The XR Week Peek (2023.09.04): Meta may be working on the next Quest Pro with LG, Meta Avatars get legs, and more!
September is back! We will soon enter Autumn, exactly the season I think VR is in (I’ve just written an editorial about this if you are curious to read it…).
This is also the month when we will finally see the launch of the Quest 3, so it is going to be pretty cool. Who is as excited as me?
Top news of the week
Meta may be working on a very cheap Quest and very expensive Quest Pro 2
Thanks to Twitter user Lunayian, I got to read an article written by a Korean magazine with some very interesting rumors about Meta. Before I dig into them, I remind you that they are just rumors, so you should take them with a grain of salt.
First of all, the magazine states that Meta is going to release in 2024 a new Quest model that should cost less than $200. It is not the first time that we’ve heard a similar rumor, but it is interesting to find new evidence of this. A device with that price is likely a headset without cutting-edge features that ships without controllers, I would speculate. I think it would be beneficial for the ecosystem, because price has always been an important factor to determine the success of a headset, and a headset costing $199 would enlarge our current market. The only doubt I have is about what content it is going to offer: if the headset is without controllers, it means is dedicated mostly to social VR, media consumption, and/or virtual screen for the PC. I’m not so sure that this is the kind of content people are looking for.
Then, the magazine also affirms that Meta is working on the Meta Quest Pro 2, which anyway won’t be called that way, but would be called “Meta Quest 4 Pro”. This would mean that Meta would start doing like Pico and having the “Pro” models with the same numbers as the standard models. The Meta Quest 4 Pro should be released in 2025 and be produced in partnership with LG Electronics. Meta plans to fight Apple thanks to the help of LG, a company that has deep expertise in manufacturing hardware and displays. This seems a smart decision to me: Meta needs this kind of partner to be able to improve its hardware manufacturing capabilities, and LG is a solid one.
If this strategy is confirmed, by 2025 Meta would have a cheap $200 device (Quest 3 Lite?), a $500 Quest 3 device, and a $2000 Quest 4 Pro, so it would cover all the possible segments of the market. On paper, this sounds good, but let’s see how it works well in practice…
Other relevant news
Some leaks on Quest 3
Quest 3 is going to launch soon, so the leaks about it are going to intensify in the upcoming days. This week we had two small leaks about the upcoming Meta headset:
- The photo of a Quest 3 devkit appeared in the wild, and from it, it is possible to see that the front part of the headset is quite thin… a bit like the Lynx
- Some leaked videos datamined from the firmware show that the Quest 3 is able to reconstruct the mesh of the environment around the user thanks to its depth sensor. Thanks to this, it should be able to initialize the Guardian system automatically, without the need for the user to draw a cage around him.
More info (Photo of Quest 3 devkit)
More info (Environment scanning on Quest 3)
Meta Avatars to finally get legs
After many promises (and many jokes) about this topic, Meta has finally started rolling out legs for Meta Avatars. The update is currently in the latest update of the PTC (Public Test Channel) runtime. Users will be able to see the legs of the other users, and also their own legs when looking themselves into a mirror. Legs won’t instead be available on the own avatar of the user, because they don’t represent the real pose of the user’s legs, but only an “AI-driven reconstruction of a reasonable pose”, so they would look unrealistic.
In the beginning, legs in Meta Avatars will be available only in Meta Home and then in Meta Horizon Worlds.
Now that the legs have been delivered, I’m sure we will find some other reasons to make fun of Meta…
More info (Meta Avatars to get legs — Road To VR)
More info (Meta Avatars to get legs — Upload VR)
More info (A comment on Meta Avatars on New World Notes)
Some news on Apple Vision Pro
This week we had also some news and some leaks also about Apple’s upcoming headset, the Vision Pro.
