Meta has announced that an upcoming Quest 2 update will unlock additional performance that developers can tap into to make their games look better. Some apps will benefit from the increased performance automatically.
Meta says “no integration or coding is needed to start reaping the benefits of this improvement,” as the headset’s dynamic clocking system will automatically boost the GPU speed if it detects that an app needs it. For apps with occasional stuttering, this little boost could smooth things out.
For apps using the headset’s dynamic foveation capability (which blurs the area in the peripheral view to improve performance), Meta says the headset will boost the processor to the new 525MHz speed to maintain visual quality before blurring the peripheral area. That means apps which previously relied on cranking up the blur during demanding scenes should look better in those cases than if they didn’t have access to the extra power.
Meta says the Quest 2 performance increase is technically available as of v47, but requires a bit of a workaround to enable it each time. As of the Quest 2 v49 update the performance boost will be unlocked without any caveats.
Not ready to plonk down your first $100 on Quest 2 games? Thankfully there’s an impressive number of free games, experiences, apps, and social VR platforms to keep you playing before you’re paying.
We have however included App Lab games. If you want to see more, SideQuest’s search function is a great resource for finding free stuff and demos. Below you’ll find some of the top App Lab games in addition to those hosted on the official store.
Free Games
Blaston
This shooting game just went free-to-play, letting you take on friends, family and foes head-to-head in 1v1 dueling action. Refine your loadout and jump into the action as you scramble for weapons and send a volley of hellfire as your enemies, all the while Matrix dodging through this innovative bullet hell meets futuristic dueling title. Spend money on cosmetics, or don’t: it’s a massive slice of fun any which way.
There aren’t a ton of free-to-play shooters out there that promise multiplayer action, however Gun Raiders fits the bill with its multiple game modes that let you jetpack through the air, climbing from wall to wall, and shoot down the competition. There’s the same sort of microtransactions you see in bigger games, but it they’re all avatar skin stuff, so no pay-to-win here.
Ultimechs should look pretty familiar: it’s basically Rocket League, but instead of driving around in cars, you’re given rocket-powered fists to punch balls into the goal. Online multiplayer includes both 1v1 and 2v2 matches, offering up tons of opportunities to earn cosmetic gear that will let you outfit your battle mech into something unique. There are also now two paid battle passes too, offering up a ton of cosmetics to set you apart from the competition.
Battle Talent is one of those fighting sims that let you go ham on ragdoll baddies, which in this case are wily goblins and loads of skelingtons. This physics-based roguelite action game lets you climb, run and slide your way through levels as you slash, shoot, and wield magic against your foes.
From the studio that brought you the award-winning puzzle game, I Expect You to Die, comes the room-scale mixed reality experience Home Sweet Home, which offers up a new way to defuse potentially lethal situations, and all in the comforting backdrop of your own living room thanks to Quest 2’s passthrough mixed reality function.
Ever wanted to play Counter-Strike on Quest? Pavlov Shack offers up a pretty comparable experience, as you play in either deathmatch or co-op mode. It’s got all of the realistic gunplay and much of the fun of the paid PC VR title, but it’s still going strong with a free open beta on Quest.
Zero-g sports aren’t possible unless you’re stationed on the ISS, and even then you probably shouldn’t muck about. In this fast-paced game of ultimate frisbee-meets-hockey-meets-whatever you’ll launch at speed to the goal, evade the opposing team and chuck your Tron-style frisbee-thing for the win. Remember: you can smash your opponent in the face, but please follow the same suggestions mentioned in Gorilla Tag above.
Freshly launched into open beta, this 4v4 arena-scale shooter requires space and Quest 2 (or Quest Pro) owning buddies—both of which you may not have. Still, it makes for an incredible time that is basically the best version of laser tag you’ve ever played. You’ll need SideQuest to download this one since it disables Quest’s guardian system, but it’s well worth jumping through the hoops to get working if you have everything else.
