Virtual & Augmented Reality News - Page 4

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.

Cybershoes may have the funding taken care of, but the company isn't out of the weeds yet. Just after Christmas, Cybershoes reported that it had encountered some problems that would prevent it from fulfilling the full feature set for Cybershoes for Quest.

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.

Following his departure, Miller had this to say about his time with Magic Leap:

"Friday was my last day at Magic Leap, the amazing company I helped found. It was an extraordinary ride. I am deeply honored to have spent almost exactly a quarter of my life among the most brilliant, creative, enthusiastic, and visionary people I have ever seen collected in one place. We broke down the walls between art and engineering that existed in our minds. We pushed the boundaries of science, art, engineering, experience, and manufacturing. We shipped a product some of the world's luminaries said could not be shipped (and are close to doing it again). We defined a new field. You all know who you are: thank you for coming on the crazy expedition with me, then letting me journey with you!"

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.