The hype for the Apple Pro is starting to deflate and it is possible to see that from some cues: for instance, there are more critics of the headset and fewer articles are talking about it. It’s still the gadget of the moment, but a bit less shiny than before. Honestly, I’m glad about that, I was getting bored from reading only articles about it.
Before getting into the interesting XR news of the week, I invite you all to attend the new Awe Nite that Cecilia Lascialfari and I are organizing for this Thursday (29th) at 6 pm CET that will be about XR and AI with very interesting speakers like Rafael Brown. It’s free, so you have no excuses not to attend! You can find all the most important information about it at this link: https://area6dof.com/awe-nite-florence-ai-xr-a-match-made-in-heaven/
Top news of the week
Meta and Samsung prepare their answers to the Apple Vision Pro
The standalone market has been completely focused on cheap headsets since the release of the first Oculus Quest and Meta has largely been the dominant player, creating a quasi-monopoly. But the release of the Apple Vision Pro has completely shaken up the industry and now many players are focusing on launching a competitor of Apple’s headset. The consumer market is still relevant, but the prosumer one has suddenly become important for everyone, too.
We already know that Google, Samsung, and Qualcomm are working on a competitor of the Vision Pro, which should be based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR Gen2+ and cost around $2000. According to a recent rumor, the headset is slated for release by the end of this year, possibly alongside the upcoming Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Z Fold 6 smartphones. The Korean manufacturer is expected to produce 30,000 units this year.
The news of the week is that also Meta is moving fast for its Meta Quest Pro 2: Zuck is expected to fly to South Korea to speak with the CEO of LG to finalize the partnership. The new headset should also incorporate somehow the operating system of LG TVs, maybe to stream videos from the most popular platforms. The release of this headset is expected for the first half of 2025.
So at the beginning of next year, we may have huge players like Apple, Google, and Meta battling for the high-end XR sector. Together with them, there could be also some other companies, like Huawei and Pico (Bytedance), which are also rumored to work on Vision Pro competitors. It is going to be interesting to see how this battle will play out…
More info (Quest Pro 2 report)
More info (Samsung XR headset report)
Other relevant news
Apple Vision Pro’s crackgate
I start the weekly update on the Vision Pro by mentioning its “crackgate”: a certain number of users showed on Reddit that the glass cover of the device is randomly generating a crack on it with no apparent reason. The fun thing is: it seems Apple does not substitute it for free, but you need to pay a lot of money to repair it.
More info (Apple Crackgate)
More info (Reddit users showing their cracks)
In the competitive battle between the Quest 3 and the Apple Vision Pro, it is interesting to discover that some developers are also using the Quest 3 and the Vision Pro together. They activate the passthrough on Vision Pro and then they wear the Quest 3 on top of it, so they can use the Quest 3 while using the Vision Pro. Passthrough-ception.
More info (Passthrough-ception)
New apps have been released for the Vision Pro and now the count is beyond 1000, which is not bad for a new platform. One of the new apps that is worth mentioning is the meditation experience Mindway.
More info (1000 apps on Apple Vision Pro)
More info (Mindway)
Also, the analysis articles of Vision Pro are continuing. And while Optofidelity keeps analyzing every detail of the visual system of the headset, on UploadVR I’ve found an interesting analysis of the accessibility options offered by the device.
More info (Optofidelity’s analysis)
More info (Accessibility analysis)
The comparisons between Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3 continue
After the biased comparisons between the Vision Pro and the Quest 3 made by Mark Zuckerberg and Andrew Bosworth, some other people have tried to produce fairer comparisons between the two headsets. One that I found to be good is by CNET’s Scott Stein, who underlines how the Quest 3 defends itself well against the Vision Pro in many aspects and it is even better in others. Considering the cheaper price, the Quest 3 is basically the headset to buy according to him… an opinion we all agree on.
On the technical side, Dennys Kuhnert (the developer behind Hand Physics lab), compared on video the performance of hand tracking on Vision Pro and Quest 3, and showed how at this moment, the Quest 3 is much better at that task. This doesn’t surprise me: Quest launched with decent hand tracking, then evolved it incredibly over the years. Apple has just started, so still has a long road to go with this task.
More info (Apple Vision Pro vs Meta Quest 3 — CNET)
More info (Apple Vision Pro vs Meta Quest 3 — Hand Tracking)
Sony to make PSVR 2 compatible with PC
To celebrate the first anniversary of PSVR 2, Sony has written in blog post in which it talks about how it is improving the content catalog its users can access.
