News – Page 15

Meta Introduces ‘Super Resolution’ Feature for Improved Quest Visuals

Meta, News, quest, super resolution, VR development / Rejus Almole / July 11, 2023

Meta today introduced a new developer feature called Super Resolution that’s designed to improve the look of VR apps and games on Quest. The company says the new feature offers better quality upscaling at similar costs as previous techniques.

Meta today announced the new Super Resolution feature for developers on the company’s XR developer blog. Available for apps built on the Quest V55 update and later, Super Resolution is a new upscaling method for applications that aren’t already rendering at the screen’s display resolution (as many do in order to meet performance requirements).

“Super Resolution is a VR-optimized edge-aware scaling and sharpening algorithm built upon Snapdragon Game Super Resolution with Meta Quest-specific performance optimizations developed in collaboration with the Qualcomm Graphics Team,” the company says.

Meta further explains that, by default, apps are scaled up to the headset’s display resolution with bilinear scaling, which is fast but often introduces blurring in the process. Super Resolution is presented as an alternative that can produce better upscaling results with low performance costs.

“Super Resolution is a single-pass spatial upscaling and sharpening technique optimized to run on Meta Quest devices. It uses edge- and contrast-aware filtering to preserve and enhance details in the foveal region while minimizing halos and artifacts.”

Upscaling using bilinear (left), Normal Sharpening (center), and Super Resolution (right). The new technique prevents blur without introducing as much aliasing. | Image courtesy Meta

Unlike the recent improvements to CPU and GPU power on Quest headsets, Super Resolution isn’t an automatic benefit to all applications; developers will need to opt-in to the feature, and even then, Meta warns that benefits from the feature will need to be assessed on an app-by-app basis.

“The exact GPU cost of Super Resolution is content-dependent, as Super Resolution devotes more computation to regions of the image with fine detail. The cost of enabling Super Resolution over the default bilinear filtering is lower for content containing primarily regions of solid colors or smooth gradients when compared to content with highly detailed images or objects,” the company explains.

Developers can implement Super Resolution into Quest apps on V55+ immediately, and those using Quest Link (AKA Oculus Link) for PC VR content can also enable the sharpening feature by using the Oculus Debug Tool and setting the Link Sharpening option to Quality.

Meta Introduces ‘Super Resolution’ Feature for Improved Quest Visuals Read More »

SteamVR Now Supports Automatic Controller Binding, Making Weird VR Controllers a Little Less Weird

News, steam, SteamVR, steamvr controller, steamvr controller binding, SteamVR Controllers, valve / Rejus Almole / July 8, 2023

Valve released its 1.26 update to SteamVR, which ought to make it easier to play any VR game using any type of motion controller thanks to automatic controller binding.

The company initially released a Compatibility Mode in its 1.24 update back in August 2022 which let games initially targeted towards specific controller types essentially be accessible to all controllers.

In the new SteamVR 1.26 update, Valve is going one step further with the new automatic binding feature, which automatically generates a new button binding profile, configures it based on a more common controller (like Index or Touch), and sets it to simulate that controller type. The idea is you won’t need to faff about in menus if something like your Windows Mixed Reality controller isn’t officially supported.

That’s the immediate stopgap for players at least, although if a developer decides to create a native binding for any specific controller down the road, SteamVR will automatically switch to that as soon as its available. Notably, this puts the onus on Valve to continuously update its compatibility layer to include new controller types down the road.

“While native support and explicit bindings will always give the greatest control, having this compatibility layer will smooth releases and lighten the load on game developers and controller manufacturers alike,” the company says in the update log. “Controller driver developers can get more information on creating a rebinding file at this documentation page.”

You can see the full update notes on Steam.

SteamVR Now Supports Automatic Controller Binding, Making Weird VR Controllers a Little Less Weird Read More »

Meta Reportedly in Talks With Tencent to Bring Quest to China

china, Meta, meta in china, Meta Quest 3, News, quest 3, tencent, tencent vr, VR in China / Rejus Almole / July 8, 2023

Facebook and Twitter have been blocked in China since 2009, but Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is hoping to get back in that country with Quest, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the report maintains that Meta has held discussions with several Chinese tech companies, making the most progress with massive entertainment conglomerate Tencent.

