Good Morning XR! This week in XR has seen a range of exciting announcements, starting with the introduction of XR Glasses from North, which wants to be the Warby-Parker of XR. Under $1,000 and your prescription, too! ICYI, earlier this week we recapped AWE Munich, visited a new free roam VR venue inside a Go-Kart Attraction, and covered the launch of Spatial, recently out of stealth and backed by 8M in venture funding. Facebook admits it's working on AR glasses, which everyone already knew, while the head of Oculus resigned amidst rumors the Oculus 2 PC HMD had been delayed, or possibly canceled.
Fashionable smart glasses backed by solid investment come out of the North. North, previously called Thalmic Labs, has revealed a pair of smart glasses called Focals. Unlike past attempts at smart glasses like Google Glass or Intel’s Vaunt, North has focused their efforts on making Focals fashionable. Wearers will see a 15-degree viewing area approximately 300x300 pixels in the right lens. A small area of photopolymer material allows a laser projector in the right arm to bounce images straight into a wearers retina. North’s custom-built software and UI allow users to view messages, call an Uber, see turn-by-turn directions, view their calendar, and check the weather. The apps are controlled via a ring equipped with a joystick, as well as a microphone embedded in the glasses themselves. The battery is said to last 18 hours. A pair of Focals can be had for $999 after a visit to one of two company locations, in Toronto or Brooklyn as each pair must be customized for the wearer.
Oculus co-founder leaves Facebook over rumored Rift 2 cancellation. Brendan Iribe, co-founder and CEO of Oculus before its acquisition by Facebook, has been with Oculus since its founding in July 2012. Reasons for his departure are thought to be related to a diverging of views for the future of the company. In a Facebook post announcing his leave, Iribe praised the path Oculus has taken and the talented team involved in pushing the future of VR. Oculus cleared the air about a Rift 2 cancellation ensuring that they are still working on next-generation PC VR.
VR/AR game developer closes $7.5 million Series B funding. Resolution Games, creators of Bait!, Bait! Arctic Open, Wonderglade, Narrows and Solitaire Jester successfully closed their series B with investment from venture capital firms GP Bullhound and Fly Forever, as well as industry thought leader David Helgason, the founder of Unity. After a successful LeapCon release of Angry Birds: First Person Slingshot for the Magic Leap, this new round of funding will help expand Resolution Games portfolio of intellectual property. The company’s total funding comes to $13.5 million.
Augmented bouncy ball from smart toy company WRLDS bounds onto the scene. Intended as an addition to their newly released SDK, the WRLDS connected ball is a superball filled with smart components. The ball is made of lightweight “Moon Foam” and communicates with an accelerometer for impact and g-force, and a Low Energy Bluetooth (BLE) connection to your smartphone. WRLDS hopes developers use the ball and SDK to create games that blend the fun of video games with the real world of sports and fitness. The possibilities are endless, and to get users started, WRLDS has included free game modes with features like territory control, reflex-based team play, and pressure sensitivity of squeezing the ball. One of WRLDS bouncing ball’s first developers said "When I was a little kid, all of the games were about how hard or how fast you could throw. Now there’s hardware inside of a ball that can track how hard or how fast you are throwing.”
TD Ameritrade partners with Oculus Go for immersive financial learning experience aimed at investors. TD Ameritrade’s first VR experience takes users inside places like the New York Stock Exchange, CBOE, and a Bitcoin mine. Lee Mcadoo, managing director of Investor Education from TD Ameritrade said: “Learning through an interactive experience is an exciting and immersive way that will help investors understand more complex issues and retain the knowledge learned for their own financial futures.” The TD Ameritrade experience can be found on the Oculus Video app. I have no idea who would actually do this, but kudos to Ameritrade for caring about VR. I hope it works.
Artist’s largest solo exhibition now available in VR. Shepard Fairey’s “DAMAGED” art exhibit had a limited run last year in Los Angeles drawing large crowds. After the show, VRt Ventures laser scanned and generated volumetric photogrammetry of the entire exhibition. VRt Ventures creates VR applications that capture artist’s works and archives them for immersive experiences. Now users can experience the entire exhibit as well as over 100 minutes of narration from Shepard himself. “DAMAGED” is available for $4.99 for iOS, Android, Oculus, Vive, and on Steam. Love Fairey’s work. Given it’s widely available for free, not sure who will pay $5 to see it in VR.
Jaunt goes through layoffs to focus business away from VR and onto AR. What began as one of the first virtual reality video companies is now changing focus to augmented reality technologies. Jaunt created one of the first professional VR cameras, the Jaunt One, and was the driving force behind early 360-degree video productions. In a Medium post titled “The Future of Jaunt is AR” Jaunt explains their decision to go all in on augmented reality and wind down their virtual reality efforts. This, of course, means layoffs of current talent as the company restructures. Fun times for the fine people at Jaunt.
This weekly column is written and edited with Michael Eichenseer who writes about XR on Medium.
