The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 2, 2018

The Vive Focus was most probably the best VR standalone on the market when Oculus last week announced what will be the first consumer 6DOF VR standalone headset. And so here we are again: Oculus vs HTC, America vs China, Hugo Barra vs Alvin Wang Graylin. And now the battle is on standalone headsets: Oculus Quest vs Vive Focus.

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 27, 2021

Oculus Quest 2 had a great Christmas. The sales of Oculus Quest 2 have been great during the holidays , and the Quest has been a Christmas gift very much appreciated by kids (but wasn’t there an age limit?). (Image from Reddit). The VR ecosystem can end 2021 with a big smile on its face. Other relevant news. Image by Rec Room).

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 12, 2019

The time for my Oculus Quest review has come. The Quest has a nice packaging , as all Oculus products. I really love opening Oculus products , since usually they are packaged really well, and the Quest is no exception. Oculus Quest box content (Image by Oculus). Front view of the Oculus Quest.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 16, 2020

Like with all the other events organized by HTC China, the keynote has been held by Mr. Alvin Wang Graylin , mostly known as “Mister President”, that is famous for the passion with which he performs inspiring talks. An official launch will come in Q3 2020, at first in China and then in the rest of the world.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 12, 2021

This week has been pretty crazy: It all started with Facebook approving my silly The Unity Cube application (an application with just a cube) on App Lab. score on the Oculus App Lab now. In the meanwhile, if you can, go giving 5 stars to the cube on App Lab … who knows if Facebook may consider promoting it on the main Oculus Store….

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 19, 2021

Image by Oculus). The other bombshell news is that Resident Evil 4 is coming to the Oculus Quest 2. On April, 21st, Oculus will host its first Gaming Showcase , with news on ‘Lone Echo II’, ‘Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge’, and many other titles. Top news of the week. Facebook announces Wi-Fi streaming and Resident Evil 4 for Quest.

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 23, 2019

Some months ago, we all read that letter where Zuckerberg claimed wanting to get complete control of the hardware and software stack so that Facebook shouldn’t depend on external companies, like Google or Apple for the SO, or phone manufacturers for the hardware. Oculus releases hands tracking SDK, official Link cable for Quest and more.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 23, 2020

More info (How to pre-load Half-Life: Alyx) More info (Leaked review of Half-Life: Alyx) More info (Suggestions on how to stream the game) More info (Valve Index on top of Steam charts) More info (Oculus Rift S soldout) More info (Vive Cosmos Elite gives Alyx for free) More info (Vive Cosmos Elite review) More info (Gabe Newell talks BCI).

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 26, 2020

While Oculus is getting all the glory for the Quest, its competitors are not sleeping. At WCVRI, China shows its strategic interest for VR. And while China always moves chaotically, I think that the push of the government is helping its VR companies. Notwithstanding all this hate, the Oculus Quest 2 is selling very well.

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HTC Oculus Conference China 384

The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 13, 2021

It was too early for Unity, but they taught me about C++, C#, Java, OpenCV, OpenGL and other fancy development stuff. In that period, the Oculus DK2 ordered by Gianni arrived, and he told me that I should go to his office to try that device, and my reaction at that time was like “Oculus what??”

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 1, 2019

” review of standalone headsets (you can find in other posts the ones related to Oculus Go and HTC Vive Focus ). There is everything you need, but not the same wonder that you have when you open the box of a product made by Oculus. it is bigger than the Oculus Go but smaller than the massive HTC Vive Focus.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 8, 2018

The Oculus Go is one of the headsets of the moment : it is the first truly consumer-oriented VR-only device : it is easy to be used, it is cheap and it is (or will) available in the retail shops, so has all the potential to attract people that until now considered VR something too geek. So, where is the truth? The headset.

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VRScout

SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

Last year, the inaugural VR On The Lot brought together major players from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Europe, and China for a two-day exploration of the intersection between entertainment and technology. Tony Parisi , Global Head of VR/AR at Unity Technologies. LIFE VR, Unity, Unreal Engine, VRC and DTS (an Xperi company).