The Meta-Tencent talks reportedly came to a head late last year, with Tencent Chairman Pony Ma deciding to proceed with the negotiation first and “see what deals they could reach,” WSJ reports.

Undoubtedly the most complicated bit of the talks would revolve around VR content distribution, and how it’s moderated for Chinese markets. It’s said a portion of Meta’s global offerings could be on offer alongside Tencent’s own apps and services.

In 2009, Facebook and Twitter were banned in China after breaching Beijing’s notoriously strict censorship laws; the ban is thought to have been a direct effort to quel the July 2009 Ürümqi riots that took place in the country’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

More recently, Chinese executives were allegedly worried that Zuckerberg isn’t seen as “friendly to China” due to lingering tentions over prior accusations of technology theft by companies such as ByteDance, maker of TikTok.

A Meta spokesman declined to comment on WSJ’s report. Tencent didn’t respond to a request for comment.

This isn’t the first time Meta VR hardware has made a splash on the Chinese mainland. In 2018, Meta (then Facebook) penned a deal with Xiaomi to release a Chinese variant of Oculus Go, sold by Xiaomi as the ‘Mi VR Standalone’. At the time, this was something of a quid pro quo, as Xiaomi was tasked with manufacturing Oculus Go, giving it exclusive rights to the mainland Chinese market as a result.

No such manufacturing deal is in place with Meta Quest 3, which is coming this Fall for $500. In the end, Meta’s current strategy seems less about getting its subsidized hardware into the country, and more about driving a wedge into the Great Chinese Firewall so it can once again tap into the world’s fastest-growing economy.

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HTC Quietly Retires Vive Cosmos in the US

htc vive cosmos, htc vive cosmos elite, News, vive cosmos, vive cosmos elite, VR Headset / Mike M. / July 8, 2023

After being out of stock for months, HTC quietly removed the US-facing product page for Vive Cosmos, its modular PC VR headset released in 2019.

The discrepancy was first discovered by Reddit user ‘Kody1996’, who wondered why the Vive Cosmos product page was missing.

“I am afraid the VIVE Cosmos headset has been discontinued in the US. I suggest you to check with resellers if they have it available,” an HTC service representative confirmed with Road to VR, echoing the statement provided to Kody1996.

At the time of this writing, new units are still available direct from HTC in select markets, including Europe, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan.

Vive Cosmos has always been a bit of an odd duck. Launching a little over a year after Vive Pro hit the market, Cosmos was set to be the company’s first consumer VR headset since the original HTC Vive. Cosmos’ claim to fame in 2019: integrated audio, competitive displays, and an inside-out optical tracking, which was… not great.

At its 2019 launch, the $700 Cosmos was sandwiched between two primary competitors: Oculus Rift S on the low-end at $400 and Valve Index on the high-end at $1,000 (controllers and base stations included). It would have to perform better than Rift S to defend its seat in the middle ground, but it was actually so bad at launch we postponed our review because we thought we had received a faulty unit. Nope. The headset’s inside-out tracking was just really unreliable in everything but perfect lighting conditions.

Those tracking woes were partially improved with successive updates, although the only real way to get ‘perfect’ tracking out of the headset was to ditch its modular faceplate and middling controllers and swap it out for the platform’s rock-solid SteamVR-tracking faceplate, courtesy of Vive Cosmos Elite. When Cosmos Elite launched in 2020, that would have set you back $900 for the all-in kit, putting it $100 below Index, which is still broadly considered the reigning champ for best all-around PC VR headset.

Despite lowering the price of the all-in Cosmos Elite kit in the US from $900 to $750, and even offering a headset-only option for as little as $550, HTC’s modular headset never really managed to serve up competition to Oculus or Valve, making only a sliver of an in-road on Steam in its first year.

HTC Quietly Retires Vive Cosmos in the US Read More »

Report: Samsung Delays XR Headset Due to Stiff Competition from Apple Vision Pro

apple vision pro, News, samsung, samsung mixed reality, samsung mr, samsung xr / Rejus Almole / July 6, 2023

Samsung’s upcoming XR headset, which is meant to compete with Apple Vision Pro, has been delayed by “one to two quarters” from its reported early 2024 release target, according to an SBS Biz (Korean) report.