First of all, we have some more info on the micro OLED displays: Sony started selling them in Japan, so we have some more specs: they have 4K resolution, 90Hz framerate, a high luminance, and the capability of reproducing a very wide color range. It’s interesting to read that the displays also support a foveated-rendering mode, which cuts down the transmitted data bandwidth to 60%. This seems a great result to me. What is also important is discovering the price: 150,000 yen ($1,026). This means that of the $3500 of the cost of the Vision Pro, around $2000 is just the cost of the displays (OK, Apple most probably paid less than that, but still this shows how the displays contributed a lot to the final cost of the device).
Talking about the optics system of the Vision Pro, there are still many unknowns about the ZEISS prescription lenses associated with the device. But someone managed to scrape some sentences of the operating system related to the installation of these lenses and from these, it is possible to read that the operating system is aware of the fact the user mounted these lenses. This is because the lenses may affect the detection of the OpticID and the performance of eye tracking. For these reasons, there is a pairing process associated with them, that performs a “re-calibration” of the optic system to take the lenses into count.
Talking about content, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is one of the first series shot with Apple’s ‘Immersive Video’ format and is set to debut on Apple TV+ in late 2023. It is shot using a very wide aspect ratio of 21:9, significantly wider than the standard 16:9 format found on traditional TV displays. It is yet unclear whether the entire show will be in an immersive format or if it will feature select sequences or additional content. What is almost sure is that in the feature it will also be available for Apple Vision Pro headset.
More info (Sony’s MicroOLED displays)
More info (ZEISS Prescription inserts)
More info (Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters)
Magic Leap 1 to be discontinued soon
Magic Leap 1, the device of the hype and the fall of Magic Leap, is going to be discontinued soon. Cloud services are due to be shut off on December 31, 2024, and because of a cloud check that the device must perform, every headset will be bricked after that date. (Don’t ask me why they can’t just remove this check in a firmware update… this looks so absurd to me) From now to the end of 2024, many services and web portals related to Magic Leap will be gradually shut down. .
It’s the end of an era. Magic Leap managed to stimulate a lot of hype for its headset, which should have revolutionized XR and instead turned out to be just a HoloLens clone. Its flying whale in the gym has been an icon for the vision of XR for many years. It has been a piece of the history of XR, and while I’ve also been very critical about it in the past, I’m a bit sad that is going to die.
Luckily Magic Leap will continue to exist, and its recent Magic Leap 2 is proving to be a very solid device, which is having its share of success in the enterprise sector.
More info (Magic Leap 1 to be discontinued — Road To VR)
More info (Magic Leap 1 to be discontinued — Upload VR)
Among Us to be discontinued on Rift platform
Among Us, VR developers have stated that the game won’t be available on the Rift Store after October, 4th. Per se, this is a piece of news no one cares about. But I’m trying to look at it trying to analyze what it may mean: a very successful VR game is abandoning one of the platforms it is in… it means that there is something wrong with that platform.
Well, the Rift runtime is slowly becoming abandonware, and recently Meta killed the Home feature it offered. Submitting a game for the Rift Store is problematic (trust me, I have a game submitted there and it has never been approved), and now Among Us is abandoning it. My suspect is that at Meta Connect, Meta will announce that the Rift Store will be discontinued, and on PC will only remain the runtime to make the Quest+Link work with SteamVR.
More info (Among Us to abandon Rift)
News worth a mention
Meta aims to transform every surface into a keyboard
Meta just shared a short video of something its R&D department is working on: a system to transform every flat surface into a keyboard. The user sees on the surface a VR keyboard, and then using its bare hands can tap on the virtual keyboard to type in VR. Since the virtual keyboard is put on a real surface, it provides tactile sensations when you press a key.