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 16, 2020

Valve Index and Oculus Quest were on sale again. This week the Valve Index and the Oculus Quest have been put back in stock. Oculus and Valve have probably taken out all the devices they had in the warehouses so that to ship them before Half-Life: Alyx and the sale has been a big success. Image by Oculus). Who knows….

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 20, 2021

From time to time, I like to look at the adoption graph of XR shown by John Riccitiello (the CEO of Unity) in 2017 , where you can see that the real acceleration of immersive technologies should start around 2022-2023. Not to mention the millions spent on marketing , especially in the US (Oculus was one of the sponsors of NBA, for instance).

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 8, 2023

T he event will be presented by Oculus Studios Executive Producer Ruth Bram like last year, but introduce new pre-event and post-event sessions. Zapbox features a 100° FOV and is going to launch with a Unity SDK to create content for it. In China, companies are already using AI to substitute illustrators.

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AR Gaming Augmented Reality China 271

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 1, 2021

Oculus has also partnered with Virtuclear to offer prescription lenses for the Quest 2 for $80. All the 3 major VR runtimes (Oculus, SteamVR, Microsoft) are now compatible with OpenXR , and this means that on the runtime layer on PC, now OpenXR has been fully integrated. You can now use consumer devices inside Oculus For Business.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 11, 2018

When I was in China, the last company I visited in Shanghai has been Lenqiy. This is another Vive-X company working in the educational sector and that has given me interesting insights into the educational ecosystem in China , that confirmed what I have learned speaking with Langzou and Judao. He is a great person , for sure.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 7, 2020

While Oculus has decided to discontinue the Oculus Go and abandon completely the 3DOF sector, Chinese vendor Pico has decided to double down on 3DOF offering two new models , the Pico G2 4K S and the Pico G2 4K Enterprise , that are two improvements of the original Pico G2 4K. User Interface.

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VRScout

JULY 17, 2016

for mixed reality lightfield technology that no one has actually seen (outside of a small number of people with ironclad NDAs), and is funded by giants like Google and Alibaba. News broke that users who logged in via Google account were allowing full access to their Google accounts – meaning photos, browsing history, emails, etc.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 24, 2020

Oculus devices will require a Facebook login. The enormous piece of news of the week is tha t Facebook has communicated that from October, 20th, all people that want to use an Oculus device for personal use will have to use their personal Facebook account to log in. Top news of the week. Image by Tweakanalogy). The same on Twitter.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

In the meanwhile, the community is still rioting about the Facebook login , and /r/Oculus should now be called /r/FacebookBannedMyAccount because this is the only topic people are talking about. More info (New features of OpenXR) More info (OpenXR in Unity) More info (OpenXR in Microsoft products). OpenXR slowly increases its adoption.

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Sony Oculus Controllers Haptic 354

The Ghost Howls

MAY 17, 2020

I mean, all UE developers, we Unity developers felt like being in a party where everyone is making out and you’re just there sipping a coke. Oculus Link now works with USB 2.0. Very Silently, Oculus has changed the specifications of Oculus Link , which now doesn’t require anymore a USB 3.0 port and cable.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 11, 2019

Everyone of us already knew that Gear VR was a platform almost abandoned when Oculus announced the Oculus Go. Anyway, officially, both Samsung and Oculus have continued at least to support it. Original image by Oculus). Xiaomi disbands the Mi VR team, with unknown effects on Oculus Go. Gear VR is dead.

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Samsung Survey Oculus AR 191

The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 3, 2019

Actually, the first launch has happened in China with the Vive Focus at the end of 2017, but we had the full development of the ecosystem now. This year we saw the launch of: Oculus Go ; Lenovo Mirage Solo ; Vive Focus ; Pico Neo / G2 ; S hadow VR; and the announcement of the Oculus Quest. Standalone headsets. PC VR headsets.