Samsung announced in February it was developing an XR headset in partnership with Qualcomm and Google, the former supplying the device’s chipset and the latter the headset’s operating system.

The report maintains that Samsung Electronics recently notified its display manufacturing partners Samsung Display and China’s BOE that it’s postponing the release of “existing XR devices.”

Samsung was reportedly hoping to ready samples of the headset by year’s end, aiming to mass produce the device starting early next year. That’s apparently been delayed by about “one to two quarters,” or three to six months.

Quest 3 (left) and Apple Vision Pro (right) | Based on images courtesy Meta, Apple

SBS Biz cites an official familiar with Samsung’s internal affairs, maintaining the decision to delay was made in direct response to Apple Vision Pro, which was unveiled early last month during Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference.

“We decided to review all internal specifications and performance, such as the design and display of the new XR product,” the official told SBS Biz.

Provided the report holds true, it will be interesting to see Samsung shoot for the high-end, which is where Apple’s $3,500 mixed reality headset is undoubtedly headed when it launches sometime early next year. While it wasn’t clear when Samsung announced the headset earlier this year, it makes more sense the Korean tech giant would rather compete somewhere in the premium XR headset market with Apple than compete with Meta’s upcoming Quest 3 mixed reality headset, slated to launch in Fall 2023 for $500.

Report: Samsung Delays XR Headset Due to Stiff Competition from Apple Vision Pro Read More »

This Quest Pro Game Recreates Sword Art Online’s Lovably Bad User Interface

Mixed Reality, News, sao, subspace hunter, sword art online, sword art online vr, VR Game / Rejus Almole / July 6, 2023

Looking to immerse yourself into Sword Art Online (SAO)? While there are plenty of VR games that offer the sort of massive multiplayer immersion fans of the manga and anime series have craved over the years, a game built for Quest Pro and Quest 2 has recreated probably the best/worst part of the series: its lovably bad user interface (UI).

Called Subspace Hunter, the SideQuest-only game is essentially in very early access at this point. The demo lets you spawn a certain number of swords, magic, guns, and thirteen monsters, developer XuKing Studio explains on the game’s SideQuest page.

The cheap and cheerful demo (it’s free) is unabashedly inspired by SAO through and through, even including a one-handed sword very similar to protagonist Kirito’s Dark Repulser blade. YouTuber ‘GingasVR’ shows off the demo in action:

While the low poly baddies aren’t anything to write home about, it’s the loyal adherence to Sword Art Online’s lovably obtuse UI that brings it all together, making it feel strangely more immersive than it might without it—and that’s despite the likelihood no professional XR developer in their right minds would design such a system for real-time battle.

In case you didn’t catch the video above, to select a weapon you don’t just pull out a virtual backpack, or reach over your shoulder like in many other VR games. Instead, you need to bring up the menu with a sweeping two-finger swiping gesture, select through three different 2D submenus, and then physically confirm your selection. Although that’s no more complicated than ordering through a fastfood kiosk, it’s not really the best system for immersive, real-time action games. Thankfully, you can control when monsters spawn, otherwise you probably wouldn’t have enough time to muck about.

That’s probably why we don’t see these sorts of dense 2D menus in modern VR games. But then again, it was never designed for any sort of game in the first place, since the anime aired in 2012 well before the Oculus Rift DK1 even arrived on Kickstarter backers’ doorsteps. By now though, the industry has mostly figured that 2D menus generally feel pretty bad to use in VR, making SAO’s fictional UI feel distinctly like a holdover from the gaming days of yore (think turn-based RPGs).

As it is, fiction typically does a pretty poor job across the board of predicting how UI actually evolves. Film and TV oftentimes prioritize large, overly complex movements and cluttered UI elements that just don’t really translate to real life. Tom Cruise’s cybergloves in Minority Report (2002) are a shining example.

You don’t see platform holders or individual games copying Minority Report not because it doesn’t look cool, but because it introduces unnecessary friction. It’s both tiring in the long term and unintuitive to new users in the short term—two things developers really have to pay attention to if they want players returning to their game or app. It’s basically the same thing for SAO, albeit on a smaller scale.

