The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

Plus there is this sense of perceived “stasis” of the technology. As I said a few months ago , we are in the middle of a paradigm change: the cycle that started with the Quest is arriving at an end, and a new cycle driven by new technologies (mixed reality headsets) and new players (Apple, Google) is starting.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

HoloLens 2 availability has been expanded to 15 new regions : Italy (YESSS!), The HoloLens 2 Development Edition will become available in 10 additional countries by the end of the year: Canada, Germany, France, UK, Ireland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Italy. More info (Unboxing video on Upload VR).

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 27, 2020

Another busy week has passed by, and here in Italy we just got the news that lockdown measures will start to loosen from next week, but the road to go out as we wish is still long. 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).

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 21, 2021

The article ends with Facebook claiming that it cares about privacy, and wants to discuss the topics of privacy, security, and safety of this technology with all the community. More info (Volu official website) More info (The technology behind Volu). Vive Facial Tracker works also with non-HTC headsets. Image by Microsoft).

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 1, 2020

HP and Microsoft have a long track in offering enterprise hardware, so this headset may battle HTC on his own land (B2B). First of all, Peter Chou, ex founder of HTC , has launched his startup XrSpace, with his first VR headset Mova (that you can see in the header image of this post), together with its social XR platform Manova.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 13, 2022

It has become one of the headset manufacturers with the biggest worldwide market, and the market leader (together with HTC) in the B2B virtual reality sector. The Pico Neo 3 has this special technology thanks to which it doesn’t connect via USB to become a PCVR headset (like the Quest 2 and Focus 3 ), but it does that via DisplayPort.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 10, 2022

As a Unity developer, I am a bit envious of all of this. It’s interesting that HTC is keeping the name Vive both for VR and Web3 solutions. I am in the team organizing On|Metaverse Summit 2022, the first international B2B summit on metaverse and virtual transformation in Italy. News from partners (and friends).

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 24, 2020

A comment from HTC , just saying that it was up to compete with Oculus has had on Twitter something like 12K likes , and I think that HTC’s social media manager had never seen that number in his whole life. What other devices are so cheap, have the best games, a continuous stream of updates? The same on Twitter. Other relevant news.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 2, 2020

The damn coronavirus continues to impact all our lives: the fact that many countries are applying restrictions on flights to and from Italy is, for example, creating various nuisances to my job. The only company not much affected by it is HTC, that manufacturers its headsets in Taiwan and not in Mainland China.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 3, 2019

This means that someone made some predictions that were totally wrong and this made lots of companies bet on a technology that was not ready enough, creating huge losses and so the general consensus that VR is not taking foot and so it is a dead technology. Mister President launching the Vive Focus (Image by HTC). Enterprise.

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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. technology (with support for Steam VR 1.0 Then, the price is a bit high , and this is very HTC. Top news of the week.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 5, 2021

Today in Italy it should be the day when we go pic-nicking… but given the fact that we are in lockdown, I’ll just eat a lot at home While I send you a lot of good vibes, let’s see together what have been the best pieces of AR/VR news of this week, that has been incredibly interesting! (My I suggest you exploit this opportunity, of course.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 20, 2021

I expect all these trends to continue in 2021, for a year that will see the growth of the technology on all its sides (software and hardware). Companies like Pico, HP, Valve, and HTC are already performing very well in this sector. Yes, it’s a lot of time, but these are realistic projections. The rise of enterprise.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

I am back in Italy! Mark Zuckerberg, but also Unity CEO John Riccitiello) that should mark the beginning of the serious adoption of new technology. That’s why 10M is such an important threshold: because it marks the beginning of the serious growth of a technology.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Italy won the Tennis Davis Cup, and that was pretty cool to see (the match between Sinner and Djokovic was just incredible). These technologies are so important and have so much business potential (see the success of OpenAI services) that companies can not stop pursuing them because there is too much money at stake.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 20, 2022

Ten days ago, I revealed to you that I was going to Austin, Texas to attend the SXSW, one of the most important events about creativity and technology in the USA. Today, while I’m packing my stuff up to go back to Italy, I want to tell you a few words about my experience there, and if I think it has been worth going. Going SXSW.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 4, 2020

While in Italy we get ready for the “Phase 2” of the lockdown, I write the best AR/VR news of the week just for you! In any case, this is good: more people bought a VR headset, and other ones got more engagement with the technology , maybe after months of having left the headset in the closet. Image by HTC Vive).

