Hello everyone from Shenzhen, China! My Chinese trip is going pretty well and I’m doing a great mix of work and visiting the cities as a tourist. The only one not happy is my stomach, but I hope that it will change its mind soon 😛
This week in XR has not been super exciting and most of the articles I’ve read are announcements about games or reviews about games… but still, there have been a couple of bangs happening. Plus, I wrote a very interesting article on how I used AI to analyze the mixed reality seen by the Quest (yes, using a sort of camera access), so you can start your weekly reading by having a look at it!
Top news of the week
Meta shuts down Spark AR platform
With a totally unexpected move, at least for me, Meta has announced that the shutdown of the Spark AR platform will happen on January 14, 2025. All the filters created by the community with Spark AR will be removed, and only the official filters created by Meta will remain available on Meta’s social media platforms.
In the announcement of the news, Meta confirmed that Spark AR filters have been developed by many thousands of creators and used by hundreds of millions of people. The company justified its decision stating that that it “is part of our larger efforts to prioritize the products we believe will best serve the future needs of our consumers and business customers alike”. What I read along the lines is that Meta didn’t find Spark giving it any strategic advantage, nor any clear monetization, so in this “year of efficiency” it decided to cut the project.
I have anyway been very surprised by this: we all agreed that AR filters were the only successful use case of mobile AR, and in the past years we all read the stories of creators becoming rich by making filters for brands. So the fact that Meta decided abruptly to close the platform, throwing in the thrash a whole ecosystem of creators is pretty weird to me. Many creators are getting very angry because for some of them, Spark AR was a sure source of income and Meta didn’t even warn them about what was going to happen.
I really hope that at Meta Connect Meta will announce a new platform that substitutes Spark AR and that a whole ecosystem is not just going to be wiped away by a short communication on the Meta website.
More info (Meta shuts down Spark AR)
More info (Spark AR creators are angry at Meta’s decision)
Other relevant news
Meta may be working on a new headset codenamed “Puffin”
After the cancelation of the “La Jolla” headset, which, according to many, was the project of the Quest Pro 2, Meta may be working on another kind of future headset codenamed “Puffin”. This is what a report from The Information states and that of course got no official confirmation. According to this latest rumor, Puffin is a mixed reality headset resembling a big pair of glasses and it can be so lightweight (110g circa) because all the computation is offloaded to an external puck, which would also host the battery of the device. The headset would also ship with no controller but rely entirely on hand and eye tracking.
From the description, this device looks like a mix of the Bigscreen Beyond and the Apple Vision Pro. In my opinion, the purpose of this prototype is indeed designing a device that is closer to what an eventual Apple Vision headset may be in 2027. Andrew Bosworth, Meta CTO, repeated last week that Meta explores different prototypes and form factors every time, and probably this “Puffin” headset is an experiment on what Meta could obtain if it tried to follow the same route that Apple has taken so that it could see if the resulting device is better than what the other form factors (e.g. the Quest) are delivering. Other people are instead speculating that this Puffin device may already be the new form factor of the Meta Quest Pro 2, which so would be more similar to the Apple Vision Pro 2 and would substitute the “La Jolla” device which was more akin to a Quest.
In any case, take as usual these rumors with a grain of salt: it is absolutely possible that this headset never sees the light. And considering the tethered puck, I sincerely hope so.
More info (Meta “Puffin” — Road To VR)
More info (Meta “Puffin” — Upload VR)
Spatial Computing enters the Gartner Hype Cycle
Like every year, the market analysts of Gartner have published the Gartner Hype Cycle of emerging technologies, in which they show what is the current maturity status of all emerging technologies. Spatial Computing entered this hype cycle of 2024 and it is in the innovation trigger phase, with the expected maturity happening in the classical 5 to 10 years.
This news has been received with much irony by the XR community: Gartner already made Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality go along the whole hype cycle many years ago. Then it was the time of the metaverse… and finally, now it is Spatial Computing doing this innovation rollercoaster. It seems that XR is so innovative that it is doing the hype cycle three times! This is pretty ridiculous, considering that these terms all refer to the same underlying thing: “Virtual Reality” puts more focus on technology, “Metaverse” on the social shared infrastructure, and “Spatial Computing” on human-computer interaction. They all include different shades of meaning and different involved technologies, but the foundations are the same, so this new hype cycle looks a bit absurd.
I can’t wait to see VR appearing again in this graph in 2027 when Meta will launch its first consumer AR glasses. XR is dead, but it keeps respawning at the beginning of the Gartner Hype Cycle…
News worth a mention
New rumors about Deckard arise
There are new rumors on Valve Deckard. But this time they don’t come from the usual Brad Lynch, but from Tyler McVicker, a person who has been dedicated to spreading rumors about Valve for the last few years. Tyler confirms that Valve is still committed to ship Deckard and that has in the works two new games in the Half-Life universe, one for PC and the other one for Deckard. Quoting Road To VR, The result would be “an asymmetric multiplayer game taking place in the Half-Life universe,” McVicker says, “where one player is in VR and the other on a computer. The computer player would always be Gordon Freeman, while the VR player would be Alyx Vance. The idea was that these two characters would interact, with the VR player experiencing Alyx’s story and the PC player experiencing Gordon’s story, both having cooperative elements between them.”
I don’t know if any of these things will ever come true, but it’s always nice playing the speculation game.
Meta abandoned the creation of custom chips
It seems that Meta has definitely abandoned the idea of building its custom chips. At first, it stopped the production of its chips for XR glasses and started a long-term partnership with Qualcomm. Now, it abandoned the idea of the chips even for wearables in general: it was too expensive and did not lead to satisfactory results. The “year of efficiency” required this cut, too. So for everything related to chip manufacturing, Zuck’s company will keep relying on external partners.
