The XR Week Peek (2024.10.15): Meta Avalanche cloud rendering appears on the store, cheaper Apple Vision may cost $2000, and more!

October 15, 2024October 15, 2024

My Quest 3 has just been shipped and I can’t wait to put my hands on it. But before that moment, I have still one thing to do for you, which is to summarize the best XR news of the past week!

Top news of the week

Cloud rendering Avalanche app appears on the Horizon Store

Someone discovered that Meta published its Avalanche app on the Horizon Store. It can’t be downloaded and it doesn’t even show any meaningful information on its store page, if not a poster image that seems made by someone on Fiverr for $2 and the short description “Download to test out the latest cloud streamed titles on Avalanche”.

This confirms what the rumors, the leaks, and the info that data miners told us for months: Meta has an internal cloud rendering service codenamed Avalanche. The service is already active and it is used under the hood by the application Hyperscape, which I recently tried. This is huge news: if Meta starts investing in cloud rendering, it could offer its Quest users VR games with amazing graphics like Lone Echo that are not compatible with standalone devices. It could be a game-changer for XR.

There are anyway a few caveats: first of all, cloud rendering requires high-speed low-latency networks, and possibly a rendering edge server that is always close enough to the user. This network architecture is not available, yet. Then, cloud rendering is quite expensive: I don’t think Meta can afford to gift it to every user wanting it unless it wants to lose an insane amount of money. This last problem is anyway solvable if Meta offers the service as part of a subscription (like Quest+) or as payable tokens. The first one could be partially solved by checking the network speed of the user and showing a disclaimer if the latency and/or the bandwidth are not good enough.

It’s still a mystery why this store page got published. In my humble opinion, since it looks like a draft page, I believe that someone at Meta created an App Lab app to test the service with some test groups, being sure that the app was hidden because App Lab apps were unlisted. But then a few months ago, Meta unified the App Lab store with the main Horizon Store and someone may have forgotten to delist the app before this happened.

In any case, it’s good to see that Meta is working with cloud rendering. Let’s see if and when it will actually launch this service.

More info (Meta Avalanche appears on Meta Store)
More info (My explanation of why this may have been published on the Store)

Other relevant news

Boz confirms the rumors about the Quest Pro 2

While speaking with Alex Heath from The Verge, Andrew Bosworth confirmed the rumors about Meta canceling the possible Quest Pro 2 project codenamed La Jolla and the development of a prototype of a lightweight mixed reality headset connected to a portable computational unit codenamed Puffin. Notice that this does not mean that this headset will ever be released, though.

Boz explained to Heath the process that Meta follows from the conception to the release of hardware and it goes as follows (courtesy of Upload VR):

Pre-Discovery: a dedicated team is always “prototyping the craziest stuff”, creating a “proof of experience” for each idea.
Discovery: a “small number” of Pre-Discovery concepts are approved by executive review to proceed to the Discovery phase, where “a few” employees examine the practicalities of industrial design and cost.
Prototyping: if deemed practical, Discovery concepts are prototyped, involving “maybe 10 times more people”, who build integrated hardware and software to bring the concept to life.
Engineering Validation Test: “roughly half” of those prototypes go to this final stage, where they are put on the product roadmap. Of these EVTs, Meta executives apparently kill “about half” before they ship, while the others are released to the public.

As you can imagine, many projects die at an early stage and very few get actually released. The Puffin headset has just been promoted to stage 2, which is a good sign, but it means that it still has to go through many hurdles before eventually seeing the light.

I think that this process shared by Boz is incredibly interesting for us, because it gives us an exclusive peek on how projects are handled by Meta. And helps us seeing under the right light any rumor we’ll hear about Meta from now on.

More info

Apple’s cheaper headset may cost $2000

According to the usual Marc Gurman, Apple is working on a cheaper version of the Vision Pro, which may use cheaper materials, feature an A-series chipset, and ditch away the EyeSight display. This is something we already heard from other rumors, but he added that according to his sources, the target price for Apple is around $2000. The sales expectations at Cupertino are pretty realistic: twice the sales of the current Vision Pro.

I honestly wonder who this device is targeted to: $2000 is still a lot of money, especially for a device that people have not understood what it is for. It’s good that Apple is bringing down the price, but it had better also fix the problems of the current device (e.g. its comfort), update the runtime to offer more functionalities, and offer more useful apps if it wants people to actually want to buy it.

More info

New info about Meta Orion

Orion is the device of the moment and many people in the industry are talking about it. Even if I know it is many years away, I am myself intrigued about it and I want to share with you some new info I discovered about it this week.

