The XR Week Peek (2022.10.18): Meta announces Quest Pro, new rumors about Apple, and more!
This has been the week of the Meta Connect, which brought with it many important announcements. I thought that there could be nothing else to say in this roundup apart from the Connect, while actually, digging into the various XR magazines and social media feed, I have been able to find a lot of interesting little news, which I’m reporting to you.
By the way, today I travel to Lisbon to attend AWE Europe, where I will be the moderator of a panel about sustainability in XR and Web3. If you are going, too, let me know and maybe we will be able to meet! If you are not going, well, expect to read some articles on mine about the hardware that I will try there, so you will feel as if you have been there, too… and I will also eat and review some delicious pasteis de nata for you :D.
Top news of the week
Meta announces at Connect Quest Pro and a partnership with Microsoft
Meta Connect has been the big event of the week, which got the attention not only of the XR community but also of the whole tech world, which is interested in following the evolution of Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse dreams.
There have been a few key announcements at Connect:
- Meta has launched Quest Pro, its new premium headset, for $1500
- Meta announced its focus on a new vertical, productivity
- Meta has partnered with Microsoft and Accenture to tackle the XR enterprise world. Satya Nadella was on the virtual stage to announce the integration of Microsoft Teams with Quest Pro
- Mark Zuckerberg teased new avatars (with legs) and new upcoming features for Meta Horizon
If I have already written two roundups about the Connect, one shorter, focused on the key takeaways, and one longer, with ALL the announcements in one single article. You choose which one you want to read!
More info (Key takeaways from Meta Connect)
More info (All the announcements from Meta Connect)
Other relevant news
Apple MR headset may feature iris detection and legs tracking
A new week, a new set of rumors about the Apple headset. According to a new report, Apple visor will feature iris scanning, which will have a double purpose: on one side, it can help in detecting which is the user that is employing the device, so that to have easy switching of users when multiple people in the same family are using the headset. And on the other side, it could be used for biometric authentication to perform payments in XR (where entering your card data is a true pain).
Thanks to downward cameras, the device should be able also to offer legs tracking, for more realistic avateering.
The report ends with a fantastic sentence: “some previously planned features may not make it into the final version of the headset when it is unveiled next year”. Long story short, all the rumors until now may prove to be wrong. Ahah I love the nonsense of the rumors about Apple! People publishing lots of posts, and then… “ah no, maybe this won’t happen”.
More info (Report about Apple visor — Mac Rumors)
More info (Report about Apple visor — Upload VR)
A job Listing confirms that Valve is working on a standalone headset
Recently Valve has published this job listing:
We are looking for versatile, self-directed software engineers in computer vision who can help us achieve the next steps in VR with millions of customers world-wide. The main scope of this position is to prototype, ship, and support consumer gaming products leveraging visual-inertial tracking (HMD and controllers), camera passthrough, environment understanding, eye tracking, and hand tracking.
Reading it, it is pretty obvious that they are talking about a standalone headset: they are looking for computer vision engineers, which are required to perform inside-out tracking, they are talking about camera passthrough which is the trend now for standalone devices, as it is environment understanding, and also they talk about “millions of customers”. If you mix this with the previous statements about Steamdeck technology being useful also for VR… I mean… how many other hints do you need? 🙂
More info (Valve’s job listing)
News worth a mention
HP Reverb G2 how at $350
HP has put on sale the HP Reverb G2 for just $350 on its website. For that price, it is absolutely a steal.
On a (maybe) separate note, someone on Reddit says that HP may stop selling the Reverb soon. I don’t know if the rumor is true, but if it is, the big sale may be useful to get rid of the remaining units in the warehouses.
More info (HP Reverb G2 flash sale)
More info (Rumors about the end of the HP Reverb G2)
Pico 4 preorder campaign has been a success
Pico has stated that there will delays in shipping the preordered Pico 4 devices because of the “unprecedented demand” for them. It’s good to hear about its success since we need more competition in the XR space. On the other side, it is not uncommon to hear that a newly launched headset has gone “out of stock” or had “overwhelming success”… these statements are a common marketing move.
By the way, with the official launch of Virtual Desktop on the Pico Store, now Pico 4 has finally a reliable solution for wireless PCVR streaming.
More info (“Unprecedented demand” for Pico 4)
More info (Virtual Desktop on Pico 4)
Luma Labs releases its app in beta
Luma Labs has released its app to scan objects in beta. Powered by NeRF technology, the application lets you scan an object easily with your phone. It is successful for the easiness of use and the quality of the resulting 3D model.
