The XR Week Peek (2023.07.31): Roblox released on Quest, Apple bringing back investments in VR, and more!
It’s the last of July, the weather is hot, and today I had a very hot day at work, too. But at least I have some good Italian ice cream which always makes me happy. Ice cream and VR news, what could I ask more from this evening?
Top news of the week
Roblox Beta has been launched for Quest
Some weeks ago I reported here the announcement by Meta about an upcoming launch of the popular gaming platform Roblox on Meta Quest. This week the application has been launched in Beta and is accessible via App Lab.
I think this news is massive: Roblox has around 60M daily users and is one of the most popular applications among kids. Its release on a VR headset means that there will be more awareness about VR and that many kids will ask for a Quest to their parents this holiday season so they can enter their Roblox creations. This idea has been validated by the results that Roblox is having now: notwithstanding the soft launch and the release on App Lab, the indie store for Quest where it can’t be discovered, Roblox got more than 1600 reviews in just two days. This is kind of a record for the platform.
I’ve gone hands-on with Roblox Beta and I’ve come out with mixed impressions. On one side, it has so many available worlds in it, that it is basically providing a place with infinite content to all of us VR people. On the other side, it is very buggy, features a terrible framerate, and the Roblox creations which look ok on mobile feel very rough in VR. It seems that it has been a bit rushed out, and the fact that Zuckerberg mentioned it during its quarterly call with the investors, makes me think that it has been rushed out to announce it exactly to investors.
At the end of the day, this is a great announcement for VR, and I can’t wait to see how Roblox will contribute to the sales of the Quest 3 these holidays.
More info (Roblox coming to Quest — Road To VR)
More info (Roblox coming to Quest — Upload VR)
More info (Zuck announcing Roblox to investors)
More info (My detailed review on Roblox for Quest)
Other relevant news
Apple Vision Pro is bringing back some investments in VR
After the hype for the metaverse dried up, XR entered into an “autumn” phase. It was more difficult for startups to find investments or find VR projects to do for other companies. The situation was made even worse by the current bad economic conditions, and the many layoffs happening in the tech sector.
We were all waiting for an Apple announcement, hoping that it could bring back some enthusiasm into the field, and it seems that the Vision Pro is having some beneficial effects, indeed. According to the Financial Times, “In June, AR, VR, and mixed reality start-ups in the US raised $208 million, almost as much as the previous three months combined”. Apple showed investors that XR is not a fad, and even if it is still in its early stages, it is going to stay. This made sure investors gained some trust for immersive reality startups again, something that will be beneficial for our whole industry.
I think that the upcoming release of Quest 3, and the increasing rumors about Samsung are going to improve our situation even more. Maybe we are getting out of the quicksands we were in since the start of the year. Let’s all hope so.
More info (Investors are believing in VR again — Financial Times)
More info (Investors are believing in VR again — Isp Page)
Meta keeps losing billions on the metaverse
Meta is keeping investing many billions in its metaverse dream and its latest quarterly call shows this commitment. The latest Q2 2023 operating loss of Reality Labs has been around $4 billion. The situation is made even worse by the fact that Reality Labs’ revenue was down by 39% with regard to last quarter due to lower Quest 2 sales.
Quest 2 is at the end of its lifecycle, so it is selling less than before. Everyone now is waiting for the release of the Quest 3 which is going to happen at the end of September, so it is pretty normal that revenues are going down now. I think we’ll understand the real situation Meta is in during this holiday season: Meta is betting a lot on having a fantastic end of 2023, and if it is not going to happen, then the company may be in trouble.
Meta has underlined that it expects to keep losing money for many months ahead: expenses are expected to “increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in AR/VR and our investments to further scale our ecosystem”. I appreciate the commitment, but I’m wondering if it is spending its money wisely: it is spending much more than all the other companies for XR, but currently, we are not seeing an equivalent huge output (see the disasters of Quest Pro and Meta Horizon Worlds). If John Carmack complained about the efficiency of Meta, I think he had good reasons.
More info (Meta Reality Labs quarterly financial data — Road To VR)
More info (Meta Reality Labs quarterly financial data — Upload VR)
Meta is desperately pushing Horizon Worlds
Horizon Worlds is keeping not reaching the results that Meta wanted, so it is news of this week that Meta is trying to revamp again the platform, trying to bring better results.
