the same time. I’m also putting effort into my outreach activity. Among other things, I have written a fantastic post about the VR concerts worth millions of dollars that Pico is doing in China; I have been interviewed in a podcast by Moonbase; and this Saturday I will be close to Turin (Italy) speaking at a science and technology festival about my work in immersive concerts. If you are close to here, please come.
So I’m sorry but this newsletter is coming late and will also have less text commentary inside it (this means the wall of text will be much shorter :P). As usual in this kind of moments, I’m very open to accepting hugs from all of you in the community!
Anyway, today I am as excited as you for the upcoming Meta Connect (about which I wrote a few predictions) and the launch of the Quest Pro, which I hope I’ll be able to afford :D. And you?
Top news of the week
Quest 3 may be 2x more powerful than Quest 2
Brad Lynch is keeping publishing leaks and rumors about Quest 3. According to his latest findings, the Quest 3 may use the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset, which should be the XR variant of the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset. This chip should feature the Adreno 740 GPU, which can be predicted to be between 2x and 3x the computational power of the Adreno 650 contained in Quest 2. If this is confirmed, it means that Quest 3 may provide graphics that are at least 2x better than the ones of Quest 3.
Considering that computational power is the Achille’s heel of Quest, the fact that it could have such a jump forward would let this kind of device run much better applications. I truly hope this turns out to be true. Probably PC VR and PSVR fans do have not the same hope, though, because this could be another nail in the coffin of consumer PCVR.
Other relevant news
HTC teases a new headset
HTC has started the usual marketing operation it does for the launch of every new device. It slowly teases tiny details every few days until the final release… after which usually all the community is disappointed, with the price or the features.
This time the tease is about a small headset, which I would say probably is either a more expensive version of Pico 4, the Vive Flow 2, or a 3DOF media viewer like Nreal Air, but for VR. We don’t have further details about it, and if you try to enhance the above image, you just get a “Nice try” trolling label coming to view (gg HTC for that). At the sarcastic comment saying that it is an overpriced device no one will buy, HTC answered that it is absolutely not like that (Press X to doubt about the price).
I truly hope that this time HTC made things the right way… the more good headsets there are on the market, the better is for us all.
More info (HTC teases new device — Road To VR)
More info (HTC teases new device — Upload VR)
More info (HTC says the device is not overpriced)
Meta pivots to serve both consumers and prosumers
We didn’t have enough Quest Pro leaks (should I still pretend it is “Project Cambria”?), so Immsersed decided to publish by error a GIF where you can see the user putting on the headset and using the application in mixed reality. The GIF also clearly shows that you can put blinders on Quest Pro if you don’t want to have your peripheral view open and so immerse yourself more in the virtual content.
In preparation for the Connect, Protocol has published some details about an interview it had with Zuckerberg and that shows the new vision of Meta for XR going forward. Let me quote the most interesting part of the article:
Zuckerberg told me during that interview that Meta was looking to establish two lines of VR devices. “We think that there’s a kind of consumer-grade device, in that $300-to-$500 range, for gaming, social use cases, things like that,” he said. “But then there’s going to be a work-grade device, which is going to eventually [be] a laptop or workstation replacement.”
Meta is so now working on satisfying the needs of two categories of customers: consumers and prosumers, a clear pivot from the consumer-only launch of Quest 2. I guess the idea of subsiding the Quest till success has proven to be not viable.
More info (Leaked Quest Pro video)
More info (Meta’s new dual strategy)
Horizon Worlds is not even used internally at Meta
An internal Meta memo about Horizon Worlds has been leaked by The Verge. In this document, Meta’s VP of Metaverse Vishal Shah reported that Horizon Worlds has problems with bugs and a lack of polish, and for this reason, it is not even used much by Meta employees themselves. He adds a telling sentence: “The simple truth is, if we don’t love it, how can we expect our users to love it?”. The solution he found is making the team work more on polish and delay the launch of the worldwide launch of the experience until a quality threshold is found. He wants also to force all Meta employees to use Horizon Worlds at least once a week.
