The Ghost Howls
FEBRUARY 6, 2025
Passthrough camera access is a hot topic in the XR community right now and while the positions of Meta, Apple, and Pico are known, everyone is wondering what Google will do with Android XR. After I’ve spoken directly with the company, I can tell you that they will offer a solution similar to the one on the phone. Keep reading to discover more!
Road to VR
FEBRUARY 7, 2025
John Carmack, former CTO of Oculus and legendary programmer, isn’t shy when it comes to voicing his opinions on all things XR. To Carmack, Meta’s block-slashing rhythm game Beat Saber (2018) was “far more important than Half-Life: Alyx ” in pushing adoption of the medium. While Valve’s PC VR game Half-Life: Alyx (2020) is largely prized as the pinnacle of ‘AAA’ VR gaming, Carmack maintains Beat Saber was “far more important,” owing to the hit
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XR Today - Virtual Reality
FEBRUARY 26, 2025
When the pandemic forced education online, microbiologist Dr. Jane Harrington discovered a fundamental problem: teaching students about invisible organisms through a webcam just wasn’t working: As an educator, I love teaching and I love microbes. I found that just talking to students was ineffective, especially for people who have processing disorders such as ADHD or autism.
AR Insider
FEBRUARY 24, 2025
Though the narrative around AI often portrays it as magical and all-encompassing, the reality is more complex. This was one of many takeaways in a video interview with SuperDNA 3D Lab Chief AI Officer Chetan Jakkoju. We have the footage and top takeaways. This post appeared first on AR Insider.
Speaker: Chris Paxton McMillin, President of D3 Training Solutions
To avoid awkward and sometimes disastrous learning content, instructional designers must use authentic translation in the right context to get optimal results. For example, even a simple phrase like “got milk” translates to “are you lactating” in Mexico. Can you imagine what a straight translation might do to your course? With over 317 million people in the US and over 6.7 billion potential customers in the world, personalizing training seems logical.
Upload VR
FEBRUARY 11, 2025
Android XR will let apps access the passthrough camera view, Google confirmed. While headsets like Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro use cameras to let you see the real world, today only the system software gets raw access to these cameras. Third-party developers can use passthrough as a background, sure, but they don't actually get access to it. They instead get higher-level data derived by the system, such as hand and body skeletal coordinates, a 3D mesh of your environment with bounding boxes for
Virtual Reality Pulse brings together the best content for VR professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
The Ghost Howls
FEBRUARY 17, 2025
The last demo I had during my CES in January wasn’t for sure the least in terms of importance. I was able to go hands-on with Afference , a very special ring meant to give haptic sensations. Why was it so special? Well, let me explain to you Afference Ring and the referred sensations Afference concept image (Image by Afference) Afference is a startup proposing a haptic ring.
Road to VR
FEBRUARY 27, 2025
Meta today revealed its next-gen smart glasses, Aria Gen 2, which the company intends to release to third-party researchers working on machine perception systems, AI and robotics. The company revealed its first iteration of Project Aria back in 2020, showing off a sensor-rich pair of glasses which the company used internally to train its machine perception systems, ultimately tackling some of the most complex issues in creating practical, all-day augmented reality glasses of the future.
XR Today - Virtual Reality
FEBRUARY 7, 2025
Do you remember the Metaverse? Mark Zuckerberg remembers… Meta’s CTO, Andrew Bosworth , remembers too. Following its landmark $100 billion investment into XR, then in turn metaverse, solutions Bosworth revealed in a leaked memo that 2025 will be a standout year for the once headline and imagination-stealing technology as well as Reality Labs as a whole.
AR Insider
FEBRUARY 25, 2025
ACES 2025, Sharge, a company better known for its sleek power banks, introduced Loomos AI Glasses, an AI-first wearable designed to compete with Metas Ray-Ban smart glasses. Can it outmaneuver Meta in AI wearables? This post appeared first on AR Insider.
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With a rapidly changing economy, Avangrid Renewables looked to virtual reality to develop a standardized form of immersive training in order to onboard and upskill technicians faster than ever before.
