Extended Reality (XR) - Page 33

Apple has big plans for the augmented reality market... it's just that those plans won't actually solidify in actual reality until at least 2022 according to a new report from The Information.

The new report says that Apple plans to release its first AR headset in 2022, which the iPhone giant will then follow-up with a pair of AR glasses the next year in 2023. There are some analysts and other reports that suggest 2020-2021 for the new AR products, but The Information is firm on 2022-2023.

Apple's mysterious AR headset is reportedly codenamed N301, and is meant to be similar to the Oculus Quest but slimmer. Apple's purported N301 headset has both AR and VR abilities, packs external cameras that capture users' surroundings, and a high-res display that shows information and virtual objects overlay the real-world.

Magic Leap is in the headlines in all the wrong ways right now, with the beyond secretive company signing over all of its patents 2 months ago now, to JPMorgan Chase as collateral.

Documents filed with the US Patent & Trademark Office on August 22 saw a huge 1903 patents from Magic Leap, and its various holdings companies including Mentor Acquisitions, LLC and Molecular Imprints Inc. were assigned to JPMorgan Chase. The patent security agreement was signed by Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz and JPMorgan Chase collateral agent Eleftherios Karsos.

The bigger issue here is that Magic Leap has burned through its gigantic $2.6 billion in funding so far, as well as its latest funding round of $280 million from Japan's NTT Docomo earlier this year.

OK -- if there was ever a time to sit back and say "now this is awesome", that time is now. Virtuix and HP have just teamed up to throw a huge $100,000 esports tournament.

The $100K tournament will take place in Virtuix Oni's Arena virtual reality attractions, and while $100K pales in comparisons to the millions and even 10s of millions on offer for other esports, this is specifically in VR -- and more specifically, on freaking VR treadmills. It'll be sweaty, with gamers (really) earning their money.

Virtuix and HP have teamed together for the 2020 Omni Arena esports series, which now has a $100,000 prize pool. The last event had $50,000 -- so we have a doubling in prize pool thanks to the new partnership with HP -- as well as the winning teams taking home an HP Reverb Virtual Reality Headset.

Have you ever been walking to work, school, or just down the road and thought the real-world was too boring? Don't worry, Microsoft is working on something for that with project DreamWalker.

DreamWalker is a new project by researchers at Microsoft that sees users wearing a VR headset, as well as a backpack computer and a myriad of sensors. With the kit all installed onto your person, you can walk around in the real-world while viewing a totally different reality through a VR headset.

Don't worry about walking into something as there are a bunch of real-time sensing technologies in the DreamWalker VR system: the backpack PC, dual-band GPS sensor. two RGB depth cameras, and a "Windows Mixed Reality-provided relative position trace".

A new Predator VR game will do for intergalactic hunters what Batman: Arkham VR did for the Caped Crusader.

Predator VR aims to bring the suspenseful chaos of the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic to your HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, or Valve Index headset.

In development from Phosphor Studios and produced by FoxNext Games, Predator VR will offer three different modes: a campaign mode where you play as a soldier, an online PVP mode where one player hunts down soldiers as the Predator, and Predator Rampage, which sounds like a survival horde-style experience. The game will also give you bonuses for decapitating soldiers in the multiplayer mode (wicked!).

The Walking Dead is getting adapted into a big new survival-horror VR game complete with exploration, brutal combat, and crafting.

Today Skydance Interactive announced The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners, a new VR game set in Robert Kirkman's terrifying zombie-infested world. Set for release in January 2020 on Oculus and Steam's VR platforms, Saints and Sinners sounds like an intuitive mix between Dying Light and Dead Island with a whole new layer of immersion and thrilling tension: gamers can grab zombies and decapitate them, slice and dice hordes of walkers, and interact with an explorable world.

The game will also have a surprising amount of reactivity and depth with a 15 hour+ campaign, showing Skydance is keen on reversing the downward trend with Walking Dead games. You'll get to wield all sorts of guns and shotguns (as well as bows) as you fight for survival in an undead-littered New Orleans, mowing down both humans and walkers alike. There's opportunities to help various NPCs littered throughout the game and every decision you make will not only shape the world, but it'll determine who you can team up with.

Respawn today announced Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, its new VR shooter originally teased way back in 2017.

Titanfall VR isn't happening after all. Respawn's AAA VR shooter is a Medal of Honor adaptation centered in World War II, and promises to deliver authenticity and immersion via the Oculus platform. Above and Beyond takes players to various battles and theaters of war across Europe, and even tosses in some unique physics systems to enable realistic carnage.

