I’m in Italy, but in a sunnier place than usual, enjoying a more relaxed environment and a lot of good food. Probably too much good food… but I can’t resist it ahahah. Anyway, I am still working, and that’s why you are still having your weekly roundup of news today! And since September-October (the usual launch window for new VR hardware) is getting close, the XR space is heating up, and there is very interesting news to speak about today! So keep reading to discover what happened in the past few days…
Top news of the week
Pico’s new headset is the Pico Space Pro
The headset that was codenamed “Project Swan”, that is the new upcoming headset by Pico, now has a real name: Pico Space Pro.
Pico officially announced the name when announcing the launch event of the new device, which was planned for September 2nd. This should have been the Chinese launch of the headset, with details about the launch of the headset in other parts of the world coming at later times. But then, a few days after this announcement, Pico surprisingly shared on its social media that the launch has been canceled, because the company needs more time to perfection the device and its software.
This has been very confusing, to say the least: in five days, at first the company announced the launch of the device, and then it abruptly canceled it. I wonder what happened in those five days, and I have two ideas (which are completely speculations of mine, with no proof of any kind). One is that the company was not expecting so much attention from the West to the Chinese launch event, and so it is switching to a worldwide launch that is less confusing. The second possibility is that Pico got some insights about a competitor device (like Meta Phoenix) and decided to postpone the launch so that to compete better with it. This is basically what happened with GalaxyXR, which was postponed to make it compare better with the Apple Vision Pro. In any case, this abrupt change in decision is very strange.
We don’t know about the price of the device, but there has been a leak through JD.com, one of the most popular e-commerce websites in China. If this leak can be trusted, the price of the device in China will be $2,400–2,600, depending on the SKU. Notice that this is just a leak and that the prices in China are usually different than in the West, so take this price hint with a grain of salt.
The leaked price is anyway perfectly in range with what I was expecting: given the high-end component of this headset, I was estimating a price in the range $2,000–2,500. This is, of course, not a good price for gamers, but this headset was never intended for them and has always been aimed at prosumers and enterprise customers. And for enterprise customers, a headset like the Vision Pro, but lighter and $1,000 cheaper than the Vision Pro, could actually be a good deal.
(Hat tip to Tyriel Wood for telling me about the leak on JD.com)
More info (Pico’s new headset is the Pico Space Pro)
More info (Space Pro is launching in Japan on September 3rd)
More info (Price leak via JD.com)
More info (Pico Space Pro launch is postponed)
Other relevant news
Videos about the Steam Frame leaked
In what is the last one of what I believe is a series of controlled leaks, Valve has “accidentally” revealed the videos that act as a user guide for the Steam Frame. In these videos, you can see things like the unboxing of the Steam Frame, or how to install the straps to the controllers, and so on.
We can not see anything particularly interesting in these videos, but they have been enough for VR magazines to publish the news and say that the launch of the Steam Frame is imminent… which is basically what they have been saying in the past few months for every new leak about this device.
Talking about the “imminent launch”, today, August 24th, is actually the 30th anniversary of Valve. Some people in the community believe that it could be the day of some great announcements like the Steam Frame or Half Life 3. I really hope something is going to happen, but Tyler McVicker, the “hype machine” for Valve, said that in his opinion, nothing is going to happen today. But it’s hard to make predictions about Valve, so let’s see…
More info (All the leaked videos from Valve)
More info (Steam Frame videos have been leaked)
More info (Tyler McVicker saying that nothing is happening today)
Felix & Paul Studios may have shut down
There have been various rumors about the shutdown of the immersive storytelling studios Felix & Paul. While there has been no official confirmation, the fact that all the staff have been laid off is a symptom that things are going pretty badly. In the best situation possible, the studio is now in a frozen state; in the worst one, it has been closed. And in the second case, it is not clear who owns the content produced by the studio now.
