The Ghost Howls

JULY 24, 2023

This week VR is dead again. Sorry to inform you about that. It’s been good to dream about the metaverse, but now we can all get back to frying potatoes at McDonald’s and binge on Twitter during the free time. Ah no, not even that because also Twitter is dead. Now it’s called X and aims at becoming the Western WeChat. Luckily there is AR that is still strong, and we can hope to wear Google AR glasses soon… ah no, they are dead too.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 7, 2023

I’m a big fan of products that try to bring something new to XR and that’s why I have been very happy of trying Wisear AWE 2023 in Santa Clara. When I was contacted by the company, from the name “WiseAR” I thought it was the nth solution for no-code development of augmented reality applications, but then I actually discovered that it was something much more interesting than that… Wisear Wisear is on a mission to find new ways with which people can interact with tech

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 30, 2023

This will be a newsletter written on the road: I’ve prepared the material in Italy, I’m currently writing these words from the Frankfurt airport (Germany), I will keep writing on the plane across the ocean and I will finalize everything in Sunnyvale (California, USA). I’m traveling to the US to attend AWE, but this is not stopping me from telling you what are the most relevant XR news of the week!

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 26, 2023

Next week I’ll fly again to the US, and in particular to Silicon Valley to attend AWE again. It’s a good occasion to meet there or to do something together for the possible launch of the Apple headset. AWE US It’s again the time of the year when I attend the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara, California. It will be my third time in a row at that event.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 23, 2023

It’s been a strange week. On the technological side, it has been exciting. Since there is the possibility that Apple announces its headset soon, all the companies are rushing to announce what they have in the pipeline before the big day. This means that these days we are going to have a lot of announcements. This and the next editions of the newsletter are going to be full of cool pieces of news.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 22, 2023

When I visited China at the beginning of the year, I had the pleasure of visiting Netvios offices in Guangzhou and speaking with Anjie Cao, the CEO of the company. She gave me a very interesting presentation about the status of VR in China and the difficulties of launching a VR game there. In this article, I collected the most interesting tidbits of that presentation to share with you, so that if you want to start distributing your content there, you know what you have to do.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 14, 2023

Last week, Google delivered its most important event of the year, the Google I/O. During its keynote, the CEO Sundar Pichai announced many new products of the company. Of course, AI has been the star of the show , with the public release of Google Bard and the announcement of a new language model, but there have been also interesting pieces of news about XR.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 24, 2023

This week we had quite a few interesting pieces of XR news. From the nth rumor on the Apple headset to the announcement of the Pico 4 Pro in China, there have been a few things happening that you as an XR enthusiast can’t miss. Here in this roundup, of course, you can find them all. And together with them, you can also find a giveaway of keys for the audiobook about the metaverse by Luis Martins!

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 13, 2023

At Laval Virtual, Pico has just announced a new headset for its enterprise line: the G3. Surprisingly, it is a 3DOF headset. Pico G3 Headset launched I wasn’t at Laval Virtual this year and I wasn’t even properly briefed about this launch. So when I was lazily looking at an XR news roundup and I suddenly saw the news of a new headset announced by Pico, I was a bit surprised.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 30, 2023

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of participating in a preview of the concert that Fatboy Slim held inside the VR platform ENGAGE. Could I avoid writing a review for you? Of course not! Fatboy Slim concert ENGAGE is one of the best VR platforms for enterprise usage, and I’ve used it myself a few times to hold B2B events and presentations. Lately, it has also launched Engage Link , a full VR world dedicated to enterprise use, sometimes defined as “the Linkedin of the metaverse” In

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 26, 2023

Today I want to tell you about s ome very short hands-on sessions I had during my attendance at the SXSW festival. They were all very interesting experiences, but given the very short time I had with these devices, what I’m going to write can’t be considered a real review, but more some kind of first impression. Vive XR Elite Finally, I’ve been able to put a Vive XR Elite on my head.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 19, 2023

My time at SXSW is over, but I still want to write a few articles about what I tried there. And today I want to write a short post about two experiences that I’ve tried in the XR Showcase area: Temporal World and From The Main Square. Temporal World: A Virtual Reality Memory Experience I got curious to try “Temporal World: A Virtual Reality Memory Experience” because I saw its booth featuring a room with some light projections and the people inside wearing a weird jacket.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 8, 2023

Tomorrow I’m taking a plane for an international flight… again. But before telling you more about this, let me wish a great “International Women’s Day” to all the wonderful women of our ecosystem! And also to all the women that are close to us men in XR and that support us every day :)… and that are close to us even if we always talk about technology and we like to wear luminous shoeboxes on our faces.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 3, 2023