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Virtual Reality Oculus China Samsung 316

The Ghost Howls

MAY 30, 2022

This shows the growing trend of European companies to try to create a new technological hub that can compete with the US and China for this new tech revolution. The Metaverse hype is growing strong also in China. The Metaverse hype is present also in China, and many Chinese companies are working on projects related to virtual worlds.

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VRScout

OCTOBER 4, 2018

Available on the Vive Focus — HTC’s China-only replacement for its discontinued Daydream headset — Beat Reality generates a colorful filter that allows you to experience any locale with literal rose-tinted glasses. Are you planning to port the app to the Oculus Quest or Mirage Solo? But in the future… [sic]”. It’s like this meme.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 10, 2019

Image by Google). Google completely opensources Cardboard. With a surprise move, Google has announced with a blog post that it ha opensourced completely Cardboard. Google affirms that Cardboard has been a huge success to introduce people into VR, and more than 15 million headsets have been distributed.

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Augmented Reality Google Machine Learning AR 161

The Ghost Howls

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

After Oculus, that has expressed concerns on the manufacture of the Quest, this week Tilt Five has stated that it will have difficulties in shipping devices to the first backers, while nReal , that is based in Beijing, has completely stopped its production. More info (Use Google Translate). Google Chrome now supports WebAR.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

DECEMBER 9, 2016

Featured image from left to right: Rob Goodman (OpenVerse), Han Jin (Lucid VR), Amitt Mahajan (Presence Capital), Timoni West and Tony Parisi (Unity). And the reason, according to Tony Parisi , head of VR and AR strategy at Unity, is simple. Breaking through in China with VR arcades. Gamers buy hardware first.

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Trends Industry China Unity 100

Road to VR

DECEMBER 14, 2016

HTC’s China Regional President of Vive, Alvin Wang Graylin, took to the stage at the Unity Vision Summit in Asia this week and made a series of bold predictions for where we’ll see VR in the next two years. SEE ALSO Oculus Chief Scientist Predicts the Next 5 Years of VR Technology.

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Virtual Reality HTC China Real Estate 100

The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 22, 2021

As a long-time AR enthusiast, and one of the first to have tried Google Glass in Italy, I have to admit that I will consider AR mainstream only when it will be on glasses that we will wear all day , when we’ll live in a completely shared mixed reality world (the AR Cloud). Or is it just a talk about glasses?

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Augmented Reality Magic Leap AR Apple 474

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 2, 2020

To make you understand how these features are incredible, Qualcomm has stated that “the [XR2] reference design has 2x the CPU and GPU performance, 4x more video bandwidth, 6x higher resolution and 11x AI improvement compared to our current widely adopted XR platform [the Oculus Quest ]”. Oculus fixes two of the greatest issues of Oculus Link.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 26, 2018

The problem is that we had no idea about the release date for us western people because the device had been announced and released only in China. Oculus Go showcased. The Oculus Go (Image by Oculus). At GDC, the Oculus Go has been one of the main characters.

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AR Magic Leap Oculus Virtual Reality 160

The Ghost Howls

JULY 16, 2021

VR has got the attention of the mainstream thanks to Alyx and the commercials by Oculus. For every studio that made $10M on Quest, maybe 20 indie studios have worked on some VR games of theirs that they never published, or that went on Steam but no one cared about, or that were refused by Oculus. The amazing Unity Cube.

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VRScout

MARCH 23, 2017

Bye will be delivering a keynote at SVVR, as will Nonny de la Peña, CEO of Emblematic Group, Tony Parisi, Head of VR and AR at Unity Technologies, and Rikard Steiber, SVP of VR at HTC. ” In service of making this cross-pollination, SVVR included representation from VR communities from Japan, Korea, and China. Enter: SVVR.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 2, 2019

Feature comparison between ARCore, ARKit and the Unity Handheld AR SDK (Image by Unity). Meta is having funding issues because of the new trade wars between America and China. Google Maps in AR). With ARKit you can also track your face, and some developers have started also using it as an animation tool.

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