Extended Reality (XR) - Page 26

The wait for HP's Reverb G2 VR headset is over for some people. HP started shipping headsets to supplierslast week, and those suppliers have already begun shipping headsets to customers. The first review surfaced on Discordon Wednesday.

A member of the HP Reverb G2 Discord community that goes by Oaf_Tobark reported on Wednesday that they had received their pre-order. Unbeknownst to Oaf_Tobark, it appears they were the first customer to report receiving the headset. Luckily for us, Oaf_Tobark is a good sport and gave us a mini-review of the headset: Despite it being their first VR headset.

VR Cover today introduced two different accessories for the Oculus Quest 2 standalone VR headset, including washable face cushions and lens protectors.

VR Cover is famous for fits hygienic solutions for VR headsets. The company has existed for longer than consumer VR has been available, and it offers solutions for almost every headset on the market. The new Oculus Quest 2 is the latest device that VR Cover supports. It partnered with Facebook to make these official Quest 2 accessories.

VR Cover usually sells PU leather cushions, which are moisture-resistant and easy to wipe down with an anti-bacterial wipe. VR Cover will have that style of cover available later this month, but the first product for Quest 2 offers a higher level of cleanliness. You can now get medical-grade hypoallergenic silicone covers that are moisture-proof and washable. These will be great for situations where you're sharing headsets with the public.

Facebook has a bit of an issue with the Quest 2 accessories on its hands, and the problem may be worse than it initially expected. Some Quest 2 Elite Straps fail prematurely, and Oculus has stopped shipping the product until it figures out why.

Not quite a week after Facebook started shipping the Oculus Quest 2 standalone VR headset and its accessories, reports began surfacing about failing Elite Strap upgrades. Many people have reported their strap cracking or snapping in half altogether.

We reached out to Facebook after the initial reports surfaced, and a company representative confirmed that Oculus was aware of the problem. Still, the company believed that the issue affected a "very small percentage" of customers.

Microsoft is making the HoloLens 2 available for a broader audience. What was previously limited to enterprise-class organizations is now accessible for most developers.

Microsoft introduced the HoloLens 2 Developer Edition, which should help independent developers and small software studios start creating Windows Mixed Reality experiences. The developer edition headset isn't a cheaper device, but Microsoft is now offering financing to soften the blow. The HoloLens 2 Developer Edition also comes with a few extra bundled perks to sweeten the deal.

Microsoft's HoloLens 2 Developer Edition bundle includes a standard HoloLens 2 headset, which retails for $3,500. The developer package also includes $500 in Azure credits, enabling developers to experiment with some of the HoloLens 2's cloud-enabled features, such as Azure Spatial anchoring and Azure Remote Render. The HoloLens 2 Developer edition also includes 3-month trial licenses for Unity Pro and the Pixyz Plugin, which Microsoft says is an added $750 value.

DecaGear revealed that the DecaMove locomotion solution, which ships with the upcoming DecaGear 1 VR headset, will be available as a standalone product.

DecaGear recently revealed the DecaGear 1 VR headset, which features face and eye-tracking. DecaGear 1 also includes a tracking puck for your hips that allows you to control your movement orientation by rotating your hips.

Or Kuntzman, one of the company's founders, said that DecaMove would work with many headsets, including Valve Index, HP Reverb G2, and even Oculus Quest/Quest 2.

On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg told Facebook investors that the new Oculus Quest 2 is selling way faster than the old version. The CEO said that sales of Quest 2 have "surpassed expectations."

Facebook announced the Oculus Quest 2 standalone VR headset on September 16 at its annual Connect developer conference. The new headset, which sells for as little as $300, gives you everything you need to enjoy immersive VR experiences that you can move around in and interact with.

Facebook opened pre-orders for Quest 2 the day it revealed the hardware, and many people ordered one before the October 13 launch. Facebook never reveals unit sales, but Zuckerberg told his investors that 5x more people pre-ordered the Quest 2 than the original Quest headset, which is more than the company anticipated.

Sony's PlayStation 5 launch is mere days away, and people are getting excited about the next-gen experiences that it brings. But one of the bigger features about the console is supposed to be backwards compatibility, but for PSVR players, it might not be as good as it seems.

Sony has said that its new console would play 99.9% of PS4 games, including almost all of the platform's virtual reality titles. The PlayStation VR headset is compatible with the PS5 console, but it recently came to light that the PS5's camera isn't compatible with the PSVR headset. Sony offers a free dongle that converts the PS4 camera to USB to make it work on PS5.

It turns out; the dongle requirement may have been a sign of the level of support the PSVR would get on PS5. A spokesperson for Sony told UploadVR that the PS5 versions of No Mans Sky and Hitman 3 would not include VR support, adding that the company has "not announced PS5 titles for PS VR." Sony considers the PSVR as a "backwards compatible device," not a PS5 accessory.

