The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 26, 2023

You can access it at this link: [link] ) Top news of the week (Image by Microsoft) Microsoft kills Windows Mixed Reality Microsoft has decided to pull the plug on the Windows Mixed Reality platform , the one of the WMR headsets by Acer, Asus, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung which were the first to introduce inside-out tracking in the VR ecosystem.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 28, 2023

The first huge leak we had this week was a full unboxing video of the device. This time was not some hotel employees finding some random Quest boxes, but a n anonymous guy uploading the unboxing video on Reddit. The video was later republished by “VR Panda” on Twitter. That’s fantastic news for all Unity XR developers!

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 18, 2022

In my opinion, Magic Leap 2 is a superior device to HoloLens 2 (see my hands-on here ), so I think that with these prices, it can have good success in the enterprise market, starting to gain shares with regard to Microsoft. Nano-tech wants to be the Nanite of Unity. See Unity running on Quest. Learn more. This is mind-blowing!

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 15, 2023

If you missed it, don’t worry: you can still enjoy a video recording at this link. Congress is stopping the acquisition of more Microsoft IVAS headset. The story of the IVAS, the modified HoloLens system that Microsoft is building for the army, is becoming always more similar to a soap opera. Top news of the week. Funny link.

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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. I will leave you the link to do that below.

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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

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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ARPost

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

As pointed out in one of the Unity Developers’ blog posts , aside from the exponential rise of development businesses, we’re also seeing more developer tools, such as the Unity and Unreal engines, becoming more accessible. These collaborations are also a result of the need to create an open and interoperable metaverse.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 22, 2018

NVIDIA RTX 2080 videos and photos. In the entertainment area of Gamescom, NVIDIA has put some RTX graphics cards on the desks of some booth of partner companies , like ASUS and Microsoft. The company is providing a Unity and UE4 SDK so that interested developers can develop for it. So, here you are what I did today.

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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. More info (Unboxing video on Upload VR). Two interesting videos on the Quest 2. Other relevant news.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 26, 2020

With a lot of sadness, I’m here watching the photos and the videos of WCVRI , the big Chinese conference about VR that is held every year in Nanchang. Facebook and Microsoft publish two interesting research projects for VR. This week, Facebook and Microsoft have released two interesting works from their R&D department.

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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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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. Especially the first feature made most people go in awe : volumetric videos are very expensive, so they’re typically not used during XR events. Image by OceanX).

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 27, 2020

We’re looking for a Unity dev for a freelance gig lasting 1–2 months, ideally from Italy or a nearby country (for easier management). It is in Italian, but basically it says that we’re looking for a Unity dev with preferred experience with VR and/or multiplayer games. You can read the Job description here. Top news of the week.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 3, 2020

If you want to watch it, it’s a very interesting 2-hour-long video and you can find it here [link] together with a summary of the key points he said. 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.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 5, 2021

So it seems that the user will be able to see the videos he/she is recording, with the actual AR filters already applied in real-time. 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

JUNE 13, 2022

It will be possible to shoot 4K videos of the augmented applications, body tracking has been improved , and the system will be able to perform better environment understanding The new ARKit features will be used by a new tool provided by Apple for all its iPhone users: RoomPlan. I think the news is the final nail in the HoloLens coffin.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Mine was planned to ship today, so I guess that tomorrow I will do an unboxing video! It seems that Meta is working on a similar technology , too, and a video released during the Meta Connect shows a user navigating and interacting with an XR experience by just moving a bit the fingers. I’ve also interviewed him a few times on my blog.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 22, 2022

Microsoft IVAS program is not doing great. The special IVAS program that Microsoft is carrying on to develop a special version of HoloLens 2 for the US Army is not doing that well. According to Microsoft, around 50% of Gen Z and Millenials are ready to work remotely in XR. Other news. Learn more. Learn more. Learn more.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 15, 2021

Read about Microsoft’s Ignite conference. As I’ve reported to you last week, Microsoft’s latest Ignite conference, where Microsoft Mesh was announced, was a true marvel, an example of how a truly immersive keynote should be held. The second one relates to a system that tries to understand what is happening inside videos.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 31, 2023

There will be a new launcher, improved graphics, improved in-game camera, production-ready Unity SDK for the creators, improved full-body VR, and much more. Learn more (Video Pitch) Learn more (Company Deck) Some XR fun Who doesn’t love punching children? First of all, the Web3 VR platform has announced version 3.0

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XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

JULY 8, 2022

The solution involved creating a 3D, configurable version of the incredible Arksen 85 yacht, powered by Unity. Footage for the marketing experience was shot using Meta 360 video camera systems, and is designed to make users feel as though they’re sitting in one of the seats inside the train. Microsoft and Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe.

