The XR Week Peek (2023.01.16): Meta discontinues Quest 1, Apple HMD is in the hand of developers, and more!
Hello from Qingdao, China! I’m happy to be back in the Far East of the world after such a long time, and I’m actually quite enjoying my time here, even if I still spend a lot of hours working remotely. I want to start this newsletter by thanking you all that attended the alpha concert for the launch of the VRROOM platform to which I’ve contributed as a developer. We have still a long road to go, but we got good feedback, people had fun, and we reached an unexpected first place in the Pico store among the free experiences :O. This is just the first event, many others hopefully will come. If you missed it, don’t worry: you can still enjoy a video recording at this link.
Top news of the week
Meta starts the discontinuation of Quest 1
Meta has started the discontinuation of Quest 1. In a recent statement sent via e-mail, it has communicated this to all Quest 1 users:
- You will still be able to use your Quest 1 headset and available apps.
- We won’t be delivering new features to Quest 1.
- We plan to continue maintaining the system software with critical bug fixes and security patches until 2024.
- Quest 1 users will no longer be able to create or join a party.
- Quest 1 users who currently have access to Meta Horizon Home social features will lose access to these features on 5 March 2023. You won’t be able to invite others to your Home or visit someone else’s Home.
Translated: we are discontinuing Quest 1. This doesn’t come as a surprise, considering that Quest 1 was already missing some key features shipped to Quest 2, and many new games weren’t already supporting it. Quest 1 is less powerful than Quest 2, and implementing every feature on it is much harder. Not to mention the fact that this is the year when Quest 3 will come, making the Quest 2 obsolete. If you add to the mix the fact that Meta had to lay off lots of employees, it comes as a natural consequence the need to focus on the most important device, which is the Quest 2.
I’m a bit sad because the Quest has been the headset that revamped the interest towards VR, but I understand that now its time has come.
Other relevant news
Some selected developers have received the Apple headset
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who is considered a reliable reporter about Apple, claimed that “a small number of high-profile software developers” have already received the Apple mixed reality headset to start developing content for it. If this report is confirmed, it would mean that the headset would really be almost ready for commercialization and so could actually be announced this spring (just before WWDC) as some rumors have suggested in the past months.
Could this really be the year of the Apple headset? Only time will tell…
Roblox may be coming for Quest
In his new (paid) column on The Verge, Alex Heath stated to have “heard” that Roblox may come to Quest in the second part of the year, but he also added that “plans are subject to change”. So, this rumor seems very flimsy to me, considering that it’s just something he heard and doesn’t even know if it is going to happen.
BUT actually, if you remember well, I already reported a similar rumor six months ago. And at that time, there was also an image shared during a Roblox earning call featuring all the platforms Roblox is running on, and among these, there was also Roblox running on a Quest 2. So this new rumor on top of this makes me think that there is an ongoing discussion about porting Roblox to Quest for real for quite a long time.
I would really hope for this to happen. Roblox has a huge user base (like 50M daily users) and bringing it to VR, maybe together with the launch of Quest 3, would give Virtual Reality an infusion of lots of new young users. Roblox also already somewhat supports VR, even if in a tricky way, so the porting doesn’t seem so impossible. Fingers crossed for it.
More info (Roblox rumored to launch on Quest — Road To VR)
More info (Roblox rumored to launch on Quest — Upload VR)
More info (Previous rumor on Roblox)
News worth a mention
Intel’s latest Wi-Fi card lets you connect your Quest directly to your PC
Intel partnered with Meta to add an interesting feature to its latest flagship Wi-Fi card.
At CES, Intel announced that its Wi-Fi 6e AX1690 will have a special feature called Double Connect. Thanks to this, the card will be able to keep two Wi-Fi connections at the same time: one towards a router to have an internet connection, and the other directly to another device, like the Oculus Quest. This way it’s possible to wirelessly connect the PC to the Quest without passing through a router for optimized PCVR streaming, while at the same time have still an ongoing internet connection.
DigiLens unveils its headset
DigiLens has unveiled its first AR headset. Dubbed “Argo”, the device is meant for professional usage. It has a rugged industrial and enterprise construction, and it is designed to work hands-free with voice and gaze recognition. It features a 48MP camera which offers photorealistic image quality and multiple microphones that can detect well the user’s voice even in noisy environments.
Quest adds Android Health integration and a free Elite Strap for all new users
Interesting news came this week for the fitness VR world. First of all, the Meta Quest 2 has added support for Android Health, meaning that you can add your VR workout stats to all the other stats of the traditional workout you do. Plus now Quest can work together with some heart rate trackers to track your heart rate while you do XR fitness. And, even, more interestingly, Meta is offering a free Elite Strap to all new Quest users, so that they can work out in VR with the Quest staying more firmly on their heads.
Congress is stopping the acquisition of more Microsoft IVAS headset
The story of the IVAS, the modified HoloLens system that Microsoft is building for the army, is becoming always more similar to a soap opera. After the big headlines for the huge contract and then the disappointment with the current status of the hardware that lead to the suspension of the program, the situation seemed to set up for the better when the Army finally requested the first 5000 units of the IVAS to deploy to the field. But now Congress has stopped the Army’s request for $400 million to buy as many as 6,900 more of the AR combat goggles this year, because of all the issues the hardware has, and probably also because of the many expenses due to the US’s support to Ukraine. This is a decision that is not going to make Microsoft happy.
At least, there is a new budget of $40M to develop a new IVAS model, but this project seems to have a very troubled road in front of it.
Unity adds OpenXR hand integration package
Unity has just released the XR Hands package, currently in preview, that aims at making developers integrate hand tracking into their applications via OpenXR. This means that developers won’t need to use anymore the vendors’ SDKs to integrate hand tracking, but can finally use a fully cross-platform solution.
Meta and Codemasters’s latest game is… meh
Last week Meta and Codemasters announced the porting of the popular arcade racing sim GRID Legends to Quest 2. All VR magazines reported the news with enthusiasm. This week, the VR users have started playing with it and… My God, it has a graphical quality that is comparable to the games on my 486. It’s terrible, really. It is exactly the example of how NOT to do a porting…
More info (A review of the game)
More info (Reddit making irony of the game)
Some news on content
- Timberman VR aims at bringing the popular game Timberman to Oculus Quest 2
- Isle Of Pan is a game meant to make you shoot photos of bizarre creatures and landscapes in VR
- Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy VR port by DrBeef nears release on Quest & Pico
- MLK: Now Is The Time commemorates Martin Luther King in Virtual Reality
More info (Timberman VR)
More info (Timberman VR’s Quest store page)
More info (Isle Of Pan)
More info (Star Wars)
More info (MLK)
Other news
This research project is able to track the full body pose of people in a room by just using Wi-Fi signals
Everyone is praising ChatGPT, and the risk of a hype followed by disillusionment is high
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth wants to make the company more efficient
News from partners (and friends)
XR Bootcamp partners with Pearson
XR Bootcamp has just announced a partnership with Pearson, a world’s leading learning company. Their collaboration is meant to develop and test various VR language learning app prototypes. To be exact, the purpose is to have 13 Prototypes and 4 store-ready XR language learning MVPs.
Some XR fun
Standalone headsets are evil.
Funny link
Modern VR problems.
Funny link
Cats are the best haptic devices.
Funny link
It’s funny because it’s true.
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
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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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