XR Reality - June 20th Edition

This week is full of interesting news for the virtual and augmented reality industry. The #AWE2024 event, taking place in California, is gathering folks from all over the industry, and companies are also sharing some innovations there. Let's take a look at this week's XReality News, brought by Odders Lab .

PALMER LUCKEY BACK IN VR AND META GOT A REALLY COOL MR STYLUS WITH LOGITECH

• At AWE 2024 this week, Oculus founder Palmer Luckey briefly discussed a new XR headset he's working on. He brought with him an Oculus DK1 box and kept it mysterious for some time with a "What is on the box?" approach, but no new headset was shown. Instead, he brought an original DK2 and compared it with Beyond Screen VR goggles, the smallest VR headset to date (which fits in a can, as you can see in the streaming video of the event).
• While this marks Luckey's return to the XR industry, this headset is designed primarily for military applications rather than for consumer use, probably being developed within his current company, Anduril, a tech-focused defense contractor. Though Luckey was on stage with Bigscreen VR Beyond creator Darshan Shankar, the two didn’t indicate any joint work together.

• Among other interesting announcements, we can mention the first mixed reality stylus for Meta Quest, created by 罗技 , which also marks the first time Meta Quest headsets support more than two paired controllers. The MX Ink bridges the gap between traditional tools and the immersive digital world with haptic feedback and pressure sensitivity and is shipping on Meta Connect 2024 at $130. This device is especially interesting for artistic VR apps, prototyping, and collaboration, and will be supported by a few Quest apps like Gravity Sketch, PaintingVR, and ShapesXR. Take a look at Logitech's website for more information.

GOOGLE IS TAKING XR EFFORTS SERIOUSLY AGAIN, APPLE IS BETTING ON A MORE AFFORDABLE MODEL, META IS DIVIDING XR EFFORTS INTERNALLY, AND PICO SEEMS TO BE READY FOR PICO 4S.

• Hugo Swart, previously managing XR at Qualcomm, has just announced in a LinkedIn post that he will be leading the XR efforts at 谷歌 as XR Ecosystem Strategy and Technology responsible, which is great news for the industry. As General Manager and VP of XR at 高通 , Swart drove the development of the Snapdragon XR chipsets, which power most standalone headsets, including all Meta Quest models.
• Moving to another tech giant, Apple has reportedly canceled the direct successor of the Apple Vision Pro. Instead, the Cupertino company is focusing on a more affordable model with fewer features, which is planned for late 2025 at the earliest. More info on the MIXED article.
• Reality Labs, Meta’s XR division formed in 2020, is now being reorganized into two distinct groups, ‘Wearables’ and ‘Metaverse’. According to The Verge's Alex Heath, Meta CTO Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth announced in an internal memo that Reality Labs teams will be reorganized into a 'Metaverse' group for Quest and a 'Wearables' group for other hardware, including Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.
• Finally, ByteDance-owned PICO XR seems to be almost ready to launch the Pico 4S model as South Korea's National Radio Research Agency (RRA) certified a new Pico standalone headset. More about this on UploadVR.

VR PHOTOREALISTIC EXAMPLES: A KAYAK TRIP, VIEWS FROM A PLANE AND VOLUMETRIC VIDEOS

This week, we are looking at other types of content other than gaming. Photogrammetric landscapes in VR can be quite astonishing, and here are two recent examples of how powerful they can be.

• So?a Valley, the first paid DLC for the VR game Kayak VR: Mirage, was released this week, and it is a stunning showcase of PSVR 2's graphical capabilities. The developers had to create a new water for a whitewater section, and it looks really stunning.

• From the ground to the sky, Aces of Thunder takes immersion to new heights, as noticed by VR content creator Nathie

• Gracia is a really interesting technology pipeline and viewing platform for 6DoF volumetric content that wants to become "the YouTube of truly volumetric content." The startup recently raised a $1.2 million seed investment, has 15 developers and designers, and the app itself is available on Quest 3 and PC VR. Wouldn't it be cool to have our fantastic Dan and Rachel like this on Les Mills XR Bodycombat?

And that is all for this week! We are living in exciting times for XR! As shared in #AWE2024, the XR industry is targeted to be worth $35B in 2024, has over 2M XR developers worldwide (or so says ChatGPT!), and has around 1000 use cases.

In our weekly #XR newsletter, you can always find some of the most important XR news with a short summary from a tech, business, and content perspective. Please share and recommend us to everyone who is interested in the virtual and augmented reality world!