The XR Week Peek (2023.04.18): Valve confirms it’s working on a VR headset, Quest 2 has 6M+ active users, and more!
This hasn’t been the most interesting week ever for XR, because we had no big news. But we had many interesting small pieces of news that are worth a read. And guess where you can find them? Yes, here below, personally curated by your favorite ghost!
Top news of the week
Valve confirms it is working on a VR headset
Speaking with the Korean magazine This Is Game, Valve’s product designer Greg Kumar has answered the explicit question about their work on a VR headset with the following sentence: “Still, I can tell you for sure that we’ve been working on a VR headset lately. This is because Valve has a lot of expertise in VR devices and has faith in the medium of VR and VR games”
There is a lot of talk about a possible upcoming standalone headset by Valve, that evolves the Steamdeck design into a virtual reality helmet. But, to my memory, the company has never explicitly confirmed the existence of such a headset, codenamed Deckard. They have provided many hints, but never explicitly talked about it.
This time, instead, Valve has instead officially confirmed that it is actually working on a new VR device. No details have been provided, but we can imagine that it is the standalone VR headset we are all waiting for. I can’t wait to discover more about it…
Other relevant news
Quest 2 monthly active users are around 6M
The Wall Street Journal has published a report about Pico providing money to developers to port games to its VR platform. But while this is the main topic of the article, the report actually provides much more interesting information when speaking about Meta.
The journal has been able to access some internal statistics by Meta, and especially three points are relevant:
- Across its lifetime up to October 2022, Beat Saber has generated over $255 million in revenues and was played monthly by 1.47 million active devices
- As of February 2023, more than 200 apps have made more than $1M on the Meta Quest Store, up 44% compared with the year prior
- Meta Quest had 6.37 million monthly active players as of October 2022.
These pieces of information are very interesting. First of all, they show the impressive size of the success of Beat Saber: this game has had revenues surpassing $255M, which are huge even for a non-VR game. Meta clearly bought this game because it is the killer app of VR gaming.
Then the fact that Meta had more than 6 million monthly active players in October 2022 gives us an overview of the retention rate of Quest 2. Considering that a recent report talked about 20M Quests sold since the release of the first model, we can say that around two third of the bought Quests are taking dust on shelves or not used frequently. This is bad, and we must understand why this is happening if we want VR to become mainstream. At the same time, 6 M monthly active users are not even that bad: some people claimed that only 10% of Quest purchasers were active users, but this hypothesis has just been refuted by this report. 6 M is a market that is not huge, but it is big enough for small-medium studios to survive in. Of course, for mainstream adoption, we need much more than that.
More info (Original report by WSJ)
More info (Mixed News reporting about Meta’s numbers)
More info (Upload VR talking about Quest’s active users)
More info (Upload VR talking about Beat Saber’s revenues)
Pico announces G3 3DOF headset
While some reports talk about Bytedance reducing its investments in VR, Pico is actually keeping improving its offering.
On the consumer side, it has just announced a new bundle: whoever buys a new Pico 4 gets for free a bundle of 4 apps: Peaky Blinders: The King’s Ransom, Les Mills Bodycombat, Golf 5 eClub, and Wander. This is a nice bonus for all people considering buying a VR headset to play games.
On the enterprise side, instead, there has been the announcement at Laval Virtual of the new G3 headset. G3 is a headset for the enterprise market, in particular a 3DOF headset that is suitable for watching media.
Here you are the G3 specs, in case you are considering buying it for your company:
- Display resolution: 1832 x 2160 pixels per eye
- Refresh rate: 72/90 Hz
- Pixels per inch: 773
- FOV: 98°
- Lens type: Fresnel
- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2
- Weight: 604 grams with Strap
- Storage: 128 GB
- RAM: 6 GB
- Tracking: Inside-Out 3DoF
- Controller: 3-DOF tracked Remote
- Battery: 5300mAh
- Price: €399
When I shared the news online, many people had fun commenting on the fact that the headset is 3DOF, but actually, there are still companies making good business by employing 3DOF devices for training, education, psychology, marketing, and other use cases. The headset is a refresh of the previous G2 4K with improved horsepower thanks to the use of the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chipset. The cost is €399 + VAT, which is not cheap, but we have to remember that is an enterprise device, so its cost is higher than consumer devices like the Oculus Go.
I think the G3 is a headset that is interesting for a niche of the VR market, but that is still a very profitable niche, so Pico did well in doing this launch.
More info (Pico 4 Spring Bundle)
More info (Pico G3 announcement)
News worth a mention
Media Molecule to reduce commitment to Dreams
Media Molecule has decided to reduce its support to the creation sandbox Dreams: live support for the application is being discontinued after September, 1st, and there will be no new updates to the application after the same date. This also means that support for PSVR 2 is never coming.
I’ve found this to be an important piece of news. When Dreams came out for PSVR, many journalists depicted it as a potential savior of VR. Thanks to its capabilities of letting content creators develop VR games and experiences without any coding knowledge, it was expected that Dreams-based VR content could explode, giving VR players much rich content to play with. But after an initial hype, nothing of that vision became true and now the game is even being discontinued. This is just the nth lesson about why you should never fall for the hype…
Some news about AI
- Zipnerf is a new cool Nerf technology. Researchers have been able to create a quasi-realistic moving drone shot of a house full of objects starting just with a set of pictures
- AI services are starting to be used to create images of women for “romantic purposes”. I think this creates another level of blending of virtual and real, which will be typical of the metaverse. People are appreciating or falling in love with girls that never existed, and are just created by the AI, a bit like NPCs of a virtual world. We are going to live in a reality where the line between what is real and what is not is becoming always more blurred… and people seem to be ok with it
- 25 AI agents have been put into the same virtual town and let them live their life. It was interesting to see that the AI agents have started replicating some behaviors that are typical of humans. For instance, a piece of news could start from an agent and arrive to all the others via word of mouth. This means that in the future we may have cities of AI agents and humans that coexist in a natural way.
