Welcome to the last newsletter of 2022! It’s been an interesting year for XR, and I’m glad that we did this journey together. Thanks for the trust you are giving me and for reading this column I publish every week… I hope it has been useful for you this year and that it will still be next year.
Before we start digging into the news, let me wish you a Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it) and a happy new year! You can read my full greetings in the post I published a few days ago: https://skarredghost.com/2022/12/24/happy-holidays-xmas-2022/
Top news of the week
Somnium Space to showcase its headset at CES
Somnium Space is ready to reveal its first headset at CES 2023. The company behind the eponymous web3 social VR world has released some teaser images of its upcoming device, inviting everyone to come and see it at the upcoming tech exhibition in Las Vegas.
The headset that was in the beginning advertised as a hybrid standalone+tethered device has just become a SteamVR HMD. Its specifications are actually quite cool:
- Display: 2x 3.2″ 2880 x 2880 Fast LCD.
- Horizontal FOV 120°, Vertical FOV 100°
- Pass-through cameras: 2x 3864 x 2192, 90 FPS (foveated transport), FOV 120° x 100°
- Ultraleap hand tracking
- Custom made eye tracking
- Wireless PC VR Streaming
- Integrated high quality stereo microphones
- 3 modular customizable and 3D printable anchor points
The Somnium VR1 headset (this is its name) gains even more value if we consider that it is thought to be as open and modular as possible. For instance, the partnership with 3D printing company Prusa Research may be exploited to create an entire ecosystem of accessories for the device that can be 3D printed. As for the price, a friend of mine told me that the goal is to make it quite affordable (so not to sell it at Valve Index prices).
I can’t wait to discover more about this device. Given its open and modular nature, I fully endorse it. Unluckily I won’t be at CES, but I will read every review that there will be around about it. I like a lot what I know about it, but VR hardware must be tried to be judged, so I’ll wait for the first reviews before expressing a true opinion about it.
More info (Somnium VR1 photos and specifications)
More info (Somnium VR1 to be revealed at CES 2023)
Other relevant news
Meta stresses its commitment to XR
Andrew Bosworth, the CTO of Meta, has shared a post on the company blog to underline the efforts made in XR by the company, and to hint about what will happen in the future. It’s a very corporate post, but in it, it is still possible to find some interesting tidbits. First of all, he confirms that Quest 3 is coming in 2023. And also confirms that Meta is going to invest 20% of its budget on Reality Labs, so on XR technologies, and that 50% of this money will be invested into the development of AR glasses. The meaning is quite clear: Meta is still committed to XR and its end goal is developing the AR glasses that all people will wear all day. So notwithstanding the bad moment of the economy and the departure of Carmack, the mission has not changed. What sounds weird, though, is that in this post, he never mentions the “metaverse”. Considering the importance that Meta has always given to this word, it is very strange, and it may hint at a slight pivot that the company is performing.
Together with this post, a few other technical posts have been shared by Meta. Also here there is nothing mindblowing to read, but still something worth reading. Meta claims to have retinal resolution still on its roadmap, and that one of its goals is to let people perform the scanning of a room with the Quest Pro, without the user needing to set the boundaries manually. Meta has also detailed the story of how the lenses of the Quest Pro (one of the best features of the device) have been manufactured: it seems that Meta had to create the supply chain from scratch to be able to build pancake lenses with the quality it desired.
Regarding AR glasses, there is a last detail I want to share with you. According to a report by The Information, Meta is looking to ship them with an accessory that may help as input device. One device the company is testing is shaped like a phone and could be used to “send commands to the glasses or to access more computing power for them”, according to The Information. As for the smartwatch they were planning to build, it seems that they incurred into power and design problems.
More info (Boz’s official post)
More info (The Verge comments Bosworth’s post)
More info (Boz never mentions The Metaverse)
More info (Meta and automated room scanning)
More info (Meta and retinal resolution)
More info (Meta and the lenses of Quest Pro)
There is still hope for a wireless PSVR 2
Japanese magazine Famitsu interviewed Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Hideaki Nishino and asked him many questions about PlayStation 5 and PSVR 2. In the long interview published online, I found three pieces of information especially intriguing:
- PSVR 2 has been designed and developed together with PS5. It has not been an aftermarket accessory, but it has been designed together with the main console since Day 1. This shows the commitment that Sony has toward VR;
- The lineup for PSVR 2 is not complete. Many people are complaining that the lineup of games for the launch of PSVR 2 is quite small. Actually, Sony has not revealed all the launch titles, yet. I hope it has some aces up of its sleeve…
- Sony is still experimenting with a wireless adapter for PSVR 2. Sony Interactive Entertainment believes that the cable is the only way to deliver a VR experience of the highest quality possible and this is the reason why PSVR 2 will ship as a tethered headset. But there is still ongoing research about a wireless mode, so maybe an official accessory providing wireless streaming for PSVR 2 may come in the future. Maybe.