Reading this memo, I was kinda impressed by the total disconnect that managers of companies may have with the real market. First of all, forcing employees to use an application they don’t want to use will just make them enter into it without any willingness to do anything and wait for the required time to pass by. Employees have to be motivated, otherwise, this operation has no sense. Then, if Meta thinks that its problem is the “polish” of Horizon Worlds, it had better think twice: VRChat is full of bugs and problems, but it is one of the most used social VR worlds. I think Horizon Worlds has structural problems, plus a bad reputation overall in the community because of Facebook’s reputational debt. These are more serious things to work on, like the product-market fit.
SideQuest raises $12M
This piece of news put a smile on my face: SideQuest has just raised a new funding round of $12M to keep improving its “unofficial” store for VR headsets. I’m very happy about this because SideQuest truly did a lot for us indie developers: it made us promote and sell our games even if they were not approved on the Quest store.
Part of the funding comes from Google Ventures, so people start fantasizing that Google may come back to VR and SideQuest may become something like its official store. I doubt about it, because actually, Google has already its store, and it is already used “slightly more” than SideQuest…
Sony prepares to have 2M PSVR 2 devices at launch
According to Bloomberg, Sony is ramping up the production of PSVR 2 devices, and plans to have 2 million units ready by March. Considering that PSVR 1 took 14 months to arrive at the sales of 2M devices, this means that Sony Interactive Entertainment expects to have very high sales of this device. The company seems also confident that at the time PSVR 2 is going to launch, some critical components may be much more available, so it will be easier to buy a PS5 console, which is needed to run the headset.
If Sony’s predictions prove to be correct, it would be amazing for the whole community, because it would mean that VR is going to sell quite well in 2023 among gamers.
More info (2 million PSVR — Road To VR)
More info (2 million PSVR — Upload VR)
News worth a mention
D-Link Quest Dongle costs $99, but…
D-Link has put on sale its dongle to connect the Quest to the PC for high-speed wireless connection to perform PC VR via Air Link. The device is available only in the US, and it costs $99.
The small device has had a special reviewer on Twitter: Guy Godin, the owner of Virtual Desktop, who for sure didn’t like seeing his software mentioned as a clunky solution in D-Link marketing material. Guy has totally destroyed the D-Link dongle in his hands-on commentary, highlighting some weird features of its, like a “software factory reset button” or the fact that when you use it, you are not connected to the internet (what the hell). Fun fact: his device also broke after a few hours.
More info (D-Link Air Bridge on sale)
More info (Guy Godin reviewing this dongle / 1)
More info (Guy Godin reviewing this dongle / 2)
This healthcare use of VR is simply amazing
This is probably the most mind-blowing news involving VR I’ve read this week. UT’s Dell Medical School is experimenting with using VR simulation to treat epilepsy patients before they undergo brain surgery. Many people suffering from epilepsy undergo brain surgery to stop having their seizures, but this operation is dangerous and complicated and may damage some areas of the brain, requiring the patients to undergo a long rehabilitation. The idea of this research project is to use VR simulations to make the brain re-wire itself (using a process called neuroplasticity) so that to perform the operations it usually does in the brain area that should be affected by the surgery in another different area. This means that BEFORE the surgery, the brain moves its activities elsewhere, so during the surgery, even if that area is damaged, the consequences for the patient are very small, because that area of the brain became of little use. This translates into much better post-treatment conditions.
This is just a research project for now, but it is very promising and shows how VR has enormous possibilities in the healthcare sector.
Kura establishes a partnership with a MicroLED company
Kura is still alive. The startup promising wide-FOV 8K AR glasses has disappeared from most of the radars, but it is still working towards its goal. The proof is a press release issued this week to announce a new partnership it has established with MICLEDI, a company manufacturing MicroLED displays.
