That’s according to Mark Gurman in today’s Power On newsletter in Bloomberg.
Apple doesn’t participate in CES, of course, but Gurman writes that he still expects an announcement about Apple’s fancy AR / VR headset to come “in the next week or so” ahead of a February release.
It’s been on sale for $250 for the last two months, and now Meta is making that sale price permanent — that means you can get two of them for the price of a single (albeit much better) Quest 3. Accessories are seeing a price cut, too.
In the video embedded below, developer Korejan shows how the Quest Pro can now track their tongue with version 60 of Meta’s OpenXR face tracking extension, as spotted by UploadVR. The feature hasn’t been widely adopted yet, but Korejan has added support in their third-party VRFCT face-tracking module and ALXR PC VR streaming app.
It looks kind of like Rocket League mixed with guns, based on a brief glimpse in a trailer of upcoming additions to Horizon Worlds. Meta says the game will launch on January 1st.
The trailer also shows off Horizon Central, a kind of virtual town square where you can “browse” other Horizon Worlds experiences. And Super Rumble, is getting more quests and rewards on December 20th.
Apple’s upcoming mixed reality headset can play back stereoscopic 3D video shot on iPhone 15 Pro, and CNET’s Scott Stein got to load up some of his own spatial videos on a Vision Pro and watch them:
[My mom] sort of raised her eyebrows a bit, and the way she looked at me in 3D — at a scale close to normal size, with her seeming to make eye contact — made me feel like I was almost there. It made me want to climb through that fuzzy-bordered window and join my family again on the other side.
ByteDance reportedly scrapped it after sales of last year’s Pico 4 “fell far short of ByteDance’s expectations,” according to a report by The Information. The last headset still hasn’t launched in the US, as political heat has stayed on ByteDance and its other well-known project, TikTok.
However, the report also claims Pico engineers are working on a long-term “Swan” concept to develop a high-end headset inspired by Apple’s Vision Pro.
Update v140 allows you to stay “present in the moment” and record yourself in the third person (rolling out now). You can also follow new people by high-fiving them for two seconds, like an iPhone NameDrop in the not real world.
Even with the new high-five, there are new personal boundaries that keep people from feeling like they’re too close to you (adjust in Settings > Safety).
The composer of the intense music game Thumper is now making Thrasher, which like a similarly jaw-dropping musical experience. The game’s Steam listing describes it as “a mind-melting cosmic racer and an essential audiovisual experience,” and I can’t wait to try it out when it launches in 2024.
It’s coming to Quest and SteamVR first, but it will come to flatscreen platforms “sometime after,” according to a press email.
Sony just published an interview on the PlayStation Blog with two of the game’s developers, and it’s packed with details about what you can expect and some ways the development team adapted the game to VR. This was one of my favorite tidbits:
This is also a small detail, but the camera for the first-person perspective is set a little lower than Leon’s actual eye level. If the camera is at the same eye level as Leon – who is quite tall himself – the Ganados (enemy villagers) will appear smaller. The Ganados approach and attack Leon from a low, forward posture, so if you get too close to them, you end up looking down at them which strips away the intensity.
Resident Evil 4’s VR mode launches for PSVR 2 on December 8th.
There’s a reason why the $130 Quest 3 Elite Strap with Battery is listed as out of stock on Meta’s store — the company has temporarily paused sales of the accessory after widespread reports of buggy charging behavior. RoadtoVR reports that it’s having to manufacture new straps to fix the issues.
If your device is affected, try reaching out to Meta Support for a replacement.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with taking your phone to the ceramic throne so you can relax, read, and relieve... but a virtual reality headset? That’s next level.
OK, there are clear benefits to taking the new Meta Quest 3 to the bathroom, though. As Redditor Tall_Whole_5777 describes: You don’t need to touch screens or buttons to watch and control a YouTube video.
Microsoft Teams is about to go 3D thanks to a new VR meetings experience in January 2024. While that’s a new way to chat with coworkers, Microsoft is already teasing how its generative AI Copilot system will be able to handle requests for creating meeting spaces and objects in VR. We’re not sure when this will arrive, but generative AI in VR is certainly on the way.
Check out the process in an onboarding video that 9to5Mac found in the latest visionOS beta.
The Wall Street Journal reports that it will be sold in China and “other markets” as well, and will use cheaper lenses than the Quest 3, but features a more powerful GPU than the older Quest 2. Despite leaving China 14 years ago, Meta’s return will be made possible through a preliminary deal with gaming giant Tencent. The news comes amid weakening demand for VR hardware.
The three companies announced an Android AR / VR headset in February but with few details. UploadVR and Korean business outlet The JoongAng report rumors of a late 2024 launch, after Apple introduces its Vision Pro.
Last month Samsung closed a $218 million deal to acquire eMagin, a US company developing Micro OLED tech that execs have said could surpass the panel in the Vision Pro, could be two to three years from being commercialized.
Meta is making it easier to chat with your Quest friends while you’re in Horizon Worlds as part of the v134 update to the app. It’s the company’s latest way to make Horizon Worlds more social; Meta rolled out “world chat,” an in-experience text chat, to all users earlier this month.
The new options include more hair colors and the ability to create a two-toned hairstyle, according to a Meta blog post. You can read more about the options in my article from September when Meta announced the upgrades. (It has been rolling out the changes since then.)
UploadVR spotted a “coming soon” listing for VRChat, the virtual reality social platform, in the app store for the ByteDance-owned Pico 4 headset.
I wonder if that Four Seasons Total Landscaping hangout is still around.
[UploadVR]
In partial response to articles documenting people wearing their Meta Quest 3s in the real world (like ours), VR YouTuber Brad Lynch published a video about the experience of using the Quest 3 at Disney World.
Just to be clear: I think that using the headset’s mixed reality features outside still feels like a strange thing to do. But Lynch has some thoughtful perspective on where the Quest 3 falls short as an out-in-the-world mixed reality device.