More info (Example usage)
More info (Twitter feed of Luma Labs where to see many scans)
Some news on the metaverse
Like every week, let me share with you some relevant articles about the M-word:
- Invisible Studio takes us back to 1998, when it developed a multiplayer 3D experience. This is the “metaverse” of 25 years ago, which of course was terrible for today’s standards, but much ahead of its time. I love to see the work of the pioneers
- Wired has written an article about how the metaverse doesn’t need virtual reality. While I partially disagree with this, it’s good to remember to ourselves that the metaverse can also be accessed with mobile phones and similar devices
- Decentraland has tried answering the report from last week about its number of users, saying that actually it has 8000 daily users. Which are not that many, either
- An article in JingDaily states that in China metaverse activities are more appreciated by the authorities if they are somehow linked to real events and locations
- The New York Times has written a long and detailed article to bash Mark Zuckerberg and its metaverse efforts. This has been the sport of the week, with many other magazines (like Techcrunch) doing the same. A sentence contained in the article is an indicator of the status of the metaverse nowadays: “Mr. Bosworth tried to lead a staff meeting inside Horizon Workrooms, according to an employee who was present. The meeting was thwarted by technical glitches and the team ended up using Zoom, the employee said”. Remember: we are still in the early days.
More info (The metaverse, 25 years ago)
More info (The metaverse without VR)
More info (Decentraland about the number of its users)
More info (The metaverse in China)
More info (The New York Times’s report about Meta)
New info about IVAS glasses
A report by Bloomberg details the problems that the IVAS glasses, that is the Microsoft Hololens headsets modified for the US Army, are having. According to sources, the soldiers are complaining about feeling discomfort and nausea while using them, and also about the light they emit that could make the enemy discover the soldiers. Besides, some of the users are also puzzled about their utility. The army is still interested in continuing the experimentation because Microsoft is keeping improving them and for some tasks (like navigation) they are proving to be useful.
More info (Report by Bloomberg)
More info (Article on The Verge)
Some bad metrics about Meta products
As I’ve told you before, bashing Meta has been the sport of the week. In this section, I want to tell you about some disappointing metrics related to products offered by Meta:
- According to some calculations from New World Notes, every Quest 2 user has on average bought 2–3 big games on the Quest Store. This is not a big number and may show why Meta had to raise the price of the device, not being able to subsidize the hardware with the revenues from the software
- An article in the Wall Street Journal reports that Meta was expecting to have around 500,000 users in Horizon by the end of this year, while the real number now is more or less half of that. This is pretty disappointing
More info (Quest 2 software sales estimates)
More info (Horizon Worlds users)
Google Starline starts real-world testing
Google Starline, the booth for realistic remote one-on-one meetings, has started being deployed in “early access” inside some selected companies. In my humble opinion, the solution is too bulky and expensive to be able to replace a Zoom call, which can be performed by a mobile phone on the fly, while offering not-so-relevant advantages. My bet is that we’ll see it soon in the Google Graveyard, but I hope to be wrong.
Some news on content
- Road To VR has published its usual interesting monthly update about VR mods
Other news
LastPass is the first password manager with a 2D Progressive Web App (PWA) on Meta’s Quest Store
Quest Hand Tracking v2.1 increases the reliability of hand tracking on Quest 2
StandableVR is a plugin developed by a young dev to offer full-body VR via IK in Unity. It looks very promising
Lynx releases its SDK and dev portal so that developers can start experimenting with it
First benchmarks show that RTX4090 can offer 2x the performances of the 3090 when playing VR games
Epson launches a new version of Moverio smartglasses for enterprise
Bobby Carlton writes a few pieces of advice to follow if you want to have your AR tattoo
News from partners (and friends)
Discover the MetaVRse engine
Alan Smithson has shared on Linkedin a new cool showcase video of his MetaVRse engine, with which it is possible to build enterprise VR applications.
Learn more
Discover VRCast
VRCast is a podcast recorded inside VRChat that talks about VRChat, social worlds, and VR in general. Some topics covered in the past have been Meta Connect, Pico 4, full body tracking, lap dance clubs in VR, and the new NVIDIA GPUs. You can enjoy it on Youtube or Twitch.
Learn more (Youtube channel)
Learn more (Twitch channel)
Some XR fun
Meta Reality Labs can give you a lot of money if you participate to its surveys.
Funny link
The new Meta Quest Pro or something like that.
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:
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And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by Meta)
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