The XR Week Peek (2023.01.31): New rumors on Apple headset, Quest Pro price drops, and more!

I’ve read a lot of articles and XR news this week, but actually, at the end of the day, nothing relevant has happened, except for the usual rumor about Apple… so you can close this roundup now… no ok, I’m kidding! It’s not been the most exciting week ever for XR, but there is still some interesting piece of news here below for you to enjoy.
 
 And by the way, on the personal side, things are going well for me! Utopia has just announced that I will be one of the mentors of their metaverse masterclass, and I’m pretty happy about it.

Top news of the week

New Apple headset rumor talks about natural interactions and content creation tools

Rumors and leaks about the upcoming Apple headset are being wisely slowly spilled week after week to keep the attention on the headset high. And this week new reports about Bloomberg and The Information highlight some potentially interesting features of the device. As usual, take all of them with a whole box of grains of salt.
 
 The new rumor from this week confirms other rumors heard in the previous weeks: Apple headset has a display on its front plate to show to the outside world the eyes of the wearer, has lots of cameras, and costs around $3000. The new rumor also confirms that the headset is powered by an external battery pack, big as two iPhones stacked one on top of the other, that guarantees a charge duration of two hours. This is a bit of a bummer for me: it’s true that a battery pack guarantees that the headset is lightweight, but on the other side, it is a tethered object to put in the pocket that can be rather uncomfortable. This doesn’t sound to me very “Apple”.
 
 On the UX side, other interesting things are being rumored: the headset would ship with no controller, and rely only on eye tracking and hands tracking for interactions. It has been said that the menu will look like a spatial version of the home menu on the iPad. And to select objects, you have just to look at them and then pinch with your hand. This would be a more natural form of interaction than the one offered by the other headsets. Furthermore, there is a physical crown to switch from VR to passthrough AR, but it is not clear to me why you would need a crown for that.
 
 Between the apps in development, there should be a spatial version of Facetime offering immersive 1-to-1 communication between distant people.
 
 But actually, the feature that impressed me more of all the leaks is the idea that Apple has about content: it wants content creators to be able to create simple experiences by using the power of AI. A few years ago, Apple bought Fabric Software, a Canadian company whose engine let developers automatically create environments and objects using procedural generation. The idea may be to let creators speak with Siri about what they want to create, and this magical AI engine creates the MR experience for them, without needing from them any kind of coding experience. This would be super cool, because would immediately enable a huge ecosystem of creators to develop content for the new device.

More info (Apple headset’s interactions)
More info (Apple headset’s user experience)
More info (Apple headset’s content creation idea)
More info (Latest rumors on Apple headset — Mixed)
More info (Latest rumors on Apple headset — Upload)

Other relevant news

Meta drops the price of Quest Pro

In an unexpected move, Meta has dropped the price of the Quest Pro to $1,100 in the US an £1,300 in the UK (with taxes included) for a limited time.
 
 The move has probably been done to better compete with the Vive XR Elite, which is going to be released now exactly for $1100. But I think it’s not a good move for Meta, for the following reasons:

• It shows that it is “afraid” of HTC. A year ago, Meta would have never created a discount for the Quest 2 when the Vive Flow came out because it knew it had a better product. Discounting the Quest Pro to compete with the Vive XR Elite is a sign that Meta thinks it has not the most valuable product in hand this time;
• It shows that the sales of the Quest Pro are going quite badly. Again, there is no need to discount a product if sales are going well;
• It is going to piss off all the people (like me) who just three months ago bought this product for the full price of $1500. The advantage of having preordered the Quest Pro is having paid more for it… which has no sense. I feel disrespected by Meta, and I think the company should give us some goodies for free, like free accessories for the headset or games, to compensate for the price difference. It seems that in some cases, it is possible to get a refund of the difference or return the headset and get a new one under the discounted price. See the below links for more info on how to do that

More info (Quest Pro price drop)
More info (How to get refund/discount on your Quest Pro)

News worth a mention

Rec Room is working on full body avatars

Rec Room, one of the post popular social VR experiences out there, just announced that it is working on full-body avatars to use alongside the usual “bean” avatars. This shows the greater attention that companies are having towards full body avateering and embodiment in virtual worlds in general.

More info

Ben Lang wrote his impressions on AntVR’s optics

Road To VR’s Ben Lang (my “review hero”) has finally written his hands-on article about AntVR’s optics that can switch between AR and VR modes. He highlights how they are very interesting because apart from the mixed mode, they also offer a 120° FOV. But they have two drawbacks: one is that the VR mode doesn’t fully cover the real world around you, and the second one is that they look like bottle bottoms, so they make the user look ugly. They are anyway a piece of tech to keep an eye on (pun intended).

