Extended Reality (XR) - Page 22

VRFocus reports that Nolo is preparing an ODM (original design manufacturer) standalone VR headset for companies interested in getting into the VR device market without the upfront R&D costs.

Nolo has been around in the VR space for several years now, and the company has carved out a nice niche within the market. Nolo builds an aftermarket tracking solution that can convert any VR headset into a 6DoF system with motion controllers.

Nolo's SodarTraq tracking system uses ultrasonic technology for its positional tracking, which usually requires a tracking ball that attaches to the headset. Nolo's ODM headset will include this tracking system embedded into the device. The headset also includes dual front-facing cameras, which support SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) positional tracking for headset positioning.

DrBeef, the indie developer behind the Quake, Doom, Half-Life and Wolfenstein VR mods, is at it again, and this time, it's Doom 3 getting the VR treatment. Doom3Quest is almost ready and should be out in the next few days.

DrBeef and his [Team Beef] partners have been dropping teaser videos over the last few days showing Doom 3 in action on the Oculus Quest. The team is preparing to release the Doom3Quest mod on the SideQuest marketplace in the coming days. This one definitely looks like a title to check out.

On January 1st, Team Beef release a teaser clip of the iconic mirror scene early in the game, demonstrating the motion controller tracking in action. On the 3rd, the development team released a clip showing off the lighting effects in action. The IDtech 4 game engine that powers Doom 3 is nearly a decade and a half old, but it still produces terrific visuals. DrBeef is pretty confident that it will impress, stating that "Doom3Quest will be one of the best looking experiences on the Quest platform for sure."

Facebook said that the Oculus Quest 2 had brought more women into VR than any of its previous headsets. The standalone VR system is also selling far better than the original Quest headset.

It is no surprise that Quest 2 is a big hit for Oculus. The headset has sold incredibly well, with developers announcing shortly after the headset's release that they were seeing all-time high sales numbers for their games. Chris Pruett, an executive at Facebook Reality Labs, said in October that sales exceeded company expectations. Mark Zuckerberg later confirmed that five times as many people pre-ordered Quest 2 than the original Oculus Quest.

Facebook today revealed that it took less than seven weeks for Quest 2's monthly active user numbers to surpass the userbase of the first Quest, which hit the market a year and a half prior. It's safe to say that Quest 2 is a big seller. And given the reaction from many developers after the holidays, it's likely that the active user base is much higher now than it was seven weeks after Quest 2 launched.

The Kickstarter campaign for Cybershoes for Quest is officially over, and the company smashed its fund-raising expectations. Cybershoes raked in three times its $30,000 goal.

Last October, following the launch of the Oculus Quest 2, Cybershoes announced that it would launch a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the production of a Quest-compatible version of the Cybershoes VR locomotion accessory.

The campaign kicked off in November, and it was an instant success. Within hours, Cybershoes had raised the $30,000 it sought after with the campaign. Ultimately, the campaign closed with more than three times that much raised, with just shy of $100,000 in capital to bring the product to market.

Today, Tundra Labs revealed the Tundra Tracker, a more compact, more affordable alternative to HTC's Vive Tracker puck. The Tundra Trackers will be available for pre-order on Kickstarter next month. Pricing hasn't been announced, but the Tundra Trackers are supposed to be cheaper than Vive Trackers, and you'll get better pricing if you buy them as a set.

The Tundra Trackers use Valve's open-source Steam VR platform, which enables them to work with any Steam VR compatible device, including Valve's Index, HTC's Vive headsets, and the Pimax 5K and 8K lineups. Tundra Labs even said the Tundra Trackers would work alongside Vive Trackers.

Tundra Trackers are significantly smaller than the Vive Trackers, making them lighter and easier to mount in new ways. Luke Beno, the founder of Tundra Labs, told Road to VR that Tundra Trackers are 60% smaller and weigh 50% less than Vive Trackers. Tundra Trackers also consume 50% less power, giving them twice the battery life of HTC's version.

Lynx delivered some unfortunate news in its latest progress report. The company was expected to begin shipping backer units before the end of the year, but it delayed production because the hand tracking cameras don't meet expectations.

The Lynx R1 is a mixed reality headset that offers support for virtual reality experiences. It also supports augmented reality experiences thanks to a pair of low-latency passthrough cameras. In total, the headset features six cameras: Two eye-tracking cameras on the inside, two RGB cameras for passthrough video on the face, and two monochrome cameras for tracking.

It's the monochrome tracking cameras that are giving Lynx pause. The cameras that the company had ordered for the first batch of Lynch headsets work fine for 6-DoF inside-out motion tracking, but their 120-degree horizontal and 78-degree vertical field of view is not adequate for hand tracking.

