The XR Week Peek (2024.05.28): Meta and LG’s partnership gets in trouble, new leaks on Meta Quest 3s, and more!

May 28, 2024May 28, 2024

Hello from Helsinki, Finland! The city is different from how I found it in December: there is no snow, but there is a bright sun that sunsets late evening. It’s very beautiful, but in a different way. As usual, I will keep you posted about my adventures here!

This week in XR has not been mindblowing, but there is still a good number of pieces of news that are worth sharing with you.

Ah, and before starting delving into the news, the magazine Mixed featured my experiments in Mixed Reality, and I’m kinda proud about it!

Top news of the week

The partnership between Meta and LG becomes troubled

A few weeks ago, Meta started a strategic collaboration with LG, which was officially confirmed by a picture portraying Mark Zuckerberg together with two high-end managers of the Korean company. The purpose of the collaboration, according to some unofficial rumors, was about the manufacturing of the Quest Pro 2, which should have been manufactured by LG using the platform by Meta.

But this week a few rumors surfaced about the partnership being terminated because of “not enough synergy” between the two partners. It’s not clear what it exactly means, but someone speculates that the announcement of the partnerships with ASUS and Lenovo regarding the new operating system HorizonOS didn’t make LG people too happy. The rumors say that LG is so looking for new partners to create a headset, and it may have identified Amazon as a possible choice. This is pretty bizarre, considering that Amazon has not done much in XR.

LG answered a Korean outlet denying that the partnership is canceled and saying “LG Electronics continues the XR partnership with Meta forged in February but is controlling its pace”. This officially confirms that there are troubles between the two companies. It seems that the headset may so not have been canceled, but delayed, and some rumors say to 2027.

2027 is a pretty far away year, and if an Apple Vision Pro successor is slated for 2026 as some rumors say, the risk is that this new headset is going to be re-engineered again after Apple announces its device, a bit like what happened with Samsung and its high-end headset. The life of the Quest Pro line continues to be pretty troubled…

More info (Meta and LG partnership issues — Road To VR)
More info (Meta and LG partnership issues — Upload VR)

Other relevant news

There is a new rumor about the specs of the Quest 3s

Luna is a very popular and reliable data miner and leaker about the Quest and it has published an infographic about the probable specifications of the upcoming Quest 3s (which may also be called Quest 3 Lite). You can read them in the image above or in the list here below:

Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2
Single Fast-Switch LCD at 1832 x 1920 per eye (20 PPD)
90Hz/120Hz Refresh Rate
Fresnel Lenses with 3-Position IPD/IAD Adjustment
Meta Quest 2 Style Glasses Spacer
Meta Quest Touch Plus Controllers
4x IR Tracking Cameras
2x 4MP (18 PPD) RGB Passthrough Cameras
2x IR Illuminators for Depth Sensing
Meta Quest 3 software features such as Automated Space Setup, Inside-Out Body Tracking, and Multimodal Tracking

This new rumor seems to confirm the previous ones that talked about a Quest 2 with some features of the Quest 3. The features coming from the Quest 3 are especially the controllers, mixed reality, and the chipset. If the price of $199 is confirmed, this may be the cheapest mixed reality headset ever, helping Meta to make the technology mainstream.

More info

A data miner unveils what may come to Quest next

This piece of news is about Luna again. She published on Upload VR an article where she says what has been able to find in her data mining operations on the Quest runtime. These findings unveil what features Meta engineers are working on, which may turn into updates on the Quest runtime in the short term, long term, or even into nothing: some features may be cut out during the experimental phase and never see the light.

The most important features she has found are in my opinion:

Quest System buttons on the wrist, which I think are great for usability. The buttons on the wrist worked already great on HoloLens
The introduction of the Meta AI assistant, like the one present on the Ray-Ban smart glasses. I wonder if this means that you have an assistant with access to your passthrough, too, like Meta is experimenting on the Ray-Ban Meta in the US. This way you could go with your Quest around the house, asking the assistant for help with whatever you have in front of you. This would be pretty cool, but also has privacy implications
Codec Avatars. Meta is increasing its experimentation about bringing its realistic codec avatars on Quest. I guess the release of Personas by Apple made Meta speed up its work on avateering
Custom virtual keyboard sizing and positioning. It would be pretty handy to decide how the virtual keyboard should appear on the device
Improvements to Bluetooth. Bluetooth is always a pain to manage, so everything that can improve its usage can help a lot in the creation of accessories for the Quest
A new fullscreen UX for the video player of Quest browser, which is very large and immersive. This has been made to counteract the big screen of the movie player of the Vision Pro.