To be clear, this isn’t a dump on Subspace Hunter. The melee-focused MR demo offers SAO fans a very nice slice of immersion which is baked into a suitably pint-sized package. Critically, Subspace Hunter isn’t overreaching with promises of a VRMMOPRG the scale and depth of SAO either, which is probably where such a system might wear out its welcome. Whatever the case, there’s something stupidly charming about those sweeping hand motions, and the fitful hunt-and-pecking of 2D menus.

It seems like the studio has some very real ambitions to develop Subspace Hunter further, and you’re not going to have threaten me with the risk of explosive brain death to play either. I’ll just play.

This Quest Pro Game Recreates Sword Art Online’s Lovably Bad User Interface Read More »

Niantic and 8th Wall Explore New Monetization Strategies

8th wall, advertising, augmented reality, featured, News, niantic, webAR / Rejus Almole / July 5, 2023

Historically, Niantic has made much of its money through in-app purchases on its free-to-play games like Pokémon Go. However, recent announcements from the company suggest that it’s exploring new monetization strategies, including through web-based experiences powered by 8th Wall.

Niantic Pioneers AR Ads In-App

The Cannes Lions Festival recently took place in the South of France (and in Virbela, if you got a golden ticket from PwC). Niantic took the opportunity to announce a new ad format coming to its AR games.

“Rewarded AR ads is a revolutionary new ad product from Niantic, which uses the smartphone camera to immerse players within branded content in the real world around them,” said a release shared with ARPost. “Players engage with interactive experiences within these ad units while they move around in the real world to unlock rewards within the game.”

This might sound like it disrupts the game, or poses an undue bother to players. However, this might not be the case. If done thoughtfully, this ad format could be a way to introduce players to branded immersive content that they might be otherwise interested in anyway.

Niantic Rewarded AR ads

“Ad” might have a bad taste to it – like a commercial that interrupts the video you’re watching. But tastefully executed branded immersive experiences often feel less like ads and more like opportunities for consumers to participate in brands that they care about. Companies like Coca-Cola create branded immersive experiences that are actively sought after by fans.

“AR offers an exciting new way to engage people powered by fresh innovation in spatial computing,” Niantic VP of Sales and Global Operations, Erin Schaefer, said in the release. “Audiences can engage with Rewarded AR ads to have immersive and enjoyable brand experiences, discover new products, or engage with interactive features.”

What about immersion? AR is built on the user’s physical surroundings. Artistically done location-based advertising might play into the blending of real and imagined worlds, rather than interrupt it. So far, there have only been limited pilot programs so we have yet to see for ourselves.

Get Out Your Virtual Wallet

Tested ads in AR apps directed players towards a physical point-of-sale from within their game – and lured players with the promise of in-game rewards. But WebAR is where most branded immersive experiences currently take place and Niantic has a big stake in that world since purchasing 8th Wall last year.

In addition to being a larger established ad market, WebAR is less limited to actions and interactions within a given application. It’s easier to do things like conduct e-commerce through the web than through an app, and rewards for customers aren’t confined to a given application.

That’s increasingly true given the advent of Web3 – an era of the internet in which users access online experiences not through individual profiles and accounts, but through one “wallet” that maintains a digital identity across experiences. SmartMedia Technologies, a “Web3 engagement and loyalty platform,” announced such a wallet integrated into 8th Wall.

“By combining our expertise in Web3-enabled mobile wallets with Niantic’s AR technology, we aim to create innovative experiences that enhance user engagement and drive brand loyalty,” SmartMedia Technologies CEO, Tyler Moebius, said in a release shared with ARPost.

As with AR ads, branded experiences through WebAR linked with a user’s wallet have proved a promising proposition to users who might already seek out branded experiences. These experiences now have the potential to exist in other areas of the users’ online life.

“This opens up a new frontier of creativity for brands and the opportunity to redefine how they engage with their target audiences,” Niantic Director of Product Management, Tom Emrich, said in the release. “Our collaboration with SmartMedia Technologies adds a new dimension to WebAR experiences for brands by giving consumers ways to build and activate their digital collections.”

A World of Augmented Ads?

