The XR Week Peek (2024.02.20): Zuckerberg reviews the Vision Pro, Mozilla Hubs shuts down, and more!

Glad to have you here again. For whatever reason you may be reading this article, I wish you a lot of happiness. And now let’s dig into the most relevant pieces of XR news of the week!

Top news of the week

Many people are analyzing the Apple Vision Pro… including the ones at Meta

Here you are with the usual huge roundup of news about the Apple Vision Pro (a roundup in a roundup).
 
 This week both Zuck, the CEO of Meta, and Boz, the CTO of Meta, expressed their opinions on the Apple Vision Pro. In both their videos, they basically claim that the Vision Pro may have something nice like a very high resolution, but at the end of the day, the Meta Quest 3 is a better product… even if we do not consider the price. I’ve found this a pretty bold claim, considering what I read in the balanced reviews of the Vision Pro, which highlight a product with great foundations that may pave the way for very interesting future devices. And I think it’s been pretty bizarre that the CEO of a company claims so openly his product is better than the one of a competitor. Sure, Zuck is right, the Meta Quest 3 has better games, is cheaper, and is an all-in-one device without any wire, but he seems not to grasp that the Vision Pro is the first edition of a new line from Apple, the company that with his powerful brand and its magical UX is able to dominate many markets.

More info (Zuck’s review of the Apple Vision Pro)
More info (Boz’s review of the Apple Vision Pro)
More info (My analysis of why Zuck’s commentary on the Vision Pro is shortsighted)

Maybe Zuck should let real journalists review the headsets. And I’ve read this week two very good reviews of the Vision Pro. David Heaney has written a very detailed review of the device, highlighting all the pros and the cons. A must-read article. And Ars Technica evaluated its use to replace a TV: unsurprisingly, the result of the analysis is that Vision Pro can be a good replacement for some TV setups (but with a few caveats).

More info (Upload’s review of the Apple Vision Pro)
More info (Ars Technica’s review of the Apple Vision Pro)

Going even more technically in reviewing the device, Karl Guttag has started examining the display of the Vision Pro. In his article, he says that it is better than other headsets, but it still shows issues, like uneven white color across the display.
 
 Regarding the photon-to-photon latency of the passthrough, Optofidelity confirmed with a test that it is below 12 ms, as Apple claims.

More info (Karl Guttag’s analysis of the Apple Vision Pro display)
More info (Optofidelity on the latency of the Vision Pro passthrough)

On the UX side, I’ve read an interesting article about how to make a gaze+hand interface that works. But I’ve also expressed my doubts about this kind of interaction, especially because the Vision Pro requires people to use the eye as a form of input… something that for me is wrong because eyes are not made for that.

More info (Eye+hand interface)
More info (My doubts on Apple Vision Pro’s UX)

Still talking about UX, but on the development side, I loved reading the article where Realities.io describes how they ported Puzzling Places to the Vision Pro. It’s a very practical post that explains why they had to rethink the whole interface of the game. They also talk about the current difficulties of using Unity to develop for the Vision Pro.

More info (How Puzzling Places was ported to the Apple Vision Pro)

New apps get released to the Vision Pro every week: Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator have been announced for it (I teased this on my blog a few weeks ago). And TikTok is the first social media announcing a native app for it (even if it is just a 2D app).
 
 But how are successful the apps on the Vision Pro? Tom Ffiske published a very interesting analysis of it. It seems most apps have a few hundred downloads, while a few have thousands: Jigsaw, which was promoted in the Vision Pro marketing materials, even arrived at 14,000. The device represents a niche, so for now the download numbers are still small.

More info (Job Simulator and Vacation Simulator on Vision Pro)
More info (TikTok on Vision Pro)
More info (Analysis on the download numbers of the apps)

We always think about the Vision Pro being a device for consumers, but actually, also enterprise use cases are being explored. For instance, a clinic center in San Diego is experimenting with how to use it for healthcare.

