VRWorld

OCTOBER 27, 2017

This week, Microsoft announced the launch of Microsoft Reactor in San Francisco —the flagship hub for the tech giant’s efforts in mixed reality (MR). “We are at the threshold of the next revolution in computing,” Liz Hamren, corporate vice president of Microsoft Devices Marketing, wrote in a blog post.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 4, 2021

Image by HTC Vive). HTC is probably going to announce Vive Flow. With a surprise move, HTC Vive has started teasing the launch of a new product. The company has set up a virtual event on the platform ENGAGE (of which HTC is an investor) for October, 14th 2021 at 8 am PDT. Send me hugs while I’m still human!

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 21, 2021

More info (FRL Official blog post) More info (Road To VR reporting and commenting the news) More info (Ctrl+Labs’s Dino Game Early Demo) More info (ETH’s experimental wristband). As it had promised on my blog last year , its cool Nreal Light AR glasses have finally arrived in Europe. Image by Microsoft). News worth a mention.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 19, 2021

Image by HTC). HTC launches Vive Flow headset for relaxation, priced at $499. After endless teasings and leaks, in the end, HTC has finally unveiled its headset: called Vive Flow, it is a lightweight device for media consumption. I send you good vibes so things go well for you too! Top news of the week. Other relevant news.

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ARPost

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

We talked with The Park Playground CEO Peter Vindevogel, who shared his thoughts on these myths and misconceptions, shedding light on virtual reality technology. We’re already seeing key metaverse players coming together in the collaboration between Meta and Microsoft.

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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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The Ghost Howls

JULY 14, 2019

If the report were true, this would mean that Apple doesn’t believe in AR anymore and this would be terrible news for all the immersive realities ecosystem. Apple is clearly committed in augmented reality, and the recent release of ARKit 3 proves that. Microsoft is launching in two weeks a private beta for iOS users.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

Image by Microsoft). Microsoft ramps up distribution of HoloLens 2 and Kinect For Azure. Microsoft is working to improve the distribution of its latest devices: HoloLens 2 and Kinect For Azure. HTC Vive celebrates the holidays giving 100% rev share to developers. Other relevant news. Donate to the Ghost Howls on Patreon!

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 5, 2021

Given its great expertise in image analysis and its big user base, Snap is another company to keep an eye on for the future of augmented reality. Microsoft signs a $22B deal with the US Army. It seems that this test has been a success, and so now Microsoft has won now a bigger contract to carry on the project: $21.88B (!!)

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ARVR

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

One-year price performance for MSFT, AAPL, GOOGL, SNE, and NVDA According to the latest report from Statista , the global augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) markets are rapidly growing and are forecast to reach a total of $72.8 How Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) can transform Education 3.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 27, 2020

If not, well, let me make a recap: startup Lynx opened the preorders some months ago about a new standalone headset all focused on having both virtual reality and passthrough augmented reality , and featuring amazing capabilities like eye tracking, hand tracking, a new lens design, and 5G connectivity (through an add-on).

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 24, 2020

You can imagine that after it has been released through two official blog posts, an enormous backlash from the community started to happen. That’s why even Microsoft took Epic’s stances : Microsoft uses UE4 to develop some products also for Apple devices, and this decision hurts also its business. The same on Twitter.

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XR Today - Augmented Reality tag

APRIL 4, 2024

In a recent blog post highlighting the firm’s ten-year immersive journey, the company teased that new smart glasses are incoming. During the blog post, Meta notes that a new AR device is coming that combines AR and AI in more sophisticated ways. Initially, Meta remained the key leading champion in the XR space.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 5, 2020

But as far as I know, nothing disruptive for the industry : Oculus has already shots all its bullets, and HTC for the first time isn’t announcing anything. HTC is celebrating the new year with a $100 discount on the Vive Cosmos running from 1th to 10th of January. Microsoft SharePoint Spaces to launch in the first half of 2020.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 25, 2020

OMG, it’s almost 3 years that I write these roundups… the first week peek was exclusive for my blog subscribers and it featured as best news the release of Google Blocks and in the other news something about Samsung Gear VR… how much time has passed since then! Image by Microsoft). This is the 150th Week Peek! News worth a mention.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 2, 2020

The devices that will be based on this reference design will have amazing specifications like: 2K x 2K display resolution per each eye ; Have up to 7 cameras used simultaneously, including the ones for tracking, mixed reality and eye-tracking; High-quality passthrough augmented reality with high resolution and framerate.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 3, 2020

Some time ago, the most important companies of the XR ecosystem (HTC, Oculus, Microsoft, etc…) joined the Khronos Group to discuss a standard to end the fragmentation of the XR space. I’m writing a full editorial on it maybe tomorrow or the day after here on this blog, because there is a lot to talk about. Top news of the week.

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XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

February is already an eventful month for Meta; following its Q2 report last month, the immersive technology firm announced the closure of Crayta and Echo VR while exploring augmented reality (AR) wearable goals. Moreover, Meta decreased the price point of its Quest Pro headset by £400 last month.