There are other features found with the data mining and I invite you to read the article below to discover them all.

More info (Data mining findings)
More info (New fullscreen UX of video player of Quest browser)

Rokid launched its AR Lite glasses

Chinese manufacturer Rokid has launched the Kickstarter campaign for its AR Lite glasses and it has been an instant success. The 3DOF glasses are meant for media consumption and have the following specifications:

50° FOV
1200p per-eye resolution
Up to 120Hz framerate
600 nits of brightness
Software IPD adjustment
75g weight
Up to 4h usage of battery
8GB + 128GB of memory

The device should enter mass manufacturing in September and so ship at the end of the year. Keep in mind that Rokid is a recognized brand and it has already demoed prototypes of this device, so I’m sure they will ship this gadget. But at the same time, Kickstarter campaigns always experience delays so do not fully trust the timeline.

More info (Rokid AR Lite kickstarter campaign)
More info (Nikk Mitchell hands-on with AR Lite prototype)

News worth a mention

Leaks point to a Snapdragon XR2+ Gen3

There are new leaks about an upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, to be exact the XR2+ Gen3. The XR2+ Gen2 has been announced recently and it should be the chip driving the upcoming Samsung headset, so it is pretty strange that there are already leaks about a Gen3. May it be that Qualcomm is evolving its products very fast to catch up with Apple?

More info

Microsoft announced Volumetric Apps at BUILD

Microsoft Build is the yearly event at which Microsoft announces its upcoming products. This year it has mostly been about AI, and some features like the ability of Windows to record everything that is happening on your screen to train your personal assistant, have even created concerns in the community.

For what concerns VR, Microsoft has announced “Volumetric Apps”, that is applications that work as usual, but when a headset is connected (e.g. with Windows streamed on Quest), they also show some VR components. This is an interesting idea, but if you remember well, Meta announced something similar a few years ago, but it didn’t have much success. I wonder if this concept will have more luck this time (but I doubt it).

More info (Volumetric Apps — Road To VR)
More info (Volumetric Apps — Upload VR)
More info (All the major announcements from Build)
More info (Elon Musk complaining about the new Recall feature)

Ericsson’s predictions on AR

Ericsson has written an interesting report with its predictions for the next years in AR. Inside it, there is also an infographic about when some AR services are expected to happen: for instance, while AR navigation is coming in the next 2 years, 3D remote teachers may need more than 4 years to come to light. I think it’s an interesting read, but always read these reports with a grain of salt considering that analysts make a lot of wrong predictions.

(Thanks Mick for the tip)

More info

Meta Quest apps just tripled because of App Lab

Meta has just triplicated the number of discoverable apps by opening up its App Lab store. While there are only around 660 apps on the Main Store, there are more than 2,200 on App Lab, so by making App Lab apps discoverable, now Quest users can find up to 2,800 apps.

More info

Discover some interesting VR research projects

The ACM CHI Conference is a place where many research projects are showcased. Many of them regard XR and I selected two to showcase to you:

One is about making you see your surroundings in the same way that various animals see them
The other one is about the creation of Mid-Air Haptics with Synthetic Jets. Thanks to this system, it is possible to have some small haptic devices even on smartglasses blowing air on your face to simulate the sense of being touched in AR

(Thanks Ivan for the tip)

More info (Animal Vision)
More info (Haptics via Synthetic Jets)

Snap launched immersive lenses

Snap AR recently launched some new immersive AR lenses that transform the environment around you in real-time in a way that reflects some graphical style. The artist who shared this news, Paige Piskin, showed her use of a cubist style, with the application making every object, including her face, become more abstract and squared. I think that applying filters to reality will be cool to do also on MR glasses (I made a few tests about it around 5 years ago) and I can’t wait for a similar technology to be launched also on Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro.

More info

Meta adds multiplayer blocks to its SDK

Meta has just added blocks about multiplayer to its Meta SDK. Building Blocks are for me one of the biggest innovations that Meta has brought to its Unity SDK and let us developers prototype really fast VR or MR applications. With the addition of multiplayer blocks, it becomes incredibly easy to build a multiplayer application in MR with avateering and object interactions. The supported multiplayer frameworks are either Unity Netcode or Photon Fusion.