This has been shocking news for the whole community. Felix & Paul were not just an immersive studio, they were THE immersive videos studio. They were there since the early days, and I remember demoing the GearVR to all my friends showing them a video of Felix & Paul. All the content they created was carefully crafted and incredibly delivered. One of the last pieces they did was about life on the International Space Station, and some special cameras were even sent to space to make this documentary possible. They were a masterpiece machine. That’s why, when the news of the shutdown was shared, everyone couldn’t believe it.
As someone commented on social media, this shows once more the problem of the profitability of immersive storytelling content. Immersive movies and performances are loved by people, win awards at Venice Immersive, but then they can’t make enough money to be sustainable. It is not clear what their business model should be. Most of the time, this content relies on patronage, and many pieces of content from Felix & Paul were actually sponsored by Meta. But relying on manufacturers’ money is not a business model, and when this money finishes (because now Meta is cutting the budgets), the studio can’t sustain itself anymore. Probably this has been one of the reasons for the shutdown of this studio. As a VR enthusiast, I’m incredibly sad about this news, but as a businessman, I can understand why it happened.
More info (Felix & Paul shuts down — Ian Hamilton)
More info (Felix & Paul shuts down — Alex Coulombe)
More info (Felix & Paul shuts down — XR Must)
The press keeps putting the spotlight on Ray-Ban Meta glasses
The pressure on Meta from the press regarding smartglasses is getting stronger. Every week, I’ve been sent articles about the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, their privacy issues, the fact that they’re being banned from some places, or the stigma about being “pervert glasses” because some stupid men are using them to record interactions with women. This week has been no exception, and I’m linking three of these articles below.
There is one piece of info that I’ve found particularly interesting from all the articles I’ve read this week. In a long article from The Guardian (which absolutely LOVES talking about this topic), it is possible to read that the LED tampering on Ray-Ban Meta still works after the latest update. You know that one of the big problems of the glasses is that there are many people who hide or break the privacy LED on the glasses, so people around them don’t know if they are being recorded. Meta so released an update some weeks ago to solve this problem once and for all: if the LED has been tampered with, the cameras are not working anymore. But some people who are paid to disable the privacy LED claimed that this update didn’t bring much improvement, and they can still disable the privacy LED for people who want to sneakily record with the glasses.
I have not found any confirmation of this in other magazines, but if this were true, it would be bad news and would mean that Meta has no way to fix this very serious issue, so these glasses are still going to be seen as “pervert” glasses for a long time.
There is a second interesting fact that I’ve discovered in an article by Ars, instead: there are now apps to detect if around you there are people with smartglasses. And they have very fancy names, with one even called “Zuckoff”. These apps are finding some market, but they can only detect if around you there is someone with the glasses, not who they are and what they are doing with the glasses. I guess once the psychosis ends, these apps will be useless.
(Thanks Rob Cole for many of the links)
More info (The Guardian’s article about Meta Glasses)
More info (Apps to detect smartglasses)
More info (Teens are making stupid videos with glasses, too)
News worth a mention
Apple performs layoffs in the Vision Pro team
According to various reports, Apple has laid off around 200 people from various teams. The layoffs may include around 60 people in the Apple Vision Pro teams, in particular the ones related to gaming and immersive videos. This is not very surprising, considering that the Vision Pro is mostly successful in the enterprise and productivity sectors and not much in the entertainment sector.
More info (AVP teams cut — 9to5mac)
More info (AVP teams cut — Engadget)
More info (AVP teams cut — Bloomberg)
XREAL Aura reaches 10K registrations
XREAL reached an important milestone: there have already been more than 10K reservations for its upcoming XREAL Aura glasses. This is definitely a good result, but I think they can do more: 10K is not a huge number, considering that the Apple Vision Pro was considered by many a failure for selling less than 1M units. But let’s remember they are still just pre-launching, so let’s see the actual numbers when the headset is on the market: it is definitely a good product, so I think it can have pretty decent sales.