This humble game of tag has taken both SideQuest and App Lab by storm with its infectious gameplay, and it’s now made its way to the official store. You’ll be lumbering around a tree-lined arena using its unique grab-the-world locomotion style that lets you amble around like a great ape. Chase the other apes and infect them or climb for your life as the infected chase you. Pure and simple. Make sure you’re far from TVs, furniture, babies, and pets because you will punch something in the mad dash for sweet, low-poly freedom.
No real cash gambling here, but PokerStars VR not only let you go all-in on games of Texas Hold’em, but now a full casino’s worth of table games a machines that are sure to light up the dopamine starved pleasure centers of your brain. It’s all free play, so you won’t be risking real cash unless you buy in-game chips, which cannot be turned back into real money: it’s only to keep your bankroll flush for free play.
Gym Class – Basketball is the solution if you’re looking to shoot some hoops and dunk like you probably can’t on a physical court. Online multiplayer lets you go head-to-head for a pretty convincing game of b-ball thanks to the game’s physics-based and full-body kinematics.
This plucky roguelite dungeon crawler is still in beta (still!), but there’s a reason it’s become an App Lab favorite. Explore a vast dungeon to explore, housing plenty of baddies just asking for the steel of your sword, knives, and arrows. You’ll climb over deep pits, dodge lethal traps, and search for hidden treasures. Smash all the pots and crates you can before it officially launches on Quest sometime in the near future.
Would-be wizards, this is your time to shine. Explore a magical laboratory and take on the job of apprentice wizard. The lab is full of gadgets and magical stuff to mess around with; as one of the games that natively supports Quest’s hand tracking, you can put your controllers down and get experimenting with this little slice of the dark arts.
Since the recent Fishin’ Buddies update, this classic VR title has gotten a whole new lease on life as a multiplayer VR fishing game that lets you sit back and crack a cold one with the boys as you reel in the big’uns. The additional social areas also let you sit back between your fishing adventures to take part in casual mini-games.
Without a doubt one of the most fun, and most expansive VR titles out there… and it’s free. Sure, you can pay real cash for in-game tokens to buy spiffy clothes for your avatar, but that’s really up to you. Gads of mini-games await you in both first-party creations such as the ever so popular co-op Quests—that could be games in their own right—to user-created stuff that will keep your pocket book gathering dust. It’s social VR, so meet people and have a ball for zero dollarydoos. Fair warning: there’s a ton of kids.
If you’ve been anywhere near the Internet in the last few years, it’s likely you’ve already heard about VRChat, the user-generated social VR space filled with… well… everything you can imagine, re-pro games included like Among Us, Mario Kart, and even a version of Beat Saber. Fashion your own avatar or download the millions of user-generated avatars out there so you can embody SpongeBob, Kirito from Sword Art Online, or any one of the million anime girl avatars that you’re bound to see there.
Horizon Worlds is still taking baby steps, although recent efforts have brought more tools and user-generated content to the platform which has rounded out things to make it more competitive with Rec Room and VRChat. You may want to check in just to see the state of Meta’s first-party VR social platform—and then check right out again—but at the price of ‘free’, you may just find an environment or community you really gel with, which is the whole reason behind social VR in the first place.
Vertigo 2, the hotly awaited sequel to the original 2016 single-player VR adventure, has had the same demo on Steam for the past three years. Now developer Zulubo Productions has brought a complete overhaul to the free demo, which the studio says better reflects the quality of the final game.
No new content or areas have been added to the demo, although you may still want to pop your head in to see just how the update shows off “how the final game will look and feel,” the studio says.
In addition to adding better visuals and physics, the demo’s intro area has been removed altogether, something the studio says will “get new players right into action.”
