The Ghost Howls

FEBRUARY 9, 2020

This week in XR has seen the launch of the first standalone MR headset, plus a lot of interesting news and articles about immersive realities. It is being very useful to let indie distribute little games and innovative experiences (like the ones employing hands tracking ) to Quest users. Do you want to discover them with me?

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ARPost

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

For more on how VIVE’s VR accessories help them compete with other headset manufacturers, read the entry on them in our article on competition for Varjo headsets. Sony makes some of the coolest VR accessories of any company out there. However, the company is already selling DecaMove , a motion controller worn on the hip.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 11, 2022

I hope that this way, even if you lost the announcements from CES, you can catch up with all the most important ones by just reading a single article. PlayStation VR 2 Logo (Image by Sony Interactive Entertainment). Controllers specifications. The Touch controller and its mount are bigger than the glove itself.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 15, 2020

Image by Sony, from Road To VR). Sony announces PS5, it supports PSVR. With an online livestream of around 1 hour, Sony has finally unveiled the design of the PlayStation 5. The console works in conjunction with the innovative DualSense controller. I hope you’ll enjoy it…. Top news of the week. SSD (8–9 GB/s).

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 15, 2023

I’ve written a dedicated news roundup article dedicated to Google I/O today, so I won’t go deep into details here and I invite you to read that post (linked here below) if you want to have the details about the news. According to a guy on Twitter that answered my post, Ultraleap should launch a new tracking controller this year.

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ARVR

DECEMBER 2, 2020

Interhaptics is a Haptics software company specializing in tools for haptic design and rendering, and hand tracking interactions for digital platforms as Mobile, XR, and consoles. It supports an extensive list of XR controllers, hand tracking systems, and haptic devices. Trending AR VR Articles: 1.

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 26, 2023

But unluckily, their tracking performance was bad, especially for what concerns controllers, the manufacturing quality was debatable, and especially Microsoft never invested enough into dedicated content. I found it a very inspiring article, very different from the others I usually read. Last week, people said January.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 11, 2023

The article talked about a headset shipping without controllers and aiming at the sweet price point of $200. Mark Gurman reiterated a similar rumor: he didn’t say that Meta will ship it without controllers, but just that it is evaluating also that option. The second is about interactions.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 1, 2024

Some of them have been brainstormed with Lorenzo Cappannari with whom I wrote an article a few months ago and who I thank for the collaboration ). Even here, the launch of the Apple Vision Pro, with its strong focus on MR and hand tracking, is changing a bit the rules of the market.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 25, 2019

This week, the content has been really the king of VR Let me guide you through the most interesting articles. Sony has acquired Insomniac Games. Sony has acquired Insomniac Games , one of the most talented game studios among the ones focused on Virtual Reality. The studio will so become part of the Sony Worldwide Studios.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 24, 2023

The most interesting ones for me are related to hand tacking. Meta Quest will receive Hand Tracking 2.2, which makes the hand tracking more responsive to fast movements of hands : the system can so track the hands also when the user is playing fitness games like FitXR (or HitMotion: Reloaded).

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 30, 2023

But before, please read (and share around) my latest article which is about a crazy experiment I did with mixed reality and generative AI… I’m sure you will love it! But the thing that surprised me the most in Gurman’s description is the controllers. So let’s dig into them. But that’s just a speculation of mine.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 4, 2023

Top news of the week (Image by Meta) Meta may be working on a very cheap Quest and very expensive Quest Pro 2 Thanks to Twitter user Lunayian , I got to read an article written by a Korean magazine with some very interesting rumors about Meta. Who is as excited as me?

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 25, 2022

Today is a bit of a special day for this newsletter because this article you are reading is the 250th roundup about XR news I’ve written! This was the final big surprise of the event: Sony Pictures and Meta, in partnership with nDreams, will bring the famous franchise to virtual reality. Meta releases hands tracking 2.0

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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. Image by Sony). News worth a mention.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 18, 2023

And sorry if it took more days than expected to assemble this article… A good year for XR at CES Before listing all the most important pieces of news, let me tell you how XR presence was overall at CES. At CES, Shiftall brought also the concept of innovative controllers called FlipVR.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 23, 2023

In total, I counted something like 32 games, which is ok to start with, but then Sony should be fast in collecting more content to not make the PSVR2 players get bored fast for the lack of playable games. But still, the fact that all the PSVR 1 content won’t be available for the new headset gives Sony a good challenge on the content side.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

Image by Sony). Sony believes in VR, and we definitely believe at some point in the future, VR will represent a meaningful component of interactive entertainment. So, PSVR2 probably won’t launch before 2022 : Sony can afford that also because it has no competition in the console VR space , so there is no need to rush.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

3 hours in active use Controllers : Two AA batteries, which last about 80 hours in active use Connectivity : Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, Controllers. Pico 4 Controller (Image by Pico). I was the first one to tease the controllers of Pico 4, and they are exactly how I described them in my dedicated post. Computational power.

