Road to VR

JUNE 18, 2024

Did you know you can technically play SteamVR games like Half-Life: Alyx (2020) on Vision Pro? Well, now you do, as the leading app dedicated to bringing SteamVR connectivity to a ton of standalone headsets is now available for Vision Pro on the App Store. Previously offered as an invite-only beta, ALVR is now free on the App Store , allowing Vision Pro users to stream OpenVR games from your PC via Wi-Fi.

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XR Today - Virtual Reality

JUNE 21, 2024

Are virtual reality headsets bad for your eyes? As VR devices continue to gain popularity in both the consumer and business landscapes, many potential users are asking this question. After all, for years, we’ve been told that “too much screen time” can cause eye fatigue, headaches, and more. Our parents even warned us that sitting too close to a television screen when we were young could cause all kinds of damage.

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Charlie Fink

MAY 30, 2024

Primetime Emmy winning ex-Pixar and Oculus team, Fable, launched the first web streaming series made exclisvely with AI.

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Upload VR

JULY 22, 2024

Dynamic occlusion on Quest 3 is currently only supported in a handful of apps, but now it's higher quality, uses less CPU and GPU, and is slightly easier for developers to implement. Occlusion refers to the ability of virtual objects to appear behind real objects, a crucial capability for mixed reality headsets. Doing this for only pre-scanned scenery is known as static occlusion, while if the system supports changing scenery and moving objects it's known as dynamic occlusion.

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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.

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Anand Tech

JULY 15, 2024

Back at Computex 2024, AMD unveiled their highly anticipated Zen 5 CPU microarchitecture during AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su's opening keynote. AMD announced not one but two new client platforms that will utilize the latest Zen 5 cores. This includes AMD's latest AI PC-focused chip family for the laptop market, the Ryzen AI 300 series. In comparison, the Ryzen 9000 series caters to the desktop market, which uses the preexisting AM5 platform.

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XR Today - Mixed Reality tag

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

Today at MWC 2024, Samsung unveiled an upcoming XR headset the firm created alongside partners Google and Qualcomm, with a scheduled release window coming in 2025. At the event, Samsung unveiled several innovative tech products, including the immersive device, a smart ring, and an assistive mobility robotics device. The device is currently early in its lifespan.

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XR Today - Augmented Reality tag

JANUARY 16, 2024

This week, AR headset vendor Magic Leap secured roughly $590 million via Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, following the region becoming the firm’s majority owner in 2022. The Saudi Arabia funding has launched Magic Leap’s valuation to more than $4.5 billion, providing the firm with a solid foundation to continue its journey of delivering enterprise-grade XR solutions.

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Voices of VR

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Bert Nepveu is a co-founder of VRvana, which made a enterprise mixed reality headset that was acquired by Apple in 2017 and provided a number of key innovations that have now shipped with the Apple Vision Pro. I had a chance to sit down with Nepveu to capture a comprehensive founder’s journey from the beginning […] Bert Nepveu is a co-founder of VRvana, which made a enterprise mixed reality headset that was acquired by Apple in 2017 and provided a number of key innovations that have

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 18, 2024

In my article about the craziest XR devices out there , I mentioned Ekto VR , the shoes that let you walk in real life to walk in virtual reality. After that article, Brad Factor, the CEO of EktoVR, contacted me to tell me that there have been a lot of updates in the device since the last time I tried them. I got very curious, so I proposed to him to have an interview so he could explain to me his product, his vision, and his company in general.

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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.

Virtual Reality

NVidia VR

MARCH 18, 2024

NVIDIA is bringing OpenUSD-based Omniverse enterprise digital twins to the Apple Vision Pro. Announced today at NVIDIA GTC, a new software framework built on Omniverse Cloud APIs , or application programming interfaces, lets developers easily send their Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) industrial scenes from their content creation applications to the NVIDIA Graphics Delivery Network (GDN) , a global network of graphics-ready data centers that can stream advanced 3D experiences to Apple Visi

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Road to VR

MAY 30, 2024

Google and Magic Leap today announced a “strategic technology partnership.” The move shows Google seeking to gain ground to keep up with the likes of Meta, Apple, and others in a race to control the AR headset market. While consume VR headsets have been around for years now, none of the world’s major technology companies have launched consumer-focused AR glasses.

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Road to VR

JUNE 26, 2024

There are a few great ways to market VR games, but there’s arguably none better than by showing real people immersed in virtual environments thanks to mixed reality capture. While Meta has its own Mixed Reality Capture tool (MRC) , the company is taking a step back from development by adopting third-party app LIV as its official solution. LIV describes the deal as a “multi-year partnership with Meta to bring LIV’s mixed reality capture & virtual camera solutions to developers p

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Road to VR

MAY 29, 2024

Sony said earlier this year it was bringing PC VR support to PSVR 2 , and while we still don’t know when that’s set to arrive, it appears the company is nearing the final steps thanks to a certification with the competent certifying authority in South Korea. As reported by tech analyst and YouTuber Brad ‘SadlyItsBradley’ Lynch, Sony has certified the ‘PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter’ with South Korea’s National Radio Research Agency, which is tasked with cer

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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.