Here’s the change list, courtesy Zulubo Productions:
Weapon interaction has been overhauled and now uses physics
Arm and upper body IK has been added
Enemy AI has been greatly improved
Graphics and sounds have been polished
Environments are more detailed and interactive
Lighting has been improved
Performance has been improved
Detailed graphics settings and other options have been added
Vertigo 2 is slated to take PC VR players deep underground in the reaches of Quantum Reactor VII, again setting you on an upwards journey back to your home on the surface. You’ll face bizarre alien flora and fauna leaking from other universes—deadly android security forces included. The game is also set to feature a branching narrative, which promises plenty of surprises around each corner.
Vertigo 2 is slated to launch on SteamVR headsets on March 30th, 2023. If you haven’t had a chance to play the original Vertigo,the game’s rerelease Vertigo Remastered (2020) may still show a bit of its pioneering 2016 roots, but admittedly with much higher quality visuals and interactions. Well worth a play-through to give you something to do while you wait!
Earlier this month Valve changed the longstanding format for displaying which VR headsets are supported on a game’s Steam Store page. The company says the change was made to ‘keep up with the growing VR market’.
Earlier this month some folks were alarmed to see that the ‘VR Support’ section on the right side of a game’s Steam store page—which showed the headsets and playspaces a game supported—had been removed, seemingly leaving only ‘Tracked Motion Controller Support’ to indicate that an app supported VR.
As Valve tells Road to VR, however, the information was not removed but merely reorganized and streamlined—and it seems it may have taken a bit for the changes to correctly proliferate across store pages.
“We decided to organize things a bit differently, as we found the old system wasn’t keeping up very well with the growing VR market,” a Valve spokesperson tells us. “You can now find this info in System Requirements. We also added flags for VR Only, VR Supported, and tracked motion controllers to the Features section. The changes are also aimed at giving developers more control and flexibility.”
So now instead of a game listing all supported headsets and/or VR platforms on the right side of the page, developers can choose to show ‘VR Only’ or ‘VR Supported’. Meanwhile, further down in the System Requirements section, developers can additionally specify which headsets or playspaces are supported under the ‘VR Support’ prefix.
Looking at several examples shows how this works in practice.
Half-Life: Alyx, for instance, lists ‘VR Only’ and ‘Tracked Controller Support’ on the right side of the page (and still prominently includes a notice that the game requires a VR headset). In its System Requirements we see ‘VR Support: SteamVR’, indicating that the game affirms support for all SteamVR headsets.
Dirt Rally 2 uses ‘VR Supported’ on the right side of the page, and under System Requirements we see ‘VR Support: SteamVR or Oculus PC’ (indicating that the game supports both the SteamVR and native Oculus PC runtimes). Notably the game does not list ‘Tracked Controller Support’ on the right side, meaning players cannot use VR controllers with the game but must use another input like keyboard or traditional controller instead.
While we don’t have any inside knowledge as to exactly why Valve decided to change this longstanding system, the reasons they gave do make sense from the outside. The previous system confusingly listed some specific headsets (ie: ‘Valve Index’, ‘Oculus Rift’ and ‘HTC Vive’) lumped right alongside a whole platform of headsets (ie: ‘Windows Mixed Reality’)—while ignoring more modern headsets like those from Pico or Pimax. Making this change streamlines things for Valve who would otherwise have to track and add all new SteamVR headsets as they come to market.
And further, the distinction between ‘Standing’ and ‘Room-scale’ playspace sizes has become much less important over the years; very few games require a room-scale space, even though most technically support it. That left the previous ‘Play Area’ section of the store page as something of a needless remnant (except for games that only support ‘Seated’ play).
That said, there’s no doubt the change feels like it’s coming out of nowhere. And with Valve’s minimal apparent interest in VR in the last few years, it raises questions as to ‘why now?’
People have differing views on the best way to tackle climate change. In fact, some think it’s too late to make a difference. The problem has become too big and complicated. As a result, humanity can’t rely on just a small part of society to manage it.
In line with this, Augmented World Expo (AWE) launched the “XR Prize Challenge: Fight Climate Change.” The organization will accept AR and VR video concept submissions until December 31. Each should present an impactful, creative, and functional XR-based solution to the climate crisis. AWE will award $100,000 to the winning group or individual.