First of all, the analysis of the TESTED hands-on video about it reveals something more about its specs: we already know about its 70 degrees field of view, but I can also add that the display is outputting hundreds of thousands of nits of brightness, but when light reaches the eyes, you will just see 3–400 nits, which is not enough for outdoor usage. The resolution is pretty low, 13 pixels per degree, but it seems that Meta has another prototype with 26PPD. The LEDs for eye tracking are installed directly on the lenses as if they were hair cluttering it and they are not noticeable by the eye. The glasses feature a custom Wi-Fi 6 protocol to communicate with the puck. And the battery duration is 3 hours for the glasses and the whole day for the computational unit.

Then Boz said that porting content from Quest to Orion won’t be easy. Apart from the fact that Orion doesn’t feature controllers like Quest, the biggest of the problems is the computational unit: Boz said that it is 10 times less powerful than Quest, which already requires a lot of optimizations for its games. This means that we devs have to be prepared to design simple games and over-optimize them for when the first AR glasses will be released.

The last piece of info I was able to find is the usually detailed article by Karl Guttag about the glasses. In it, Karl details the compromises the Meta had to find when designing Orion. But even more than all the juicy technicalities, I’ve found the end of the article pretty concerning:

I understand that Meta was demonstrating, in a way, “If money was not an obstacle, what could we do?” I think they were too fixated on the very wide FOV issue. I am concerned that the diffractive Silicon Carbide waveguides are not the right solution in the near or long term. They certainly can’t have a volume/consumer product with a significant “eye glow” problem.
This is a subject I have discussed many times, including in Small FOV Optical AR Discussion with Thad Starner and FOV Obsession. They have the worst of all worlds in some ways, with a very large FOV and a relatively low-resolution display; they block most of the real world for a given amount of content. With the same money, I think they could have made a more impressive demo with exotic waveguide materials that didn’t seem so far off in the future.

Karl believes that Silicon Carbide waveguides may not be the right choice for AR glasses, not even in the long term. If this proves to be true, it means that we just assisted a show from an R&D lab that may not be related to how AR glasses will truly be manufactured in the future. Let’s see…

More info (The specifications of Orion from the TESTED video)
More info (Porting games to Orion is difficult)
More info (Karl Guttag’s analysis about Orion)

Epic Games is already envisioning Unreal Engine 6

In an interview with The Verge, Tim Sweeney talked about the future plans of Epic Games. He said the company is now in a good financial situation and is working on its next iteration of the Unreal Engine game engine. Unreal Engine 6 will feature the full power of UE5 with the ease of use of UEFN (Unreal Engine for Fortnite). The plan is to let developers create an app once and then deploy it as a standalone game for any platform, including gaming platforms with UGC like Fortnite.

Sweeney keeps being very optimistic about the metaverse and is working hard for the interoperability of content between platforms: for this reason, the content that is developed for the Disney platform will also be compatible with Fortnite. The idea is to extend this compatibility to other applications made by other studios, either AAA or indie.

The same concept applies to digital assets: the Fab store, which provides assets that creators can use inside their worlds built with Unreal Engine, will be able to offer the same asset in multiple formats, with each one of them working in a different platform. The same element can so be compatible both with Unreal Engine, and Unity, but also Roblox and Minecraft.

Sweeney believes that having a shared economy between metaverse platforms is going to benefit everyone: if a player knows that an asset he buys is going to be useful wherever he goes, he will feel safer buying it, because he knows that even if he stops playing the current game, the asset will still be useful for him in other ones.

Of course, Unreal Engine 6, like all the metaverse vision, is going to take many years to happen. But it’s good that Sweeney remains a believer in the metaverse even if now it is not the trend of the moment anymore. When asked about the diminished popularity of the term, he ironically answered: “It’s like there’s metaverse weather. Some days it’s good, some days it’s bad. Depends on who’s doing the talking about it.”

More info

News worth a mention

Sightful pivots to a software solution

Sightful, the startup that got popular thanks to its laptop that used AR instead of a physical screen, has just pivoted to become an AR software solution. The Spacetop G1 used Xreal Air glasses instead of a physical display, letting the user have a virtual huge display in front of his face. Its unique solution made it become quite viral on social media. I tried this product at AWE and found it pretty good, just limited by the field of view of the AR glasses and the quite high price ($1900).

This week, quite surprisingly, Spacetop announced that it’s canceling the Spacetop G1 laptop and is refunding anyone who preordered it. The company is pivoting to a pure software solution for Windows laptops, that will let people have a similar experience to what they could have with the Spacetop G1 when they connect their AR glasses to their PC. The reason is that the newest Microsoft laptops feature a neural processing unit (NPU) that improves processing power and battery efficiency when running AR experiences. This means that every laptop will be able to do what the special Spacetop G1 was promising.

