The holidays are just over, and the fun for us has already started with the CES, where a lot of pieces of tech news have already been announced. I’m not there (I’ve still never been to CES…), but as usual I will follow the news and report it on this blog, so stay tuned!
Top news of the week
Apple announces the release date of the Apple Vision Pro
During the last few days, the rumors about possible release dates for the Apple Vision Pro have intensified, and someone talked about January, 27 as the day of the launch. Mark Gurman, who is one of the most reliable Apple analysts, claimed that Apple could have announced the availability dates of the Vision Pro during the CES hype, basically stealing the spotlight from all the other companies with this super announcement. And Mark was right: today, totally out of the blue, Apple finally announced when people will be able to get a Vision Pro.
The headset will be available for purchase in the U.S., both on physical and online Apple Stores, starting from February, 2nd. Apple will open the preorders next Friday, that is January, 19th at 5 am PT. The price is the one we already know, that is $3499 for the 256GB storage model. Apple has also unveiled that the ZEISS Optical Inserts will be available in two types: Readers, priced at $99, and Prescription, available for $149. The headset will ship with two separate straps: the one we always saw until now, and another one that has also an over-the-head strap to distribute better the weight.
The launch post of the device highlights many of its use cases, including productivity, gaming, movie watching, etc… One of the strengths of Apple is that it can exploit its already enormous library of content, like all the series on Apple TV, all the games on Apple Arcade, and the 1 million applications available on iOS and iPadOS, which all become compatible with the Vision Pro. This is something that Meta does not have, and let the headset start with already a huge amount of available content since Day 1. Some immersive games will be available at launch: Game Room, What the Golf?, and Super Fruit Ninja. Probably What The Golf will become the game of the year 2024…
I’m of course super excited for this launch because the hype created by this headset can reinvigorate the whole XR ecosystem. Unluckily, probably I won’t be able to get the Apple Vision Pro, first of all, because I’m in Italy, and second because it would be a pretty hefty investment for me to buy a Vision Pro and a Mac to develop for it. But I still hope for Santa Claus to come and make me a delayed gift 😛
In the links here below I’m also adding some extra content about the Vision Pro: a link with a leaked video of how Safari works on the device, and a weird patent with some strange ideas of how to use its external display.
More info (Apple announces the release of the Vision Pro)
More info (Apple Vision Pro release date)
More info (Apple Vision Pro straps)
More info (Mark Gurman predicting the upcoming announcement)
More info (A previous wrong prediction about the launch)
More info (Safari on the Apple Vision Pro)
More info (Weird uses of the Vision Pro external screen)
Other relevant news
Qualcomm announces Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chipset
Qualcomm has just announced a new chipset for XR headsets: called XR2+ Gen 2, it is the evolution of the XR2 Gen 2 chip used in the Meta Quest 3. This is a high-performance chip that is devoted to the headsets that want to compete in the high-tier league, the one of the Apple Vision Pro. The improvements with regards to the XR2 Gen 2 are (the following data is courtesy from Road To VR):
- 15% increase in GPU frequency
- 20% increase in CPU frequency
- 12 concurrent cameras (up from 10)
- 18.5MP (4,300 × 4,300) per-eye resolution at 90Hz
As you can see, we are talking about a nice upgrade, but not a generation jump like it happened between the XR2 Gen 1 and the XR2 Gen 2. And it’s hard to compete with Apple when the Vision Pro mounts an M2 chip, which is a very efficient chip for laptops (so not for phones).
Together with the new chipset, Qualcomm prepared also a reference design (as usual), which gives us a glimpse of how future headsets employing this chip may look like. The headset (that you see in the above picture) is quite slick and features pancake lenses, eye tracking by Tobii, integrated audio, and Wi-Fi 6/6E/7. The picture also shows the girl using the device making a micromovement of the hands on her lap, a clear hint to the fact that this device can perform accurate hand tracking like the Vision Pro.
