The XR Week Peek (2024.10.08): Windows 11 update bricks WMR headsets, PSVR 2 becomes the 9th most used HMD on Steam, and more!
After last week’s many interesting pieces of XR news, this week has been far more relaxed. Or maybe “relaxed” is not the right word to use, considering the little drama on Microsoft’s headsets.
Top news of the week
Microsoft officially drops support for its Mixed Reality headsets
Microsoft has just released the infamous Windows 11, version 24H2 update. It is infamous because the update removes support for Windows Mixed Reality headsets, whose deprecation was announced a few months ago. If you want to avoid your headset being bricked, you have to block the update and stay on version 23H2, with all the security risks that this implies. In any case, even if you do that, you’ll still be able to play SteamVR content only through November 2026. After that, WMR headsets will no longer receive security updates, non-security updates, bug fixes, technical support, or online technical content updates, Microsoft said.
According to the Steam hardware survey, Windows Mixed Reality headsets are still used by 50–80,000 people today. And all these people have to choose between having their devices bricked and having an old operating system. For this reason, there has been a little backlash in the VR community about this decision and even famous people like the Youtuber Tyriell Wood publicly complained about it.
I know that I’m saying something unpopular, but I understand Microsoft’s decision. As a tech guy, of course, I’m all in for retro compatibility, and I would still love to sometimes attach my Oculus DK2 to my laptop and remember the good old times playing Tuscany. However, as an entrepreneur/manager, I know that managing a product requires trade-offs. If you are the product manager of Microsoft Windows, and you are in a moment where tech companies are shrinking their budgets, you have to cut features. And if the install base of Windows 11 is above 400 million devices, cutting a feature used only by 80,000 people, which is the 0.02% of the number of users, can become a necessary evil. The people who were working on those functionalities had better be used to fix or update other features that benefit the majority of Windows 11, maybe avoiding blue screens of death. Also, consider that HP Reverb G2 was released almost 4 years ago, and the other WMR headsets much before, so they have given the devices enough lifetime.
You may wonder why they haven’t just left the feature as is in the operating system. Well, because things don’t work this way. That feature has dependencies on other features, it’s connected with others, and probably creates conflict with some things. So if you want to keep it, you have to maintain not only it but also all its dependencies. Plus people having problems with it will complain and this means further stress on the customer support center.
Again, I’m not happy with this decision either, it totally sucks, but at the same time, I understand why Microsoft took it. If I were a WMR owner, probably I would block the Windows update for six months or something like that, and I would use this time to keep using my headset while at the same time looking for a new device to buy.
More info (Microsoft drops WMR support — Road To VR)
More info (Microsoft drops WMR support — Upload VR)
More info (A redditor angry about this decision)
More info (Tyriell Wood complaining about this decision)
Other relevant news
PSVR 2 is now one of the top 10 headsets on Steam
PSVR 2 is now the 9th most used headset on Steam. Its userbase is superior to known PCVR headsets like the HTC Vive Pro and Pro 2 and most probably in the next weeks, it will also surpass the Pico 4.
This is a pretty surprising result, considering that the PSVR 2 is a device for a console (the PS5) and its adapter for PC was released only a few weeks ago. But at the same time, it is also understandable why it is having this little success: PSVR 2 is a headset with a good resolution and refresh rate, and especially it has an OLED display, which guarantees sharp colors and deep blacks.
I’m happy that PSVR 2 is having its little share of success, but I don’t think this will change much for Sony’s headset. PSVR 2 has a 2.39% userbase, which is less than the 3.55% owned by Windows Mixed Reality, the headsets that have just been bricked by Microsoft because they were not used by enough people. I think this speaks a lot. Unless PSVR 2 reaches at least the 10% threshold, I think the sales number of this headset will still be too low compared to the initial expectations. I cross my fingers, but I don’t have high hopes.
Google and Samsung are working on smartglasses
According to The Information, Google and Samsung are not only working together on a mixed reality headset but also on a pair of smartglasses (a la Ray-Ban Meta) powered by Gemini AI. We don’t have much information about them, but Samsung trademarked the name “Samsung Glasses” some time ago, so this may be a possible name.