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XR Today - VR Headsets tag

MAY 27, 2022

Debates on Metaverse ethics have reached headlines across global media, namely amid the rise of major tech firms such as Meta Platforms and Microsoft, who aim to protect online users from harmful content.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 2, 2020

This means having AR and VR on the same device ; A 5G modem ; 8K videos playback at 60fps; Accelerated AI so that to be able to perform objects recognition and other cool stuff on the camera feed. There is not much to say, but there is a lot to see… so click on the below links, watch the videos and let them inspire you! Funny link.

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The Ghost Howls

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

More info (Announcement link) More info (News on my blog) More info (Error in one of the screenshots). Image by Microsoft). Chinese company nReal has released various new videos of its glasses nReal Light this week, and some lucky developers that have received the kit have also shared the unboxing of the device. Image by MWC).

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 15, 2024

For instance, we use a slightly modified version of Microsoft guidelines for C# for the coding phase, and every code is reviewed during the pull request stage Try to ask for high standards from everyone. Unity XR was a much safer choice. Talking about coding, for instance, what people should do before coding?

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 26, 2018

Having had the chance to play with it for some days , I can tell you that it is really an interesting product (I’ll write a review about it here on this blog, so register to my newsletter to not miss it!). The SDK offers native APIs, but also supports popular game engines like Unity and Unreal 4.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 17, 2022

Meta announces at Connect Quest Pro and a partnership with Microsoft. There have been a few key announcements at Connect: Meta has launched Quest Pro , its new premium headset, for $1500 Meta announced its focus on a new vertical, productivity Meta has partnered with Microsoft and Accenture to tackle the XR enterprise world.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 1, 2021

But this has not been the case: with a brief post on its blog, Sony has announced that there will be a “next-generation” VR device that will work with PS5, but that it will simply not be released this year. Unity support for OpenXR is still in early beta , and so it’s not reliable yet to develop an OpenXR-compliant application in Unity.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 30, 2022

Don’t forget to read the coverage about it on my blog… Before leaving you to the news, I have to publicly compliment Emerson for having given the most correct answer to my contest. More info (LivingCities on Forbes) More info (Official launch blog post of LivingCities). The “metaverse” was not a key topic inside “Microsoft Build”.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 20, 2020

Mozilla updates its Unity WebVR exporter. Two years ago, I reviewed on this blog a Unity plugin that Mozilla had released in beta to let you create WebVR experiences from your Unity projects. Thanks to this exporter, every Unity developer can create a WebXR experience by just building the Unity project for HTML5!

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 5, 2021

Microsoft too had to lose $10B to let Xbox enter the gaming console market and compete with PlayStation. Image by Microsoft). Unity releases free guide on mobile development optimization. Unity has just released a free guide that teaches you how to optimize your game so that it can run smoothly on mobile devices.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 27, 2023

Furthermore, Microsoft 365 apps such as Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, will be connected with Omniverse Project Mellon has been unveiled. I think it’s very good because it can finally give full-body VR to many Quest and Vive XR Elite users. Of course, Epic is completely against Apple and its vision of its own walled garden.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 2, 2023

Instead of showing people how the “metaverse” is now with very rough images (that easily become memes) or how it may be in the future with some fluffy videos, Zuck has used the best technologies from the Meta R&D department: Meta’s Codec Avatars. So this version is still meant to take photos, videos, and have phone calls.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

So after the video, many people said that they understood it is not a scam and proceeded to pay the $10 to reserve the headset. Personally, I have to say that I’m not convinced at all even after the video. More info (New features of OpenXR) More info (OpenXR in Unity) More info (OpenXR in Microsoft products).

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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. Alan: Have you been to the Microsoft campus?

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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. Alan: Have you been to the Microsoft campus?

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