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Digitalnauts

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

XR, or Extended Reality, is an umbrella term for a variety of immersive technologies including VR (Virtual Reality), MR (Mixed Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality). VR (VIRTUAL REALITY). Among such are HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets. . AR (AUGMENTED REALITY). What is XR?

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Tech Trends VR

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

According to Vinay Narayan VP, Platform Strategy and Developer Community HTC VIVE, this upcoming year will present the most robust ecosystem of innovations yet. Read our blog to see how 2020 will be a defining year [link]. Enterprise XR is about to enter its grown-up phase Click To Tweet. You can download the full report for free here.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 17, 2021

Image by HTC Vive). HTC launches Vive Focus 3 and Vive Pro 2. In the end, the rumors were correct and HTC launched two headsets at VIVECON: the Vive Pro 2 and the Vive Focus 3 Business Edition. But this device got also some criticism: first of all , HTC has not released new controllers and still sells it with the old Wands.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 16, 2020

And if you need some pieces of advice regarding how to professionally survive this quarantine, I have written a blog post on the topic you can read. This means mainly two things: Livestreams and blog posts where the companies make the announcements that they would have made during the event.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 27, 2020

With a long post on Magic Leap’s blog, in the end Rony Abovitz has admitted that the company is not going that well, and has announced a new course, that should eventually lead to Magic Leap 2. The blog post is full of the usual fluff: it could have been written in 10 lines instead of a big wall of text. Top news of the week.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 28, 2022

HTC adds more parental control tools to its headsets. But actually, HTC , once the biggest competitor Oculus had, added these functionalities to its devices one month before Meta , but the news was not reported by the main VR magazines. Last week I praised Meta for finally taking action adding parental control tools to its device.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

Oculus and HTC), there were some cases when this sensor could actually prove to be very useful for some experiments. Microsoft finally enables Research Mode on HoloLens 2. If you find what I do useful, please donate on Patreon to keep this blog alive and make me inform the community every week. Funny link. Patreon time!

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 11, 2022

As it is a tradition of this blog , I’ve prepared a big roundup of the best news in XR from this year’s CES! HTC Vive Wrist Tracker. HTC Vive Wrist Tracker (Image by HTC). HTC has made an announcement at this CES and it has been a pretty cool one. Qualcomm and Microsoft partnership.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 21, 2023

The past week has been a pretty interesting one for the tech world: between Microsoft Ignite, Unity Unite, and the OpenAI drama, there has been a lot to follow. I’ll try to summarize all of that, especially for what concerns the announcements related to our XR space.

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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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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 26, 2018

HTC has finally revealed the price of the Vive Pro : it will cost $799 just to have the headset (no controller and no base stations, so you must already have a Vive 1 kit) and will be available for pre-orders since April, 5th. But, as Road To VR has stated, maybe HTC should have clarified that in all its marketing material.

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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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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 7, 2021

Just to make you understand how much money this could mean, my reader Sir Gamedev has sent me a link where one of the previous Xbox executives has revealed that the initial undercost sales of the first Xbox units cost Microsoft between $5B and $7B. More info (HTC Vive Pro 2 review) More info (HTC Vive Pro 2 review?—?cached

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XR for Business Podcast

DECEMBER 18, 2019

Dean: Yeah, I was sort of a traditional newspaper and magazine journalist for a long time, and then, when the web came along and people started podcasting and blogging, I looked around and felt like it was less of a risk to go try something new than it was to stay at a newspaper. I was at the San Jose newspaper at the time. Dean: Yeah.

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XR for Business Podcast

DECEMBER 18, 2019

Dean: Yeah, I was sort of a traditional newspaper and magazine journalist for a long time, and then, when the web came along and people started podcasting and blogging, I looked around and felt like it was less of a risk to go try something new than it was to stay at a newspaper. I was at the San Jose newspaper at the time. Dean: Yeah.

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XR for Business Podcast

DECEMBER 18, 2019

Dean: Yeah, I was sort of a traditional newspaper and magazine journalist for a long time, and then, when the web came along and people started podcasting and blogging, I looked around and felt like it was less of a risk to go try something new than it was to stay at a newspaper. So we're still one of the last, larger independent tech blogs.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 22, 2019

This week I have been pretty busy working on our mixed reality fitness game that is very close to launch and in preparing some amazing articles for next week (I will publish a review of the Valve Index and a super-amazing interview to Jeri Ellsworth, the creator of TiltFive augmented reality glasses!), Image by Ray-Ban).

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XR for Business Podcast

DECEMBER 18, 2019

Dean: Yeah, I was sort of a traditional newspaper and magazine journalist for a long time, and then, when the web came along and people started podcasting and blogging, I looked around and felt like it was less of a risk to go try something new than it was to stay at a newspaper. I was at the San Jose newspaper at the time. Dean: Yeah.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 2, 2023

More info News worth a mention Information leaks on Vive’s inside-out Tracker There is a new leak about the inside-out tracked Vive Tracker that HTC teased a few months ago. On October 17th people will be able to buy the new Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses starting from $299. And as you can imagine, the leaks come from him, always him: Brad Lynch.

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