Cheating in VR games is a thing
In an interesting interview with Ghosts Of Tabor devs on Upload VR, I’ve discovered a very interesting thing: there are cheaters in VR games on Quest. We are all aware of cheaters in VR games on Steam: people decompile and “crack” the code of a game to have an unfair advantage and beat the opponents. But we were all convinced that, being the Quest a closed ecosystem, it was almost impossible to crack the games there. In reality, this is already happening, and the devs of Ghosts Of Tabor had to fix this problem themselves because people at Meta are still convinced the games on their store can not be cracked.
Varjo implements mixed-reality group training
Varjo, the Finnish manufacturer of high-end headsets for enterprise and military, has just announced a pretty cool feature called “People Occlusion”. Thanks to this feature, the user can see a virtual reality environment with the real visuals of the people who are in the same room with him/her. Basically, the headset can “green screen” the people in the same room, so a group of people can have a proper mixed reality training while seeing each other. I think it’s a pretty cool feature for multiplayer applications, which is cool for the enterprise, but can also have some application for gaming (I’m thinking about LBVR).
(Thanks Ivan Aguilar for the tip)
The Quest 1 bootloader has been unlocked
Someone found a way to unlock the bootloader of the Meta Quest 1. The full hack has been shared on GitHub, and considering that the Quest 1 is not receiving new updates, this means that probably Meta won’t fix this one. This will allow people with the Quest 1 to install other operating systems or also to root the device.
A new documentary raises questions about adult content on VRChat
The YouTuber Jumper spent 500 days investigating adult content on VRChat, in particular worlds where people basically have virtual sexual intercourse. The documentary exposes 18+ practices that should be forbidden by the TOS but about which VRChat seems to turn a blind eye, also because some of its people are directly or indirectly involved with these communities.
It’s complicated to comment on this topic. Adults are free to do what they want with other consenting adults. Plus, virtual erotism has always been a great use case for virtual worlds: people on Second Life are still doing there sexual practices that I prefer not to mention here not to traumatize you. And VRChat, as a startup operating in a troublesome sector like VR nowadays, can not afford the luxury to kick out all these people that use its software to do their perverted things. It would probably lose too much of its community and maybe go bankrupt.
But on the other side, things can not stay this way: these worlds are not age-gated, so a teenager can still enter there and be traumatized, or even worse, become a victim of a sexual predator. So VRChat should work more on its age verification, and completely separate the 18+ areas (and avatars) that require strict age verification from the other areas that are open to everyone. This would allow people to do what they want without any risk for people who should not see these things.
(Let me just end this topic with a joke: did this guy really need 500 DAYS to expose adult content on VRChat?? I mean, I guess a week was more than enough. Probably if he stayed so long, he was enjoying the process himself lol)
A great VR games bundle
The “VR Games Showcase: The New Essential” bundle is offering cool VR games like Arizona Sunshine 2, Into The Radius 2, and Underdogs for just $26! Lower tiers are available if you want fewer games. Customers can also add a $5 All-for-Charity Tier to get cosmetics, soundtracks, and custom artwork. If you are looking for some fun VR games to play, feel free to check this out.
Some news about content
- FitXR has added knee strikes to its Combat and Flow studios on Quest
- CM Games announced its VR survival shooter Into the Radius 2 is officially leaving early access on Quest 3 and Quest 3S on August 27
- Knights of Fiona will launch free-to-play with the game’s story and “additional features” requiring an $18.99 Story Pass add-on
- Sol Protocol, a procedurally generated space-based co-op roguelike, has announced a September 17 Early Access release date on Quest 3 & Quest 3S
More info (FitXR)
More info (Into The Radius 2)
More info (Knights Of Fiona)
More info (Sol Protocol)
Some reviews about content
- Upload VR journalists played a preview of Payday: Aces High and found it a very fun game to play with friends
- Puzzles of the World is a very relaxing experience, but it needs more content to keep its players engaged in the game for a long time
More info (Payday: Aces High)
More info (Puzzles Of The World)
Other news
Peripheral Labs made a demo about reconstructing an NBA match with Gaussian Splats and the results are staggering
I found a fun reddit post where users share their cheap tricks to increase immersion in VR
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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.
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(Header image by Pico, shared by Luna)