Qualcomm has officially said that this is the chipset that the upcoming Samsung headset is going to employ. But there is not only Samsung: XR2 Gen 2 is going to be integrated also by Immersed’s Visor, a new HTC Vive headset, a YVR headset in China, and a headset that is still undisclosed. It seems that a bunch of high-end standalone headsets are coming to the market to challenge Apple…
More info (XR2 Gen 2 announcement — Road To VR)
More info (XR2 Gen 2 announcement — Upload VR)
More info (XR2 Gen 2 reference design)
Quest 2 price has been permanently cut
The sales of the Quest 2 have gone so well during these holidays that Meta has decided to permanently keep its low price. The 128GB Quest 2 model will be priced at $250 and the 256GB model at $300. This will guarantee that the device will have strong sales, which is good for Meta for two reasons: on one side they increase their market size, and on the other side, they empty the warehouses from old Quest 2s.
All in all, this seems a very good piece of news for all of us, because it helps the VR market in growing, but it also has a downside. If so many people are getting a cheap Quest 2, the biggest part of the VR market will be made by old Quest 2s, which will make developers interested in making their experiences have the best compatibility with this old device. This will make them less interested in developing applications that exploit the new computational power or the new mixed reality capabilities of Quest 3, possibly slightly slowing down the evolution of the technology.
Police are investigating a sex assault in a virtual world
It has been reported by various online outlets that a 16-year-old girl has been the victim of a sexual assault in a virtual VR world. The victim of course did not have any physical consequences, but due to the immersive nature of VR, she reportedly suffered psychological trauma “similar to that of someone who has been physically raped”.
I’m very sorry for what this girl has gone through and I hope she is recovering. I think that it is important to shine a light on this episode because all the articles talking about this mention the fact that the police are investigating the facts, but the laws are not ready to punish this kind of crime. No law about rape involves an assault that had no physical contact, so with the current legal system, the people responsible for this horrible fact can not be punished for rape. Furthermore, virtual rape usually happens between people of different countries, so there is a need also for international agreements about these cases.
If, as we all hope, our long term involves living in the (virtual and augmented) metaverse, we need a legal system that can account for all these new crimes that happen only in the virtual world, but that can have very serious consequences in the physical one.
More info (Virtual sexual assault)
More info (Virtual sex crimes and the law)
XREAL launches Air 2 Ultra glasses
XREAL (formerly known as Nreal) is sharing a few interesting pieces of news on the occasion of CES. First of all, it revealed that, according to analyst firm IDC, XREAL owns 51% of the augmented reality market. This is a remarkable result for the Chinese startup, and it has been mostly achieved thanks to the XREAL Air glasses, which do not provide 3D AR, but they are mostly a media viewer that projects a virtual screen in front of your eyes.
Then, it revealed its new glasses: called XREAL Air 2 Ultra, they are nominally an evolution of their Air glasses, but actually they are the new generation of XREAL Light. These glasses are not just for media consumption, but they provide true 3D augmented reality, with 6DOF tracking, plane detection, environment meshing, hand tracking, and all the other features that augmented reality glasses typically offer. The visual specs are not bad either: the Air 2 Ultra offers a 52-degree field of view, 500 nits of brightness, a 1080p screen for each eye, and a refresh rate of up to 120Hz. These glasses work by being connected to your smartphone via a USB-C cable.
The cost of these glasses is $699: preorders start today and the shipment will be in March. Before buying them, though, please check if your phone is compatible with this device.
It’s good to see Nreal releasing a new full-fledged pair of AR glasses that are lightweight and affordable. Probably the upcoming release of the Apple Vision Pro is already reinvigorating the whole augmented reality market.