There are new games that are going to launch on PSVR 2, like Army VR, Little Cities: Bigger!, Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate, The Wizards — Dark Times: Brotherhood. Sony Interactive Entertainment knows that PSVR 2 has not the same compelling games catalog that the original PSVR had and it is trying to give its players many new fresh games. This is good news, even if I personally think that Sony is still lagging behind on this side, and especially it lacks those first-party exclusive amazing games that were one of the winning factors of the original PSVR.
Then, it announced a piece of news that surprised us all: “[…] we are currently testing the ability for PS VR2 players to access additional games on PC to offer even more game variety in addition to the PS VR2 titles available through PS5. We hope to make this support available in 2024, so stay tuned for more updates.”. Long story short, Sony will make PSVR 2 users play PCVR games. This may happen in two ways: either they release a solution to make PSVR 2 compatible with high-end PCs, so people can use it to play SteamVR games; or Sony will release a streaming solution so that you can stream your PCVR game to the PS5 and play it with your PSVR 2 headset (something like Virtual Desktop but with the PSVR 2 instead of the Quest). Both solutions would be pretty cool to increase the number of games that PSVR 2 players can play.
But… this news led me and other analysts also to have some suspects. Because on one side I am very happy to hear that PSVR 2 is opening up to PCVR content… this can be good for PSVR 2 users, but also for PCVR developers to increase their sales. But on the other side, usually, consoles are walled gardens, and if one opens up, it is a bit strange. PSVR 2 is not skyrocketing in sales, and its games catalog is not bad, but it doesn’t shine either. Some weeks ago, we discussed about some developers not porting their games to that platform because it is not profitable enough (the market is too small), and one developer even defined it as a “dead platform”. So this may seem a desperate move to improve the situation. Or maybe PSVR 2 is just having a slow start, and all of this was planned by Sony since the beginning: I hope it is the latter because it would be beneficial for the whole ecosystem if the only console that is truly betting in VR would succeed.
More info (Official PSVR 2 Anniversary Post)
More info (PSVR 2 support for PCVR games — Road To VR)
More info (PSVR 2 support for PCVR games — Upload VR)
More info (Editorial: Is PSVR 2 failing or just having a slow start?)
News worth a mention
The 256GB Quest 2 is no longer available
It is almost impossible now to buy a 256GB Meta Quest 2 because it is either out of stock or delisted both on the Meta website and on the major retailers. The possibilities are two: either Meta is having some stock problems (remember that Quest 2 is selling quite well in this period) and it will be solved soon, or Meta has emptied its warehouses of this old model and it is now ready to start selling the rumored Quest 3 Lite. We’ll discover pretty soon where is the truth… in any case, I hope that Quest 3 Lite comes pretty soon because with its affordable price and rumored computational power, it can improve a lot the adoption of virtual reality.
Most VR content should still be sold at a premium
The developer behind Sail VR shared interesting statistics about his game, which is available on Meta App Lab. For around one year, he sold it at $14.99, and then for another year, he released it for free, but with IAP to make money. The result is that with the freemium version, he had 10x the users of the premium one, but it also had 5 times less revenue. It is true that one datum doesn’t create a valid statistic (he could have badly designed the IAP structure of the game), but this is coherent with other info I got in the past: unless you have a very big number of users, freemium is not the way to go to monetize your content. And now most games on App Lab do not have a huge number of users.
Meta is reworking the UI of Quest
We all know that the UX of the Quest kinda sucks. Luckily, Andrew Bosworth (Meta’s CTO) said in his latest AMA that the company is working already on improving the core UI of the headset, and also the management of the 2D apps so that to have better multitasking. He did not have an estimate of the release date for this feature, but the company is working on it. He said that this doesn’t come as a consequence of the release of the Apple Vision Pro with its super smooth UX for multitasking… but… I mean… it’s hard to believe this 😛
Some good essays on mixed reality and spatial computing
This week I have read two very interesting articles that talk about spatial computing, mixed reality, and the other technologies of the moment:
- The first one is from Louis Rosenberg and I loved it because it explains the reason why we have both the terms mixed reality and augmented reality to express a similar meaning. It is because when Google Glasses came out, its marketing message was about augmented reality, even if they were just smart glasses. So the companies behind the actual AR devices, like HoloLens, started to use the term mixed reality to show they were doing something more than just overlays of information
- The second one is from Matthew Ball, who as usual provides a very lucid analysis of the current moment of XR, going through the history of the few last years. A specific part of this article made me laugh: it is when he shows that when the metaverse hype arrived, all companies started mentioning the M-Word everywhere, and when the hype deflated, they started deleting the same word from everywhere, too
More info (AR vs MR — Louis Rosenberg)
More info (Metaverse and Spatial Computing — Matthew Ball)
A Neuralink patient can now move the mouse with his brain
Elon Musk has claimed that his startup Neuralink installed a neural chip into the brain of a human patient, and now this person can control a mouse just by thinking. The implant was made at the end of January, and now the patient is going towards full recovery after the surgery. It is a remarkable result, but remember that this is not the first time that something similar has happened: there have already been research projects in which the brain was used as the input for some applications.