Upload VR
FEBRUARY 9, 2025
John Carmack described PC VR as "a boutique niche", standalone VR as "the biggest win that VR ever had", and Beat Saber as "far more important than Half-Life: Alyx". In a post on X , the former Oculus CTO once again clarified his position on standalone and PC VR, a position he has held for more than a decade. Whenever I post something critical of Metas handling of VR, there are always some old timers that pile on with Yeah!
Hypergrid Business
FEBRUARY 15, 2025
OSgrid’s LBSA Plaza is the cross-roads of the hypergrid and a popular virtual hangout for developers, region owners, and metaverse travelers. OSgrid is planning a complete inventory reset on March 21, 2024. That means that if you have an OSgrid avatar or region, you will have five weeks to make a backup of your inventory before everything is permanently deleted. “All avatars that don’t have a backup of their OSgrid assets elsewhere within now and five weeks will irrevocably los
The Ghost Howls
FEBRUARY 18, 2025
Im back in Italy, tired but happy. I hope you had a good Valentines Day with your special ones and that in general, you are happy, too. Do you want to know one of the reasons for my happiness? My article about Android XR granting permissions for the camera frames has earned me mentions in important magazines like Road To VR , Upload VR , and Android Authority !
Road to VR
FEBRUARY 26, 2025
Valve’s rumored standalone XR headset, codenamed ‘Deckard’, is practically the stuff of legend at this point, with speculation brewing since data miners first discovered mention of the alleged device in January 2021. Now, leaker and data miner ‘Gabe Follower’ maintains Deckard is coming by the end of 2025, priced at $1,200.
Speaker: Nik Gowing, Brenda Laurel, Sheridan Tatsuno, Archie Kasnet, and Bruce Armstrong Taylor
With 191 country signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement now hard at work in the race to zero carbon by 2050, much of the heavy lifting in ecosystem sustainability falls on the shoulders of the world's densely populated urban centers. This conversation considers how today's AI-enabled simulation media, such as AR/VR, can be effectively applied to accelerate learning, understanding, training, and solutions-modeling to sustainability planning and design.
XR Today - Virtual Reality
FEBRUARY 18, 2025
This week, the NHS made further strides in leveraging XR technologies via a government-led 4.3 million VR training initiative. The initiative attempts to reduce related travel and material costs while also addressing skill shortages among STEAM students and NHS staff. Innovate UK is leading the multi-million VR training initiative , bringing outreach programs and hands-on training for students, professionals, and NHS staff.
AR Insider
FEBRUARY 27, 2025
This week on Reality Bytes, we dive into Instagram's messaging overhaul, start circling with Google, and uncover a data privacy scandal around DeepSeek and ByteDance. This post appeared first on AR Insider.
Upload VR
FEBRUARY 26, 2025
A Valve leaker claims the Valve Deckard headset is set to launch by the end of this year at $1200, including first-party "games or demos". The leaker, known as Gabe Follower , has successfully revealed the existence and details of multiple Valve projects in the past, including Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) and Deadlock. Now, in a post on X , Gabe Follower claims "several people" have "confirmed" that Valve aims to release its wireless standalone headset running SteamOS, codenamed Deckard, by the end of
XR Today - Augmented Reality tag
FEBRUARY 10, 2025
Recently, frontline AR solutions provider Vuzix debuted AugmentOS , a dedicated operating system for workplace immersive human-computer interfaces. The OS is ready for Vuzixs portfolio of products, allowing end-users and developers to use products such as the Z100 smart glasses, which include AI functionality integration. AugmentOS is debuting as version 1.0.
Speaker: Richard Goring, Director at BrightCarbon
Remote meetings are here to stay - and many are BORING. If you are trying to engage your learners (or any audience), compelling content is critical. But trying to create stimulating content with the same tools you’ve always had is hard, right? Thankfully, wrong! Terrific tools in PowerPoint along with visual assets help you create the kind of dynamic content you need to capture your remote audience’s attention, with functions that allow for interactive sequences and navigation.