This sounds very intriguing, but Meta has on its side the partnership with the powerful EssilorLuxottica which is able to make stylish glasses and distribute them through its wide network. A device made by Samsung and Google may be technically cool (at least until Google abandons it) but may not have these incredible advantages…
News worth a mention
Apple is reconsidering its strategy after the reveal of Orion
According to Mark Gurman, Apple is revising its XR strategy after Meta has shown the world its Orion AR glasses. Apple’s end goal is the one of building lightweight AR glasses that people wear all day, too, so it’s pretty normal that people at Cupertino are concerned about the work that Meta is doing (this is one of the positive side effects that I envisioned about the reveal of Orion, and in fact, it came true).
It’s not clear what the effects of this strategy change will be: for now, Apple seems still interested in providing a cheaper Vision Pro and also in investigating the release of smartglasses. The AR glasses that, according to rumors, Apple was thinking of releasing in 2027 were postponed indefinitely some months ago: I wonder if Orion will entice Apple to put this program back on track…
Meta releases its new Avatars
Meta announced a new design of its avatars at the latest Connect. The past week, Meta has actually released them: they are finally available in Horizon Worlds and will be available in other applications when developers update the Avatar SDK used in them. An interesting piece of news (spotted by JustDaven) is that in the Horizon mobile app, it is now possible to make a selfie to automatically reconstruct an avatar face out of it. This is very handy to create a personalized avatar in a few seconds.
More info (Meta releases new avatars)
More info (Avatar face from selfie)
Meta may be trying to re-organize its Store
The merging of App Lab into the main Horizon Store has been a good thing for us developers, but it has created some mess for the users, who now are seeing some subpar titles in the suggestions about what to buy on the store. It seems that Meta is working on improving the current situation and some developers have in fact already received a notification about Meta reorganizing the categories and genres on the Horizon Store.
Boz publicly apologizes to Palmer Luckey
Some months ago there was a little debate on X between Palmer Luckey, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, and John Carmack about Palmer’s firing from Meta. After that small drama, Boz has recently publicly apologized to Palmer Luckey, and Palmer has even been invited inside Meta to try Orion. Even Zuckerberg publicly praised Palmer and said he was fun to work with. Palmer has accepted the apologies also because the people who fired him are not at Meta anymore. Love wins, in the end, and that’s good.
More info (Boz apologizes to Palmer Luckey — Road To VR)
More info (Boz apologizes to Palmer Luckey — Upload VR)
There are advancements in LBS
LBS, or Laser Beam Scanning, is a special type of display that directly projects images to your retina thanks to a laser ray that “draws” the image on it. They had some hype a few years ago, also because Magic Leap, in the beginning, hinted at the fact that it would have used them, but then they revealed themselves to be too unpractical for AR. There is now a company called Amalgamated Vision that claims that it solved many of the main problems of LBS and it’s proposing its laser-scanning display system to interested XR OEMs. It’s interesting that there are companies that are still working on that route, I’m curious what will come out of it.
Some interesting research projects
This week I got to know about some interesting research projects, and I want to share them with you:
- XR-Objects is a prototype XR+AI system that detects objects that you have in front of you and lets you include them as active elements in your AR experience. In the demo application, for instance, as soon as you introduce some kind of food on the table in front of you, the system shows an AR menu with some buttons to let you ask for information about the food or compare two pieces of food that you have on the table. Since this framework makes the real-world objects an active part of the AR experience, this is an additional tool to blend the real and the virtual worlds
- Meta openly released the Digital Twin Catalog (DTC), which is probably the world’s largest and highest-quality 3D object model dataset for 3D reconstruction research. It contains high-quality reconstructed 3D digital twins of physical objects, together with images and videos of such real objects. It may be very interesting for AI or computer vision research
- Apple’s research team has just released Depth Pro, a system able to generate detailed 3D depth maps from single 2D images in a fraction of a second without relying on the metadata from the camera (that was traditionally needed to make such predictions). From a quick comparison, it seems faster and more accurate than the competitor systems
- Two videos from the upcoming UIST in Pittsburgh show some amazing research works on haptics, AR, VR, and AI. It’s fun to see how many experiments there are around the world on these interesting technologies (Thanks Ivan Aguilar for having pointed me to these ones)
More info (XR-Objects)
More info (Digital Twin Catalog)
More info (Apple Depth Pro)
More info (UIST 2024 — Papers Video)
More info (UIST 2024 — Demos Video)
Neofables tells you stories in XR
Neofables is a WebXR experience available for the Quest VR browser that generates for you stories in virtual reality on the fly using generative AI. You say what you would like to happen, and the system keeps generating a story following your instructions and showing it to you using 360 images around you. It’s an interesting concept.
