Extended Reality (XR) - Page 38

All new purchases of an HTC Vive now come bundled with a free copy of Fallout 4 VR.

Fallout 4 VR is being heralded as an industry changer by AMD, who has recently partnered with Bethesda in a cross-collaborative initiative. A bit ago I predicted that Fallout 4 VR would be the killer app VR so desperately needs, and Bethesda Game Studios is doing everything in their power to make that happen.

"[Fallout 4 VR] is a ground-breaking VR title. It will change the way we think about VR. It will be an industry changer," AMD corporate vice president Roy Taylor told MCVUK at this year's VR World Congress.

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey has been quiet since his exit from the VR startup, but during the Tokyo Game Show this week, Luckey confirmed he's formed a new company.

The new company is working on VR in some form, with Luckey saying: "I have a new company; I can't talk about my projects too much yet, but I'm still working in the virtual reality industry on some very exciting things". Continuing, Luckey said he doesn't want to be seen "as an Oculus person" as his ambitions are much bigger than what one company is doing.

He continued: "Don't think of me as an Oculus person. Just think of me as a VR person. Everything. Sony, HTC, other companies. Everything".

Oculus and HTC had their time with the Rift and Vive, respectively, but Sony has sold many more VR headsets thanks to the large PS4 install base.

During an interview with Reuters, Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. boss Andrew House said: "I'm not entirely comfortable being the market leader in VR by such a margin that seems to be happening right now. With such a brand new category you want a variety of platforms all doing well to create that rising tide and create the audience".

Sony is really only fighting against HTC and Facebook, as Samsung still dominates thanks to the GearVR. Sony shipped 519,400 PSVR headsets, while Facebook made 246,900 Oculus Rift headsets, while there were 94,500 HTC Vive headsets sold in Q2. Sony has 24.4% of the VR market share in Q2, while Facebook has 11.6%, and HTC with 4.4%.

The world of mobile VR headsets is going to quickly expand later this year and into 2018, with HTC filing a trademark that teases a standalone VR headset called Vive Focus.

There has been two new filings from HTC for a "head mounted display" named Vive Focus, according to Lets Go Digital, with one of them from the European Union Intellectual Property Office while the other is with the USPTO.

HTC's purported Vive Focus headset would run Google's Daydream mobile VR platform, which has had a hand from Qualcomm in the hardware department. HTC's new Vive Focus headset should feature 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) positional tracking, with 3DoF motion controls, with compatibility with Daydream games and apps.

ASUS' mixed reality headset will miss the launch of Windows 10's Creator's Update, and is schedule to launch in 2018.

In an effort to standardize both VR and AR and roll out affordable, accessible headsets to everyday consumers with productivity, gaming, and entertainment features, Microsoft has teamed up with a consortium of tech titans like Dell, ASUS, Acer, HP and Lenovo to make Windows 10-powered "mixed reality" headsets. While other companies have readied and solidified their respective mixed reality creations in preparation for the big Windows 10 Creator's Update, ASUS has pushed its MR headset back a ways.

The headset has twin 1440 x 1440 resolution display panels that support refresh rates up to 90Hz and a 95-degree field-of-view, and features two cameras for inside-out tracking, removing the need for outside camera sensors like high-end VR headsets such as the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. ASUS' mixed reality HMD also features sensors like an accelerometer, gyroscope, and a magnetometer. As with all Windows 10 mixed reality headsets, the ASUS model won't be wireless or self-contained, and requires a machine running Windows 10 to operate. But unlike the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, the Windows 10 MR HMDs don't require expensive graphics cards and can instead run on laptops using integrated graphics.

The August Steam survey shows some interesting statistics, with the Facebook owned Oculus Rift increasing its market share by 8.1% compared to July's data. This brings the Rift's market share to 43.8% compared to HTC Vive's 52.3%, considering recent rumours of HTC potentially selling off the Vive and the upcoming release of Microsoft's Direct Reality products, should Vive owners be worried?