The film Ready Player One gave us an instant classic scene as executives try to decide exactly how much of a player’s field of view can safely be taken up by advertising. It doesn’t have to be that way, as AR ads can blend into the virtual world just as they so often blend into the physical world. Niantic isn’t a bad group to be leading the charge.

Niantic and 8th Wall Explore New Monetization Strategies Read More »

China’s Largest Telecom Forms Metaverse Industry Alliance, Including Xiaomi, Huawei, HTC & Unity

china mobile, china mobile metaverse alliance, htc vive, Huawei, metaverse alliance, News, unity, VR in China, Xiaomi / Rejus Almole / July 5, 2023

China Mobile, that country’s largest wireless carier with over 940 million subscribers, has formed a metaverse industry alliance including some of the biggest names in China-based tech.

As reported by Shanghai Securities News (Chinese), China Mobile announced during Mobile World Congress Shanghai what it calls the ‘China Mobile Metaverse Industry Alliance’, something the company says will be “the world’s strongest metaverse circle of friends.”

At MWC Shanghai, state-owned China Mobile announced the first batch of 24 members of the alliance, including Huawei, Xiaomi, HTC Vive, Unity China, NOLO, XREAL (formerly Nreal), AI company iFlytek, video streaming platform MGTV, and cloud streaming platform Haima Cloud.

Main objectives include improving the state of metaverse development in China, sharing resources to deepen cooperation between the companies, and developing a “win-win concept” to share the new dividends of the digital economy. China Mobile additionally announced a member alliance fund that will support outstanding metaverse projects as well as R&D for both hardware and XR content creation.

At the MWC Shanghai press conference, Zhao Dachun, deputy general manager of China Mobile, said that the metaverse represents a new opportunity for trillions of yuan (hundreds of billions of USD) and “an important carrier to accelerate the construction of digital China and realize the digital economy.”

China Mobile isn’t new to the space. In 2018, China Mobile partnered with HTC to “accelerate the proliferation of 5G infrastructure and devices in China” and provide HTC with greater push to get its VR devices into more retail channels.

In 2021, the company launched its own XR interoperability standard called GSXR (General Standard for XR), which included support from many of the companies listed above in addition to Pico, Rokid, Oppo, Baidu, Tencent, China Telecom, and Skyworth.

Migu, China Mobile’s streaming content subsidiary, has also recently built a new ‘Metaverse Headquarters’ in Xiamen, China. There, the company says it will leverage 5G and XR technologies to help build Xiamen into “high-quality, high-value, modern and international” city with digital intelligence, China Daily reports.

China’s Largest Telecom Forms Metaverse Industry Alliance, Including Xiaomi, Huawei, HTC & Unity Read More »

Meta’s Twisted Pixel Studio is Building an Unannounced VR Title with Unreal Engine

News, oculus studios, twisted pixel, VR Gaming / Rejus Almole / July 5, 2023

Following the studio’s acquisition by Meta late last year, we haven’t heard much about Twisted Pixel, a veteran VR game studio which made several exclusive titles for Meta. Now we’ve learned of the first details of the studio’s next project.

Following the launch of several non-VR games, Twisted Pixel Games in recent years has become largely focused on VR. The studio has built several VR games, exclusively published by Oculus Studios, for the Rift, Go, and Quest headsets. The most recent being Path of the Warrior (2019) for Quest and Rift.

After working closely with Twisted Pixel under Oculus Studios, it was announced late last year that Meta had acquired the studio, along with several others.

Considering that we haven’t seen any new release or even game announcement from Twisted Pixel since late 2019, it wasn’t clear if the studio had remained properly intact, or if it had been absorbed into the Meta mothership and scattered to the wind.

But now we have our first glimpse of an answer. According to job postings published this year, the studio has been seeking to fill various roles to work on an “unannounced VR game using the Unreal Engine.”

Considering Meta’s priorities at this moment, it’s almost certain the game will be built for standalone Quest headsets only.

The mention of Unreal Engine (specifically UE4, as noted in some listings) is certainly interesting. There’s a very small handful of Quest games that have been built with Unreal Engine. The other, more popular choice by far, is Unity, which is largely thought to scale better to the low-end hardware of the Quest headsets; not to mention it’s almost always the first to get the latest Quest developer tools from Meta.