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 28, 2023

Today I host another great article by Rob Cole , who writes again about his experience with the Pimax Crystal headset. Here are my findings since the first article was published, starting with a subject close to my heart. If you want to read his previous post, you can find it here.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 2, 2020

The coronavirus is also impacting the production of all the major VR headsets : we’re at the point that Valve’s customer service has no more left controllers to give to people for RMA. Developers continue to have fun with Oculus Quest hands tracking! A new week, a new sheer of demos exploiting Oculus Quest hands tracking!

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 20, 2019

As you will be able to see in the following sections of this article, there’s nothing really mind-blowing about this headset, but a lot of improvements that make the Rift S more modern than the Rift CV1. This may be the reason why the hands-on articles report that the headset feels comfortable on the head. Controllers.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 3, 2021

So it has partnered with iFixit, which will provide detailed DIY repair guides for the headsets and the controllers, so people with a broken Vive can repair the headsets by themselves and keep happily using them without having to contact HTC assistance (that anyway in the West was not famous for its quality).

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 6, 2023

Hands-tracking is also supported. From a first hands-on someone was able to have with the device, seems that the prototype is solid, but the battery life is a bit short (30 minutes). To try to solve this issue, Meta has released two interesting articles about two very well-made WebXR sample projects it made.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 28, 2022

Road To VR reported about Manus VR’s new Quantum Metagloves with very precise hand tracking for enterprise use (cost: $9000). Upload reported that Sony showcased PlayStation to some selected partners , but no one could speak about what he/she has seen. HTC adds more parental control tools to its headsets.

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The Ghost Howls

FEBRUARY 7, 2022

Zuck noticed that it is slowly losing control of the current technology platform and it is trying to switch to the new one, to dominate it even more. Two articles on the M-word. Sony acquires Bungie and thinks about Capcom. More info (Sony acquires Bungie) More info (Sony may acquire Capcom). OpenBrush v1.0.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 3, 2023

More info A new full body tracking technique Some researchers working with Meta have developed a new technology to reconstruct the pose of the full body of the user using only the tracking information coming from the headset and the controllers. The product is now coming to the US on July, 14, to be sold for $450.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 26, 2020

Some of its features are: 2,160 × 2,160 resolution per eye 90Hz framerate 4-cameras inside-out tracking (like the Quest) Touch-like controllers with Knuckles-like finger-sensing Face tracking Hips tracking (for better orientation in games) Integration with SteamVR games Wireless add-on.

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Upload VR

AUGUST 3, 2022

Sony confirmed PSVR 2 last year and have since released further tidbits of information over time. A 2023 release looks almost certain at this point — Sony hinted as much in a blog post , and supply chain analyst Kuo has also suggested a 2023 release is likely. There’s also new (and bundled) Sense controllers.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 4, 2020

Sony reveals finger tracking technology for controllers. In a research paper released by Sony and presented at CHI2020 it is possible to see the work that Sony is doing in finger tracking inside VR controllers. We’ll see the actual controllers only in 2021. More info. A rumor about Oculus Go 2.0

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 18, 2022

connector with OTG 3 Physical IPD adjustments Optical Positional tracking, with 4 tracking cameras Cameras have 400×400 resolution and run at 120Hz Maximum 10m x 10m tracking area and mm-precision accuracy Optical Tracked Controllers, with 32 tracking points All-PU materials fabrication, for easier sanitization 5300 mAh battery, for around 2.5–3h

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 25, 2020

But the greatest feature is that finally Oculus is accepting hands-tracked applications in the Oculus Store from the 28th of this month! Mozilla has also released Firefox Reality for HoloLens , and it features hands tracking in WebXR experiences. It’s all very cool. Magic Leap raises other $350M. in Europe). More info.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 4, 2022

Image by Sony Interactive Entertainment). This proves the value of eye-tracking and its implementation inside PSVR 2. More info (Foveated Tracking boost inside PSVR 2) More info (Full Unity talk at GDC). Some articles on the metaverse. News worth a mention. Unity talked about PlayStation VR 2 at GDC. Other news.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 14, 2020

As it is a tradition of this blog , I have read everything I could about the AR and VR technologies showcased there, and I’ve condensed all the news in a single article , that you can skim fast until you find a topic you are interested in. Pico Neo 2 controllers. They are not beautiful, but functional.

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 6, 2021

It is the home country of Sony, so PlayStation VR and Meta itself have clearly expressed its interest in penetrating the market. Vive Focus 3 , instead, has just released a new version of the runtime that dramatically improves hands tracking , making it able to track properly also hands that are moving very fast.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 11, 2020

Also, new more ergonomic controllers, that solve the flaws of the current design, will be part of the package. These controllers should be compatible with the current Quest. More info (Report by Bloomberg) More info (UploadVR’s article on the news). Mechanical IPD is confirmed. Other relevant news. Image by Magic Leap).

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