More info (XREAL dominating the AR market)
More info (XREAL Air 2 Ultra launched)
The PCVR community is on fire for UEVR
On the last day of 2023, the Praydog’s UEVR injector was released, and this has been the best thing that the PCVR community has seen in the last few years. UEVR is a universal VR mod, and it lets everyone easily convert every Unreal Engine-based PC game (including the AAA ones) into a VR experience. Of course, it is not the same experience as having a VR-native game, but the fact that all PCVR people have now access to an enormous amount of flatscreen games that have become VR-compatible is fantastic news anyway. There are some subreddits where people are just talking about this topic, exchanging opinions on the best games to play, tutorials on how to use UEVR or just happy posts. The PCVR space is literally on fire.
I’m sharing here below some Reddit links, so in case you want to be part of the hype as well, you can get started.
More info (UEVR is now available)
More info (Opinions on some modded games)
More info (Someone thanking Praydog for the job done)
More info (Playing around with Stray and the VR mod)
More info (Advice on some games to try)
More info (Getting started with UEVR)
More info (The most beautiful game worlds to try with this mod)
More info (Some Steam Winter Sale games to try with the mod)
More info (Another request about the games to try)
More info (A video answering to many of the questions about the mod)
News worth a mention
Quest 3 is now the 4th most used headset on Steam
In the latest Steam hardware survey, it is possible to see that Meta Quest 3 is now the 4th most used headset on Steam, and will soon the the 3rd since the gap from the Rift S is already very small. It’s a show of the good sales of the device, with many enthusiasts upgrading from Quest 2. I was a bit surprised by the fact that Quest 3 has gained shares over Quest 2, which is selling like hotcakes, but many people made me notice that probably all these new Quest 2 users are casual users who probably do not even know about the Quest Link.
More info (Quest 3 on Steam Survey)
More info (Me wondering why the Quest 2 is losing shares)
Will hand-tracking substitute controllers?
Devin Reimer, the previous CEO of Owlchemy Labs, has written an editorial on Upload VR saying that controllers are going to die and that hand tracking will be the main input form for XR in the future. I partially agree, in the sense that hand tracking is very handy (pun intended) for many tasks, but I still see a lot of utility in controllers, especially for complex tasks or for playing VR games. I so asked an opinion to the community, and this sparked a huge constructive debate about the topic which is worth reading.
More info (Reimer’s post)
More info (My social post sparking a debate)
More info (Long comment on it by another Owlchemy employee)
Utraleap can now do hand tracking through tracking cameras
Talking about hand tracking, one of the coolest pieces of news of the week is that in the latest VR reference design by Goertek, Ultraleap has integrated its hand-tracking technology directly with the tracking cameras of the headset. This means that now Ultraleap hand tracking does not need any more dedicated cameras, but it can use the ones that the headset already uses to track the controllers to also track the hands. This can facilitate a lot the integration of Ultraleap technology in the headsets of many OEMs.
Nofio wireless transmitter may be less good than we hoped for
Nofio is a product that generated a lot of interest in the VR community for its promise of delivering a wireless connection to the PC for high-end headsets like Valve Index. The problem is that the device is coming out now, when the Valve Index is at the end of its life, and its first reviews are pretty negative. It is not totally bad, and iVRy uncovered that its latency is lower than the one of Quest 3 plus Air Bridge, for instance, but still, people were expecting a much more polished product.
More info (First negative review found on Reddit)
More info (Negative review also by Brad Lynch)
More info (iVRy revealing that some technicalities of the device are actually good)
VR is still US-centric
George Jijiashvili from analyst company Omdia has published a post to explain why his company is pessimistic about the short-term future of VR. There is one datum that impressed me in the analysis: VR is still very concentrated in the US. Taking the data of the Black Friday sales on Amazon, on a total of 132K Quest 2 sold, around 100K have been sold in the US and the other 32K in Japan and selected European countries. This shows how in the Western world, VR is still much more popular in the US than in the rest of the countries. Keep this in mind when you are doing marketing for your XR game.
A summary of VR in 2023
Ben Lang from Road To VR has written a very well-made roundup of the most important things that happened in the VR space in 2023 and I thought it would have been great to share it with you.
