The Ghost Howls

MARCH 8, 2021

Microsoft announces Mesh, an XR collaboration platform. Alex Kipman promised us a Microsoft Ignite conference with an amazing level of immersion , and he kept his word. But since Microsoft owns one of those studios (and using it costs around $100K/day if I remember well!), You are all fantastic! Here you are my flower for you!

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ARPost

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

Dispelling Common VR Myths and Misconceptions Despite the relatively widespread acceptance and use of virtual reality technology, there are still some myths and misconceptions that surround it. 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

We are at the beginning of March and I just realized that I haven’t written yet a post with my predictions for augmented and virtual reality for this year. The last cycle before this one was the Quest one, which started to make virtual reality known to the mainstream audience for what concerns games and fitness.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 23, 2019

Stay tuned on my blog for updates about this new adventure of mine. HTC has revealed the design of the Vive Cosmos. HTC has finally unveiled some information on the Vive Cosmos. HTC has immediately answered that 899$ is a too high estimate of the price. Top news of the week. Image by Upload VR).

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 5, 2020

This is the first roundup of news of this new year, and to signal a change with the past, I’ve changed the name from “VR Week Peek” to “XR Week Peek”, because, hey, I like talking about all immersive technologies and not only Virtual Reality. Microsoft SharePoint Spaces to launch in the first half of 2020. Top news of the week.

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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

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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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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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

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. Two interesting videos on the Quest 2.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 27, 2020

The day has come and finally, the sandbox to create games without coding that is Dreams on PlayStation has released a patch to be used with virtual reality. That is, from now on, creators from all over the world will be able to express themselves in virtual reality on PlayStation without any particular technical knowledge.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 13, 2023

I’ve very limited time, but luckily this week has not been very relevant for the ecosystem, so I’m managing to write this newsletter anyway Top news of the week (Image by Microsoft) AltspaceVR shuts down In one of the saddest moments of the latest years in VR, AltspaceVR has closed its doors.

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Road to VR

JUNE 18, 2016

Microsoft / Xbox. Microsoft is bringing VR to Xbox. Ongoing court cases aside , Bethesda surprised the industry during their E3 press conference by announcing a Doom VR tech demo as well as a full port of Fallout 4 to VR, with the latter coming in 2017 to HTC Vive and Xbox Project Scorpio. The cat’s out of the bag.

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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. Varjo XR-1 adds chroma-keying feature.

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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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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. As 5G networks come online, graphics and compute will increasingly be served from the network edge,” adds NVIDIA’s Director of Virtual Reality David Weinstein. “In

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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

Since the Oculus purchase in 2014, the firm has released numerous headsets, most notably the Quest range, which now includes mixed and virtual reality products. In a recent blog post highlighting the firm’s ten-year immersive journey, the company teased that new smart glasses are incoming.

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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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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 28, 2022

If the lenses become dark, you don’t see your surroundings anymore, but just the augmentations, and so you have Virtual Reality on an AR glass. HTC adds more parental control tools to its headsets. When you are in virtual reality, you see the objects closer than they actually are. Other news. Learn more.

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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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AllThingsVR

JANUARY 17, 2017

Weekly Funding Roundup: Valve Acquires 3D Audio Company Impulsonic, Microsoft Acquires 3D Data Optimization Specialists Simplygon, Spaces Grabs Another $6.5M & 8i Appoints New CEO 1) The HTC Vive is finally getting integrated headphones later this year, and co-creator Valve’s latest acquisition could help you get the most out of them.

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Peter Graham

JULY 25, 2019

Ever since the launch of Firefox Reality by Mozilla last year the company has been gradually scaling up the project by adding new features and support of devices like Microsoft’s HoloLens 2. As an added bonus, these protections work in the background and actually increase the speed of the browser.”

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 2, 2020

The only company not much affected by it is HTC, that manufacturers its headsets in Taiwan and not in Mainland China. HTC Vive releases Cosmos Elite, two models of Vive Pro Eye and creates some confusion. Image by Microsoft). It is clear that the company is aiming at giving it to players before the launch of Half-Life: Alyx.

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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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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. . Source: Microsoft “What is Mixed Reality” [link].

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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

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. Further references. Shiftall MeganeX.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 14, 2019

All the other major companies (Samsung, Huawei, etc…) are working on AR and Apple for sure can’t stop experimenting with if it doesn’t want to miss the next communication platform as Microsoft did with Windows Phone. Microsoft has released this week a new video showing how the game will work. It reminds me a bit of Varjo, but for AR.

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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 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

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

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

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

Today I host a new post by my friend and VR professional Rob Cole , who has already published many interesting posts on my blog, including a review of Pimax Sword controllers , a series of hack on how to modify the Valve Index , and his experiements in creating new innovative controllers for SteamVR. HTC Vive Trackers (Image by Rob Cole).

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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.

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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.

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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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