Microsoft Flight Simulator just received its long-awaited VR patch, but you might be better off waiting longer to play it. People are reporting terrible performance even on high-end gaming systems.

Shortly after the new VR patch dropped, people started reporting their terrible experience with the game's performance. Over on the r/flightsim subreddit, user u/felix330 reported getting less than 45 fps on his original Vive headset. They didn't say which CPU they're running, but the RTX 2070 Super in their system is no slouch of a GPU.

u/DeliciousPangolin chimed in and stated that they're getting roughly the same framerate on their Valve Index headset with a Core i7-9700K and RTX 3080-equipped gaming system. Even on the lowest graphics settings, the game is continuously rendering in reprojection.

Oculus announced that it had received a small number of complaints about skin irritation caused by Oculus Quest 2 headsets. The volume of reports is very small, but the company is taking them very seriously.

Oculus said that roughly 0.01% of Quest 2 users had reported mild symptoms such as redness, bumps, or swelling after using the headset. And while the symptoms are not severe and should remedy themselves, Oculus is not content to leave things where they lie and has enlisted the help of medical professionals to solve the problem.

The company believes that a by-product of the manufacturing process may cause the irritation, and it has already made changes and is in the process of verifying its effectiveness.

HTC has been quiet about its plans for its next VR headset to the point that many people have speculated that the company has shifted its sights away from the consumer VR space. While we don't know if it will be a consumer or enterprise device, HTC's Alvin Graylin confirmed that new innovative Vive products are coming next year.

Alvin Graylin, President of HTC China, recently sat down for an extended interview with Daniel Colaianni and Nick Rosa at The Academy of International Extended Reality (AIXR). During the talk, Graylin talked about his history, including his family. He spoke about the early days of launching the HTC Vive headset. And near the end of the interview, he dropped one heck of a bomb of a scoop. He gave some hints about possibly more than one upcoming Vive headset.

One of the last questions that Colaianni and Rosa posed was an attempt to get Graylin to describe what the next Vive "would look like." Unsurprisingly, Graylin couldn't give a direct response to that question, but he did reveal more than we would typically expect.

Sam Miller, one of the founding partners at Magic Leap, has left the company he helped run for eight and a half years. He's now the President of a med-tech company.

Miller helped launch Magic Leap, and for the better part of the last decade, he has helped steer the company in one way or another. Miller joined the company as the Principal System Engineer in August 2012. He held various titles through the years, including Lead System Architect, Director of System Engineering, Sr. Director, Systems Engineering, and Sr. Director, Product Experience and Platform.

Miller's most recent and final role at Magic Leap was Vice President, Product Strategy, which he took on in April 2020, when the company when through a big shakeup that included Rony Abovitz, another Magic Leap founder, stepping down from his role as CEO.

VR Cover today revealed its new Controller Grips for Oculus Quest 2. These new grips transform your Touch controllers with Index-like hand straps that let you loosen your hold without dropping your controllers.

The Oculus Quest 2 is a fantastic VR system, but it lacks some creature comforts that some other headsets offer. For example, Valve's Index controllers offer an over-the-hand strap that attaches the controllers to your palm so you can loosen your grip for specific interactions. Primarily, the straps make it far less likely to throw your controllers when you try to throw something in VR.

The Index controllers are the only controllers with that strap feature, but VR Cover's new accessories bring that option to the new Touch controller. The VR Cover Controller Grip for Quest 2 features a fabric strap to secure the Touch controllers to your hand. They also feature a textured non-slip material to give you a more secure grip on the handles.

Are you tired of plugging in your Quest 2 when you're done playing with it? With Anker's new Charging Dock for Quest 2, you will never have to worry about that again.

When Facebook announced the Oculus Quest 2 headset, the company also revealed that it would work with partners to launch a series of officially supported accessories for the Quest 2 headset. At launch, we learned of the VR Cover face cushions and some Logitech headphone options, along with the Oculus brand Elite head straps.

Today, Anker joined the pack with a magnetic charge dock for the Quest 2 headset and the Touch controller.

The highly anticipated VR update for Microsoft's Flight Simulator dropped today. Flying a plane in your basement has never been so realistic!

Microsoft's Flight Simulator got a big update today, which included the long-awaited VR support. And it's not just a minor add-on. You can play the entire game in virtual reality, including everything from the beginning menu to the cockpit view.

The VR update for Flight Simulator is compatible with any OpenXR-compatible headset, which means it should be OK with basically any headset that works with SteamVR. Microsoft said that the VR update is currently optimized for the HP Reverb G1 and G2 and the Samsung Odyssey Windows Mixed Reality headsets. In other words, If you have one of those headsets, you won't need to do any additional setup.