Notwithstanding the fact Meta claims its test users can reach more than 100 words per minute using this system, I remain a bit skeptical. The haptic feedback of typing on a surface is much worse than the one of a keyboard, plus hand tracking is too prone to errors when the hands are close to a surface. I guess that some kind of AI autocorrect/autocomplete system is helping a lot in achieving the advertised speeds…
Flamera hands-on
Upload’s David Heaney went hands-on with Flamera, Meta’s prototype headset to obtain a distortion-free passthrough. He claims that the headset fulfills its promises, and what you see in passthrough mode from inside the headset is almost identical to what you see in reality. This is very cool and very promising for the future. He also states that the prototype has some drawbacks, but they seem driven more by the fact it is a prototype than the actual showcased technology.
Lynx is shipping its headsets
After a long wait of years, finally French startup Lynx has started shipping the first batch of its headsets to its backers. We will finally see how much this headset can penetrate the market against tech giants like Meta and Bytedance. Good luck, Stan and team!
(Thanks Nova for the tip!)
Lenovo Legion Glasses Hands-On
Tom’s Guide went hands-on with Lenovo Legion Glasses, a pair of lightweight AR glasses that you can pair with the Lenovo Go handheld console to enjoy your games on a big screen in front of you. They feature 1080p per eye, at 60Hz. The journalist trying them was satisfied by their ease of use and comfort.
Lenovo Legion Glasses go on sale in October, at the same time as the Legion Go, and will set you back $329.
Discover Venice Immersive
Venice Immersive, the section of the Venice Film Festival dedicated to XR storytelling, is running from August 31 until September 9. Upload VR has written an interesting piece about what could be the most interesting artworks from there to keep an eye on.
Discover London Film Festival
Like Venice, the London Film Festival has its own section dedicated to XR, called LFF Expanded. A long and detailed article shared by Tom Ffiske describes this year’s edition of the festival and what are the selected creations.
Fanatical has a new VR bundle
Fanatical is running its “Build your Own VR Adventures Bundle”, with which you can get 10 VR games for only $14.99!
Another Axiom is building the spiritual successor to Echo VR
The studio behind the super-hit Gorilla Tag is working on a game, codenamed Project A2, aimed at becoming the “Spiritual Successor to Echo VR”. The idea of the team is to take the best of Echo VR and Gorilla Tag and create an e-sport that can make people bond in VR like they did with Echo. The game shouldn’t feature the same graphical quality of Echo, but it should bet a lot on community-making.
I’m very curious about this project, but the developer has stated that it won’t be available until late next year at the earliest.
Some news on content
- Behind The Frame: The Finest Scenery VR is an experience that mixes painting in VR with storytelling and puzzle-solving. It arrives on the major headsets on September 14
- Polyarc Games has released in early access Glassbreakers: Champions of Moss, a multiplayer game set in the Moss universe
- PvP shooter game Alvo is slated to arrive on PSVR 2 on September 14th, 2023
- On-rail shooter Gazzler abandons co-op to focus on single-player. It is slated to arrive on all major headsets on September 14
More info (Behind The Frame)
More info (Glassbreakers)
More info (Alvo)
More info (Gazzlers)
Some reviews on content
- Both Road To VR and Upload VR went hands on with a preview of “Vampire: The Masquerade — Justice” and praised its graphics and its gameplay
- Firewall Ultra is an interesting multiplayer shooter according to Upload, but it is impacted too much by some uncomfortable controls and the many bugs it has
- Empereur is a 40-minute journey that puts you inside the head of a father suffering from Aphasia, trying to make you feel the same difficulties he has. It is an interesting experience according to Upload
More info (Vampire — Road To VR)
More info (Vampire — Upload VR)
More info (Vampire — Firewall Ultra)
More info (Empereur)
Other news
This article talks about the synergies between XR and sustainability
All generative AI training is based on modern slavery
Samsung has trademarked the name “Curio”: can it be the name of its smart ring?
News from partners (and friends)
Happy Birthday, Tom Ffiske!
Tom Ffiske turned 30 and wrote an article detailing a few lessons he learned about marketing in VR.
Happy Birthday, Tom!
Learn more
Some XR fun
VR rocks, literally
Funny link
Donate for good
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