Players can catch grenades mid-air and throw them back at enemies, toss knives, interact with the environment like climbing chains, ladders, walls, and even pulling a grenade pin with your teeth, operate tanks, and of course shoot a wide array of guns straight out of the brutal world conflict. You can even swim. The spatial head and body tracking will allow more freedom in VR, and Respawn wants to capture all the possibilities that Oculus VR has to offer.

Simply put, Facebook wants to read your mind and actually has admitted to it as well. According to a new announcement, Facebook wants to build a wristband that "captures your intention".

Firstly, "capturing your intention" means that the wristband will have the technological power to be able to read your electrical signals sent to your brain, and determine your intention before you even carry out the action. Meaning Facebook would essentially know what you are about to do before you even do it. Scary? Yes.

According to Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's Vice President of VR and AR, announced on Monday the acquisition of "neural interface platform" CTRL-labs. The way that Facebook is marketing this wristband is "empowering you with control over your digital life", which seems quite the farce considering how much Facebook has been put under the coals for privacy violations.

Most people even outside of the technology industry have wondered what the next 'mobile phone' would be. Some analysts are banking on the next 'mobile phone' being some form of eye-wear that would incorporate augmented reality. Facebook and the Ray-Ban's owner might just be building that.

CNBC has said that Facebook has now partnered up with Luxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, Oakley and other big companies in the eye-wear industry. The contacts close to the deal have said that these companies are planning on building the 'next mobile phone' in the form of augmented reality glasses that would allow for users to make calls, see information, livestream what you are seeing, while also features apps and more.

This new product has been titled Orion and according to sources close to this deal the new pair of shades wouldn't be reaching the market until 2023 - 2025. While that might seem like some time away from us, Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly said that he considers this project to be a 'priority' over at Facebook.

The 2016 launch Vive headset will soon be much harder to buy throughout the rest of 2019, and will eventually be discontinued, HTC confirms.

Now that there's a galaxy of new Vive headsets like the Vive Focus, Vive Cosmos, and Vive Pro, HTC will soon retire the original launch Vive. The new modular $699 Vive Cosmos aims to replace the 2016 Vive with inside-out tracking, reduced cords, and the ability to attach various mods like wireless receivers.

"We felt like it's time to start bringing in a new replacement for the Vive CE. That product is going to start coming out of the market very shortly. By the end of the quarter it's going to start becoming very scarce in channel," HTC VR general manager Dan O'Brien told UploadVR.

HTC's new Vive Cosmos headset will cost $699, putting it between the self-contained Vive Focus at $599 and the premium Vive Pro at $799.

The new Vive Cosmos VR HMD is built around ease-of-use and accessibility, and brings spec performance boosts over original Vive headset. The Cosmos has two 3.4-inch panels at 1440x1700 pixels per eye for a combined 2880x1700p or about 88% more pixels than the base Vive, complete with a 90Hz refresh rate and a 110-degree field of view.

The major difference is the Cosmos doesn't require base stations for movement tracking. It's outfitted with six cameras for inside-out tracking, making setting up a breeze. The Cosmos is also modular. HTC teased smartphone interactivity when the Cosmos was first announced, but the only mod that's official is an external tracking mod that allows you to use old Vive tracking base stations for improved immersion.

Nate Mitchell has announced he's leaving Facebook in a post on Reddit, with the co-founder of Oculus saying: "Hey everyone - I have some bittersweet news to share with this community. After 7 incredible years, I've decided to move on from Oculus / Facebook".

I first met Nate back at PAX Australia 2013 when Oculus was a small start-up, and he was one of the most humble guys I'd ever met. He remembered me again at CES 2015, and again was a humble human being even with Oculus going through its meteroic rise with Palmer Luckey and creating a VR market out of nothing really.

Facebook is looking internally and externally to find a replacement for Mitchell, according to someone who spoke with WIRED. Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer said in a reply to Mitchell's post on Facebook: "Nate thank you for all you've done for VR and FB. Was and is an amazing ride and blast working with you. THANK YOU! Hope you get some well-deserved rest and I can't wait to see what you do next!"

We all gawk at the glitz and glamor that is Hollywood. It has been said that Hollywood film and shows of the sci-fi genre tend to show future items which one day may come to pass. This one just came along much quicker than most.

The haptic suit which most likely will come to the front of your mind via the recent box office nostalgia/retro-futuristic hit Ready Player One. Haptics is nothing new but the idea of a full-body suit which can alter your immersion level into a VR environment has been the tale of many sci-fi onlookers. VR immersion is nice but imagine being able to feel every hit, impact, or explosion in your game in accordance with its positioning.

You may not have to imagine for long as a London-based company 'Teslasuit' is building such a haptic suit. It can increase the immersive nature of interactive experiences by adding the sensory perception of touch to the mix. While most of us gamers and PC enthusiasts immediately jump into the scenario I laid out, Teslasuit intends this to meet several roles, including fitness training or kinesthetic learning. The latter being a way to learn errors in things such as golf swings so it can help you train to improve your performance.