Simulation

Road to VR

APRIL 22, 2024

Today Meta made what is likely to be an industry-altering announcement: it plans to open up the Quest operating system to third-party device makers. Asus, Lenovo, and Xbox have been tapped to create new headsets built on the operating system which is being branded ‘Meta Horizon OS’ Meta has just made its biggest strategic move in the XR space since betting the farm on standalone headsets over PC VR.

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Road to VR

MARCH 21, 2024

Sony announced last month it was bringing PC VR support to PSVR 2 sometime this year, although the company didn’t specify how or exactly when this would happen. While we’re no closer to knowing when , all signs now point to a direct wired connection—holding a few implications for Sony’s VR strategy. According to the latest PS5 firmware update , PSVR 2 now works without needing Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) and DisplayPort Compression (DSC), two things which were b

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Road to VR

JUNE 12, 2024

We’ve know that Apple planned to support WebXR for quite some time, but with VisionOS 2, the company is enabling the feature for all users. WebXR allows developers to deliver cross-platform XR experiences directly from the web, with no gatekeepers to approve or reject content. WebXR is the widely supported web standard that allows developers to deliver AR and VR content from the web.

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Road to VR

APRIL 2, 2024

Apple today released ‘Spatial Personas’ in public beta on Vision Pro. The newly upgraded avatar system can now bring people right into your room. We got an early look. Much has been said about Apple’s Persona avatar system for Vision Pro. Whether you find them uncanney or passable, one thing is certain: it’s the most photorealistic real-time avatar system built into any headset available today.

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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.

How To

Road to VR

MARCH 20, 2024

Apple is adding support for Vision Pro’s unique input system to WebXR, the web standard which allows XR experiences to run right from a web browser. One of the most unique things about Apple Vision Pro is its input system which eschews motion controllers in favor of a ‘look and pinch’ system which combines eye-tracking with a pinch gesture.

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Road to VR

JANUARY 23, 2024

Judging by sales volume on Amazon, Quest 2 & Quest 3 massively outsold PSVR 2 during the 2023 holiday season. Tracking Quest 2, Quest 3, and PSVR 2 sales volume on Amazon US gives strong evidence that Quest headsets did quite well this holiday season, while PSVR 2 saw concerningly low sales. Looking at the numbers over the course of the holiday season shows that for every 1 unit of PSVR 2 sold, Quest sold more than 30 units.

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Road to VR

JULY 2, 2024

There’s at least six really good reasons why getting Half-Life: Alyx onto PSVR 2 is a good idea, and it would be a net positive for everyone involved. So what do we gotta do to make it happen? Despite launching in 2020, Half-Life: Alyx continues to be one of VR’s absolute best games. It’s production value and incredible attention to detail have allowed it to hold up extremely well, even four years later.

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Road to VR

JANUARY 8, 2024

The Wi-Fi Alliance announced today that Wi-Fi 7 Certified products are ready to hit the market. The latest version of the Wi-Fi standard promises the possibility of “near-zero” latency for real-time applications like wireless VR streaming. The Wi-Fi Alliance (the organization that maintains and develops the Wi-Fi standard) announced today that applicable products can officially be “Wi-Fi 7 Certified” and be sold as such.

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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?

Technology

Road to VR

JANUARY 25, 2024

A project from researchers at Reality Labs, Meta’s XR division, shows a method for interacting with the real-world through augmented reality. I’m about as seasoned as they get when it comes to the XR space. I see research papers all the time that are interesting but ultimately one more step along a predictable path. It’s rare that I come upon something that I’d never even conceptually considered.

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Road to VR

JANUARY 8, 2024

Today at CES Sony revealed a new standalone MR headset equipped with “4K” OLED displays. The headset is yet-unnamed, but the company says it’s aimed at creatives building 3D content and will launch this year. Sony’s unnamed standalone MR headset is based on Qualcomm’s XR2+ Gen 2 processor and is said to include 1.3-inch “4K” OLED microdisplays.

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Road to VR

JUNE 17, 2024

Logitech today unveiled an XR stylus that comes as Meta Quest’s first third-party motion peripheral, targeting creatives working in both 2D and 3D media. Called Logitech MX Ink, the spatially-tracked stylus supports Quest 2 and Quest 3, as well as “future headsets,” Logitech says. The company additionally confirmed it won’t support Quest Pro.

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Road to VR

APRIL 22, 2024

Meta today announced it’s opening its operating system to third-parties , and has named three heavy weights that have pledged support for its newly renamed Meta Horizon OS: Asus, Lenovo, and Microsoft’s Xbox. In a blog post , Meta says it’s tapped ASUS’s Republic of Gamers to develop an “all-new performance gaming headset,” Lenovo to “develop mixed reality devices for productivity, learning, and entertainment,” and Xbox to create its own limited-edition

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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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