The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Here below I’m posting for you the best offers I’ve found: for instance, HTC is discounting basically every piece of hardware (including Vive Trackers that can be useful for all the VRChat fans out there), while Pico is offering one of the best deals with €100-worth-of-content given for free with every purchased Pico 4.

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Augmented Reality Apple Samsung Ukraine 363

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 27, 2023

Ok, of course, I’m kidding, but, you know, the possibility of saying the wrong name is so high that my proposal actually starts making sense… Top news of the week (Image by HTC Vive) HTC reveals inside-out-tracked Tracker With a totally unexpected move, HTC has revealed a new kind of Tracker.

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Razer HTC Apple Ukraine 320

The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 2, 2023

Roblox was already on App Lab, where it had more than one million downloads, and now is going to be available on the official Quest store Asgard’s Wrath 2, coming on Quest Store on December 15th, 2023. On October 17th people will be able to buy the new Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses starting from $299.

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Las Vegas Amazon Controllers Gaming 380

XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Following its debut, Igloo Vision began rolling the product out to end users, including Microsoft, Nike, and AtkinsRéalis. In 2023, Igloo Vision showcased its various immersive spaces. This platform uses Microsoft Teams for calls and Microsoft Office apps such as PowerPoint, Miro, Alleo, and Power BI.

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Immersion Architecture Microsoft 360 Video 107

XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

MAY 10, 2023

On the enterprise side, many AR headsets, from firms like RealWear and Microsoft, for on-site usage provide eye and hand-tracking features to optimize workplace operations and communications. How has eye and hand-tracking tracking technology advanced in 2022 and 2023?

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Hand tracking Technology Eye Tracking Hardware 90

XR Today - VR Headsets tag

OCTOBER 31, 2023

Last week, Augmented World Expo EU (AWE) 2023 hosted its yearly event highlighting recent innovations in enterprise-grade AR/VR/MR solutions, as well as related emerging technology such as genAI, digital twins, and geospatial tech. He cited ARtillery data, highlighting how, in 2023, XR will become a “$38 billion” industry.

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Training Industry Strategy AR 95

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 1, 2024

This would be pretty disruptive, because up to now every standalone headset has been a walled garden with its own store and hardware, with the only exception being HTC trying to distribute its Viveport store to some other Chinese devices. Basically, Google could try to be for standalone devices what Steam has been for the PC VR ones.

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Trends Apple Google Unity 442

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 13, 2023

I’ve very limited time, but luckily this week has not been very relevant for the ecosystem, so I’m managing to write this newsletter anyway Top news of the week (Image by Microsoft) AltspaceVR shuts down In one of the saddest moments of the latest years in VR, AltspaceVR has closed its doors.

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Ukraine Apple Groups Augmented Reality 340

The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 27, 2020

Or that Microsoft is working on a new reference design that fixes the issues of the first one? While in all past years the answer had always been “HTC Vive”, now the king is Oculus, with both the Rift S and the Oculus Quest getting the majority of answers (especially the Quest). Unity changes how it handles XR Plugins.

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The Ghost Howls

FEBRUARY 23, 2023

But in China, they are very famous, and now they are also organizing a big event about XR called FBEC with hosts from all the major VR companies (HTC, Unity, Alibaba, Huawei, etc…). For example, we invited senior executives from HUAWEI, JBD, HTC, Alibaba, iQIYI, Qualcomm, Microsoft, and so on.

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XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

OCTOBER 24, 2023

All you need to do is get in touch [link] pic.twitter.com/o8VKifqGdl — Igloo Vision (@IglooVision) October 13, 2023 Formed in 2007, the company began building its geodesic domes for projection-mapped immersive spaces. This platform uses Microsoft Teams for calls, Microsoft Office apps like Powerpoint, Miro, Alleo, Power BI, and many others.

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Immersion 360 Video Architecture Microsoft 86

XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

SEPTEMBER 4, 2023

In its report, the WEF named the “Medical Metaverse” among its top emerging technologies of 2023 – alongside flexible batteries, genAI, sustainable aviation fuel, designer phages, wearable plant sensors, spatial optics, flexible neural electronics, sustainable computing, and AI-facilitated healthcare.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 4, 2023

Because if Apple is just going to repeat the same use cases of the HTC Vive and Meta Quest 2, but selling it at $3000, it is just going to fail spectacularly. Shipping should start in 2023. This is great news because MRTK 3 introduces better compatibility with Unity standard tools than its previous version. For what purpose?

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Apple Gaming Hand tracking Leap Motion 345

XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

MAY 24, 2023

Instead, he has concentrated his journalistic efforts on a stereotypical dystopia of avatars and social media white elephants from a caricatured Meta, Microsoft AltSpaceVR, and Decentraland. Don’t forget to catch the XR Awards on 25 May, 2023, where we celebrate the victories of the global immersive industry.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 20, 2021

From time to time, I like to look at the adoption graph of XR shown by John Riccitiello (the CEO of Unity) in 2017 , where you can see that the real acceleration of immersive technologies should start around 2022-2023. Companies like Pico, HP, Valve, and HTC are already performing very well in this sector.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 24, 2020

Who doesn’t want to do that can still use his/her Oculus account to log in until 2023 , but he/she won’t be able to use all the social functionalities of the device (like Venues, Horizon, etc…). After 2023, the devices won’t be guaranteed to work with an Oculus login. The same on Twitter. Other relevant news. Image by Epic Games).