The end of the Oculus Go era has officially commenced. Hilariously, one of the last apps to make the cut is a bathroom companion experience called Poo With a View. A 360-degree content viewer that gives you something more interesting than a bathroom stall door to look at when you're taking care of business.

The first-ever Oculus standalone VR headset has officially reached its sunset days. Facebook discontinued production and sales of the headset in June of this year, followed by an announcement that submissions to the Go app store would end in December.

The last day for developers to submit their Oculus Go apps for publishing consideration rolled past us on December 4. Today was the final day that Oculus will publish new apps to the store, and there were surprisingly few titles that launched this week.

Cyber Dream, the developer behind VR battle royale game Virtual Battlegrounds, has just released season 2, which includes new weapons and a larger map, and introduces a dynamic weather system.

Virtual Battlegrounds Season 2 is a significant overhaul to the entire game. Cyber Dream revamped the visuals with improved vegetation and higher-quality 3D assets. The developer also incorporated a new dynamic weather system, which randomizes the weather conditions for each match. The possible weather conditions include overcast, sunset, full moon, thunderstorm, and sunny day.

Season 2 also introduces a new area to the Virtual Battlegrounds map. The newly added warehouse district gives players a space that requires new tactical strategies to survive. The new pump-action shotgun should help with the tight quarters inside the warehouses.

Oded Daniel, one of the founders of Deca, the new VR company behind the upcoming DecaGear headset, revealed that his company is currently producing the first 300 units of the DecaMove locomotion system, and each one of them is destined for a reviewer.

Deca is a new company in the VR hardware space, and it is trying hard to gain the trust of the VR community rapidly. The company has given several glimpses into the production process for the DecaGear headset and the DecaMove locomotion system, with multiple developer vlogs released on Twitter, Linked In and YouTube. The company recently showed a machine that prints circuits on PCBs as it prepares the DecaMove hardware for reviewers.

Daniel said the company is calling the first 300 units the "blogger edition" because each one of them is destined to go directly to VR influencers on YouTube. We've reached out to MegaDodo, and we're hoping to get one, too, so we can tell you all about it.

Oculus released the launch trailer for the Quest exclusive Jurassic World Aftermath, and it looks like this is a title that fans of the Jurassic Park series won't want to miss. This cell-shaded VR adventure looks like a thrilling experience.

Jurassic World Aftermath puts you right in the center of the abandoned park. You're on a mission to retrieve embryos from the research facility, and just like in the original Jurassic Park movie, you're going to need to outsmart a pack of velociraptors.

Jurassic World Aftermath is a fully immersive room-scale VR game built exclusively for the Oculus Quest platform. This is one of the titles listed on the back of the Quest 2 box, so we expect good things.

The free Oculus Quest ports of the classic Quake, Quake 2 and Half-Life games, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein have been modified to run at the Quest 2's 90Hz refresh rate. They are available now on Side Quest.

Simon Brown, AKA @DrBeef, is the independent developer behind the popular virtual reality ports of ID's classic Quake and Quake 2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Half-Life. His implementations incorporate 6-DoF control and stereoscopic rendering with the original game files to give you full VR support for these classic games.

DrBeef's VR ports are some of the more popular releases on the SideQuest distribution platform, having amassed over 175,000 downloads collectively, with a minimum star rating of 4.7 out of 5 for each of them. Now, gamers with Quest 2 headsets can run the game at higher framerates than before, thanks to the new 90Hz update.

Today, carbon Studio revealed that it is hard at work porting The Wizards: Dark Times to the Oculus Quest platform. The studio is gearing up for an early 2021 release.

Carbon Studio launched The Wizards: Dark Times on PC VR over the summer, and it's had fantastic reviews from gamers and tech media. This spellcasting VR adventure is the follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Wizards, which also got rave reviews.

The Wizards: Dark Times features some of the most impressive graphics found in any VR game, so it comes as quite a surprise that Carbon Studios is making it work on the standalone Oculus Quest platform. Of course, the graphics in the Quest version are toned down quite a bit.

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond has only been available for three days, and Respawn Entertainment has already released the first patch with a promise of more on the way.

Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond dropped on December 10 and the response to the game has been mixed at best. Respawn Entertainment took the criticism to heart and quickly moved to fix some of the community's most frequent complaints.

Late Friday, u/Oculus-Mdoran from Oculus Studios announced that a patch would be released early this week, which would address several complaints by adding features and making some tweaks to how the game works.