Godot enhanced its support for Meta Quest
The company behind Godot announced that the game engine has just improved its support for Meta Quest development, adding integrations for features like passthrough and scene understanding and fixing bugs like the one affecting Vulkan. All of this could happen only because Meta provided a very generous grant to Godot, most probably as a strategic way to be close to one of the most 3 popular game engines, supporting it as an alternative to Unity and Unreal Engine, which are companies not very close to Meta.
Read Andy Fidel’s column about the jobs in XR
If you are looking for a job or an internship in XR, there is a new resource you can look at. I’ve discovered that Andy Fidel publishes a weekly update on Linkedin on the open job positions in XR and this can be very interesting for all of you who are looking for the next big opportunity.
Enjoy Meta’s End Of Summer sale
Meta’s ‘End of Summer’ sale is live and it offers 30 percent off more than 200 Quest games. If you are looking for a game, hurry up, you have time only until September 3rd!
Some news about content
- NFL PRO ERA, the NFL football VR game series, is relaunching as a live service game later this year, with a new paid version coming in 2025
- Ramen VR has pushed its final content drop to VR MMO Zenith and reduced the price of the product from $30 to $10
- Impulse is a new storytelling experience by award-winning studio Anagram and it explores ADHD. It is expected to be released on Quest headsets in September
- Hitman 3 VR: Reloaded is coming to Quest 3 on September, 5
- Exercise Your Demons is a mixed reality fitness game where demons teach you how to work out. It is coming to Quest at the end of the year for $19.99
- A guy from the Reddit community created a mixed reality game about playing his guitar and opensourced it
- Pudica is a mixed reality musical journey that was presented at Venice Immersive using Sony’s enterprise XR headset
- Fragile Home is another experience presented at Venice Immersive that explores the Russo-Ukrainian war’s impact on families through mixed reality
More info (NFL PRO ERA)
More info (Zenith)
More info (Impulse: Playing With Reality)
More info (Hitman 3 VR: Reloaded)
More info (Exercise Your Demons)
More info (Mixed Reality guitar game)
More info (Pudica)
More info (Fragile Home)
Some reviews about content
- Batman Arkham Shadow has been reviewed by the main VR magazines and influencers. It seems the game is coming along very well, and the environments are pretty cool. But the fighting is a bit of a mixed bag: it tries to be coherent with the flatscreen game, but this does not translate super well in VR. For instance, it is too tiresome and some people have already defined this game as a fitness one!
- Action Hero is an intriguing game that puts the Superhot mechanic inside a game set inside Hollywood movies and this is very cool
- Trombone Champ Unflattened is a good porting to VR of the flatscreen game, but some interactions still have to be improved on the VR side
- Band Space is a multiplayer rhythm game with potential, but it has to fix some issues with interactions
- TrackCraft is “RollerCoaster Tycoon meets Mario Maker meets Demeo”. It’s a fun mixed-reality game to play with a friend
- Behemoth’s features amazing boss fights
- Fracked is fun to play on Quest, but it starts to feel a bit dated
- Ember Souls is a new hack-and-slash title inspired by Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia, but with a magic twist that makes it more interesting
- Does It Stack? is a new physics-based puzzle game in mixed reality that is very simple but fun
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom is a storytelling experience with very limited interaction moments.
More info (Batman: Arkham Shadow — Road To VR)
More info (Batman: Arkham Shadow — Upload VR)
More info (Action Hero)
More info (Trombone Champ Unflattened)
More info (Band Space VR)
More info (TrackCraft)
More info (Behemoth)
More info (Fracked)
More info (Ember Souls)
More info (Does it stack?)
More info (Gundam: Silver Phantom)
Other news
Surreal Touch controllers for Vision Pro have been funded on Kickstarter
An article on Upload VR suggests the best VR experiences to try in Tokyo
Sony raised the price of all the Playstation products in Japan
The community is resurrecting Marvel Powers United (I don’t know why, the game was mediocre)
Meta is launching a new initiative called Mixed Reality Motifs to teach developers the best practices with Mixed Reality development
News from partners (and friends)
VR training for surgeons
My friends at MindPort GmbH are working with the University Hospital Bonn (UKB), and the TH Köln on the VIRTOSHA project, to develop a VR training environment for realistic perception during surgical operations. The system uses haptic feedback robotic arms to make the simulation more realistic. And thanks to an integrated authoring tool, surgeons will be able to create new content and update existing content themselves without the need for the help of any developer. This is cool.
Learn more
Archmagus is the library to help you with attestation APIs
Meta provides developers with”Attestation APIs”, a cloud API that applications can connect to in order to confirm that a customer has a valid license for the app. Archmagus APIs provide a wrapper around the Attestation APIs, performing the cloud service work that an application needs without needing the application team do any more than make a couple HTTP calls from the headset and handle the responses. This should simplify a lot this part of the work for developers!
Learn more
Sponsored Area
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Senior Unity Developer
Join our Unity team and be at the forefront of innovation in the global mobile-AR industry. If you’re passionate about fine-tuning Unity components and creating groundbreaking AR experiences, we want you to be a part of our team, shaping the future of engagement.
Senior Fullstack Developer
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Some XR fun
The ultimate collection of VR fails!
Funny link
That’s my boi
Funny link
AI startups in a nutshell
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
- 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)
- Stephen Robnett
- KaihatsuJai
- Christopher Boyd
- Carol Dalrymple
- Sb
- Pieter Siekerman
- Enrico Poli
- Vooiage Technologies
- Caroline
- Liam James O’Malley
- Hillary Charnas
- Wil Stevens
- Francesco Salizzoni
- Alan Smithson
- Steve R
- Brentwahn
- Matt Cool
- Simplex
- Gregory F Gorsuch
- Paul Shay
- Matias Nassi
And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by Meta)