TCL launches its new smartglasses
Chinese manufacturer TCL has launched its new model of smartglasses: TCL Nxtwear S Plus, an evolution of the previous TCL Nxtwear S model. These glasses connect via USB to your computer or smartphone and show a virtual screen in front of your eyes. They feature OLED screens with Full-HD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixels), 600 nits of brightness, and 120Hz refresh rate. The price is $399.
More info (TCL Glasses — Tech Radar)
More info (TCL Glasses — Reddit Post)
Some news about content
- Air Hockey VR is a nice indie game simulating Air Hockey and it is now adding a mixed-reality mode
- Ramen VR has announced the release of the free-to-play ‘Infinite Realms’ open beta of its MMO game Zenith over the weekend.
- Fast Travel Games launched the open alpha for Mannequin, its upcoming asymmetrical multiplayer VR game
- Beat the Beats, a new VR rhythm-boxing game, reaches PSVR 2 next week
- Stride: Fates to feature a Mixed Reality mode in its next update
- Wanderer is getting a remake, called Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate, and a newly announced sequel, Wanderer 2: The Seas of Fortune, set in the pirates’ age
- ‘Pixel Ripped’ studio announced ‘PAWBALL’, a free-to-play VR soccer game with cats (a bit similar to Space Ball)
- ArcSine, a physics-based precision puzzle platformer, is out now on PC VR
- Anarchitects is an MR/VR sandbox that tries to mix the “limitless creativity” of Roblox with a physics-based drag-and-drop system like Garry’s Mod. A full reveal is expected at GDC
- Bootstrap Island, a new PC VR survival game, has been launched on Steam Early Access
- Zombie Army VR, a Sniper Elite spinoff, is going to be released on most major VR platforms later this year
- Stilt, a VR platformer where you move like in Gorilla Tag but with springs giving you more boost, is coming to the major VR platforms on March 8 for $19.99
- Headspace XR, a meditation app that describes itself as a “playground for your mind.”, will release on Quest on March 2024
- Upload VR has published its usual ICYMI update for this week, and I report it to you
More info (Air Hockey VR)
More info (Zenith)
More info (Mannequin)
More info (Beat The Beats)
More info (Stride: Fates)
More info (Wanderer)
More info (Pawball)
More info (Arcsine)
More info (Anarchitects)
More info (Bootstrap Island)
More info (Zombie Army VR)
More info (Stilt)
More info (Headspace XR)
More info (ICYMI)
Some reviews about content
- Both Upload VR and Road To VR reviewed Stranger Things VR and no one of them came out much satisfied about the game. There are some remarkable things, like the graphics, but it seems that the experience is recommended only to fans of the series
- Legendary Tales is an RPG with a nice progression system, but its combat system and the enemies are much worse than its competitor Dungeons of Eternity
More info (Stranger Things VR review — Road To VR)
More info (Stranger Things VR review — Upload VR)
More info (Legendary Tales review)
Other news
Meta releases an opensource demo to show the best practices for mixed reality development
Improbable to release a version of its engine that supports 40,000 people in a single shard. This would be great to have a stadium concert in a virtual world
News from partners (and friends)
Discover Dynamic Languages
A creator and his wife have launched a Japanese program on their VR language learning app, Dynamic Languages. You can now learn through it to speak Spanish, English, and Japanese. The Japanese program is designed for beginners and will help you understand the language and culture of Japan. They use immersive video and claim to take you from bein a beginner to a confident speaker in just 4 months.
Learn more
Wield VR gunstock goes sold out
Finnish company Wield VR has announced that its new universal VR gunstock Onestock has quickly sold out after launch amid positive initial reviews. If you don’t know about this product, let me tell you something about it from the official press release:”The OneStock provides the ability to switch the gunstock shape on the fly in VR games without tools or removing one’s headgear, giving players unbroken immersion in the game. Compared to previously available gunstock products, the OneStock can be adjusted six times faster to represent different weapons in VR games.”
Learn more
Some XR fun
Indiana Jones and the Apple Vision Pro
Funny link
Fanboys gonna fanboy
Funny link
Wow, the Apple Vision can already be bought in contact lenses form! :O
Funny link
This guy cheated on his girlfriend… how bad…
Funny link
It seems that also Valve preferred the name “Oculus”
Funny link
The future is now
Funny link
At this point I just hope Apple doesn’t make also underpants…
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:
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And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by Apple)