Yesterday, a report by Alex Heath on The Verge reported that Quest has sold around 20M units. Since this is well beyond the 10M threshold we were all waiting for, does this mean that VR is getting mainstream? Well, things are not that straightforward in my opinion… The magic 10M threshold Speaking at Oculus Connect 5, Mark Zuckerberg expressed this opinion of his about the path to make VR mainstream (thanks Road To VR for writing this down): The big question is what is it gonna take for it

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The Ghost Howls

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Today very weirdly I saw some snow outside of my window. The weather is getting crazy… a bit like me. I really hope you are having a great time, maybe with a newly bought PSVR 2 headset. I’m preparing for my next adventure… can you guess where will it be? Top news of the week (Image by Sony Interactive Entertainment) PlayStation VR 2 has been launched This has been the week of PSVR2.

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The Ghost Howls

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

It’s one of these days where I’m thinking about myself and my career in XR over the years. I don’t define myself as “successful” by any means, but still, after more than 8 years in this field, I’ve gathered some experience in the various jobs I’ve done in this ecosystem, and I had my share of joy and awards won.

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The Ghost Howls

FEBRUARY 11, 2023

We are living the generative AI hype, with everyone getting crazy about ChatGPT. And every day I read articles about how AI can disrupt the metaverse, how ChatGPT and metaverse are the perfect match, and especially about how the fact that if your XR company doesn’t have an AI strategy, it is already old and ready to die a terrible death. I have my point of view on all of this, and I would like to tell to you.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 23, 2023

Welcome to another roundup of AR/VR news of the week! I’m still writing from China, and this week I spent the Chinese New Year here… it was an interesting experience, and if you lost my funny story about it, you can still have a look at it in my dedicated post. Wishing you all a very positive and special year of the rabbit, I leave you with the most important news of the week in AR and VR!

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 21, 2023

Today has started the year of the Rabbit according to many Asian cultures , so I want to wish you all a great new lunar year! I hope it will bring you all luck, success, fun, money, good health, quality time with the people you love, sex (hopefully a quality one, too), and whatever you dream of having. You know that this has been the first year I’ve actually celebrated the Chinese new year in China , so I want to take this occasion to tell you how has been my experience.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 13, 2023

After two years missing from China, I’m back again as soon as I could enter. It has not been an easy trip, and I’m still in transit in Shanghai toward my first destination, which is Qingdao. You may wonder why I’m back here… and well, there are multiple reasons. One of these is to refresh the bonds I had with this part of the world , and in fact, I hope to have some business meetings here.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 12, 2023

This year has begun with a piece of very sad technical news : Mojo Vision, the startup that was working on smart contact lenses, has decided to pivot to manufacturing microLED displays. The reason is that they haven’t been able to find the funding necessary to keep developing such a futuristic project, and had to resort to working on a technology that has an immediate market.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 1, 2023

Let’s start this 2023 with a leak! I’ve been tipped about the fact that the Korean store of HTC may have accidentally leaked the name of the new Vive headset that will be revealed at CES… and maybe also its price. The Vive “Flowcus” HTC has been teasing a new standalone headset for months , without sharing much if not some images revealing some small details of the device.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

I hope all of you that are from the US have spent a great Thanksgiving! And to you non-American friends, that you did great shopping for this Black Friday and Cyber Monday Here you are the news of the week, in a condensed format. Top news of the week. (Image by Meta). Meta’s XR spending is mostly for AR glasses. It’s a common saying these days that Meta is spending “$10B/year for Horizon” or that “Meta’s goal is to close everyone inside its cringy VR world”.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 27, 2022

I’ve tried the indie game “What The Bat?” and I’m ready to tell you why I found it very cool! Here you are my review video of the game: if you prefer videos to text, this is what you should watch! What The Bat? “What The Bat?” is a game that immediately clicked with me since the first time I heard about it. I was reading some articles on Upload VR (as it happens every week) and I came to find a report from Gamescom, where the journalist was talking about the g

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

I’m sure you are familiar with the amazing 7 rules of the metaverse. They have been written by Tony Parisi, a professional that works with virtual worlds since decades, and detail what should be the foundational principles of the metaverse. They represent the future vision of the metaverse, the goal we should aim for. Tony has set the path to lead us to the real metaverse.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 9, 2022