The upcoming PlayStation 5 is compatible with almost the entire back catalogue of PS4 games, including most PSVR titles, but the system won't launch with a new PSVR headset. The new console is compatible with the existing headset, but you will need a dongle to make it work.

If you're not familiar, the PlayStation 4 console featured a unique proprietary port for the PlayStation 4 camera required to run the PSVR. The new console, however, does not include that port, and the PS5 camera is not compatible with the VR headset.

Sony said you'll need an adaptor to make the PSVR work on the new console, and you'll need your existing PlayStation 4 Camera. The adaptor is a USB dongle with Sony's proprietary end on one side and a standard USB A plug on the other end. The adaptor supports SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps.

Microsoft announced that it would transition its Windows Mixed Reality platform exclusively to OpenXR in future game engine releases.

This year, Khronos Group released the OpenXR 1.0 specification, which saw immediate support from the biggest names in the XR space. Oculus and Microsoft quickly released OpenXR compatible runtimes, followed by SteamVR and HTC shortly after that. Now that Unity and Epic Games are on board, Microsoft is preparing to move away from its WinRT API and shift exclusively to OpenXR.

The idea behind Khronos Group's OpenXR specification is that developers can write code once, which would be compatible with all OpenXR devices. That means developers could build one application that would run on OpenXR-compatible VR or AR hardware.

Immersed pushed a new update for its virtual workspace application, making it far easier to type in VR. With the Virtual Keyboard Overlay, putting a headset on no longer hides your keyboard.

Immersed is a VR application that integrates wirelessly with your PC to give you an expansive, private workspace wherever you are. Immersed offers multi-screen computing, multi-user shared environments with shared displays or whiteboards, and a virtual webcam so you can join zoom meetings as a virtual avatar.

Today, Immersed solved one of the most significant limitations of its system. Now you can see your keyboard while you have your headset on. Previously, you had to use your motion controllers to type or fumble to find your keyboard blindly. Now with Virtual Keyboard Overlay, you'll be able to see it on screen.

Tilt Five, the AR tabletop gaming platform led by former Valve engineer Jeri Ellsworth, just secured millions of dollars to bring its product to the market.

Tilt Five launched a Kickstarter campaign last year to help bring its augmented reality tabletop gaming platform to life. The company secured $1.7 million, which gave it an excellent runway to develop its AR gaming system, but it will need a bigger team as it prepares to launch its product.

In a new Series A funding round, Tilt Five secured an additional $7.5 million, which will help the company prepare for its product launch in the coming months. SIP Global Partners led the investment round, for which Jeffrey Smith, a General Partner at the firm, will assume a position on Tilt Five's Board of Directors. BITKRAFT Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Logitech, and Ken Birdwell also pitched in.

Joanna Popper, HP's Global Head of Virtual Reality for Location Based Entertainment, revealed on Reddit that the Reverb G2 VR headset is now in full production. The company recently signed off on the final production design and the first units are already out the door to partner warehouses.

The HP Reverb G2 is HP's latest entry in the consumer VR space. The headset features 2160x2160 per-eye resolution, inside out tracking provided by Microsoft's Windows Mixed Reality platform, and creature comforts pulled from Valve's Index headset, such as the lenses and the over-the-ear headphones.

HP previously announced that the Reverb G2 would begin shipping in November. Popper's announcement confirms that plan is in full motion, and it may even speed things up a little bit. Popper said that the first customers could expect to see their headsets in early to mid-November.

Cambridge Mechatronics Limited (CML) recently announced it is building a depth camera for smartphones that is better for AR than Apple's LiDAR system.

Apple recently revealed the iPhone 12 Pro lineup, which comes equipped with a LiDAR depth camera system that enables advanced AR applications that understand your surroundings' spatial map. The LiDAR camera in the iPhone 12 Pro can capture 600 points of data up to five meters away. Apple then uses AI to fill in the missing information to build a 3D mesh of your environment to enable impressive augmented reality experiences.

CML's new camera can capture depth at up to 10 meters, and it does so with much higher precision than Apple's LiDAR camera. CML said its camera collects 300,000 points of data, which gives its captures high enough resolution not to warrant additional processing from a neural network.

Lenovo and Varjo announced the Lenovo would become an official reseller of Varjo's VR and XR headsets. You can now purchase Varjo's high-end headsets suitable workstation computer.

Varjo offers some of the highest-end VR and XR headsets on the market today. The company's VR-2 and XR-1 headsets offer incredible visual clarity, which comes at a high cost for both the headset and the hardware you need to operate it. The partnership with Lenovo won't alleviate the cost of buying a Varjo device, but it will simplify the buying process by offering the headsets and computers as a bundle package.