XR Prize Challenge Categories
Entries should portray XR’s role in society in one of these four categories:
1. REPLACE – Replacing Wasteful Material Practices – Concepts in this category should focus on demonstrating how to use XR solutions as communication and collaboration media to reduce the need for transportation and new property development.
2. VISUALIZE – Visualizing The Causes & Impacts of Climate Change – Solutions competing in this category will need to demonstrate how XR can be used for creating empathy for climate change efforts through visualization. As explained in the XR Prize Challenge guidelines, these submissions should illustrate “XR’s unique ability to educate people about the causes and effects of climate change, and influence behaviors and policies to promote equity and fairness.”
3. EDUCATE – Educating About Solutions to Climate Change – This category focuses on how to use XR’s storytelling power to empower solution providers and climatologists. “As an immersive, spatial, and task-oriented story-telling medium, virtual environments can capture ideas and imaginations like no other communication platform can,” reads the guidelines page.
4. OPTIMIZE – Optimizing Design & Execution of Climate Solutions – Concepts in this category will aim to demonstrate the use of XR technology for perfecting solutions for managing or reversing climate change.
XR Prize Challenge Judging Criteria
XR and climate experts will make up the judging panel and they will choose the winner based on:
Creativity – originality, design, beauty, and appropriateness of extended reality to fight climate change;
Functionality – thoughtful user experience, innovative user interaction, and ease of use;
Impact – viability and scalability of the XR-based solution in the marketplace.
XR Prize Challenge Stages
The XR Prize Challenge will have three stages:
1. Qualification for the minimum viable product (MVP) of their concept
Firstly, AWE will send invites in January 2023 to qualified contestants. These contestants should submit their MVP by April 16, 2023. Entries should not be longer than 90 seconds, and must be in must be English or have English translation.
2. Selection of finalists
Secondly, the judging of MVP submissions will take place between April 17 and April 30, 2023. AWE will announce the finalists on May 1, after which they will hold live demos of their MVPs in Santa Clara, USA, prior to AWE USA 2023.
3. Selection of winners
Lastly, the jury will choose winners from the batch of finalists. They will award the cash prize during the Auggie Awards on June 1, 2023.
Help Fight Climate Change Now
As AWE co-founder, Ori Inbar, says in a press release shared with ARPost, “There is truly no more important collective challenge facing humanity today than climate change – and XR is the ideal technology platform to try and develop creative solutions to address it.”
Those interested in participating in AWE’s XR Prize Challenge: Fight Climate Change Fill can submit their concept until the end of this year through this form.
Phaser Lock Interactive, the VR studio behind Final Assault (2019) and Twisted Arrow (2017), announced the release date for Primal Hunt, its upcoming co-op dinosaur hunting game which pits you against a Jurassic Park’s worth of the mighty beasts.
Update (December 22nd, 2022): Primal Hunt is slated to arrive on Quest 2 and Pico headsets starting January 19th, 2023. The game is also targeting Vive Focus, however the studio hasn’t mentioned whether it’s launching concurrently on that headset.
Additionally, Phaser Lock threw out a new trailer which shows off some of its archery-based gameplay. The studio says that as you progress, dinosaurs become even more deadly with the inclusion of cybernetic implants, armor, and weapons such as machine guns, rocket launchers, and the lethal ion cannon—something that ought to up the ante as you encounter all of its different dinosaur species.
Original Article (September 7th, 2022): Called Primal Hunt, the cross-platform co-op game gives you a variety of armor and weapons as you track down and fight the deadliest creatures to have ever walked the Earth.
The game, which is inspired by the Turok series and TV show Westworld, is slated to land on Meta Quest 2, HTC Vive Focus, and Pico headsets sometime in early 2023.
The studio also released a short teaser video (below the article) and a few images, showing off what looks to be a bow-heavy hunting experience that features plenty of pushback from the native fauna.