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Unreal Apple Government Data 434

The Ghost Howls

JUNE 27, 2022

Then we have a new report from The Verge that says that the upcoming Apple visor is coming with an M2 chip (we knew that); Kuo saying that Apple will release its visor in January 2023 (we knew that); Apple AR glasses (not the headset, but the glasses) have now entered the design development stage and should release in 2024 (again, we knew).

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 13, 2021

This has been a pretty interesting week for me, having spoken at XR Safety Week and Stereopsia, and having published two cool articles about creating innovative SteamVR controllers and using Application SpaceWarp in Unity to almost double the framerate of your application. Microsoft and Samsung may be partnering for an AR device.

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Survey Apple AR Samsung 311

The Ghost Howls

APRIL 5, 2021

In the meantime, Bloomberg published a report saying that Apple is going to launch its XR headset in the “next several months” (a timeline that goes from now to 2023, I guess), and that it is probably waiting until there could be physical events again before doing it. Microsoft signs a $22B deal with the US Army. Learn more.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

And for price parity, companies were usually working with Pico and HTC that have always had a better approach in the B2B sector. Pico and HTC still offer better services, and better guarantees on data management than a consumer device, so it has to be seen what companies will value the most. I’m very curious about its consequences.

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Oculus AR Tools Unity 471

The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 10, 2022

A Horizon game is coming for this new headset, and some rumors talk also about Half-Life: Alyx potentially be available in the future; HTC has announced the Vive Wrist Tracker, a 6 DOF tracker for the Vive Focus 3. This is why companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Meta are exploring similar technologies.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 25, 2022

VR in 2022-2023 will definitely enter the mainstream market , and I wonder if it will just be because of Quest or there will be some other devices. I don’t think we’ll see the launch of a Quest 3 this year (it would compete directly with Cambria), but I think we’ll see some revelations about it, and a 2023 release.

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Virtual Reality Eye Tracking Apple Government 495

XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

The firm’s first XR headset is due soon, and with it comes a spatial computing ambition that draws similarities and differences to Lenovo, Microsoft, Meta, HTC VIVE, and other XR headset vendors. Apple is gearing up for the Vision Pro debut.

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XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

AUGUST 3, 2023

On the enterprise side, many AR headsets, from firms like RealWear and Microsoft, for on-site usage provide eye and hand-tracking features to optimize workplace operations and communications. How has eye and hand-tracking tracking technology advanced in 2023? So one could say that hand tracking is now a standard feature of VR devices.

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Hand tracking Eye Tracking Technology Hardware 73

The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Pimax 12K (Image by Pimax) Regarding the 12K headset, this was still some way off, with a 12K demo planned for Q3 of 2023, a roadshow in Q4, and a presentation at CES in January 2024. The XR2 processor is already used in other products like Meta Quest 2 and HTC Vive XR Elite, making porting of games much simpler.

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Eye Tracking Controllers Software Hardware 340

The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 1, 2019

If these Facebook features proved to be popular, more developers would use them, and finally, Facebook could have more power on the VR development tools , after the failed acquisition of Unity. The report also highlights that one of the regions where VR may grow more in 2019–2023 is Western Europe. Trimble stress-tests its AR helmet.

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Gaming Czech Republic Microsoft AR 40

The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

Part of all of this is merit of Jeri (Image by HTC). Compare that to the HTC Vive that has like 40 giant infrared lights that strobe constantly to synchronize everything and spinning lasers with infrared light… and then the Kinect that has this huge laser illumination system, so those systems work totally different than ours.

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XR for Business Podcast

DECEMBER 29, 2020

We heard from Alvin Wang Graylin from HTC talking about 2021 and beyond. Twelve months ago I put a prediction on LinkedIn saying that I thought -- based on some of the things that we're seeing coming out of Unity -- that Unity was going to go public within the next 12 months. What was your biggest challenge? That was a year ago.

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Machine Learning Education Apple Technology 78

XR for Business Podcast

DECEMBER 29, 2020

We heard from Alvin Wang Graylin from HTC talking about 2021 and beyond. Twelve months ago I put a prediction on LinkedIn saying that I thought -- based on some of the things that we're seeing coming out of Unity -- that Unity was going to go public within the next 12 months. What was your biggest challenge? That was a year ago.

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Machine Learning Education Apple Technology 78

XR for Business Podcast

DECEMBER 29, 2020

We heard from Alvin Wang Graylin from HTC talking about 2021 and beyond. Twelve months ago I put a prediction on LinkedIn saying that I thought -- based on some of the things that we're seeing coming out of Unity -- that Unity was going to go public within the next 12 months. What was your biggest challenge? That was a year ago.

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Machine Learning Education Apple Technology 60