This explains why the company canceled its expensive product and it’s working on AR software. A software solution for Windows has some advantages over the previous products: it is more agile, it may have a bigger market, and it also lets people use the apps they already use. Spacetop G1 had the problem that it had to work like a Chromebook, so forced people to only use web apps. But on the other side, I wonder if offering such a solution is really the right idea for a startup: XReal already offers a runtime for Windows called Nebula and for sure Microsoft will offer a native one as soon as AR glasses will get popular.

More info (Sightful Spacetop G1 canceled — Road To VR)
More info (Sightful Spacetop G1 canceled — Upload VR)

Shiftall launches the MeganeX Superlight 8K

The startup Shiftall (remember to read the F before the T) has just announced the MeganeX Superlight 8K. The headset looks like being targeted at prosumers and hardcore PCVR fans: for a high price it offers a staggering 3,552 × 3,840 per-eye resolution, an OLED display with vivid colors, HDR, and a 90 Hz refresh rate. Pre-orders are opened in the US and Japan for $1900, to which you have to add the cost of SteamVR controllers and base stations in case you don’t have them yet. Shipping is slated to start between February and March 2025

The problem is that the company does not have a great history of delivering: Panasonic was able to get a lot of hype for its prototypical VR glasses with a steampunk look and only years later they materialized into the MeganeX headset product by its subsidiary Shiftall. But the MeganeX never had a worldwide launch. Then the company announced the MeganeX Superlight… not to deliver it, either. So, there is a reason why we are a bit skeptical, and we want to see this headset actually being shipped before believing in it.

More info (Shiftall announces MeganeX Superlight 8K — Road To VR)
More info (Shiftall announces MeganeX Superlight 8K — Upload VR)

Rokid has launched a contest open for all AR developers

The Global AR Application Development Championship is a new contest started by Rokid for the development of the best AR application for their glasses. The total prize pool is an impressive 1.1M RMB, which equates to more than $150,000. There are a few categories to enroll in, and some of them have a good first prize of around $15,000. Check out the rules and see if you can participate!

More info

A project that transforms any surface into a keyboard

TouchInsight is an interesting research project from Meta and ETZ Zurich that is able to transform any surface into a virtual keyboard. The solution works without needing any special configuration of the table (i.e. no markers) and no additional hardware on the user (i.e. no EMG wristband). The achievable typing speed is 70 WPM, and the average is 37 WPM, with an error rate as low as 2.9%. This is good enough to let an average person write some text.

Remember that typing on a table is not the same as writing on a keyboard: keys provide mechanical feedback when you press them, plus they are softer to press than a wooden surface. But still, I think this is a remarkable result for the usability of XR headsets.

More info

Mixed Reality suffers from a drift issue

Laser Dance has been delayed to 2025. One of the reasons for the delay of such an awaited game is that currently, mixed reality tools are not stable enough, in the sense that virtual elements are not stable inside the physical environment. They suffer from what is called “drift”, that is they slowly move over time, and in the end, they are in a different position that does not fit the real place anymore. It seems many developers are complaining about drift, both on Quest 3 and Vision Pro, and it is a problem tech companies have to solve (hopefully Meta solves it in its recent Mixed Reality Utility Kit).

More info

Apple releases its first immersive film: Submerged

Apple has just announced a slew of new content arriving on Vision Pro. The one that got the most attention has been Submerged, a movie produced by Apple itself that takes place inside a WWII-era submarine. The short movie is a high-quality production directed by the award-winning director Edward Berger and provided as 180-degree 8K resolution video with spatial audio.

The initial impression by anyone who watched it is that it is a great piece of work, absolutely worth seeing. But at the same time, they also highlight that it uses too many methods from traditional filmography: it seems the director has not much experience with VR movies and tried to record it as a standard one. This seems to me the same mistake Apple made with its headset: instead of learning from what other companies have been doing in the space for years, it decided to release the device with naive mistakes like it being front-heavy. I wonder when Apple will let its pride go and start realizing that there is a VR history to learn from before them…

More info (Apple released Submerged and other pieces of content)
More info (Submerged review — Upload VR)
More info (Submerged review — Kent Bye)

Games on Quest PC runtime may be discontinued

Some people on Reddit are reporting that games on their Rift runtime are starting not to work anymore or be removed from their libraries. For instance, Batman Arkham VR has been discontinued and can’t be downloaded anymore. A Redditor tried to contact Meta, who offered him some Store credit to repay him for the nuisance. Interestingly, he reports that Meta defined the Rift “to be end of life” and so it’s normal that some software becomes no longer accessible.

