Virtual & Augmented Reality and 3D News - Page 1

At Meta Connect 2023, Meta CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg was on hand to confirm that the Meta Quest 3 all-in-one VR headset is also now a mixed-reality device and is launching on October 10 starting from USD 499.99 for the 128GB version and USD 649.99 for the larger capacity 512GB model.

The Meta Quest 3 launches October 10, starting from $499.99, image credit: Meta.

Yes, the new Meta Quest 3 headset features cameras on the front, with full-color passthrough to deliver mixed-reality experiences on top of serving as the next-generation all-in-one VR headset from the company. Meta notes that this full-color Passthrough presents your surroundings with 10 times more pixels than the Quest 2.

Of course, the main functionality of the Meta Quest 3 will still be as a VR headset. On that front, the new Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 platform delivers double the GPU processing power than what's possible with the Quest 2 - alongside other features like faster loading for games.

Buying a new Apple Vision Pro headset might not get more affordable quite as quickly as we had hoped if a new report by a well-connected display analyst turns out to be accurate.

The Vision Pro headset was announced in June and was immediately slapped with a price that makes it out of reach for many. The starting price of $3,499 is a lot, but there were rumors that Apple already had plans for a cheaper version that would give more people an opportunity to get a headset of their own. However, a new report now claims that might not be happening after all.

Writing in a Medium post analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that Apple may have canceled the low-cost version of its Vision Pro. If that's the case, it will mean that Vision Pro headset growth will be affected with anticipated 2025 growth simply not happening at all.

When it launched in 2019, the Valve Index was one of the most advanced VR headsets to hit the market - bolstered by excellent software support in the form of SteamVR. With the per-eye resolution of 1440 x 1600 pixels, wide field-of-view (FOV), and high refresh-rate support, it's still a capable headset. Not to mention Valve's excellent Index Controllers being designed specifically for VR.

However, with multiple wires to connect the headset and tracking reliant on base stations that you need to wire and power, even on Steam, the Index has been overtaken by the more consumer-friendly Meta Quest 2. The Quest 2, like the recent PSVR 2 headset for the PlayStation 5, adopts an inside-out tracking approach (with the latter offering full eye-tracking) with a single-cable solution.

In the case of the Quest 2, the option to go wireless. This makes recent updates and changes to SteamVR exciting, pointing to a massive overhaul. And with new battery information and rumors surrounding Valve's "Deckard" headset hardware swirling - Steam VR 2.0 and the Index 2.0 could be here soon.

Apple might have only just gotten around to announcing the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro devices, but the company is already hard at work on what comes next. We aren't talking about new iPhones, either. The Vision Pro headset was unveiled during an event in June and was tipped for a launch in early 2024, although some were skeptical as to whether that would happen. Now, CEO Tim Cook has sought to ease those concerns.

Speaking in a wider interview discussing Apple's future with CBS Sunday Morning, Cook let slip that he is already starting to use the Vision Pro in a number of ways - including watching the final season of the hit Apple TV Plus show Ted Lasso.

Speaking to John Dickerson, Cook said that he watched the entire season on his Vision Pro headset, admitting that he has access to some things that most people do not - hinting that the Vision Pro is perhaps just one of those things. He wasn't willing to discuss what those things were when pushed, but we somehow doubt that there's an Apple Car parked in his garage.

The announcement of Apple's Vision Pro has caused many of the company's competitors to follow suit with their own version of a high-end mixed-reality headset.

Now we are starting to hear rumblings of a new product coming out of Meta and LG, which, according to Korean outlet Maekyung, is being birthed out of a relationship that formed between the two companies following the unveiling of Apple's Vision Pro. This new product is reportedly said to adopt the "Pro" tag and is expected to be called the Quest Pro 4 Pro. Notably, this high-end headset is expected to be released sometime in 2025 and will be cheaper than Apple's Vision Pro, which has a hefty price tag of $3,499.

Before the market is blessed with another high-end mixed reality headset, Meta will be releasing new variants of its already established headset line-up. However, Meta's new headsets will be targeting entry-level prices, aiming at below the $200 mark. These headsets are expected to be released sometime in 2024. While there hasn't been any official pricing on the purported Quest 4 Pro, there are some murmurings from NH Investment & Securities, which said that Meta and LG will release a premium mixed reality headset around the $2,000 price point.