Other job listings for Twisted Pixel mention “experience developing a multiplayer networked game” among the ‘Preferred Qualifications’ of candidates, which gives a strong indication the next game from the studio will be built with some kind of multiplayer functionality.

Considering the timing of the studio’s acquisition announcement, we’d guess that Twisted Pixel is actively building a VR game that’s primarily targeting to launch with Quest 3, or shortly thereafter (though will probably be backwards compatible with Quest 2 as well). With Quest 3 rapidly approaching, we should learn more about the studio’s upcoming game in due time.

Meta’s Twisted Pixel Studio is Building an Unannounced VR Title with Unreal Engine Read More »

Apple Reportedly Has No Plans to Make or Support VR Controllers for Vision Pro

Apple, Apple AR, apple mr, apple vision pro, Apple VR, AR News, avp, News, vision pro / Mike M. / July 4, 2023

If a recent Bloomberg report from Mark Gurman holds true, not only is Apple not planning to release a motion controller for Vision Pro in the future, but it may not even support third-party VR controllers at all.

When the Cupertino tech giant unveiled Vision Pro last month, it didn’t emphasize the headset’s ability to potentially support VR games, which have typically been designed around motion controllers like Meta Touch or Valve’s Index controller for SteamVR headsets.

Among Vision Pro’s lineup of content, which features a standard suite of Apple ecosystem and standard content viewing apps, the studio only off showed a single VR app, Rec Room, the prolific social VR app that supports most major VR headsets (excluding PSVR 2 for now) in addition to consoles, desktop, and both iOS and Android mobile devices.

Mark Gurman, one of the leading journalists reporting on unreleased Apple tech, maintains that Apple is neither actively planning a dedicated controller, nor planning support for third-party VR accessories.

When the $3,500 headset launches in early 2024, this would leave Vision Pro users relying on the headset’s built-in hand and eye-tracking, which admittedly worked very well in our hands-on. It’s also using Siri-driven voice input, Bluetooth and Mac keyboard support, and PlayStation 5 and Xbox controllers for traditional flatscreen games.

For VR gaming though, hand and eye-tracking lack the haptic feedback required for many game genres, meaning what VR games do come to Vision Pro will likely require overhauls to make sure hand-tracking is fully baked in.

Provided Apple sticks with its purported internal plan to not support VR controllers, that would essentially shunt development away from VR gaming and towards the headset’s AR abilities. For Apple, that’s where the ‘real’ money presumably lies.

Denny Unger, founder and lead of pioneering VR studio Cloudhead Games, explains the move as a way to provide a strong development foundation now for Apple’s AR glasses of the future, which will be both more affordable and more capable of replacing a standard smartphone than the admittedly bulky MR headsets of today.

For more from Unger, who heads one of the most successful VR studios, check out his Road to VR guest article to learn more about Vision Pro and why Apple may be launching an AR headset in VR clothing.

Apple Reportedly Has No Plans to Make or Support VR Controllers for Vision Pro Read More »

Former Oculus CTO Reviews Bigscreen Beyond: “like a prop for a futuristic movie”

bigscreen, bigscreen beyond, carmack, john carmack, News, pc vr, pc vr headset, SteamVR, VR Headset / Paul Patrick / July 4, 2023

John Carmack, legendary programmer and former CTO of Oculus, is known for giving his unfiltered thoughts on almost every aspect of the XR industry. While he departed Meta in December, concluding his “decade in VR,” Carmack is still very interested in the medium, as he recently went hands-on with one of the latest PC VR headsets to hit the scene, the slim and light Bigscreen Beyond.

Bigscreen Beyond is a tethered PC VR headset that uses Valve’s SteamVR tracking standard, which starting at $1,000 for just the headset makes it an interesting value proposition for users already hooked into the SteamVR hardware ecosystem. It’s largely praised for its slim and light profile, which is thanks to the inclusion of pancake lenses and micro-OLEDs, serving up 2,560 × 2,560 pixels per eye at 70 to 90 Hz refresh.