The Ghost Howls
FEBRUARY 10, 2025
These days I feel better, so this newsletter is coming on time again (yay!). Its been a good end of the week for me: on the work side, I have broken the news about camera access on Android XR (more on this later on), while on the personal side, I managed to cook some good Italian pasta here in China for some friends (Ive brought some ingredients from home, of course).
Road to VR
FEBRUARY 27, 2025
Sony today announced it’s permanently discounting PSVR 2 starting next month, bringing the PS5 and PC-compatible VR headset to $400. Sony launched PSVR 2 nearly two years ago today at $550. Now, following little fanfare at its two-year anniversaryand no real mention during its State of Play two weeks agoSony is slashing the price of PSVR 2 to $400 / 550 / 400 / 66,980 starting in March.
XR Today - Virtual Reality
FEBRUARY 11, 2025
The XR world is a growing space of opportunity. While headset news dominates and steals headlines, the ways in which immersive RT3D technology is used today reach many users in manufacturing, industrial, factory operations, and more. As use cases emerge, grander deployments of immersive solutions will follow. But with this comes challenges. For its second year in a row, XR Today compiled the thoughts of industry leaders on how to tackle the industry of tomorrow.
AR Insider
FEBRUARY 20, 2025
Since the current era of XR emerged about a decade ago, there have been a thousand little things that mark its evolution. But a few events jumped out from the past week as defining and symbolic moments to mark the next era of XR. This post appeared first on AR Insider.
Speaker: Treion Muller, Chief Strategy Officer at ELB Learning
Since when has learning and development (L&D) become such a negative experience with its intended learners? Could it be because learners have been conditioned by very poor learning experiences over the past two decades, combined with the kinks of technological innovation? Or is it because learning has typically been designed as a one-size-fits-all solution, despite the fact that humans are not clones?
Upload VR
FEBRUARY 17, 2025
Palmer Luckey described how Anduril's Eagle Eye helmet will give soldiers superhuman senses, describing it as "by far the best AR/VR/MR vision augmentation system that has ever been built". Last week, Anduril announced that it is taking over the US Army's IVAS program from Microsoft. Anduril is the defence company Luckey founded after being fired from Oculus, currently valued at $28 billion.
XR Today - Mixed Reality tag
FEBRUARY 17, 2025
As reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman ; the Apple visionOS 2.4 update expected in April will bring AI capabilities to the $3,499 device; potentially transforming how users interact with spatial computing. This marks an evolution evolution in the company’s mixed reality strategy, as Apple recently ceased development of its planned Mac-ready AR smart glasses to focus exclusively on Vision Pro.
The Ghost Howls
FEBRUARY 20, 2025
I have still a lot of things to tell you about my experience at CES. In this post, I want to describe three interesting pieces of hardware that I’ve tried: it’s going to be all about visual displays, each one with its own peculiarity! Optix optical system I went to check out Optix because my CES-mate Tyriel Wood suggested I try it after he enjoyed its demo.
Road to VR
FEBRUARY 11, 2025
Team Beef’s unofficial VR ports of classic Id Software games are undoubtedly fan favorites, letting you go head-first into a rash of ’90s retro titles like the original DOOM.Now, Id Software co-founder and former Oculus CTO John Carmack says he tried lobbying the Microsoft-owned studio for the chance to get those ports offered as official VR versions on Quest, but was unfortunately denied. “I tried we had a conversation with the powers that be at Id Software, and I even offere
Speaker: Micah Eppler, Account Executive for Rehearsal of eLearning Brothers
Did you know that companies such as Paychex, 3M, and Honeywell are getting better results by incorporating video-based practice and coaching within their L&D strategy? From sales pitches to soft skills, learners are becoming top performers by applying and validating knowledge transfer using the unique benefits of video. Whether used as a stand-alone application or integrated with a learning platform, video-based practice and coaching platforms give learners the ultimate opportunity to repeatedly
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