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 22, 2021

Now it’s time to make some forecasts about its companion technology, that is augmented reality! This won’t be the year of AR : exactly as I said for virtual reality, let’s not hype the technology and think that this is the year when mainstream adoption of wearable AR glasses is going to happen. Sounded good.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 27, 2022

It’s hot and the drought is creating some issues here in northern Italy. The Metaverse Standards Forum has already gathered many important players of the XR sector like Unity, Unreal Engine, Meta, Microsoft, Lamina 1, NVIDIA, and even other relevant companies like IKEA and Adobe. Image by HTC Vive). Top news of the week.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 10, 2019

If you will be in Italy, please come visiting me! The problem is in the was of physics of the optical systems: it is not possible to create such a device, and even the spirit of Steve Jobs can’t help, because with current technology, it is just impossible. HTC is now selling certified refurbished Vive HMDs for $400.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 20, 2022

Not that the situation goes better for the other technologies around us: until some years ago, I would have found it impossible that people could spend $50K to own a JPEG of a monkey … while now it is considered normal… the world is getting crazy).

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 4, 2023

According to the latest rumors, all this technology in a single package is very hard to manufacture, and Apple is having problems with the production line. Because if Apple is just going to repeat the same use cases of the HTC Vive and Meta Quest 2, but selling it at $3000, it is just going to fail spectacularly. This is impressive.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 3, 2023

We already saw this problem happening when HTC departed from the Steam platform to build its Viveport store because hardware sales were not enough to have an ambitious business. Muse looks a lot like ChatGPT integrated inside Unity. Let’s see: Google is still working with Qualcomm and Samsung on a mixed-reality headset.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 26, 2018

This surprised me because, in Italy, the most important people of an IT startup must speak English, because they needs this language to connect with abroad customers and partners. The project evolved over time and when in 2016 HTC released the Vive, they immediately thought about integrating VR into their solution. My envy intensified.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 14, 2020

These days we of New Technology Walkers have more time to work on our mixed reality fitness game HitMotion: Reloaded. There are lots of grants around, and here we can participate in some research grants offered by Italy or European Union. Doing a project of yours. Some countries are more “infected” than others.

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Road to VR

APRIL 13, 2017

Development is divided evenly across the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift platforms, each accounting for 31% of projects created, with other major VR platforms such as Samsung Gear VR, OSVR, and Daydream rounding out the bottom numbers. We invite all industry technology providers and stakeholders to join us in this meaningful program.”.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

I’m still here in the US for some days after having attended AWE, planning to meet some interesting people before heading back to Italy. In a side event happening after AWE, HTC has announced a bunch of updates of Vive Focus 3 that have the potential of revolutionizing the Location Based Entertainment in VR (LBEVR o LBVR) sector.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 8, 2018

I’m very interested in this device, that’s why I dedicated various articles to it, like the tutorial on how to get started with Go on Unity , how to stream the headset content to an external screen and my comparison with the Vive Focus. Unity development.

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 8, 2021

Today is a special day in Italy when families prepare the Christmas Tree, so I decided to publish a very special post that is a big gift to the whole XR community. The post is very long, but also super-interesting, especially if you are a maker or love DIY stuff. Tundra HDK RMA.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 20, 2020

Oculus Quest 2 is a great piece of technology. The tracking technology is almost the same , with just the cameras being a bit better in low light conditions. I’ve preordered my basic $299 one (€349 in Italy) and it will arrive on October, 15th. Description. Performances of the Qualcomm XR2 vs the previous 835 chipset.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 23, 2020

Jokes apart, before starting, let me send a big hug to all of you that are in quarantine because of the coronavirus and thank all the people that in these days have cared about me after having heard the sad news about Italy (Simon, David, Daniel, Suzie, Mark… John that has been so kind… Sebastian, and many others!). Top news of the week.

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