I wonder what it does mean for the future of the content we have on our Meta PC platform. It is always more clear that content you buy on digital stores is not something you own, but something you get a license to use, and some laws are now also forcing companies to make this clear.

More info (A redditor complaining about Batman not working anymore)
More info (Steam now warns users they do not own the games they buy)

Some news about content

Another Axiom showed the Driftball District of its upcoming game Orion Drift in a new video
New Folder Games explained that it arrived at its viral hit I Am Cat by releasing nine prototypes in one year
Theater Elsewhere lets people enjoy thousands of content generated with the artistic app Quill
Magnopus launched the fitness app Alo Moves XR featuring volumetric 3D captures of famous instructors. The price is $69 per year or $10 per month
Bugsnax, a bizarre PC game that sends you on an expedition capturing various bugs that look a lot like regular food, is surprisingly adding VR support
Spatial Ops, the upcoming mixed reality FPS from Resolution Games, is coming to Quest and Pico on November, 14th
Walkabout Mini Golf debuts on the Apple App Store and immediately becomes one of the top paid apps on the platform
Living Room, the app for Quest 3 that aims to bring a cute wildlife sanctuary into your home, is being released on November 7
Whispers of the Void is an upcoming sci-fi narrative adventure for PC VR that looks like Indiana Jones in space. There is a free demo available on Steam
The YouTube VR co-watching experience is now available on Quest
Upload VR has published its usual ICYMI post with some minor XR news.

More info (Orion Drift)
More info (I Am Cat)
More info (Theater Elsewhere)
More info (Alo Moves XR)
More info (Bugsnax)
More info (Spatial Ops)
More info (Walkabout Minigolf)
More info (Living Room)
More info (Whispers Of The Void)
More info (YouTube)
More info (ICYMI)

Some reviews about content

Frenzies is a very promising arena shooter with a solid foundation. It looks great on Quest. It’s not clear if it is going to succeed in a genre where many others have failed, though
Bounce Arcade lets you play pinball in 1st person. It is a VR game with solid mechanics and boundless potential, but the execution of some levels has to be improved
Into Black is a genuine sci-fi adventure coming out the door with engaging gameplay mechanics and a serviceable story that can be enjoyed alone or in co-op
Mecha Force is a good action game that makes you really feel like you are controlling a big mecha
Honey Pot is a new co-op VR game where you fight bears with bees, It has been inspired by Overcooked and Plants vs. Zombies and it’s certainly intriguing
The House of Da Vinci puts you in the shoes of an ambitious apprentice investigating a series of mysteries surrounding Leonardo Da Vinci. It features well-thought-out puzzles involving true Da Vinci’s designs and the visualization of events that happened in the past. It also has a good hinting system.

More info (Frenzies)
More info (Bounce Arcade)
More info (Into Black)
More info (Mecha Force)
More info (Honey Pot)
More info (The House Of Da Vinci)

Other news

The Meta Quest Link PC App PTC adds Casting & Remote Desktop features

Learn more

Play For Dream shows the low latency of its passthrough with a racing stunt

Learn more

Quest runtime v71 can show any keyboard through a passthrough window

Learn more

Lufthansa is already experimenting with offering mixed-reality entertainment via Quest 3

Learn more

Infinite Reality acquires AR company Zappar for $45M

Learn more

Reay Player Me launches its consumer avatar platform Player Zero, centered around collectibles and Web3

Learn more — Auganix Learn more — RPM’s X post

VisionProTeleop is an opensource project to control a robot via an Apple Vision Pro
(Thanks Ivan Aguilar for the tip)

Learn more

Meta Research showed a battery-free smart ring to use as a controller together with its EMG smartwatch

Learn more

News from partners (and friends)

Final Fury gets Steam Next Fest Demo

Final Fury, the VR fighting game from the same studio behind Synth Riders, now has a free playable Steam Next Fest demo. You can finally test this game with your PC VR setup from October 14th to October 28th. The company has also released a new trailer of the game and from it, you can see that there has been some changes with regard the initial teaser videos: the control system has been fully reworked after the user tests and now the gameplay is much smoother.

Enjoy the demo of Final Fury!
Learn more (Final Fury gets Steam Next Fest demo)
Learn more (Final Fury Demo Steam page)

Some XR fun

This is an interesting product for any manag… WHAT THE HELL
(Thanks Louis for the tip)
Funny link

Linkedin in real life
(Thanks Louis for the tip)
Funny link

The comments to this post are funny
Funny link

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