There’s still much to learn about Primal Hunt. Here’s how Phaser Lock describes it on the game’s website:
Face the ferocity of a pack of Raptors, the strength and power of a Triceratops, and the terror of coming face to face with a 30-ft Tyrannosaurus Rex, all in VR!
With a variety of armor and weapons at your disposal, you are poised to become the ultimate hunter…if you can survive. As you master each challenge, your prey will also become more dangerous as they are outfitted with advanced cybernetic enhancements and weapons, including carbine machine guns, rocket launchers, and more!
The studio promises that more information is coming, and that’s there’s also the possibility of a closed beta coming at some point this year.
We’ll be keeping our eyes out for all things Primal Hunt as Phaser Lock promotes its first game in the past three years since it launched Final Assault out of Early Access of PC VR headsets in 2019.
While Oculus doesn’t offer much publicly in the way of understanding how well individual games & apps are performing across its Quest 2 storefront, it’s possible to glean some insight by looking at apps relative to each other. Here’s a snapshot of the 20 best rated Oculus Quest games and apps as of December 2022.
Some quick qualifications before we get to the data:
Paid and free apps are separated
Only apps with more than 100 reviews are represented
Adobe’s VR modeling tool, Substance 3D Modeler, is now available on Steam, bringing with it support for Valve’s Index headset and possibly others.
Adobe released 3D Modeler as part of its ‘Substance’ suite of applications last year. The application supports VR and non-VR modes. In VR, users can intuitively ‘sculpt’ 3D models to their liking, then pull them into the 2D mode for refinements and use with the rest of the Substance suite (or vice versa).
When the app first launched it only supported Meta VR headsets through the Oculus PC software. Now Substance 3D Modeler has launched on Steam, bringing official support for Valve Index and its controllers for the first time.
Ostensibly the app should work just fine through Steam on Meta headsets as well, and other SteamVR headsets may work with the app too, assuming users can create the correct bindings for their controllers (though Adobe is not claiming official support for any other headsets at this time). Sources tell us that official support for Vive wands could be coming in the future.
Unlike Substance 3D Modeler bought through Adobe’s Creative Cloud platform (which is only offered as a subscription) the Steam version is a one-time purchase with updates promised through the end of 2023. Though priced regularly at $150, the Adobe is offering a limited time ‘introductory offer’ of $100 (30% discount) on Steam for the next two days.
As announced previously Adobe still expects to bring Substance 3D Modeler to Quest as a standalone application next year.
John Carmack, legendary programmer and key player in the Oculus gensis story, announced he’s left Meta, writing in a memo to employees that he “wearied of the fight” of trying to push for change at the highest levels of the company.
Carmack has never been one to mince words. Outside of bringing industry expertise to Oculus in 2013—notably a year before Meta (ex-Facebook) acquired the VR headset startup for $2 billion—Carmack has been a rare window into the world of consumer VR and one of the most important companies behind it. And even now, it appears we’re getting a peek into how things work in Meta, or rather, how they don’t work.
Last Friday, Carmack sent out a memo to employees saying he was effectively leaving Meta, mentioning the company’s VR efforts were developing at “half the effectiveness that would make me happy.”
Carmack demos an early Oculus Rift prototype at E3 2012
Parts of the memo were previously leaked in a Business Insider piece, however Carmack went one step further by releasing the memo in a Facebook update. We’ve included the text in full at the bottom of the article.
Having spearheaded Oculus’ mobile efforts throughout his tenure, in 2019 Carmack stepped down as Oculus CTO to a “consulting CTO” position, something he said would reduce his time spent at the company to a “modest slice” so he could pursue new ventures outside of VR.
Still, Carmack says the last few years at Meta has been a struggle:
“I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.”
He contends the waning sway within Meta was “admittedly self-inflicted,” owing to the fact that he wasn’t really up to engaging with C-level battles for influence:
“I could have moved to Menlo Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.”
Carmack says in a follow-up Twitter thread that there was “a notable gap between Mark Zuckerberg and I on various strategic issues, so I knew it would be extra frustrating to keep pushing my viewpoint internally.”