Lenovo and Varjo created the "Certified for Varjo" program, which pairs Varjo headsets with workstations guaranteed to deliver the required performance to power the device.

Huawei recently revealed a compact VR headset that tethers to a smartphone for its compute power. We don't know much about the headset, but we're very curious about its unique design.

The new Huawei VR headset is a compact device that looks similar in size to a pair of ski goggles. The visor isn't very deep, and it looks like the screens would be close to your eyes in this configuration. The headset images make it look somewhat like an AR device, but from what we understand, this is an upcoming VR headset.

The new Huawei VR Glass supports 6-DoF tracking for both the headset and a pair of wand controllers that come with it. The controllers look a lot like Oculus Touch controllers, with a couple of face buttons and a menu button, along with a thumbstick on each controller. Huawei's controllers also double as a stand for the headset, which is a novel idea.

Facebook's new policies are causing a lot of confusion for Oculus account holders and Facebook's support agents. Last week, reports surfaced that suggested you could get banned from Facebook for using two Oculus headsets at the same time. Facebook says that false.

On Saturday, Reddit user kommanderk33n posted screenshots of what looked like an unfortunate interaction with Oculus support. Kommanderk33n has two Oculus accounts; one for himself and one for guests. Facebook's new policy requires that Oculus accounts be associated with Facebook accounts, but Facebook's terms of service forbid users from creating multiple accounts. I'm sure you see the problem here.

While seeking guidance, Oculus Support gave kommanderk33n what looked like the worst possible response: Having two headsets associated with one Facebook account would be grounds for account termination.

Do you remember the opening scene of Ready Player One with the crazy omnidirectional treadmill that you could run on? That may not be science fiction for much longer. Infinadeck, the company that developed the technology for enterprise use, is currently working on a consumer version that anyone can afford.

Infinadeck, if you're not aware, is an actual product. The company developed its omnidirectional treadmill technology several years ago, but it never came to consumer markets. It is costly in its current form and is only accessible to enterprise, medical, and government agencies. Infinadeck has not publicly revealed the price, but we have heard that the cost is five to six figures.

Infinadeck's technology is so expensive that we never expected it to come to consumers. However, in a recent interview with Antony Vitillo at Skarredghost.com, Infinadeck's CEO, Ken Bossung, revealed that his company plans to make Infinadeck a mass-market product eventually.

Megadodo Games, a Singapore-based development studio, is gearing up to move into the VR headset market. In the last few weeks, the company quietly started releasing info about its headset, and the details are hard to believe. If it's real, it will make a significant impact on the industry next year.

Megadodo created a side brand called Deca, which is developing an advanced PCVR headset for the consumer market. The DecaGear 1 VR headset will come equipped with inside-out tracking, Index-like controllers with finger and pressure sensors, and two global-shutter infrared cameras that track your facial expression.

Deca's face-tracking technology, called FaceFlow, supports all 52 blendshapes based on the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). The DecaGear 1 headset includes an upper face camera on the inside of the visor, which tracks your pupils, eyelids, brows, upper nose and forehead movements. A lower face camera on the outside of the visor tracks your mouth, lips, lower nose, cheeks, and even your tongue.

Facebook may be dealing with a design flaw in its Quest 2 Elite Strap design. Many people are reporting their upgraded head straps are already broken just a week after Facebook started shipping the product.

The new Oculus Quest 2 is getting a lot of attention right now. Tons of people have had their first experience with VR in the last week, game developers are setting incredible sales growth, and Quest 2 is moving faster than Facebook expected.

It's not all sunshine and rainbows surrounding the Quest 2 launch. It appears that some of the people who invested the most into the Quest 2 platform are getting a raw deal. Numerous reports of broken Elite Head Straps have popped up over the last few days. We counted no less than a dozen posts on Reddit in just the past 24 hours.

BigBox VR's highly anticipated virtual reality battle royale game, Population: One, is available today on all platforms except PlayStation VR. This could be one of the biggest VR games of the year.

Population: One is a first-person battle royale game exclusively for virtual reality. The game features all the standard battle royale features, such as a bevy of weapons to scavenge, material resources that you need to collect, an open world to explore, and a map that grows smaller and smaller as time goes on. It even supports building structures like you can in Fortnite.

Population: One stands out from other battle royale games, aside from being a virtual reality game, because the combat primarily takes place in elevated positions. Population: One features BigBox VR's Vertical Combat System (VCS), which gives players the ability to reach the highest point of any structure on the map. If you can see it, you can get to it by climbing, flying, or building your way to it.