Probably not, due to a recent price drop of the Oculus Rift and its touch controllers you would expect to see some inflation in the market. With the price drop offer about to end, we should expect the market to stabilize and see a true percentage over the coming months.

The Lenovo Explorer, the Chinese tech giant's new mixed reality headset, takes aim accessibility first in both price, performance, and hardware requirements, and can run off of Intel integrated graphics.

Lenovo revealed its Windows 10-powered Explorer AR and VR combination headset at IFA 2017 in Berlin, showing the fruits of Microsoft's initiative to make affordable headsets that appeal to all sorts of users. Starting at $350, the Lenovo Explorer fits the bill nicely with its widespread functionality: users can watch 4K TV shows, view 360-degree video, play VR games, and even use the headset for productivity via Windows programs like Excel. Best of all, however, the headset doesn't require an expensive discrete video card to operate like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Lenovo has confirmed the Explorer can run on laptops and desktops with Intel integrated graphics.

The Explorer features two-front mounted cameras for inside-out position tracking, meaning you won't need an external tracking camera like the Vive, Rift and PlayStation VR--the headset features a tracking space of up to 11.5 x 11.5 feet. Spec-wise, the headset features dual 1440x1440 resolution displays. But unlike Microsoft's expensive Hololens, the Explorer--and other Windows Mixed Reality devices--aren't self-contained and must be tethered to a compatible Windows 10 device in order to function.

Arguably, Halo is Microsoft's top selling brand. When Microsoft release a new console, the first question asked is 'When is Halo coming out?'

Microsoft recently announced that they're working with 343 Industries to bring future Halo experiences to their Mixed Reality Headset.

Unfortunately, no more information was released, other than Alex Kipman, Microsoft's 'Technical Fellow', stating "We are not providing specifics right now, but it is going to be a lot of fun to work with them".

The entire world is waiting to see what Apple do with their September event, where we should be introduced to the latest iPhone, 4K-capable Apple TV, and more. The big deal at the event will reportedly be AR glasses, according to Bernstein Research.

Tim Sacconaghi is confident Apple are preparing an AR product, where he says "Instead, it is evident that most players remain content to fiddle with prototype and beta products, which are still years away from commercial viability. We believe this state of persistent fragmentation provides a potential opening for Apple. Given the relative infancy of AR, Apple does not seem to be behind any of its competitors from a technological perspective: ARKit appears to be just as capable as any other solution within the AR space".

We won't see Apple dominate the AR space instantly, but rather it will take 3-4 years for Apple to get familiar with it. This happened with the iPad, iPhone, and every product in between - and also not just from Apple, but with any new emerging technology (VR is a recent example). He added: "from a business perspective, smartglasses would make sense to Apple for three reasons," those being a "potential market" that "is very significant," the ability of Apple to plow a lot of money into refining the technology, and a follow-on market for "smartglasses software / services" that "could also be substantial".

Oculus founder and VR pioneer Palmer Luckey may make an offer to buy HTC's virtual reality division.

Due to consecutive losses from its smartphone division, Taiwanese tech giant HTC may sell off its Vive VR subsidiary in an attempt to stabilize, sources say. Palmer Luckey, who sold Oculus to Facebook for $2 billion, has expressed interest in making an offer for the Vive VR branch--if HTC ends up selling, of course. "What do you guys think, should I buy Vive?" Mr. Luckey asked the official Oculus subreddit, to which most users responded in the affirmative.

While demand and hype for enthusiast-grade PC-powered VR has cooled down in terms of sales, key OEMs and HMD-makers are ramping up for the next generation of VR headsets. This new generation is expected to include major benefits over the initial wave including wireless HMDs with self-contained hardware, use of more advanced and efficient chips and technologies, and some will even blend Augmented Reality (AR), which projects simulated images over the real-world, in an attempt to tap the Mixed Reality market.

HTC may sell off its VR business in order to stabilize losses from its smartphone division, sources say.