I wonder when the Kura Gallium will be finally released…
Some news about the metaverse
Here you can find some relevant articles about the M-word that I have read this week:
- Zepeto, the “metaverse platform” that is incredibly popular in Asia, is planning a worldwide expansion. This is something to keep an eye on;
- At the upcoming Meta Connect event, Meta plans to explain how it will connect its VR creation platform Horizon Worlds to Crayta, another creation platform acquired by Meta last year. This should be a sign of the upcoming interoperability of apps across the metaverse;
- Decentraland has just 38 daily active users. This is the true value of these online platforms with almost no value for the users and whose importance was inflated by the Web3 hype;
- An article on New Worlds Note stresses again how we should avoid repeating now the same errors that were made during the Second Life era.
More info (Zepeto)
More info (Worlds & Crayta)
More info (Decentraland)
More info (New World Notes)
Gift Cards are going to be available on Quest Store
Finally, Meta is adding a feature everyone was waiting for to happen on the Quest Store: the possibility of buying a gift card for someone else. This is going to be very handy for my upcoming Christmas gifts and also to make some giveaways to you of the community!
Some interesting stats about VR
I’ve read two interesting articles about the usage of VR this week. The first one is a report by AR Insider, which analyzed the use of VR in the US. 23 percent of U.S. adults used VR at least once, and this is quite a good result in my opinion. Remember anyway that the US is ahead of the rest of the world for what concerns VR, so in your country, this percentage may be less.
The second one is a very long article on Ars Technica that tells the story of VR hardware, highlighting the adoption rate at all stages. Now the Quest sells more than Xbox, so it may be considered a mainstream technology.
More info (AR Insider survey)
More info (VR gaming hardware)
Some news on content
- There are rumors about Half-Life: Alyx possibly coming to PSVR 2!
- Road To VR has reviewed BoneLab and gave it 5/10!
- Half Life VR mod is coming to Steam
- Beat Saber releases Lizzo DLC
- Smash Drums releases a new update with a Guitar-Hero mode
- Meta to release on Quest a series by BlackBox TV
- Upload VR has gone hands-on with Blockstar VR, Guardians Frontline, and Everslaught Invasion
More info (Half-Life: Alyx)
More info (Bonelab)
More info (Half-Life VR Mod)
More info (Beat Saber)
More info (Smash Drums)
More info (Blackbox TV)
More info (Blockstar VR)
More info (Guardians Frontline)
More info (Everslaught Invasion)
Other news
Varjo Aero is now on sale in Gamestop stores
Maybe AI has found a way to improve matrix multiplication, and this may speed up 3D computations
Vuzix announces general availability of Blade 2 smartglasses
Simula VR has been subpoenaed by Meta in its trial against FTC. This is totally disrespectful to do to a startup
Discover this do-it-yourself haptic suit!
Read more hands-on Pico 4
Learn more (Through the lenses)
Learn more (Hands-on)
News from partners (and friends)
Subscribe to Virtual Vector
Mathew Olson, the VR professional that was behind Reality Check, the amazing newsletter about XR at The Information, is starting a newsletter of his own called Virtual Vector. Virtual Vector is a paid service through which Mathew is going to send you an amazing roundup of the most relevant XR news of the week curated by him. I appreciated a lot Mathew’s work while he was at The Information, so I invite you all to check his new newsletter out!
Some XR fun
So maybe Steam is an inside job by Meta, or the opposite…
Funny link
The amazing people at Tilt Five have made a curling game for tabletop AR and I love it!
Funny link
Chatting in the metaverse
Funny link
Our hopes for HTC headset…
Funny link
The enthusiasm of the community for the upcoming HTC headset
Funny link
This is truly one of the funniest unboxing I have ever watched
Funny link
Extra! Extra! Bonelab!
Funny link
Graphics cards going forward
Funny link
This is the proper way to develop for VR
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 Pico)