Before making the move to Meta vis-à-vis Oculus, John Carmack was co-founder and Technical Director of the famous id Software. He also founded Armadillo Aerospace, a private aerospace company. Carmack says he is now “all in” working on artificial general intelligence (AGI) at his startup Keen Technologies.
The full text of his internal memo follows below:
This is the end of my decade in VR.
I have mixed feelings.
Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning – mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k (ish) screen, cost effective. Despite all the complaints I have about our software, millions of people are still getting value out of it. We have a good product. It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place. It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing.
The issue is our efficiency.
Some will ask why I care how the progress is happening, as long as it is happening?
If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable competition and/or belt tightening, but really, it is the more personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization number in production. I am offended by it.
[edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization’s performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling tool.]
We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say “Half? Ha! I’m at quarter efficiency!”
It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.
This was admittedly self-inflicted – I could have moved to Menlo Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.
Enough complaining. I wearied of the fight and have my own startup to run, but the fight is still winnable! VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it actually is possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
Make better decisions and fill your products with “Give a Damn”
nDreams, the VR studio and publisher behind titles such as Fracked (2021) and Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), today announced it’s acquired long-time partner studio Near Light.
This marks the first such studio acquisition by nDreams, which follows a $35 million investment round secured back in March 2022.
Details of the acquisition are still thin on the ground, however nDreams says bringing the Brighton, UK-based Near Light closer into the fold will allow them to work on yet more “medium-defining games.”
In addition to running three of its own first-party studios, over the years nDreams has published a number of third-party VR titles, including Little Cities (2022) from Purple Yonder, as well as the Brighton-based Near Light’s VR titles Shooty Fruity (2018) and Perfect (2016).
Founded in 2016 with the launch of virtual travel experience Perfect, Near Light is headed by industry veterans Paul Mottram and Ben Hebb, known for their previous work at Wide Games, Kuju Brighton, and Zoë Mode.
“To be making our debut acquisition is yet another incredibly exciting milestone for nDreams,” added nDreams CEO, Patrick O’Luanaigh. “For other development studios with whom we are similarly aligned on vision and strategy, there’s certainly potential for more acquisitions in our future.”
“We’re really proud to be joining with nDreams and shaping the future of VR and AR games together, a new frontier with the opportunity to do things nobody has done before,” said Near Light co-founder Paul Mottram. “Near Light is very much aligned with the philosophy of Patrick and nDreams in terms of how we want to make games and build teams. It feels like the ideal fit for us.”
Near Light is currently developing an unannounced VR title, slated to be published by nDreams.
Diver-X, the Japan-based startup known for pitching an ambitious VR headset earlier this year, is at it again, this time with a pair of VR gloves that incorporates a membrane capable of flexing and compressing to replicate the sensation of touch.
The original HalfDive headset campaign on Kickstarter managed to secure enough cash to be considered fully funded back in January 2022, although the team decided to cancel the campaign and return the funds to backers. In the end, the Sword Art Online-inspired headset, which allowed you to play whilst laying down, was deemed too niche a product to deliver at such a small scale.
Now the startup is back at it with another Kickstarter, albeit with an ostensibly wider appeal. Its ContactGlove not only tracks each finger and includes SteamVR tracking mounts for positional tracking, but also allows for button input emulation so you never have to pick up a controller during gameplay. Ultimately, its ‘pro’ feature on higher-end models boasts haptic feedback thanks to flexible membranes that contract and expand to replicate touch on the user’s fingertips.
The Tokyo-based Diver-X says its VR glove controller is natively compatible with Steam VR, providing mounting adapters for both Tundra Trackers and Vive Trackers.
The button input is an emulated affair, as in you need to go through a configuration software to assign individual buttons to hand gestures, like bending your right index finger to pull a trigger, so it’s up to the user whether that feature can be useful and in what context.