It seems that now there is an internal studio tasked to create content for Horizon, and lately it has been asked to create more game-like content, hoping that this may interest more the Horizon cybernauts. The studio’s first VR game, a shooter called Super Rumble, debuted Friday and reportedly contains better graphics and fidelity than other VR games built on top of Horizon Worlds. Horizon is increasing its graphical fidelity and it is preparing to launch on mobile, to increase also its target audience.
This week has also been announced that there will now be “quests” on Horizon: little actions like “try a new avatar” that are rewarded with small virtual gifts to the users. This gamification mechanic seems pretty lame to me: people need entertaining quests, not boring stuff just done to show them the new features of the platform.
I think Horizon is entering a critical phase: if even the new graphics and the new markets won’t manage to make it take off, probably it should be considered a failed project.
More info (Meta revamping Horizon Worlds)
More info (Quests on Horizon Worlds)
Somnium Space announces the 3.0 version and strategic investment in Sansar
Somnium Space dropped two very interesting pieces of news this week.
First of all, the Web3 VR platform has announced version 3.0 which is releasing this autumn with a massive update in which basically everything will be improved. 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. Finally, the company is also working to deploy its controversial “Live Forever Mode”, which will make the platform learn your behavior and create a virtual character that will behave like you after your death.
But that’s even more: Somnium has performed a strategic investment into Sansar. Sansar will so become a sister platform for Somnium Space, and in the upcoming months, it will implement all features present in Somnium. There will be events that will be held in both platforms together, and there will be portals to move from one platform to the other one. As soon as this interoperability layer will be finalized, Somnium will invite also other platforms to become compatible with them using the same protocol, thanks to which it will be possible to create that interoperability that is the foundation of thatwordthatstartswithM. This is definitely a good idea.
It’s interesting to underline how Somnium is building a whole VR ecosystem around it: It already invested in Lynx and VRgineers, two companies making VR headsets; in Hypervision, which makes wide-FOV lenses; and now in Sansar, who is another social VR platform. It is also going to launch its headset, soon. It has basically created a whole ecosystem of its own through strategic investments: I’m very curious to see what is the final goal of this strategy. For sure we have all to keep an eye on this company.
More info (Somnium Space 3.0 announced)
More info (Somnium Space invests in Sansar)
News worth a mention
Realwear saved 63 days of productivity by implementing… Realwear
Realwear has decided to give a test of its own Realwear glasses in the production line of the Realwear glasses themselves. (This is a story that XBit would love, I can hear the “Yo dawg” jokes from here) The result? 63 days of spared productivity and $67,500 spared in travel costs in one year.
This is a big win for the smartglasses company: with this operation, Realwear has spared money, optimized its production lines, and proved a good use case for its glasses. This seems like a great win to me.
Magnopus opensourced its Connected Spaces platform
VR company Magnopus has just opensourced its social VR platform called Connected Spaces. The code, released on Github, can be used by other companies for the creation of their own social VR platforms that can run on multiple devices and be compatible with Magnopus. This is a great thing that can speed up the development of multiplayer VR platforms for companies that can’t afford a full team that develops it from scratch. Great job, Magnopus!
Samsung may be working on a smart ring
There are new rumors in town about Samsung working on a smart ring that should be called Galaxy Ring. The ring should have a double purpose: on one end, it should act as a health sensor, able to track heart data like a smartwatch; on the other end, it should act as a controller to be used in conjunction with XR glasses.
Sony Mocopi seems to be good for full-body VR
Thrillseeker, the superstar VR Youtuber, is experimenting with Mocopi, the lightweight full-body VR kit by Sony. It seems that his first tests were so-so, but after a new firmware beta update, the system became quite accurate, and apart from some latency problems, it was able to track his body very well. Mocopi could be a good alternative to Vive Trackers for standalone VR users that want to have fun in VRChat.
Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon release open map dataset
A group called the Overture Maps Foundation, which includes Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and TomTom, has released its first open map dataset, including 59 million “points of interest,” such as restaurants and landmarks. With this dataset, third-party developers can build mapping or navigation products of their own. The purpose of the group is of course the one of fighting the duopoly of Apple Maps/Google Maps. I wonder if this data could be useful also for building the AR Cloud.
Some news about content
- Half-Life: Alyx is available at a record-low price of $20.39, 66% off its regular price of $59.99
- Shooter game Crossfire: Sierra Squad is being released on PSVR 2 on August 29
- AmazeVR has launched its new concert featuring emerging artist Upsahl
More info (Half-Life: Alyx)
More info (Crossfire: Sierra Squad)
More info (Upsahl on AmazeVR)
Some reviews about content
- Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission VR has been reviewed by Upload, which gave it an AVOID mark. It seems that the game is good only to trigger some nostalgic memories and nothing more
Other news
Road To VR tried the Virtuix Omni One VR treadmill and appreciated it as a product
Meta has released tools developers can use to verify that the VR app they have built has not been cracked or pirated
Netflix is currently not interested in releasing an app for Vision Pro
Barbie costumes are now available in Rec Room
Photogrammetry and virtual reality are used to preserve the European underwater heritage
The 8th Wall is now able to implement hand tracking in WebXR
One of the employees of the OG Meta has commented the release of the Vision Pro
Arknovv A1 AR glasses have been announced in China
Some rumors talk about a potential Half-Life announcement at Gamescom (maybe Alyx for PSVR 2?)
News from partners (and friends)
Why WebXR?
Matt Cool explains why developers should be interested in the WebXR technology.
Learn more
Invest in MetaVRse
My friend Alan Smithson is raising funds for his enterprise VR engine MetaVRse. If you may be interested, have a look at the links here below.
Learn more (Video Pitch)
Learn more (Company Deck)
Some XR fun
Who doesn’t love punching children?
Funny link
Zuck Zuck, what are you looking at, Zuck?
Funny link
Donate for good
Like last week, also this week in this final paragraph I won’t ask you to donate for my blog, but to the poor people that are facing the consequences of the war. Please donate to the Red Cross to handle the current humanitarian situation in Ukraine. I will leave you the link to do that below.
Let me take a moment before to thank anyway all my Patreon donors for the support they give to me:
- Alex Gonzalez VR
- DeoVR
- GenVR
- Eduardo Siman
- Jonn Fredericks
- Jean-Marc Duyckaerts
- Reynaldo T Zabala
- Richard Penny
- Terry xR. Schussler
- Ilias Kapouranis
- Paolo Leoncini
- Immersive.international
- Nikk Mitchell and the great FXG team
- Jake Rubin
- Alexis Huille
- Raghu Bathina
- Chris Koomen
- Cognitive3D
- Wisear (Yacine Achiakh)
- Jennifer Granger
- Jason Moore
- Steve Biggs
- Julio Cesar Bolivar
- Jan Schroeder
- Kai Curtis
- Francesco Strada
- Sikaar Keita
- Ramin Assadollahi
- Juan Sotelo
- Andrew Sheldon
- Chris Madsen
- Horacio Torrendell
- Andrew Deutsch
- Fabien Benetou
- Tatiana Kartashova
- Marco “BeyondTheCastle” Arena
- Eloi Gerard
- Adam Boyd
- Jeremy Dalton
- Joel Ward
- Alex P
- Lynn Eades
- Donald P
- Casie Lane
- Catherine Henry
- Qcreator
- Ristband (Anne McKinnon & Roman Rappak)
- Stephen Robnett
- KaihatsuJai
- Sb
- Enrico Poli
- Vooiage Technologies
- Caroline
- Liam James O’Malley
- Hillary Charnas
- Wil Stevens
- Brian Peiris
- Francesco Salizzoni
- Dimo Pepelyashev
- Alan Smithson
- Steve R
- Brentwahn
- Pieter Siekerman
- Matt Cool
- Simplex
- Gregory F Gorsuch
- Matias Nassi
And now here you are the link to donate:
Support The Red Cross in Ukraine
Disclaimer: this blog contains advertisement and affiliate links to sustain itself. If you click on an affiliate link, I'll be very happy because I'll earn a small commission on your purchase. You can find my boring full disclosure here.