More info (VCs think about the enterprise uses of the Vision Pro)
More info (Vision Pro for healthcare in San Diego)

But there is not only good news for Apple. Actually, there are already people returning the device because it’s too uncomfortable or because they can not find a true use case to justify the expense. It’s not clear how many people have returned the headset, but the number is not negligible.
 
 For this reason, my friend Eloi Gerard wrote a controversial article about Tim Cook being the new Steve Ballmer and not understanding the potential of the Quest 3, while the Vision Pro does not have a purpose. I don’t agree with his theory, but it’s an interesting read anyway.

More info (People are returning the Vision Pro)
More info (Tim Cook being the new Ballmer)

Other relevant news

Mozilla shuts down Mozilla Hubs

Like all the major tech companies, also Mozilla has to face a moment of “efficiency”, cutting down all the least profitable projects. The company behind the popular browser Firefox has decided to focus on its browser and on the current trend of artificial intelligence, and to shut some projects that are not promising anymore. Among these projects, there is Mozilla Hubs, the most popular WebXR social VR space. Mozilla will shut down its demo server residing at hubs.mozilla.com, subscriptions, and community resources on May 31, 2024. According to Mozilla, “demand has moved away from 3D virtual worlds” so the project has been shut down and the source code left to the community to handle.
 
 This news made me very sad: Hubs was an amazing project, offering a cross-platform social VR space running through the web on all possible devices, and it was fully open-source. I’ve always been a huge supporter of it, and I’ve even celebrated there one of my blog’s birthday, also thanks to the help of Enea Le Fons who crafted a cool yacht party for me. Thanks, Hubs for everything you gave to me and the whole XR community!

More info (Mozilla focuses on Firefox and AI)
More info (Mozilla shuts down Mozilla Hubs)

News worth a mention

Huawei may be working on an Apple Vision Pro competitor

Also the Chinese tech giant Huawei may be working on an Apple Vision Pro competitor. According to a rumor coming from China, this headset should still have MicroOLED displays with 4K resolution, but it won’t feature to external EyeSight display, so it could become as lightweight as 350 g. The expected price should be inferior to Apple’s one, around $2000.

More info (Huawei’s Vision Pro competitor — TNS)
More info (Huawei’s Vision Pro competitor —Tweak Town)

Meta and Rockstar Games may still be working on GTA VR

A person from Meta support answered a specific question about GTA VR saying that the project has not been canceled. Zuck promised some years ago that Meta would release GTA San Andreas VR on the Meta Quest, but then we had no more news about it, so we thought the game was canceled. Finally, someone from the company has instead confirmed that the project is still going on. So there is hope we will be able to play this game. But I will believe it 100% only when some executives (like Boz) officially confirm it (customer service people may report some wrong information)

More info

Vi is the headset for those who want to do fitness in VR

Cix Liv is back to his passion for working on fitness in XR. He’s now working on a headset, dubbed Vi, and his special kind of gloves, all optimized for fitness in VR. For instance, the gloves can detect which weight you are lifting, so they can follow you while you do your fitness exercise in XR. Fitness is one of the most popular use cases of VR, so this headset has the potential to carve its niche.

More info

VR applications should run at least at 120Hz to reduce sickness

According to a study that has been carried on, simulation sickness symptoms are inferior when the VR experience is running at least at 120Hz. This means that if we want to propose a virtual reality that feels more comfortable to our users, we need headsets that are capable of reaching this framerate.
 
 (Thanks Ivan Aguilar for the tip)

More info

Quest has now better input capabilities

With the new runtime, Quest 3 gains a “multimodal” user interface, which means that the user can use in the same app (that supports it) both the controllers and the hands in a seamless way. So, for instance, he can use the bare hand with the left hand and the controller in the right hand, or he can use the controllers in both, then put them on the table and start using hand tracking with both hands. The cool thing is that a developer discovered that hands and controllers may be tracked at the same time, so potentially you could put the controllers on your legs and use both hand tracking and the controllers to have a rudimentary full-body VR. The big caveat is that Quest 3 needs hand tracking to refine the controllers’ tracking, so this method may lead to big inaccuracies in the tracking of the controllers’ pose.
 