More info

Colored wins the Immersive Competition at the Cannes Film Festival

Colored has won the Best Immersive Work award at the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. This is the description of the experience:

Colored is an augmented reality, location-based experience by Stéphane Foenkinos and Pierre-Alain Giraud based on Tania de Montaigne’s essay The story embarks the viewer in the South of the United States, in the midst of segregation. We follow Claudette Colvin, 15 years old, who, on March 2nd, 1955, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus. 9 months later, Rosa Parks will repeat this gesture and it is her that History will remember.

Compliments to the winners!

More info (Award assignment)
More info (Colored)

Some news about content

Marvel’s “What If…” immersive experience is coming exclusively to Apple Vision Pro on May, 30th and will be free for AVP owners for a limited time. From the new trailer, it looks pretty nice
Demeo comes to Apple Vision Pro, priced at $40
Taskmaster VR is now set to launch on June 13th. You can wishlist it on Steam and the Meta Quest Store
You can play Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II in VR thanks to a new mod developed by the community
A Warhammer 40K experience will be available at VR attraction Zero Latency venues in October this year
Beat Saber is going to get its 7th OST pack
Astrea Immersive is going to publish on App Lab two experiences: Missing 10 hours, talking about attempted date rape, and Plastisapiens, which it describes as a “meditative exploration of our environmental future”
Consortium VR invites you to uncover a murder mystery on Quest & Steam
I Am Cat lets you truly become a house cat with your Quest for $14.99. It is probably one of the killer applications of VR!
Population: One will receive a new map, sprinting, and more in the upcoming ‘Phoenix Royale’ game mode.
Questcraft 5.0 brings Minecraft to Quest 3 with a 120Hz refresh rate
Capy Oasis is an in-development Quest game that lets you pet a capybara with your own hands
Venture’s Gauntlet aims to deliver deadly VR obstacle courses on Quest, Pico, and PC VR for €9.99. Its trailer is pretty nice
Hide The Corpse looks like a game full of dark humor. It is about you having to hide a dead corpse before the police enter the house
Upload has written its usual ICYMI post with many minor pieces of VR news. It includes the announcements made during the SideQuest Showcase.

More info (What If… — Road To VR)
More info (What If… — Upload VR)
More info (Demeo)
More info (Taskmaster)
More info (Hellblade II)
More info (Warhammer 40K)
More info (Beat Saber)
More info (Astrea Immersive)
More info (Consortium VR)
More info (I am cat)
More info (Population One)
More info (Questcraft)
More info (Capy Oasis)
More info (Venture’s Gauntlet VR)
More info (Hide the corpse)
More info (ICYMI)

Some reviews about content

Astra is a very high-quality mixed-reality experience that brings the solar system into your house
Ultimate Swing Golf is a good golfing experience, but it is frustrating with its inconsistent management of the power needed for every shot
EA Sports WRC offers a great rally experience in VR, but it has some annoying glitches
Blacktop Hoops is a very satisfying basketball game for virtual reality
Five Nights At Freddy’s: Help Wanted 2 is an enjoyable collection of VR horror minigames

More info (Astra)
More info (Ultimate Swing Golf)
More info (WRC VR)
More info (Blacktop Hoops)
More info (FNAF: Help Wanted 2)

Other news

The coolest experiment with AI I’ve seen this week: a hand that takes the style of the objects it is touching

Learn more

A very cool experiment about implementing soccer using Quest controllers strapped to the feet

Learn more

Meta CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth says the company would “love” to have some sort of Discord integration on Quest in the future

Learn more

VRchat launches its official merch
Learn more

A weird experiment lets you see all your surroundings thanks to a headset and a 360 camera installed on top of it

Learn more

News from partners (and friends)

Blender Start Here lets you learn Blender the fun way

“Blender Start Here” is a 3D game that lets you entertainingly learn Blender. Starting learning 3D modeling software may be intimidating, so the team at XRIO decided to create a game out of it, with the mission of making people learn while having fun. This project is now on Kickstarter, and I invite you all to support it because it’s very interesting and it has a nice team behind it. You can also play a free demo on Steam, if you want.
Learn more (Kickstarter page)
Learn more (Steam demo page)

Some XR fun

The future is now, old man
Funny link

A pretty weird concept for fitness on the Vision Pro
Funny link

A fun moment during the SideQuest showcase
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
Dimo Pepelyashev
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
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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)
Stephen Robnett
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Christopher Boyd
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Sb
Pieter Siekerman
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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 Image by AOL, Engadget to remember the other LG headset that was “delayed”…)

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