VR news of the week
As half of a weekly collection, Android Central Senior Editors Michael Hicks and Nick Sutrich are rounding up all of the news on {hardware}, sport bulletins, leaks, and cool updates associated to the Meta Quest 3, Oculus Quest 2, and different VR headsets.
Welcome one, welcome all to the weekly VR news recap for the week ending November 3, 2023. This previous week has been jam-packed with all types of news from the VR, AR, and total XR house together with massive bulletins from Qualcomm and Samsung.
Plus, we’re having a look at extra Meta roadmap leaks for upcoming Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses releases and even asking what is going on on with Meta Quest 3 controller monitoring.
And let’s not neglect about the bevy of video games launched this previous week, in addition to one other handful of in style Quest video games getting graphical upgrades for Quest 3 customers.
Controller monitoring woes
Almost all of this week’s news is enjoyable and optimistic, so why not get the detrimental out of the approach first? As extra individuals are getting their palms on the Meta Quest 3, we have been listening to of elevated experiences of controller monitoring points.
Long story quick, a couple of retailers have reported that Quest 3 controllers aren’t tracked as precisely as Quest 2 controllers. That could appear unusual provided that Meta is using each LED monitoring plus AI monitoring fashions which had been designed to make sure accuracy and velocity.
Gamers who play fast-paced VR video games like Beat Saber, Eleven Table Tennis, Synth Riders, and others say that their controllers usually glitch for a short second throughout quick actions. As you may count on, that is inflicting heaps of frustration and inflicting gamers to overlook word blocks or hits in video games.
Meta says it is at the moment wanting into the drawback, though the firm has but to reply to emails we have despatched inquiring about the potential points.
For what it is value, my very own Quest 3 controllers acquired an replace in the present day however I could not discover any printed changelog to see what was included in the replace. Meta has traditionally been good about updating its headsets usually so we count on this to get fastened quickly.
TikTookay involves Pico
Looking to perform a little late-night TikToking? You’ve bought a new strategy to do it for those who’ve bought a Pico 4, as father or mother firm ByteDance lastly added a strategy to scroll the world’s hottest social media platform from the consolation of your VR headset.
As UploadVR experiences, the TikTookay app is now formally out there on the Pico retailer however is little greater than the Android app floating in digital house. At least the headset’s crystal-clear show and pancake lenses imply that scrolling by means of your feed will look nice.
Plus, this additionally implies that posting content material to the social community is less complicated than ever earlier than, so you possibly can seize one thing tremendous wonderful in VR and put up it straight away.
Meta Quest customers might at all times sideload the app to their headset for a near-identical expertise however they’d be lacking the built-in TikTookay sharing performance.
Quest 3 video games galore
The Meta Quest 3 has seen an unbelievable launch, and that features tons of new video games which have launched since the headset got here out a couple of weeks in the past. The finest October Meta Quest video games had been appropriately Halloween-themed, although, together with massive releases from Ghostbusters and a superb reboot of the 90s puzzle journey title, The seventh Guest.
In addition to that, we have seen a quantity of Quest video games get graphics updates to make use of the new headset’s improved processing energy. The seventh Guest bought an unbelievable replace proper after launch that included even higher volumetric FMV sequences — it is really laborious to consider they’re higher than what we noticed at launch — and in style Rainbow Six-like sport Breachers simply bought its massive Quest 3 graphics replace, as effectively.
In addition, Floor Plan 2, RUNNER, Hubris, and a number of different video games additionally noticed massive graphics updates for Quest 3 {hardware}. We’ve additionally gotten phrase from the builders of Genotype and PowerWash Simulator VR {that a} Quest 3 replace is being labored on and issues are coming alongside fairly properly.
The future of smart glasses
We might have simply seen the launch of the second-generation smart glasses from Meta and Ray-Ban, however rumors of the third era are already making the rounds. Meta Ray-Ban Smart Glasses 2 seems to be a fair greater soar than we noticed with this 12 months’s launch, including in a new show that sounds an terrible lot like Google Glass.
This “Viewfinder,” as rumors name it, is alleged for use for “viewing incoming textual content messages, scanning QR codes, and translating textual content from one other language in real-time.”
Meta seems to be making an attempt to launch its very first pair of AR glasses referred to as “Project Artemis” someday in 2027 that are stated to be using Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) shows. These are the identical kind of show used in Google Glass and each Magic Leap glasses so it is not an costly, rising show kind.
To offset the weight and measurement of a VR headset, Meta is alleged to be inserting each the battery and chipset in a hip or wrist-mounted puck of some type. Meta is alleged to be together with 5G connectivity and a touchpad on this puck, making it doable to make use of it as a approach to make use of the glasses like a smartphone.
Meta’s Project Artemis goals to be the firm’s first-released AR glasses product in 2027.
Beyond that, Meta is trying to launch an much more full-featured pair of AR glasses referred to as Project Orion. Orion is alleged to be a limited-quantity merchandise and will probably price upwards of $2,000.
These would function MicroLED shows baked into the lenses, just like how some of the finest smart glasses do proper now. INMO Air 2 involves thoughts once I suppose of this design.
You’d management these glasses with a wrist-mounted controller that appears loads like a smart watch, utilizing faucets and different gestures to navigate by means of content material on these glasses, doubtless just like how Apple Vision Pro gestures work. Meta has been engaged on these varieties of gesture watches for some time now, so it is smart to see them starting to combine the tech into upcoming merchandise.