The XR Week Peek (2024.12.23): Meta prepares to face the competition, Niantic works on Spatial Intelligence, and more!
Christmas is near, and so is the end of the year. Tomorrow, I will write you all a dedicated post to wish you happy holidays, but today, I will be your Santa and do not one, but two giveaways of keys to redeem for free two cool XR games! Be sure to read the whole roundup to find out how to participate in this cool thing.
Top news of the week
Meta reflects on its positive 2024 and prepares for the competition in 2025
Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, the CTO of Meta, has written a long post on Meta’s blog to talk about the positive things that the company did in the year that is ending and to give a hint of what to expect later. The post was commented also by Mark Rabkin, VP of MR/VR at Meta, and by the Lowpass newsletter written by Janko Roettgers. Most of the information shared by these posts are things we all know like that Meta has launched the Quest 3S, which is the most affordable mixed reality headset, or some useless promotional PR statements about how Meta is an innovative company. But there are a few pieces of information contained there that are little gold nuggets, and I have hand-picked them for you, so you don’t have to read through all the boring parts to find them:
- Quest 3S is selling pretty well. Boz commented on the sales of the new device this way: “Sales were strong over the Black Friday weekend, and we’re expecting a surge of people activating their new headsets over the holiday break”. It will be interesting to evaluate the sales numbers of the device after the Holidays and compare them to the numbers that the Quest 2 managed to obtain in the same time frame 1 or 2 years ago
- People buying the Quest 3S are not all upgrading from Quest 2. Mark Rabkin said that it has “a high proportion of purchasers who are new-to-Quest”, so either they are new to MR/VR, or they come from another headset brand. This is a good thing because it shows that new people are coming into the XR space thanks to the low price of Quest 3S
- Meta acknowledges that there are a lot of kids playing on Quest now, and they are shifting the economy of the store, because they are bringing to success different kinds of experiences from what the millennials like: “There’s a big influx of younger people in particular; they’ve been gravitating toward social and co-op multiplayer games and free-to-play content (most does have IAP), driving some new hits”. Gorilla Tag is a huge example of these “new hits”. Rabkin added that instead, “adults (25+ y/o) are branching out with more time in entertainment experiences”
- Meta keeps analyzing the data of the store, and it’s moving its attention to the most successful genres: “We’re funding devs to build a now broader range of apps that users want: social gaming, entertainment, free-to-play, core gaming, and MR-first” said Mark Rabkin. If you plan to get some money from Meta to build content, you should work on a title with the aforementioned features
- The three most used immersive apps on Quest 3S are Gorilla Tag, Youtube VR, and Horizon Worlds. The rise in popularity of YouTube VR shows that people are still interested in enjoying media content on a VR/MR headset: I remember that 2D video-playing apps were already super popular on Gear VR and Oculus Go. Also, it’s interesting to see that Horizon Worlds is getting popular: young children may prefer it to VRChat (which is more for millennials). It also means that the fact that Meta is shoveling this social VR app down our throats in every possible way is working to attract users
- Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have been a huge hit, and the just-added AI integration is awesome. But Meta wants even more: Boz said that the company is working on “AI assistants into tools that don’t just respond to a prompt when you ask for help but can become a proactive helper as you go about your day”. This to me may mean at first having an AI assistant connected to your apps like email, calendars, etc… that can inform you about what you should do (what train you should take, which appointment you should remember, how you should dress for a party), and later on having always-on glasses that can guide you in what you are doing in every moment of the day. This is very fascinating, but also a bit scary on the privacy side
- Meta is the clear XR leader, but with Apple now in the market and Google (with Samsung) officially launching next year, the company is starting to feel the competition. And especially the fear of having spent so much time and money to push the technology forward to be surpassed by companies entering years later in the ecosystem. “I did bring that message to my team: There’s real stakes now,” Bosworth added, “If we slip, then we potentially lose our leadership position. Up until now, we were a little bit on our own, we were having to advance the state of the art across every single part of our portfolio. […] Competition always has an easier time than the leaders, The leader is pathfinding, and it’s expensive. The competition is just following what the leader does […] I joke with my team: We did all this amazing work to establish ourselves in a leadership position, and the reward for that is competition”. Competition is a huge problem for Meta, but it is going to be very positive for us users and developers.
More info (Boz’s post on Meta’s blog)
More info (Lowpass newsletter episode)
More info (Mark Rabkin commenting the post on X)
Other relevant news
The growing importance of Spatial Intelligence
AI and XR are a match made in heaven and one of the topics where researchers are experimenting is the use of AI to better understand a specific location. The term “Spatial Intelligence” is starting to become popular to indicate the use of Artificial Intelligence for Spatial Understanding. This week alone I have found two interesting works made in this sense.
