Headset Mania Redux

XR Headsets Gone Wild, or Not??

Would you wear one in the house?? Would you wear them with your mouse?? Headsets, AR, VR, and XR become the rage again.?

Remember reading about the days when they thought the world was flat? (No, that Columbus thing is a myth.)? I’m spending a few days at the Augmented World Expo where the geekiest folks in this reality are unapologetically cheerleading for the next reality, where the Internet is no longer flat, but a real live immersive 3D experience. Not an easy lift.??

Each year the stalwarts gather, pushing ahead on the building blocks of VR, AR, and combined XR realities so that we can all move more of our daily lives: shopping, education, governments and cities, manufacturing and building, healthcare, entertainment and more into new digital experiences.

The show is ten years old and as delightfully geeky as ever but this year two things stood out. One is that real progress has been made in creating 3D interfaces that don’t need headets to be experienced. The second, is that a new generation of headsets, hoping that the time its days have finally arrived are coming to market.? To headset or not to headset?? That is the question.

No Mo’ Headsets??

The move to browser-based (no headsets) immersive experiences that give folks with nothing but a desktop, tablet, or phone a chance to meet in the same worlds that their glasses-wearing friends and colleagues do is getting better. Current-day browsers like Chrome were built for a 2D Internet but standards like WebGPU and WebXR are adding the graphics layer needed to use the browser (unencumbered by headgear) to experience the metaverse. Companies like Niantic, especially with the acquisition of 8th Wall, a browser-based AR creation platform believe the phone is the ultimate AR/XR device.? Leslie Shanon, Head of Internet Trends and Scouting at Nokia gave a talk where she said “The majority of metaverse experiences are happening on mobile phones. Presence is more important than immersion.” And, Sightful introduced what it’s calling the world’s first AR laptop.? Put on your glasses, open your ten-inch laptop, and you can work on a full-sized multiscreen AR environment.?

HeadSet Mania

In the other corner of the immersive world are the headset evangelists.? While Apple wasn’t anywhere to be found at the show the specter of its impending announcement about XR glasses on June 5th? hung over the crowd like the sword of Damocles. Apple has been super-secretive about what’s behind the curtain other than that it will sit on your face, cost $3,000, and have some amazing optics. Apple's announcement will certainly give a jolt of life to the headset industry. Whether the acceptance of this rather pricey device as a headset for gamers, enterprise, or both, remains to be seen. And so does the killer app that it needs to succeed. Some believe this will be the company’s new “iPhone moment”.? Others say that Apple has failed at product launches before and this will be a repeat performance.?

?If $3,000 is too much to pay to wear goggles on your head, Meta announced its $500 Quest 3 this week. It’s thinner and more powerful than earlier versions. The Android-centric amongst us is watching for the Google/Samsung XR headset. Magic Leap showcased the Magic Leap 2 which allows for collaborative work in mixed reality and allows you to view the physical world with a VR overlay in a lightweight form factor.? (The lines at the booth to don a pair of glasses and see for yourself were long!)

According to Ori Inbar, the co-founder of AWE and longtime champion of immersive worlds, the? 38 billion dollar XR industry is growing steadily at 30% annually.? Fortune 1000 companies are donning optical headsets for everything from training to product collaboration,? and 1.2 billion users have already experienced AR and XR.? transforming verticals such as healthcare, entertainment, education, and gaming.”? “ Putting things over our heads is weird,” says Inbar, […] Even umbrellas took 200 years until they became culturally accepted by British men. I think that XR will be much faster.”

Neil Trevett, President of the Metaverse Standards Forum (MSf is creating), has been working with 1,500 stakeholder companies to “tame the beast” and apply rigorous open standards to the creation of immersive worlds. The group upvoted which topics to tackle.? “Topping the list,” he says, “are Interoperability, avatar creation, mapping formats, 3D object formats, and a big emphasis on privacy and security.”? Trevett believes that closed/proprietary systems like Apple’s offer healthy competition to the open systems that MSO is fostering.”

In the midst of AI mania, the headset/virtual worlds debate took a backseat in media coverage. In the coming weeks, the headsets will be returning in full force to fight for their rightful place atop your nose.