More info

Some articles about the metaverse

This week I have again a selection of the best articles I’ve read about the M-word:

• Wired wrote a story about “metaverse landlords”: since lands in Web3 worlds are too expensive, now a business model that seems to work is to lend them to companies and people that want to do an event for a short period of time
• GDC survey 2023 highlights once more how gamers hate NFTs and all that is Web3-related
• The Linux Foundation created the Open Metaverse Foundation: the purpose is to have an association of people and companies that can develop opensource software and protocols that can be the foundations of the metaverse
• Louis Rosenberg has explained in an article why he thinks that mixed reality, and not virtual reality, will be the foundation of the metaverse. A little spoiler: in VR you have always a sensory mismatch between what you see in the virtual world and what you perceive from the real one, while in MR this can’t happen

More info (Metaverse landlords)
More info (GDC 2023)
More info (Open Metaverse Foundation)
More info (MR vs VR)

Some detailed articles about XR

I’ve found two very detailed articles about XR/metaverse that need a special mention:

• A long analysis written by Tom Emrich of the current trends in AR, and how the predictions for 2022 in AR have proven to be true (or not)
• A long analysis written by Matthew Ball about why VR is not successful yet, why the metaverse is taking many years to become true, and why it has no sense comparing the growth of VR to the one of other devices like gaming consoles

More info (Tom Emrich’s analysis)
More info (Matthew Ball’s analysis)

Some articles about content

• Among Us VR has amassed more than 1M of sold copies, which shows that there is market for good VR games
• Silhouette VR is a game with the original mechanic of letting you solve puzzles by using the shadows of your hands tracked via hands tracking
• Halfbrick and Sealost have announced Thrill Of The Fight 2
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners 2 is simultaneously launching on SteamVR and PSVR 2 on March 21st, priced at $40
• Funny propaganda simulator Not For Broadcast, it’s coming to SteamVR and Meta Quest 2 on March 23rd
• Presentiment of Death, a game that exploits the same time progression mechanic of Superhot, is coming on SteamVR headsets on March 1st
• The full version of Fruit Ninja 2 VR is coming in Spring 2023
• Upload VR has reviewed Grid Legends and highlighted how it is not a good VR porting of a racing game
• Niantic has just launched worldwide NBA All-World, a Pokemon-Go clone game about basketball. Considering the success of the previous Pokemon-Go clones, I wonder when they will shut down this one
• The Source VR Mod team announced that Half-Life 2: Episode One is heading to PC VR in Q1 2023
• Upload has gone hands-on with “Cities: VR Enhanced Edition”, the version of Cities: VR that will go live on PSVR 2, and highlighted all the improvements it had over the previous version
• Orbital Strike VR, a tactical space fighting game, arrives on January 31 for PC VR
• Futuclass brings chemistry lessons on Quest

More info (Among Us VR)
More info (Silhouette VR)
More info (Thrill Of The Fight 2)
More info (TWD: Saint and Sinners 2)
More info (Not For Broadcast)
More info (Presentiment Of Death)
More info (Fruit Ninja 2 VR)
More info (Grid Legends)
More info (Niantic’s NBA All World)
More info (Half-Life 2: Episode One)
More info (Cities VR: Enhanced Edition)
More info (Orbital Strike VR)
More info (Futuclass)

Other news

There has been the first protest in Meta Horizon Worlds, with some creators protesting because Meta privileges its own events in the events catalog

Learn more

Ostloong created AR glasses that you can wear while skiing

Learn more

BodySwaps partners with Meta to make VR learning accessible to 106 higher education institutions across the globe

Learn more

News from partners (and friends)

OpenBrush v2.0 has been released

The XR dev community has not only kept TiltBrush alive after it has been abandoned by Google, but it has managed to keep improving it and now the open-source version of TiltBrush, called OpenBrush, has reached version 2.0. In its latest version, new cool features like passthrough AR support, layers, and advanced camera tools, have been added!
Learn more

Discover Time Has Stopped

Time Has Stopped is an indie single-player vehicular shooter with an automatic time dilation. It’s an old-school shooter, purpose-built for VR. Discover it at the link below.
Learn more

Some XR fun

The perfect meme about kids in VR
Funny link

It’s good to see that every month the most downloaded games in the VR stores is changing… or maybe not.
Funny link / 1
Funny link / 2

It’s so easy to be an AI startup nowadays
Funny link

Donate for good

Like last week, also this week in this final paragraph I won’t ask you to donate for my blog, but to the poor people that 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
• Terry xR. Schussler
• Ilias Kapouranis
• Paolo Leoncini
• Immersive.international
• Nikk Mitchell and the great FXG team
• Jake Rubin
• Alexis Huille
• Raghu Bathina
• Chris Koomen
• Cognitive3D
• Yacine Achiakh
• Jennifer Granger
• Jason Moore
• Steve Biggs
• Julio Cesar Bolivar
• Jan Schroeder
• Kai Curtis
• Francesco Strada
• Sikaar Keita
• Ramin Assadollahi
• Juan Sotelo
• Andrew Sheldon
• Chris Madsen
• Horacio Torrendell
• Andrew Deutsch
• Fabien Benetou
• Tatiana Kartashova
• Marco “BeyondTheCastle” Arena
• Eloi Gerard
• Adam Boyd
• Jeremy Dalton
• Joel Ward
• Alex P
• Lynn Eades
• Donald P
• Casie Lane
• Catherine Henry
• Qcreator
• Ristband (Anne McKinnon & Roman Rappak)
• Stephen Robnett
• Sb
• Enrico Poli
• Vooiage Technologies
• Caroline
• Liam James O’Malley
• Hillary Charnas
• Wil Stevens
• Brian Peiris
• Francesco Salizzoni
• Dimo Pepelyashev
• Alan Smithson
• Steve R
• Brentwahn
• Pieter Siekerman
• Simplex
• Matias Nassi

And now here you are the link to donate:

Support The Red Cross in Ukraine

(Header image by Meta)