It’s December, the month of Christmas, the holidays, and New Year’s Eve! But while you wait for the days in which you can relax a bit, enjoy this collection of the most interesting XR news of the week!
Top news of the week
Apple headset may have been delayed again
A new week, a new set of rumors about the upcoming Apple Reality One, the most awaited headset in the history of XR.
This week we got to know that Apple has just rebranded the operating system of the upcoming device from RealityOS (or rOS) to xrOS. This rebranding is interesting for a variety of reasons. First of all, it shows that the delivery of the device is getting closer, and then it makes clear that Apple is going to adopt some of the terms currently used by the community (“XR” in this case).
But even more interesting is the report by the most famous of Apple analysts, Mr. Kuo. He just filed a report of his that claims that Apple is having delays again with this device (he says “software-related issues”) and so the release of the headset may be postponed to the second half of 2023. The announcement may still happen in the first half of next year, though, but according to Kuo it is more probable in June during WWDC than in January, because making the release too distant from the announcement may hurt the device’s sales.
It’s not strange to hear about these delays, considering that Apple is preparing to launch a headset that should be so cool to deserve an Apple logo on it. The technology is not ready, so they need more time than expected to finalize it. Also, these delays are perfectly in line with the Law 3.1 of the Metaverse: “Apple is always coming next year, every year”.
As a final minor news, Apple’s current runtimes keep improving features that may useful for the future foray into immersive realities. The latest runtime for Mac and iPhones has for instance included optimizations to run StableDiffusion at the maximum efficiency possible.
More info (Apple renaming its MR operating sytem to xrOS — Upload VR)
More info (Apple renaming its MR operating sytem to xrOS — Yahoo!)
More info (Apple headset delayed to H2 2023)
More info (Apple adding features for StableDiffusion)
Other relevant news
Sony unveils affordable Mocopi tracking system
Sony has just announced a new affordable tracking system. It’s called Mocopi, and is comprised of 6 IMU trackers: 2 for your wrists, 2 for your ankles, 1 for your hip, and 1 for your head, which can connect to your phone via Bluetooth. The data of all the sensors merged together can be used to reconstruct the pose of the user thanks to the wonders of machine learning. This system could so be employed to have full body tracking inside experiences like VRChat.
The good thing about such a system is that it is affordable and very comfortable: you just wear a few bracelets and you can have full-body VR. No need for complicated room setups or suits difficult to wear.
There are also some disadvantages, though. First of all such systems based on IMU and not on full positional tracking are prone to drift and tracking inaccuracies, so it’s unrealistic that Mocopi can give you in VRChat the same performances as Vive Trackers. Then if you want to use them with the Quest, it seems that you have to connect them to your phone and then connect the phone with the Quest, for added latency.
Mocopi still looks like an interesting product. And for this reason, it is already being integrated into HIKKY, the Japanese social VR platform (where it is hosted VKET) and some people having the kit in preview have already tested it successfully with VRChat!
At the moment Mocopi has been announced only for Japan. Preorders open in mid-December for 49500 yen (around $350) for shipping in late January.
More info (Mocopi tracking system)
More info (Mocopi tested with VRChat)
More info (Mocopi and HIKKY)
Gorilla Tag is coming to the Quest Store!
Prepare to return to monke. The ultra-popular indie game Gorilla Tag is finally coming to the Quest Store! After having amassed 46,000 reviews on App Lab and having had more than 4.5 million players (yes, you read it well), it has finally been accepted into the official Quest Store, where we can expect these numbers to grow even more.
It was an absurdity that this game had not been admitted to the Quest Store yet, but finally Meta surrendered to reject humanity and return to monke. As an indie developer myself, I’m very happy that this absurd game, which has been developed by a solo creator, has managed to reach the Quest Store. Another success story for an indie in XR!
Sidequest is now available for Pico 4
Talking about indie success, we can’t forget SideQuest, the software that made it possible for the whole indie ecosystem to thrive on Quest notwithstanding the Meta walled garden. Now SideQuest is coming to Pico 4: this will be great to allow on this platform all the content that is too unripe to go to the main Pico Store, or that has been rejected for whatever reason.
It’s interesting to see the Sidequest ecosystem expanding: until now the application has been very Quest-focused (given also the name), but now that is expanding to Pico 4 and hopefully also the Lynx R-1, it will have to change. I’m curious to see how it will become.
News worth a mention
Quest update v47 brings some interesting features
Quest devices are receiving the runtime v47 which adds a slew of interesting updates:
- The users are now represented by their avatars even in the Home: once logged in, now you should be able to see the arms and the hands of your avatar on the controllers. I just tried it now, and it felt… weird;
- The Quest Pro now allows recording the passthrough. This is the first time that a feature gets enabled on the Pro and not on the consumer version of Quest;
- Meta now allows launching websites easily on the Quest via special links. If a webpage embeds this kind of special link and you click on it from PC or mobile, a popup asks you on what Meta device you want to open the link and then you can find it opened on that device. This is amazing to reduce the friction of WebXR experiences.