You’ve probably already heard what we think of it though. Now for the master:

“Bigscreen Beyond feels like a prop for a futuristic movie, but it works!” Carmack said in a Twitter thread on Monday. “Far and away the smallest and lightest PC VR headset.”

That’s high praise coming from a key figure in the Oculus genesis story, not to mention co-founder and lead programmer of id Software, the studio behind pioneering ’90s 3D games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake.

To hear all of Carmack’s thoughts on Bigscreen Beyond, we’ve formatted his tweets below for easier reading:

Bigscreen Beyond feels like a prop for a futuristic movie, but it works! Far and away the smallest and lightest PC VR headset.

As a result of the iPhone based face scanning before ordering, the fit is perfect, with zero light leaks. The custom printed facial interface is comfortable, but not breathable, so it isn’t great for fitness activities.

The prescription lens inserts snap in with magnets and work well. The visuals are a trade off vs Quest Pro. The resolution is clearly higher, but there are more internal reflections in the pancake optics, and the quality falls off more toward the edges. There are parts of the view where screens look fantastic, good enough for actual productivity work, but not across the entire view.

I sorely miss integrated audio. Having to mess with headphones severely impacts the minimalist feel of the headset. I know some people have strong opinions, but I still feel Quest made the right decisions around audio.

The cable to the PC and the tracking base stations are the biggest downside. The magic of stand-alone VR is real, and while some people happily trade it away for the raw power and flexibility of a PC, I wouldn’t recommend any PC VR setup as an entry point to VR.

For people considering an upgrade to a PC VR system, Bigscreen Beyond should be in the mix. I am very happy to see this extreme focus on light weight, and I hope it impacts Meta’s future designs.

In a follow-up tweet, Carmack points to a review from Adam Savage’s Tested, which he says “hits most of my points in more depth.”

In it, Tested’s Norman Chan reports back after having lived with the headset for a month, using a development unit as the office’s primary PC VR headset. Chan shows through-the-lens images, and discusses “the good, the bad, and the weird with this unique approach to high-end bespoke VR,” the video’s description reads.

Check out Tested’s review below:

Former Oculus CTO Reviews Bigscreen Beyond: “like a prop for a futuristic movie” Read More »

Company Plans to Sell $40K Apple Vision Pro to People With a Desperate Need to Flaunt Their Wealth

40000 vision pro, apple vision pro, apple vision pro caviar, caviar, MR headset, News / Rejus Almole / July 4, 2023

“Luxury” accessory maker Caviar plans to sell ~~desecrated~~ customized Apple Vision Pro for the high, high price of $40,000. The ridiculous price is the whole point.

For anyone who has so much money that they don’t have anything left to do with it than tell everyone that they have it, Caviar plans to sell the Vision Pro ‘CVR Edition’, a customized $40,000 version of the headset that tacks on bulky and heavy additions with the goal of making the headset a “work of designer art.” Because clearly the $3,500 headset wasn’t expensive enough.

And yes, as far as we can tell, they’re serious—and a real company.

In addition to fancy leathers for the headstrap and facepad, the defining feature of the Vision Pro CVR edition is the 18K gold flip-up cover which is made to conceal the headset’s external EyeSight display. The display shows the user’s eyes on the outside of the headset whenever they’re looking at the real world. This is to communicate to people outside of the headset that you can see them and they can see you. So exactly why you wouldn’t want people seeing your eyes is unclear (literally this is the entire point of having a display on the outside).

Considering the Vision Pro is already a fairly heavy headset, slapping on hunks of gold also doesn’t make much sense for this product in the first place. Gold is more dense than Lead and even Tungsten, with a single cubic-inch weighing in at 316 grams (probably nearly half of the Vision Pro’s total weight).

But the insanity is (sadly) the point. A $40,000 product that’s made worse by its “luxury” additions is designed for nothing else than flaunting one’s absurd wealth in the face of others. Ultimately the Vision Pro ‘CVR Edition’ is made to sit on a shelf as a trophy of excess.

While we doubt the company will actually manage to sell any of these headsets, Caviar claims only 24 will be made, and they are expected to launch in Fall of 2024.

Company Plans to Sell $40K Apple Vision Pro to People With a Desperate Need to Flaunt Their Wealth Read More »