 Regarding hand tracking, Quest will now use the tracking of the arm to be able to infer the pose of the hand when it is occluded, making hand tracking much more robust.

More info (Multimodal interface in Quest)
More info (Using hands and controllers separately)
More info (Quest tracking arms to better track hands)

Some news about content

• Star Wars: Squadrons is currently discounted by 95% on Steam and PS Store
• The Great Ocean, an experience that lets you swim with whales, sharks, and turtles, has been released on Steam
• OVRDARK: A Do Not Open Story, a new VR horror game, is coming to PSVR 2 on March, 7th
• The Infinite Inside shows a smart gameplay that seamlessly mixes elements in virtual reality and passthrough mixed reality
• The Pirate Queen, a story about a famous Chinese female pirate, arrives on March 7 on the Meta Quest platform and SteamVR for $16.99
• Psychedelic Shooter Akka Arrh lands on PSVR 2 on March, 8th
• MADiSON VR, a very promising horror VR game, arrives on March 23, 2024, on PSVR 2 and PC VR
• VR rhythm boxing game Beat The Beats is releasing on PSVR 2 this month
• VR platformer game Max Mustard (from the creators of Richie’s Plank Experience) is coming on March 21

More info (Star Wars: Squadrons)
More info (The Great Ocean)
More info (OVRDARK)
More info (The Infinite Inside)
More info (The Pirate Queen)
More info (Akka Arrh)
More info (MADiSON VR)
More info (Beat The Beats)
More info (Max Mustard)

Some reviews about content

• Under Cover is a game similar to Chris Brigade that pays homage to 90s lightgun shooters. It is fun but lacks variety and repeatability.

More info (Under Cover)

Other news

OpenAI Sora is an impressive text-to-video generative AI system. There is an open debate if to make the video it is able to internally generate models about the physics of the world or not

Learn more (OpenAI Sora announcement)
Learn more (Some people think OpenAI Sora can understand the physics of the world)
Learn more (Some people think OpenAI Sora can not understand the physics of the world)

The guys at XR Workout managed to find a way to use the Vive Ultimate Tracker together with the Oculus Quest!

Learn more

SimulaVR has delayed the release date of its headset to the end of 2024

Learn more

News from partners (and friends)

Get this book about Spatial Design

Dominique Wu has written a book about how to properly design an XR application. This is how she describes her work: “A beginner’s guide to spatial design, drawing on insights from 38 industry leaders to uncover lasting ten principles and patterns in spatial design.”
 
 I’m one of the people she interviewed when making the book, so, of course, I’m supporting her and her book and that’s why I suggest you to check it out.

Learn more

Some XR fun

How Meta vs Apple is going on
Funny link

Apple Vision Pro is influencing also the US elections
Funny link

Every XR subreddit at this moment
Funny link

Don’t take the Vision Pro on your first date…
Funny link

Nice Mixed Reality demo of the Vision Pro UX!
Funny link

Donate for good

Like last week, also this week in this final paragraph I won’t ask you to donate to my blog, but to the poor people who 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
• Wisear (Yacine Achiakh)
• Masterpiece X
• 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)
• Dimo Pepelyashev
• Stephen Robnett
• KaihatsuJai
• Christopher Boyd
• Sb
• Pieter Siekerman
• Enrico Poli
• Vooiage Technologies
• Caroline
• Liam James O’Malley
• Hillary Charnas
• Wil Stevens
• Brian Peiris
• Francesco Salizzoni
• Alan Smithson
• Steve R
• Brentwahn
• Matt Cool
• Simplex
• Gregory F Gorsuch
• Matias Nassi

And now here you are the link to donate:

Support The Red Cross in Ukraine

(Header image by Apple)