HTC's beleaguered smartphone division has caused the company to weigh specific options that may lead to an outright sale or spin-off of its Vive virtual reality business, anonymous sources have told Bloomberg. The Tawainese smartphone-maker reported its eight straight consecutive loss in May, with losses of $66 million in first quarter of the current fiscal year.

Anshel Sag, analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, told us that spinning off the VR division may have been planned all along, and if so, it won't be hard for HTC to accomplish. "HTC's smartphone business continues to struggle. The company has lots of valuable IP in that business and decent products but has failed to compete with the Chinese manufacturers and Samsung. Their VR division is already a whole owned subsidiary so spinning off Vive shouldn't be hard at all and I believe was part of a long term plan."

KFC has come out swinging with marketing ideas lately, with their own smartphone that they partnered with Chinese smartphone giant Huawei on, and now they have their very own VR training game.

In the KFC VR training app, it provides potential employees with a chicken cooking simulation - in a way that has never, ever been done before. You're stuck in a room, and need to escape - but how do you do that? Oh, you will learn how to cook chicken, and that's your only way out. Yeah, weird, isn't it?

The Colonel says in the KFC VR training game: "This game will teach you how to make my Original Recipe chicken ... the hard way. Until you learn how to make my chicken right, you will not be allowed to leave!"

Skyrim is supposed to be one of virtual reality's killer apps, but it's actually tedious and clumsy to play on Sony's PlayStation VR.

After launching on all platforms known to man (only slightly joking here), Skyrim is coming to PlayStation VR--and not just a small slice as per the usual PSVR release, the full open-world game. But the experience is hindered by one critical aspect: teleportation. Like most Vive VR games, users will have to teleport from point-to-point to traverse Skryim's in-game world while using Move controllers. According to IGN's Alanah Pearce, Skyrim on PSVR is awkward and tedious when using these motion-tracked wands, and there's more than a few glitches.

The wands are there, of course, to track your hand movements and translate to in-game interactions, from pulling a bowstring to slicing and dicing with a sword and blocking with a shield. The Move controllers aim to add the critical point of immersion to the virtual reality experience, but at the cost of smooth movement. According to Ms. Pearce, teleporting makes for strange-feeling traversal throughout open-world areas as well as congested dungeons, and doesn't feel very smooth or natural.

Mario Kart and VR are a match made in heaven--we think so, and so do the lucky Japanese gamers that have actually tried it out.

Bandai Namco's VR Zone Arcade in Tokyo is bringing eight year old me's dream to life: Mario Kart virtual reality madness. We've already reported about Mario Kart GP VR in the past, but now we see just how much unbridled joy Nintendo's go-kart racer can bring to gamers with the new dimension of VR.

The game is officially licensed by Nintendo, and players wear the HTC Vive VR headset while sitting in a special go-kart that reacts and rumbles with feedback, making the experience more like an amusement park ride than a traditional arcade experience. If you're ever in Shinjuku, Tokyo be sure to check out the VRcade and have a blast in this interactive wonder!

Apple is rumored to release their new smart glasses or AR headset later this year, and now The Financial Times are reporting that the iPhone maker is making a pair of AR-powered smart glasses, lining up with the various rumors that Apple is set to crank the dial to 11 later this year.

Apple is looking at multiple ways of delivering its glasses, with one design featuring 3D cameras and wait for it... no display on the device itself. There's no final design just yet, as Apple would be keeping this under wraps more so than any other launch in their history. The report states: "A particular area of experimentation, people familiar with the matter say, is a pair of AR glasses that might move cameras, sensors and screens from the smartphone to the face. Yet despite the excitement surrounding ARKit, internally the company is still not sure what the most compelling application for such a headset might be".

We should expect the company to unveil their next-gen iPhone sometime next month, with the purported iPhone X and iPhone 8 to be unveiled alongside next-gen smart glasses. It's an exciting time to be a technology enthusiast, that's for sure.

The world of VR might not like hearing what EA boss Andrew Wilson has to say, with the EA CEO stating that VR isn't ready just yet, and that EA sees more potential in AR right now.