Valve corp, yep the same one that brought you Steam, has canceled their VirtualLink adapter.

VirtualLink is a USB-C connection which can carry power, DisplayPort, and data all through a single interface and was touted as the potential next step for VR.

Valve made an adapter for its new Index headset which was to be the first step in adoption for VR HMD's and VirtualLink. But as of a few days ago, Valve pulled the plug on the adapter stating 'lack of adoption.'

Facebook already knows the smallest nitty gritty details about our lives, but anyone who knows more about the company would know they're working on some freaky Black Mirror level stuff in their R&D labs.

In a huge update for its brain-computer interface, the social networking giant talked about the strides its made in its push towards being able to "decode silent speech" without the need of implanting electrodes into the brain. Facebook first unveiled its brain-computer interface research initiative at its F8 conference in 2017, and has since worked with researchers at the University of California, San Francisco.

The researchers have published a new paper in Nature that details they've been working with people who have had brain surgery for epilepsy, creating an algorithm that can "decode a small set of full, spoken words and phrases from brain activity in real-time".

Wasteland developers at inXile are hiring for a new multiplayer VR game. What could it be?

inXile is no stranger to VR games, and VR Focus reports this new unannounced project has been in the works for two years now. Before we get too excited and think Microsoft is making a VR headset for the next-gen Project Scarlett Xbox console, remember this VR game was in dev before Microsoft acquired the studio.

The VR project sounds pretty ambitious in scope and could be a huge experience. It's apparently an open-world survival RPG with multiplayer elements set in a live service wrapper (which'll Microsoft very happy), and it's built with the flexible Unreal Engine 4.

We've known details about Sony's new PlayStation VR 2 for a while now, but it seems more patents and leaks are here about the PSVR 2 that are painting a clearer picture.

Sony's next-gen PSVR 2 will not see the light of day until late 2020 at the earliest, with leaked specs suggesting a $249 price and 2560x1440 screen at 120Hz refresh rate. Better yet, it would feature eye and head tracking as well as up to 5 hours of battery life with a large 220-degree field of view.

Inverse is reporting the new PSVR rolling out starting at $249, being completely wireless and having a high-end 1440p 120Hz refresh rate and 220-degree FOV. This new information comes from a recently-published patent application by the USPTO, confirming that Sony is indeed working on a new VR headset with both eye and head tracking.

Sony confirms it's new ultra-powerful PlayStation 5 console won't come with a brand new PSVR headset.

The PS5 is shaping up to be quite a beast that's flexible as well as powerful. The next-gen PlayStation is a true leap with its AMD-powered Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU architecture, an ultra-fast SSD, and a host of new services and content, but the PS4's legacy will live on through the new gen. Sony confirms the PS5 is fully compatible with all existing PS4 games, peripherals, and even the PlayStation VR. This backward compatibility means Sony isn't in any hurry to refresh its PSVR headset for the new gen--even if the hardware is somewhat antiquated.

In a recent interview with CNET, Sony R&D exec Dominic Mallinson says the PS5 won't have a new advanced PSVR at launch. "There's no reason for us to coincide it with a new console. From the point of view of the consumer, to be bombarded with many many things is a message that we don't want to send. In some ways it's good to have a little breathing space between those things."

Oculus has just announced it will have its next-gen Oculus Rift S headset on sale on May 21, launching side-by-side with the new Oculus Quest headset.

The new Oculus Rift S will sell for $399 and packs a higher-resolution 2560x1440 display (1280x1440 per eye) with a lower 80Hz (down from 90Hz) display. Rift S also packs Oculus' new inside-out tracking technology that is dubbed Oculus Insight, which means you don't need to have external motion sensors as there are five of them built directly into the Rift S headset that provide full positional tracking.

Oculus Quest on the other hand is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835-powered standalone VR headset that has offers the same Oculus Insight technology with four built-in sensors and full positional tracking, with a higher-end 2880x1600 resolution display with its refresh rate set at 72Hz.

Valve plans to release a marquee game onto its growing platform of VR headsets. Is it Half-Life related? Maybe. Maybe not.

Today Valve revealed its new powerful VR headset, the Valve Index, which supports all existing VR games on the SteamVR ecosystem. But the company wants to release a big first-party "flagship VR game" sometime in 2019 that leverages the full brunt of the Index's capabilities. After all, Valve is still making video games, and VR is a big part of its innovation now.

This new flagship game could be the rumored Half-Life VR game that was supposed to be bundled with the Index. Or it could be a Left 4 Dead experience with intuitive controls via the knuckle controllers' new design and crazy immersion capabilities via improved tracking, FOV, and refresh rates.