More info (Meta Avatars in Quest Home)
More info (Passthrough recording on Quest Pro)
More info (WebXR links)
Neuralink shows a monkey that types on a keyboard
Elon Musk’s Neuralink has just released an update on its developments. In its latest show, the company has shown a monkey that can “type” on a keyboard by just using his brain and then has teased that human trials should start soon. Interesting… but not that incredible if compared with what current BCI companies have done until now.
More info (Neuralink developments — CNN)
More info (Neuralink developments — WSJ)
Mozilla launches subscriptions for Hubs
Mozilla Hubs is not dead. The most famous WebXR social VR space has just been revamped by Mozilla, which is launching a paid subscription for it. If until now you could use Hubs however you wanted for free, from now on, you can only demo a free room, and then if you want to create rooms you have to pay a monthly $20 subscription. The software is still open source, but if you have not enough knowledge to install it on your own servers, then the best option to use it is to pay. $20 is not cheap, so probably Mozilla is aiming at the enterprise market.
But there’s even more: Mozilla has just acquired the startup Active Replica to speed up the development of Hubs. And it is promising to finally add interactions to its product. It seems that after a lot of months of stasis, the social VR world is moving again… but in a direction different from the previous one.
More info (Mozilla launching subscription for Hubs)
More info (Mozilla buying Active Replica)
Boy shoots his mother for a VR headset
This story got a bit viral in our communities lately: it seems that a 10-year-old boy shot his mother because she didn’t want to buy him a VR headset. Reading the story, though, it is easy to realize that this guy had a long story of mental issues, so the VR headset is not the main reason for what happened.
(Thanks Rob for the tip!)
The winners of VR Awards have been announced!
The VR Awards have come to an end this year, too… again with me as one of the judges! Compliments to all the winners, and in particular to Jason Moore who has won an award for his MetaMovie experience!
Some articles on the metaverse
As every week, here you are some interesting articles on the M-word I have read this week:
- Denny Unger from Cloudhead games has clearly said that the value of VR shouldn’t be evaluated using the current value of the “metaverse”, because they are two different things (even if related)
- The European Union has spent $387K to organize a party “in the metaverse” to which only 6 people have participated. And one of them was a journalist, so the real people were only 5. What a great success. They could have given half of that money to us of VRROOM and we would have brought 50 times those people… The EU doesn’t know de wei.
- Jensen Huang spoke with VentureBeat and highlighted the importance of AI generative tools for the future of the metaverse. AI tools can help everyone in generating content for the metaverse, even the ones that would be difficult to create with traditional instruments (like 3D models). These tools are starting to become very interesting: this week OpenAI opened ChatGPT, and I discovered it is already able to write good short articles on whatever topic I had in mind. AI with XR is going to be an explosive mix.
More info (Denny on VR and the metaverse)
More info (The EU and its nonsense party)
More info (Jensen Huang on AI generative tools)
More info (Chat GPT)
Niantic AR glasses are probably based on Lumus reference design
Optics expert Karl Guttag has analyzed the video of the upcoming Niantic AR headset and has discovered that is probably based on Lumus reference design. Lumus is one of the few companies which are offering a waveguide with a high value in nits, which means that the light it emits is strong enough that the virtual content is visible also outdoors. This is how Niantic can offer AR glasses that can be worn on the streets.
Enjoy two VR-related offers
- Beat Saber songs are currently sold at $0.99 each, which is half of their regular price
- Humble Bundle has a new Premier VR bundle with amazing games like Cosmonious High and After The Fall!
More info (Beat Saber)
More info (Humble Bundle)
Some news on content
- VR roguelite COMPOUND is launching on Quest 2 on December 8th
- The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners — Chapter 2: Retribution has launched on Quest. It is coming on February 2023 for Steam and March 20th, 2023 for PlayStation VR2
- Indie application “Jungle Passthrough” has been released for Quest via App Lab
- I have reviewed AmazeVR’s concert featuring Megan Thee Stallion and appreciated the high quality of its capture.
More info (Compound)
More info (TWD 2 for Quest)
More info (TWD 2 for Steam and PSVR 2)
More info (Jungle Passthrough)
More info (AmazeVR)
Other news
Razer launches tool to create haptics for VR devices
Resolution Games to host an event on December, 15th in which a new game will be announced
Lynx has published a new update on the availability of its device
Pimax has announced an incentive program for indie developers that want to release titles for its platform
Diminished reality is one of the things that intrigues me the most about XR
News from partners (and friends)
Support HitMotion: Reloaded!
If you could try the (free) fitness game I co-created and give it a good review on App Lab, I would appreciate it a lot! We absolutely need your support, so please, give it a try and review it!
Support us 🙂
Some XR fun
The best post about VR headsets you will ever read. Maybe.
Funny link
Journalists when they talk about VR.
Funny link
Every VR group or community…
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
- Yacine Achiakh
- 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 Sony)