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This Week In XR: XR Awards, iPhone 12, Lenovo Education, And Snap’s AR Scavenger Hunt

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Tis the season for the entertainment and allied industries to give itself awards for outstanding achievements. First up, the 11th annual Advanced Imaging Society’s Lumiere Awards. These awards are voted by members of the Hollywood creative and technology community working in motion pictures, television, and emerging media. Best Immersive Entertainment Live Action Feature Film was Marvel's Avengers: Endgame. Three Lumieres, Best Original Song was presented to Frozen II, natch. Other award winners included Ford v Ferrari, Alita: Battle Angel, Stranger Things Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and Tutankhamun: Enter the Tomb.

On January 21st, the German AUREA conference and awards gave creativity and innovation awards to VR innovators in Europe. Hologate, The 1944 Paris Insurrection, and Holoride, were among the winners.

Immotion Group expands their VR offerings signing contracts with the London Eye, aquariums, and a zoo. Immotion Group has installed location based VR experiences at multiple aquariums, museums, and other entertainment locations. Their library of experiences include educational ocean, congo, and moon experiences, as well as virtual roller coasters and games. You can find Immotion Group experiences around the UK and EU. 

iPhone12 rumored to be as powerful as a MacBook, and primed for XR. The leaked specs of the upcoming iteration of Apple’s iPhone include a next generation chipset using 5nm technology, a long range 3D camera, and 6GB of RAM. The 3D camera will include laser based sensors that can scan the environment up to 15 feet away at all times, compared to the current camera which scans only centimeters away. And 6GB of RAM could provide noticeably improved graphics capabilities. 

Lenovo announces standalone headset for education. The ‘Lenovo VR Classroom 2’ headset will sport 3DoF tracking, much like the now defunct Google Cardboard, and a single controller. The internal hardware is similar to the Oculus GO. The headset is set to hit the market in Spring 2020. 

Snapchat launches real world AR scavenger hunt game. The new Snappable game titled Scavenger Hunt tasks players with finding 8 everyday objects using their smartphone’s rear camera. The object recognition is impressively quick and accurate. Players who scan all 8 objects are rewarded with a face filter celebrating their success. 

Virtuix reveals their Omni-Arena eSports solution generates repeat customers. Sharing usage data from their Omni-Arena platform’s performance in the Pinballz location based entertainment venue, Virtuix showed how eSports games and competitions increase revenues. 32% of players are repeat plays, and 43% of players surveyed state they came to the venue specifically for the Omni-Arena. Some players have played over 70 times over the course of under six months, paying $12-15 per play. “Omni Arena has exceeded our expectations,” said Doug Roth, owner of Scary Strokes, a blacklight mini-golf and arcade in Waldorf, MD. “Thanks to the esports prize competitions, we’ve been able to attract a new audience of gamers who play again and again.”

“This Week in XR” is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer.

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