Here’s a look at ContactGlove promo from the Kickstarter. Take note: the magnetically attached controller with joystick and buttons seen in the video is not a feature listed on the Kickstarted campaign:
The Kickstarter is already live, and it seems to have caught fire among backers looking to nab a pair of the company’s VR gloves. At the time of this writing, the project has already blasted past its original funding goal of ¥26M (~$200,000) with over funds tipping over ¥29M (~$220,000).
The company is pitching ContactGloves starting at ¥65,000 (~$490) for models without the flexible touch membrane, and ¥94,000 (~$710) for non-haptic models with Tundra Trackers included. All haptic-capable versions of ContactGloves are already gone unfortunately, which were priced starting at ¥115,000 (~$870). We’ll be keeping our eye on stretch goal updates to see whether the startup adds the ability to purchase haptics as an add-on.
Here’s a quick look at the specs, courtesy of Diver-X:
Battery: 6 hours without haptic feedback, 2 hours with haptic feedback (will be improved by software update)
Charging time: 2.5 hours (USB type-C)
Wireless connection: includes dedicated dongle
Size: S/M/L
Hand tracking: bending sensor and IMU (standard version does not support finger opening)
Vibration: Back of the hand (equipped on all models)
Tactile feedback: thumb, index finger, middle finger (on tactile-equipped models only)
With the increasing interest in the concept of “Metacity” across the globe, it is clear that the metaverse is shaping the cities of the future. The United States, China, Singapore, Japan, and other countries are developing Metacities where immersive technologies are integrated into how cities work and the way people live.
While Europe struggles to establish itself as a leader in emerging technologies, it is fast gaining ground in helping shape the future of virtual worlds.
In a letter of intent by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the EU specifies a Europe fit for the digital age as one of its key initiatives for 2023. It notes that initiatives on virtual worlds, such as the metaverse, are among its priorities next year.
Aside from this, a more concrete action toward building Europe’s Metacities is already underway in Latvia.
Riga, Latvia, Chosen as the Bed of Metacity Development in Europe
Based on a study by Cambridge Executive MBA students, the capital city of Latvia has the potential to become the next successful Megacity in Europe. The city was chosen based on its existing connectivity infrastructure, partners, innovators, and political will.
With 5G base stations across the region, Riga boasts a strong cellular network ranked 5th in Europe in terms of internet speed. It’s also well-connected within the Baltics, making it easily accessible to other cities and countries.
Aside from the solid infrastructure, the city also has a strong technical university that has become a hotbed for innovators. Along with local technology companies and a well-connected community, Riga becomes an ideal setting for metaverse deployment and adoption.
Riga Signs a Memorandum With Industry Partners at 5G Techritory Forum
Earlier this year, Riga launched a state-supported initiative to develop its own metaverse. It is set to undertake the immense challenge of creating a city-level testbed of Metaverse applications with practical use cases that benefit citizens and enterprises.
“I congratulate us that, with our signatures, we have now expressed our willingness and readiness to be not just talkers, but also doers,” said Neils Kalniņš, 5G Techritory Program Director. “Already this January, we will come together to discuss how we can create practical applications for the Metaverse. A safe and green future of the Metaverse will be Latvia’s contribution to the world, and I look forward to it.”
The key aim of this memorandum is to establish a central authority on XR that will coordinate the development of the Metacity. After which, all other activities and procedural steps will be decided and undertaken including the platform regulations, sourcing of funds, coordinating development, and much more.
Riga Metacity: Driving Forward the Future of XR in Europe
The Riga Metacity initiative is one of the first and largest Metaverse projects in Europe. It is expected to attract a sizeable share of the estimated $1,500 billion market size by 2030 which will greatly benefit the local community and government.
However, the benefits go far beyond the city. With this initiative, Riga drives forward extended reality research, technology, and applications across Europe. The regional initiative and development are also expected to accelerate the overall competitiveness of the European Union. It opens an opportunity to develop capabilities to maintain high economic growth and drive the future of XR forward.