ENGAGE is one of my favorite social VR applications. So when I saw that yesterday they had finally released ENGAGE Link, the VR world that aims at becoming “the Linkedin of the metaverse” , I couldn’t resist: I immediately donned my Pico 4 and entered it. Here you can find my impressions about it. My video about Engage Link, with 20 minutes of Gameplay with commentary.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 24, 2022

I just got back from Lisbon, where I attended AWE Europe. I’m super-tired because of the trip, but especially because we at VRrOOm had to deliver the VR world of Oxymore, a new musical experience we did with Jean-Michel Jarre. It’s been tough work, and yesterday I slept 3 hours because we spent the night fixing bugs. My eyes desperately want to close and I will get some sleep after I finish this newsletter for you.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 10, 2022

Hello everyone! These days I’m literally crunching for my dev job, juggling many projects at the same time. I’m also putting effort into my outreach activity. Among other things, I have written a fantastic post about the VR concerts worth millions of dollars that Pico is doing in China ; I have been interviewed in a podcast by Moonbase ; and this Saturday I will be close to Turin (Italy) speaking at a science and technology festival about my work in immersive concerts.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 27, 2022

This is the first newsletter of the Autumn! It is not my favorite season of the year, but it is going to bring with it many cool pieces of VR news, and many cups of hot chocolate, so I guess I will be very happy in the upcoming weeks…. Top news of the week. (Image by Pico). Bytedance launches Pico 4, directly challenging Meta Quest 2. The announcement of the Pico 4, the first consumer-oriented headset by Bytedance, has been much more disruptive than I expected.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 21, 2022

[Disclaimer: This article has been written as part of a paid collaboration with NVIDIA. It’s been written by me, on a topic I had an interest in, and trying to convey useful information to the community, so I hope you’ll like it]. A few weeks ago, while reading the news about SIGGRAPH, I saw NVIDIA teasing the release of the Omniverse connector for Unity , and as a Unity developer, I found it intriguing.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

Today I am very happy to host on my blog a guest post by ambr, the Japanese company that is hosting these days the TGSVR , which is the VR edition of the Tokyo Game Show. I have talked about TGSVR also last year when I had the pleasure also of interviewing ambr’s Tomoko Ushiro and asking her for more details about her company. I also visited last year’s VR world and found it enjoyable, but I suffered a bit the lack of interaction.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 11, 2022

Today I finally review for you the Pico Neo 3 Link! I had a lot of delays in writing this article (sorry Pico, sorry VR community), but I promise you that it will be deep and detailed… as you like the posts on my website. Pico Neo 3 Link Video Review. For the ones of you that don’t like walls of text, I have prepared an extensive video review of the unit, where I talk about all its features, and I compare them with the ones of the Quest 2 and the Pico Neo 3 Pro.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 29, 2022

Very busy day at work, but here I am during the evening writing this roundup of news for you! Before talking about the news, let me remind you that if you use this link to register to the NVIDIA GTC, you will have the chance to win an NVIDIA RTX 3080Ti graphics card, which will be assigned exclusively to one of my followers. You will find the instructions down below this newsletter… don’t miss this opportunity!

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 25, 2022

Rob Cole is back. The author of the much-appreciated XR Caliper controllers and of many tricks to improve the ergonomics of the Valve Index has just tested for me the Pimax Sword controllers , writing the most detailed review about them you will ever find on the web. More than an article, with its 10,000+ words, this is a short book on the Pimax Sword, featuring everything you may need to know about them (what is Pimax, what are the Sword controllers, how do they work… even an interview wi

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 24, 2022

I have just finished playing Red Matter 2 , the much-awaited sequel of Red Matter , one of my favorite games for Quest. The studio behind it, Vertical Robot, launched it by claiming that it would have set a new standard for graphics on Quest. Excited by the first images and videos, I wanted to try it immediately… and after having completed it, here you are writing the review for you.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 11, 2022

Some months ago, when I was in Los Angeles to attend AWE , I had the opportunity of trying one of the experiences offered by Dreamscape , one of the leading companies for LBVR (Location-based VR) entertainment. It has been my first time at Dreamscape, so let me tell you how it was! (And by the way, thanks to the Dreamscape people for having offered me the ticket so that I could do this review).

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 3, 2022

We all know that these days the metaverse, the infamous M-word, is one of the hot topics in the tech world. We also know that this dream is very far away, and the estimates talk about between 5 and 15 years from now. There are many problems to be solved, technological and social to begin with, until we will be able to create the “next generation of the Internet”.

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