News worth a mention
Quest 2 is becoming 7% more powerful
Meta has found a way to increase the performance of the Quest 2 GPU by 7%. This is possible by boosting the GPU frequency to 525 MHz up from today’s 490 MHz. 7% may not seem much, but given the low performances of the device, every performance gain matters to arrive at the desired 72Hz, so it is more than welcome. The update arrives already on v47 of the runtime, but to be activated requires the user to double tap on the power button. With v49, the new performance headroom will be instead activated by default for all apps that may need it.
Some stats about XR and the metaverse
It’s the end of the year, so time for reports about the past year and forecasts about the next one. I’ve found this week lots of reports about XR and the metaverse, and I’m linking them to you here below so that you can read them too. The picture that they paint is not that positive for immersive realities. It seems that next year won’t be “the year of VR” again. Headsets shipments may be a bit better if we manage to go through this quasi-recession, but they will still be around 10M units/year, so nothing that gets close to mainstream adoption. VR has still the problem that must be tried to be really understood, and many people are still not interested in the technology because they don’t know what they are losing. As for the metaverse, many people still don’t know what it is and are not using any proto-metaverse now.
The picture is the one of another year of the “early days” of the technology. Things are getting better, but will still require many years before arriving at the status we dream of them to be in.
More info (People are not interested in trying VR)
More info (Forecast about VR sales in 2023)
More info (Tom Ffiske’s metaverse report for 2022)
More info (Tom Ffiske’s metaverse report for 2022 — Cached version)
More info (Capgemini’s report about the metaverse)
More info (PwC’s report about the metaverse)
Point-E is like Dall-E but for point clouds
We are getting systems that are able to reconstruct good images starting from text prompts, but what about 3D elements generation? Well, OpenAI has just released Point-E, an AI system that is able to dynamically generate the point cloud about the object described as a string of text by the user. It is not the first algorithm of this kind, but its peculiarity is that it is very fast and can answer in a matter of minutes.
This is impressive, but according to the experts, much time is still needed before a system like this can replace the 3D artist of a PC game.
More info (Point-E)
More info (Some info about Point-E)
More info (AI can’t replace human artists yet)
Decentraland lands to VR
Decentraland is one of the most popular Web3 worlds out there. It was not compatible with VR, but this week my attention was caught by the release on Sidequest of Decentraland VR, which is the VR version of Decentraland. It’s interesting that Decentraland decided finally to invest in VR.
(Thanks Louis Cacciuttolo for the tip)
Discover Road To VR and Upload’s games of the year
It’s the end of the year, and together with the reports, we also have a long list of awards that get given to VR games and experiences in general. Road To VR and Upload VR have chosen their games of the year. Road To VR has chosen a game like Red Matter 2 as the game of the year for Quest 2, while Upload VR has chosen What The Bat, which is a game I love, but… well… game of the year… this choice is a bit a what the… bat.
More info (Road To VR’s awards)
More info (Upload VR’s awards)
Some news on content
- Spatial has announced a toolkit for creators that can be used directly inside Unity
- Adobe Substance 3D Modeler has arrived on Steam
- After the backlash from the community, Virtual Desktop can now be used again without an internet connection
- Upload has reviewed The Walking Dead: Saint and Sinners Chapter 2 but hasn’t found it that amazing. It is like a big DLC of the first title
- Chris Milk has released a new crazy musical experience for VR called Lambchild Superstar. In it, you can easily generate some music you may like without the need of being a music expert
More info (Spatial)
More info (Adobe Substance)
More info (Virtual Desktop)
More info (TWD: Saint And Sinners)
More info (Lambchild Superstar)
Other news
One of the most viral XR videos of the week is this research project that shows the outside world what you are looking at in VR but in a creepy way
Dilmer Valecillos has made a new video to show the latest updates on the XR Interaction Toolkit
Diver X has started a new Kickstarter campaign about haptic gloves
8 Web 3 companies merged to create Futureverse, a quite powerful Web3 platform that uses all the expertise of the companies that compose it
Pale Blue is making experiments with VR headsets in zero-gravity settings. The photos from the related article are pretty cool
News from partners (and friends)
Review HitMotion: Reloaded
Make me an end-of-the-year gift and please leave a positive review on our indie fitness game HitMotion: Reloaded on the Quest Store!
Some XR fun
We did it again! Watch the second episode of “The Spatial Show”, the first comedy show all dedicated to the metaverse!
Funny link
Be careful about what you do after many hours in XR…
Funny link
A classic joke in the XR communities
Funny link
Let’s play the metaverse bingo!
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
- Dimo Pepelyashev
- 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 Somnium Space)