Resonite has 10,000 monthly active users
Resonite, the PC-only social VR world developed by the genius that goes under the moniker of Frooxius, is showing some impressive statistics. The spiritual successor of Neos VR in just one year has accumulated more than 10,000 active monthly users, more than 60,000 total installs, and a Patreon supporting it amassing $18,000+ per month. These are for sure some successful numbers for what seemed a niche project from a small dedicated team, especially considering that it is not available on Quest. Big kudos to Frooxius and his partners!
Some news about content
- Bounce Arcade, which lets you play Pinball by punching the ball, is launching on Quest on November 21st, priced at $20
- You Can’t Scare Me is a VR co-op horror game that scores you for making other players scream, and it’s coming to Quest on October 10, priced at $10. It’s nice that it uses the microphone to detect if some player is screaming
- Sim racer Assetto Corsa EVO is coming in early access (for flatscreen and VR) on January, 16, 2025
- Gorilla Tag’s developer shared some information about its upcoming game Orion Drift with Upload VR
- Youtube forced Apple to shut down the (very well-made) Juno app on the VisionOS App Store
- Beat Saber is launching a DLC with Britney Spears’s songs on October, 8th. So much nostalgia for people like me who have grown up with Baby One More Time…
- Team Beef released RaiderXR, a mod that makes people play the original Tomb Raider game on the Meta Quest
- Windup Minds, a startup founded by people who previously worked on Bogo and First Steps, has teased its current work on a video, where it is possible to see a cute fantasy pet in mixed reality inside the house of people
- Vestiges: Fallen Tribes, a VR strategic card game with auto battler mechanics created by the same team behind Ragnarock, has been released to Steam in early access.
- If you are a fan of excavators (who isn’t, after all?), you will be happy to know that DIG VR arrives on October 24 for the Meta Quest platform
- Band Space, a rhythm game that aims at turning you into the ultimate rockstar, is launching on October 24, 2024
- We have 6 new minutes of Metro Awakening gameplay
- Detective VR, a narrative investigation game designed for mixed reality made by the team of the amazing ValemVR, is arriving next year on Quest
- Upload VR wrote its usual ICYMI post with some minor XR news
More info (Bounce Arcade)
More info (You Can’t Scare Me)
More info (Assetto Corsa EVO)
More info (Orion Drift)
More info (Juno)
More info (Britney Spears DLC)
More info (RaiderXR)
More info (Windup Minds)
More info (Vestiges: Fallen Tribes)
More info (Dig VR)
More info (Band Space)
More info (Metro Awakening)
More info (Detective VR)
More info (ICYMI)
Some reviews about content
- Mobile Suit Gundam: Silver Phantom VR tries to be both a narrative experience and an action game and ends up being a bit of a mess between the two
- Snapstick is a very funny puzzle game, that is very good on the comedian side, but a bit dull on the puzzle side
- Exploding Kittens VR is a very good transposition of the famous card game
- Rival Stars Horse Racing: VR Edition showed interesting traits in its preview, like the good recreation of the environments, the bond with the horses you have to nurture, and the racing mechanics
More info (Mobile Suit Gundam)
More info (Snapstick)
More info (Exploding Kittens VR)
More info (Rival Stars Horse Racing)
Other news
You can get a refurbished Quest 3 for only $380
Road To VR’s Ben Lang wrote an interesting article about the best designs of shotguns inside VR games
Meta updated the Quest runtime to make it work better when it is offline
New videos confirm that Immersed Visor is a working headset, but it is still prototypical
Learn more (Visor’s walkthrough video)
Learn more (Tyriell Wood’s hands-on impressions about Visor)
The Immersive Wire published its update on the Chinese VR Market
The Roto VR Chair has its pros but especially its cons, according to this review
News from partners (and friends)
Big discounts for the Immersive Tech Week!
Immersive Tech Week is one of the most important VR events, since when it was called VR Days. The 2024 edition will happen again in Rotterdam (Netherlands) from the 4th to the 6th of December 2024. I’m a media partner of the event, and thanks to this, the first ten of you who use the discount code SkarredGhost50 will have a 50% discount for Full or Day passes.
But there is even more! If you are fast enough to be the first to contact me, I can give you a code to even have the ticket for free… 😉
Discover the Immersive Tech Week and buy the tickets!
Sponsored Area
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Read Graphic Designer Job Description
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Some XR fun
Do you have a minute to read my opinion on the BigScreen Beyond?
Funny link
This is too funny to watch!
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:
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(Header image by Microsoft)
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