The first one is by Niantic, who in a very interesting long post talks about Large Geospatial Models to refer to LLMs used for geospatial understanding. Niantic, which powers Pokemon Go and that owns one of the most popular VPS systems, explains that for as much as you may have players scanning the world for you, you will never have an accurate scan of every centimeter of the planet. You will have some sparse information, which will be more abundant in some areas and less in others. AI is what can be useful to fill the holes: for instance, every one of us has seen thousands of churches, so even if you just see a couple of pictures of a church, you can imagine how all the 3D exteriors of the building are. Niantic aims to do exactly the same: thanks to an AI that understands what is there in one place, it is possible to reconstruct the full shape of that place using some AI magic.
The other interesting work I’ve found on this topic is made by New York University and is about studying the spatial understanding of LLMs. Standard LLMs, even if multimodal, have not been trained to understand 3D spaces, so even if you use smartglasses and ask an AI to describe what is in your room, the system can answer what it sees in the specific pictures, but it doesn’t develop a true spatial understanding of the place, with the exact placement of objects and their 3D shapes. So the researchers have developed VSI-Bench, a benchmark to evaluate the spatial understanding capabilities of an AI system, and also proposed some suggestions on how to use today’s LLMs (like Gemini) to achieve a better spatial understanding.
I see this becoming a very important trend in the future of XR.
More info (Niantic Large Geospatial Model)
More info (VSI-Bench benchmark about spatial understanding)
News worth a mention
8K camera for Apple Immersive Video is available for pre-ordering
Blackmagic Design has opened the preorders for its new URSA Cine Immersive camera, specially designed to shoot 8K VR180 footage for the Apple Immersive Video format. The camera features a pair of 180° stereo lenses, and captures 59MP (8,160 x 7,200) frames at 90 FPS. The price is a staggering $30,000, which of course rules out all the hobbyists, but results affordable for professional movie recording studios. Blackmagic Design is also going to update its DaVinci Resolve video editor software to add support for the recording format of the camera and for exporting to Apple Immersive video format.
More info (Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera — Road To VR)
More info (Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera — Upload VR)
More info (Hands-on Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera)
Meta adds an audio-to-expression feature to its SDK
Meta has just added to its SDK a new feature that lets you animate the face of an avatar by just using the audio of its voice (which may be live from a microphone or recorded). Previously there was the lip sync feature that just moved the lips according to the voice, but the new AI-powered “Audio To Expression” system can instead move the whole face (eyes, eyebrows, etc…). It is pretty cool and it’s even cooler that it is provided to all the developers for free inside the Meta SDK.
Someone may have solved the stuttering problem of Quest on Steam VR
Many people, myself included, have had problems with stutterings or anyway bad performances of Quest connected via Link to a PC, when using SteamVR. Things work well when using the Meta runtime, but become choppy when run through Steam. A guy claims to have found a solution: it seems the problem is the Motionsmoothing feature, and if you disable it, performances become much better. Some Redditors already tried this workaround with positive results.
If someone from Valve is reading this newsletter, please check how you can improve your Steam software to implement this solution.
Use a digital copy of the city of Tokyo
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government released for free the point cloud related to the whole city of Tokyo. You can use it for various purposes, like training some AI for spatial understanding, developing a digital twin of a city, using it as the location for your game, and so on.
Enjoy the Meta Winter Sale
Gift yourself some nice VR games this Christmas! The Quest Holiday Sale brings big discounts to very cool games like Demeo, Asgard’s Wrath 2, and Assassin’s Creed VR.
More info (Quest Holiday Sale — Road To VR)
More info (Quest Holiday Sale — Upload VR)
Discover Upload VR’s favorite games of 2024
It’s the end of the year, the ideal time to assign some awards. Upload VR has chosen the best AR/VR games of 2024, divided by categories. You can imagine which game won the Best VR Game award… (a hint: the name starts with “Bat”)
More info (Upload VR Awards — Categories 1)
More info (Upload VR Awards — Categories 2)
More info (Upload VR Awards — Categories 3)
Alien Rogue Incursion gets released, but it is not a massive hit
The release of Alien Rogue Incursion ends the series of amazing VR games we all were waiting for in 2024. Reading the reviews around, it seems that the only true huge hit has been Batman Arkham Shadow: the other games are fun to play, they are selling quite well, but they do not hit home runs. For instance, Behemoth features amazing boss fights with the giants, but the rest of the time is less exciting. Alien Rogue Incursion provides a fantastic creepy atmosphere, but the game is very repetitive, and the saving system lets you save only on rare occasions, resulting in long repeated game chunks in case you die. All these games are going to help the adoption of VR, but maybe a little less than I hoped for.