ZOTAC has just introduced its next-generation all-in-one gaming PC backpack combo designed for VR gaming - with two models, the VR GO 4.0 A2000 and VR GO 4.0 A4500. Interestingly, these backpack PCs feature mobile CPUs and GPUs, with the latter coming from NVIDIA's professional series.

The new ZOTAC VR GO 4.0 wearable PC, image credit: ZOTAC.

It's what gives each version of the ZOTAC VR Go 4.0 its name, with one featuring an NVIDIA RTX A2000 8GB GDDR6 based on the GA106 GPU (found in the GeForce RTX 3060) and the other featuring the beefier NVIDIA RTX A4500 16GB GDDR6 GPU based on GA104 GPU (found in the GeForce RTX 4070).

Both backpacks feature 16GB of DDR4 Memory, a 512GB M.2 SSD, and Windows 11 Pro pre-installed - with 50 minutes to an hour of playtime support. Which can be extended via the hot-swappable 6000mAh Li-ion batteries.

Apple's Vision Pro headset is something that had been rumored for years before it was finally announced during the WWDC opening keynote on June 5. But the amount of time it was rumored pales into insignificance when compared with how long it was actually being worked on deep inside Apple Park and, before it, 1 Infinite Loop.

Based on information gleaned from a new patent, it would appear that Apple's engineers were hard at work on what would eventually turn into the Vision Pro headset as far back as 2007. That's the year that the original iPhone changed everything of course, and at the time of writing it's 16 years ago. We have to assume that the headset was being worked on even before the patent's 2007 origin which means that by the time the headset finally goes on sale in 2024 it's entirely possible it will have been in development for close to 20 years.

That's two decades of work that seem to have started with the patent that was spotted by Patently Apple this week. Titled "Automatically Adjusting Media Display In A Personal Display System," it appears to reference features that ultimately made it to Apple's big unveiling a couple of months ago. Those features include being able to watch content in a theater, stadium, or even a concert fatality even though they aren't there.

When Apple announced the Vision Pro headset during the WWDC opening keynote on June 5, there was plenty of new information despite years of rumors. But there are still some aspects of the headset that are a mystery, including how much storage it will ship with. Now, a new report claims to be able to shed some light on the situation although it also raises yet more questions.

That report comes via the French website iPhoneSoft and appears to be based on a leak by someone who has been able to get their hands on the Vision Pro headset as part of their app development process. And according to them, the Vision Pro headset will be available with 1TB of storage.

The iPhoneSoft report says that its source was able to confirm that by heading into the Settings app on the headset with 1TB of storage then displayed. However, it isn't yet clear if that is the amount of storage that all headsets will have or if this is an upgraded model.

The Omni One from Virtuix is a home VR solution that aims to solve all significant hurdles related to at-home Virtual Reality - the big one being the inclusion of an omnidirectional treadmill for accurate 3D movement without the need to worry about being confined to a small space and having to teleport through a game world to progress. This feature alone and the ability to fold and pack away the unit make it an exciting outlier in the VR market.

The Omni One from Virtuix, image credit: Virtuix.

The Omni One is the at-home version of Austin-based Virtuix's Omni Pro system found in entertainment complexes across the globe. Earlier this year, we reported on how the company was gearing to begin shipping units to early investors and backers, with today confirming that units are already in the hands of early backers - with plans in place to ship over 1,000 units by the end of the year, covering all 8,000 investors in Q1 2024.

With an introductory price point of USD 2,595 (with payment plan options available, too) and 35,000 interested customers, general public preorders will open later this year, with those deliveries expected to commence in Q2 2024. And to meet the demand, Virtuix plans to ramp up production.

Since Sony announced its PlayStation 5 VR successor, the wider VR community has wondered if the VR headset is PC compatible, officially or unofficially. And it's not hard to see why; it features some truly impressive specs alongside an affordable price point. For USD 549, you get a 4K OLED display with a per-eye resolution of 2000 x 2040 pixels with up to 120 Hz support. Not to mention a wide field-of-view (FOV) of 110 degrees.

Connecting a PSVR 2 headset to PC would be pretty sweet, image credit: Sony.

These are tasty VR headset specs no matter how you slice it, and on top of this, you've got full motion controls and inside-out tracking for room-space VR - features not present in the original PSVR hardware.

There's good news and not-so-good news when it comes to connecting a PSVR 2 headset to your PC and firing up Half-Life: Alyx on Steam - yes, the headset works. But it requires the use of special hardware that hasn't even been invented yet.