EA recently released their Q1 FT18 financial report, where Wilson had some choice words to say afterwards: "So I'll start with VR and AR. Not a lot of new news on VR for us and as you see there's not a lot of new news for VR in the industry. People seem to have come to terms of the fact that VR while an unbelievably wonderful innovation for how you consume interactive entertainment and all forms of entertainment for that matter is going to take a couple of years at least to going to get to a point where it is truly a mass market consumer opportunity. We still are in the same position we were in which we have enabled core VR capability in our Frostbite engine".

He added: "We have delivered a console experience in the course of delivering a mobile experience and we'll continue to push on the boundaries of what's a sports game look like inside of VR? What's first person shooter look like in VR? What's an action adventure game look like in VR? And that's really at a design level and something that will start to manifest in the marketplace in the years to come".

Just two months after HTC announced that they are working on a standalone VR headset, the company has unveiled its first Vive Standalone VR headset for the Chinese market at ChinaJoy. ChinaJoy is China's biggest gaming expo and is the most important show for VR in China as well.

The company has been one of the pioneering companies when it comes to VR. They are the first partner to work with Valve on the Vive for SteamVR and they have the best overall VR experience. HTC isn't really a PC company, so for them to be so heavily involved in PC VR was a challenge for them. But we also know that HTC is a smartphone company with expertise in mobility and design. So, it was only a matter of time until they announced their own mobile VR headset.

The exact details about the headset itself are not quite known yet, but we do know that it will be based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835 platform and will likely have the same or similar specs as the Snapdragon 835 VR reference design. That includes a 2560x1440 display, 90-120 degrees of freedom per eye, sub 18ms motion to photon latency and smooth motion tracking.

Google's Daydream has struggled to compete with the likes of Samsung's Gear VR even though it came out with much promise late last year. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, there will be only eleven devices by the end of this year that will support Google Daydream.

When you consider how many manufacturers there are out there and how many devices each of them make, eleven really isn't much. In fact, Samsung can claim eight Gear VR devices today, and they're probably about to launch their ninth with the Note8 coming next month.

Read also: Google Pixel XL 2 looks amazing in the new concept video

Microsoft's next generation Hololens AR headset will have a special built-in AI chip to recognize and process data.

The new second generation Hololens AR headset from Microsoft will feature a highly customized AI chip that will help users in a myriad of ways, Bloomberg reports. The new AI-infused chip, which was recently unveiled during an event in Hawaii, is built around Microsoft's Holographic Processing Unit that currently powers the company's self-contained alternate reality HMD.

The Redmond-based company touts that their new AI processor is the first chip of its kind to be featured in a mobile device, and has strong potential to help revolutionize the AR segment. The chip--and others like it from Google, Apple, and even NVIDIA--could one day allow HMD wearers to translate signs and even languages during visits foreign countries. Microsoft's new AI chip aims to boost real-time processing power and speed by reducing reliance on the cloud, and will also reduce battery drain to boot.

Oculus has confirmed that its premium Rift VR headset is getting a permanent price drop in a bid to fill out the headset's install base and pull more gamers into the Oculus ecosystem.

After the Oculus Rift's big $399 sale ends in six weeks, the Facebook Inc.-accelerated headset and its accompanying Touch controllers will be sold in a bundle for $499. Oculus affirmed this price drop is permanent, and the bundle includes: Rift headset, two sensors, Touch controllers, cables, and six free titles when you activate Touch-Lucky's Tale, Medium, Toybox, Quill, Dead and Buried, and Robo Recall. We reached out to Anshel Sag, Associate Analyst at Moor Insights and Strategy, for further insight on the Rift's price drop.

"Dropping the price to $499 indicates that Facebook isn't happy with sales (and they shouldn't be). They also desperately need to reach at least 1 million users so they have a compelling user base size to attract more developers. They can't pay for all the content on oculus home, so they're going to need to attract unpaid developers," said Moor Insight's Mr. Sag, who analyzes key trends in the technology sphere such as VR and AR.