Some interesting interactions in VR
Keeping talking about Road To VR, sometimes the magazine publishes articles where they talk about some good UX made in VR. This week they published a post of this series that talks about the Idea Engine and in it, you can see some examples of interesting VR interactions.
Can we reconstruct avatars from audio?
The coolest research project that I’ve found this week has been Audio2photoreal, an experimental solution to reconstruct the full movement of a realistic avatar (including the facial expression) just starting from the recording of the voice of someone. Pretty impressive.
Someone wants to build the metaverse of Ready Player One
Futureverse, an AI and metaverse technology and content company, announced the formation of Readyverse Studios, a studio co-founded with Ernest Cline, the novelist behind “Ready Player One”. Readyverse will work on the creation of the metaverse of the book Ready Player One.
Summarizing: Futureverse created Readyverse to build the metaverse. This to me sounds too much like a fluffverse.
We have the first game that is exclusive to Quest 3
Townsmen VR is the first VR game exclusively available only for Quest 3. This is a pretty weird choice at this moment that the Quest 2 is selling so well, but that’s it.
VR MMO Zenith is in trouble
Zenith has been one of the most awaited VR games since it brought a very promising MMO to virtual reality. This game seemed poised to be super successful, but actually, various months later, the company behind it is in serious crisis, and the game is operating at a loss. It is not sure the game can survive for long. This is incredibly sad news.
Some news about content
- Blair Renaud has published a long update about its awaited game LOW-FI, claiming that due to the stagnant PCVR market, the game will be released also in a flatscreen version, aiming at good sales on the Steam Deck. I think that if even such an important game has given up on PCVR, we can definitely say that the PCVR market is now a small niche
- Upload VR has published a roundup of gaming news that happened during the Christmas holidays. Nothing major happened, but the post is worth a look
- “Micro Machines: Mini Challenge Mayhem” is out now for Quest and Steam for €14.99
- On February 22, 2024, VR Skater will exit Early Access and will fully release on Steam
More info (Low-Fi)
More info (Upload VR’s holiday news)
More info (Micro Machines)
More info (VR Skater)
Other news
Labyrinthine is the VR game of the year on Steam. With much respect for the devs, but no one in the VR community has ever heard about it…
This post lists the best WebAR SDKs you can find around
IVAS (the modified HoloLens for the army) is entering its final testing phase
The Rift category on the Quest Store is now called Link PCVR. Goodbye Rift 🙁
Quest 3 supports wired ethernet connection via the USB cable
BigScreen Beyond is compatible with an external eye-tracking module
UltraSoundVR helps doctors in learning how to do an examination with ultrasounds
News from partners (and friends)
Nominate your best WebXR experience
The Polys, the annual WebXR Awards, have arrived at their 4th edition. You have time until January, 14th to nominate your favorite WebXR experience and hope that it wins an award!
Learn more
Discover Strike Rush
I’ve been contacted by the team at Skonec, which are building a game called Strike Rush:
Skonec said “Strike Rush” will be officially released on April 18, 2024 through the Meta Quest Store and prior to this, close beta testing (CBT) will be held from January 5 to 12.
It plans to recruit testers mainly from Anglo-American users the largest market for VR games and invite some Korean users as well.
“Strike Rush” which Skonec will release for the first time after signing the VR game supply development with Meta, is a PVP FPS genre that teams up in cyberpunk-style battlefields to engage in battles over occupied areas,
providing unique combat experiences from future Seoul-inspired areas to stadiums armed with high-tech technologies and using “Blitzmon” to help players break through enemy lines or support team members.
In addition, users can create optimal play combinations on their own by selecting different special abilities and weapons for each character.
Learn more
Some XR fun
The Spatial Computing bingo for 2024
Funny link
SpongeBob in VR is the new Half-Life: Alyx
Funny link
Maybe the saddest way to celebrate the new year
Funny link
I’m ChatGPT, too
Funny link
Sheldon tries a VR headset
Funny link
What the actual hell
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 Apple)