More info (Alien Rogue Incursion review — Road To VR)
More info (Alien Rogue Incursion review — Upload VR)
More info (Alien Rogue Incursion will have a Part 2 — Upload VR)
More info (Behemoth review — Upload VR)
Some news about content
- SUPERHOT-inspired action game COLD VR can be preordered on all platforms for $19.99 / £14.99 / €19.99. The game is expected to launch on January, 21st
- Mixed reality sandbox Figmin XR is now available on Apple Vision Pro and features colocation between different headsets
- Tentacular Playground lets you build your own island using some predefined blocks. It is available only on Steam
- Niantic’s Scaniverse lets you explore various locations of the world reconstructed with Gaussian Splats in WebXR
- Dino Hab, a dinosaur-raising virtual and mixed-reality simulation game from Doug Liman’s 30 Ninjas in partnership with Meta and Dark Slope, is now available for €14
- Grimlord, the Soulslike-inspired VR action RPG, enters full release on Quest and Steam, priced at $29.99
- Zenni Vision VR makes you check your visual acuity directly at home inside your VR headset
- The empowering action game Masters Of Lights is now available on PSVR 2
- The usual Upload VR’s XR News Round-Up informs us of some minor XR news of the week.
More info (COLD VR)
More info (Figmin XR)
More info (Tentacular)
More info (Scaniverse)
More info (Dino Hab)
More info (Grimlord)
More info (Zenni Vision VR)
More info (Masters Of Light)
More info (XR News Round-Up)
Some reviews about content
- Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable is a game inspired by the famous manga. The combat with the giants is decent, but the game feels rushed and so unpolished, featuring many visual and interaction bugs. It also feels short and repetitive
- Green Hell VR introduced a co-op mode and this is not only good for the game, but it is also fun to play with friends
- COLD VR features an interesting twist over SUPERHOT VR, but some of its levels are frustrating and others are hunted by bugs. It has good premises, but it should be improved.
More info (Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable)
More info (Green Hell VR)
More info (COLD VR)
Other news
Genesis is an open-source generative physics engine able to generate animated 3D worlds
OpenAI announced new o3 model, which is far superior (and more expensive) than o1
AEXLAB announced that its VR shooter Vail has generated over $5.5 million in revenue to date
Upload VR made a long list of all games that are implementing some special features for Christmas
Tom’s Guide wrote a comparison between XREAL One and Viture Pro AR glasses
Joe Hunting made a new short movie, ‘The Reality of Hope’, portraying the story of an international kidney donation resulting from a friendship made in VRChat
News from partners (and friends)
PatchWorld’s update and discount
PatchWorld, the musical app to do live jams on Quest and one of the most original VR apps I have ever tried, has just received a massive update that:
- Makes the experience fully playable with hand tracking
- Adds the support for OSC (Open Sound Control) protocol so that it can be integrated with other applications and peripherals
- Provides integration with popular music production tool Ableton Live
- Expands Multiplayer Sync for jamming with others
And all of this comes together with a massive 50% discount that lasts until January, 6, 2025. What can you desire more?
Get PatchWorld on Quest Store!
Join the DeoVR party at CES!
If you’ll be at CES like me, join the party that DeoVR is organizing there! The name of the event is “DeoVR After Dark: The Ultimate VR Creators’ CES Afterparty” and it will be held starting from January, 8th at 4 pm local time. I will be there, let’s meet!
[Disclaimer: DeoVR is a patron of this blog]
Register to the party
Home Sports giveaway!
Home Sports is a game by Resolution Games that wants to become the Wii Sports of Mixed Reality. It contains various fun minigames that you can play alone or with your friends. Here below you can find a link to my giveaway where you can get one of the two available free keys for this game, or a link to directly purchase the game on the Quest Store in case you want to support the developers.
Join The Home Sports Giveaway!
Buy Home Sports on Quest Store
Party Versus giveaway!
Party Versus is a game by Schell Games that makes you have fun with your friends thanks to a collection of party games and an innovative use of mixed reality (as I highlight in my review). Here below you can find a link to my giveaway where you can get one of the two available free keys for this game, or a link to directly purchase the game on the Quest Store in case you want to support the developers.
Join The Party Versus Giveaway!
Buy Party Versus on Quest Store
Some XR fun
Reality is often disappointing
Funny link
Zuck’s car spotted in the wild
Funny link
This video is fun and stupid at the same time lol
Funny link
When you are a monkey and you want to play Gorilla Tag but you don’t have a Quest
Funny link
Maybe instead of substituting the devs with AI, he should have substituted himself with AI…
Funny link
Accurate depiction of me playing with VR
Funny link
ChatGPT can be so naive…
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
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- Immersive.international
- Nikk Mitchell and the great FXG team
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And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
(Header image by Meta)
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