More info (Zipnerf)
More info (AI-generated images)
More info (25 AI agents in a town)
XR is becoming always more important for therapy
A very long and detailed article on CNET shows how VR is becoming increasingly important for mental therapy. Thanks to the exposure therapy, overcoming a phobia using VR is much faster than doing it with traditional methods. The problems with the widespread adoption of this tool are both technical (with headsets that should be cheaper, lighter, etc…) and social (some psychologists are still attached to the traditional therapies they know well).
6G may be important to build the metaverse
According to a recent report, 6G, with its high network capabilities, is a fundamental technology to arrive at building the metaverse. It is not the first time that I hear about the potential importance of 6G, so I’m inclined to think that this technology may be fundamental for our future. But at the same time, we are still having difficulties in deploying 5G, so I’m not confident in 6G arriving soon…
Snapdragon Spaces integrates Spatial Mapping and Meshing
Snapdragon Spaces has just integrated Spatial Mapping and Meshing in its runtime and SDK. Spatial Mapping and Meshing are those features that not only let an AR glass understand its surroundings but also make it reconstruct the mesh of the environment. Once, this technology was available only to dedicated expensive glasses like HoloLens and Magic Leap, but now that Qualcomm has integrated them in Spaces, we are going to see it very soon also in consumer-ish AR glasses connected to the phone. This is going to be big!
How Into the Radius was ported to Quest
Upload VR has featured a guest post by CM Games, in which the company talks about how they ported Into The Radius to Quest thanks to the support of an external studio. The article is full of interesting insights, and if you have a gaming studio, I suggest giving it a read.
Some news on content
- Upload VR has previewed retro-shooter Amid Evil VR and found it “promising”
- Survival horror VR game Propagation: Paradise Hotel will release on May 4 for Meta Quest and SteamVR
- Eye Of The Temple is in development for Quest 2. The developer has also released a video in which he shows how he did the level design for this game (and I found it very interesting)
- Bafta-nominated game “Call Of The Sea” has been released on Quest 2 for $20
- Upload has reviewed “Gambit!” but it didn’t find the game as exciting as it seemed from the trailers
- Kill It With Fire VR, a game about killing spiders, is now available on Steam and the Quest Store, priced at $15
- Peacock is now available on Quest, but only as a solo-watching experience
- Dead Hook, which is JoyWay’s reworking of the discontinued game Outlier, arrives on Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro on May 18
- Upload has gone hands-on with Firewall Ultra. In the related article, you can read about Ian Hamilton and David Jagneaux meeting again, and it is quite nice. Plus it’s interesting to read about the HDR display of PSVR 2 that makes flashbangs in the game really intense for the user
- The official modding tool for Pistol Whip has been released for PC
- One of the most awaited games, Breachers, is now available for all the major headsets. The 5v5 tactical multiplayer costs $30
- Upload has gone hands-on with the no-VR mod of Half-Life: Alyx and confirmed that this game without VR has little sense
- Formula Retro Racing is a decent arcade racing game in VR, but many things are to be improved
- Horror game Afterlife VR arrives on PSVR 2 on April 19
- The super-popular game Walkabout Mini Golf is coming to PSVR 2 on May 11
More info (Amid Evil VR)
More info (Propagation: Paradise Hotel)
More info (Eye Of The Temple VR)
More info (Call Of The Sea)
More info (Gambit!)
More info (Kill It With Fire VR)
More info (Peacock)
More info (Dead Hook)
More info (Firewall Ultra)
More info (Pistol Whip)
More info (Breachers)
More info (Half-Life: Alyx)
More info (Formula Retro Racing)
More info (Afterlife VR)
More info (Walkabout Minigolf)
Other news
Microsoft is deploying a Windows 11 update for HoloLens 2, showing the device is not dead, yet
Upload VR has just refreshed its website! It’s much better, but now only paid users can write comments
Bigscreen Beyond keeps getting positive reviews because of its lightweight and comfortable design
Ostloong Innovations announces Lyra smartglasses
Cesium to offer 1M in grants for XR projects using its geospatial APIs
Exit Suit is a new DIY exoskeleton for VR
Meta to use generative AI for advertisement. In the long run, the use of AI for advertisement may introduce safety risks for users
Mark Schramm recorded the reprojections artifacts on PSVR 2 in a very well-made video
News from partners (and friends)
Attend the AWE Nite Florence!
This Thursday at 6pm CEST don’t miss the online event AWE Nite Florence that will talk about XR and AI with three great speakers like Louis Rosenberg, Gianluca Iadema, and Piero Fioretti! The event is free, fully remote, and as usual presented by the passionate Cecilia Lascialfari!
Genee AR partnered with InWorld.AI
Genee AR has just partnered with InWorld.AI. Thanks to this partnership, it will be possible to easily integrate the conversational avatars by InWorld.AI in the WebAR engine offered by Genee AR. There is also a free demo available and it works quite well.
Some XR fun
How about no?
Funny link
Some people are tired of some memes
Funny link
This is me every time with my VR controllers
Funny link
Mark Zuckerberg in this moment
Funny link
VR is not dead, it seems
Funny link
If only old movies knew about how ChatGPT worked…
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
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- Immersive.international
- Nikk Mitchell and the great FXG team
- Jake Rubin
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- Alan Smithson
- Steve R
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- Pieter Siekerman
- Simplex
- Matias Nassi
And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by Valve)
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