Meta doesn’t just need another hardware building block — it needs games.
Tomorrow, Meta will explain why you should pay $500 for a Quest 3 at Meta Connect... and I’m starting to wonder if Lego will be part of the pitch. See the blocks in Zuck’s image below? They’ve got trademarked Lego logos on top!
But Zuck has since yanked his video, and Microsoft’s similar teases with Minecraft have yet to produce a killer app.
In a new report, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says Apple will ship 400,000 to 600,000 of its mixed-reality headsets in 2024, an estimate that’s lower than the expected 1 million shipments.
That prediction tracks with a July report from The Financial Times, which similarly states that Apple is preparing to make less than 400,000 Vision Pro headsets next year.
Netflix’s hit TV show has been adapted into a high-end VR experience called Squid Game Virtuals that you’ll be able to try at Sandbox VR locations. I think the show was intense enough, so I’ll probably pass on the VR version, but if you want to check it out, it’ll be there to tide you over ahead of season two.
During Sony’s September State of Play, we got our first look at a new Ghostbusters game for the PSVR2, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghostlord.
You can customize your ghost buster with all kinds of cosmetics while trying and failing to not cross the streams with your shaky VR hands. Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghostlord launches October 26th, just in time for Halloween.
The New Yorker stepped inside a VR school, where students wear headsets for two to three hours a day.
Here’s how a virtual field trip to a mountain went for some sixth graders:
One [student] suggested that we should all be quiet to prevent an avalanche, and then started screaming to demonstrate what not to do; a teacher quickly muted him. As the exercise got under way, the kids grew increasingly frustrated. “My teleport’s broken!” one of them shouted. Another couldn’t find the next chair in the line up the mountain. ...the whole group kept falling and getting reset to the beginning of the activity.
[The New Yorker]
9to5Mac posted this clip with even more system sounds included in the visionOS beta 3 update released today.
Other Vision Pro software changes now match WWDC marketing images, suggesting previous builds were well out of date. The report also notes accessibility tweaks that adjust controls for people who can’t make a gesture with one of their hands, can’t use both eyes to navigate, and more.
And finally, there’s a notification included saying “Mouse input is currently not supported on visionOS.” How would Douglas Engelbart take that news?
It’s included in the beta 3 release of visionOS, as shared by @M1Astra. It’s short, echoey, has some sci-fi vibes, and sounds inspired by the classic Mac chime. I can see a vintage Macintosh SE making this boot sound while floating through space. We’ll see if this one sticks until the Vision Pro launches next year.
Two companies, BOE Technology and SeeYa Technology, raised their hands in interest to, at scale, build specialty Micro-OLED screens, The Information reports.
Most companies haven’t invested in building the complex screens, so finding cheaper suppliers — or just more competition — is important for Apple to get the price down on successors to the $3,499 Vision Pro that uses displays made by Sony.
He says Meta can turn “any flat surface” into a virtual keyboard capable of 120WPM speeds. That’s fast! Meta’s 2020 “PinchType” averaged just 12WPM, though the company’s “surface touch typing” averaged 73WPM that same year. I’m not seeing a research paper for today’s brag yet.
My question: does this work without the fiducial (QR-code like thingy on the table) as a frame of reference?
From the last issue of Command Line:
While most developers have to physically go into one of Apple’s labs to try the Vision Pro, a select group has been able to take headsets home to spend more time building for the device. After talking with one such developer, I’ve confirmed the suspicion I had after my own Vision Pro demo back at WWDC: key aspects of the device don’t work yet, namely the front-facing display that is supposed to show the wearer’s eyes as they move.
That explains why no Apple execs have been photographed wearing the Vision Pro yet, and why even the accompanying photo for the company’s post this week on early developer reactions only shows the headset being worn from the side. Siri also doesn’t work on the devices that have been loaned to developers, I’m told. Has Apple ever let people from the outside world use, much less take home, a device that is this unfinished?
Yes, the Vision Pro looks impressive, but I encourage you to take this Apple blog post featuring opinions from developers who have attended the company’s Vision Pro labs with a grain of salt.
Still, it’s interesting to see what developers have to say. The headset has the best chance of success if it has great apps, and Apple needs to get third-party developers on board to make them.
[developer.apple.com]
With developer kits apparently going out, it was inevitable that someone would get some time inside one of Apple’s Vision Pro headsets without official authorization, and Apple Insider says a “fan” allowed them about two hours with a unit.
They didn’t get to take pictures (or, more importantly, screenshots) but noted similar experiences to ours from WWDC, saying, “...it feels like there’s almost twice the vertical field of vision on Apple Vision Pro, versus HoloLens,” and that the gesture controls already felt familiar.
You can see apparent pictures and specs of the headset in this UploadVR article, but an article on a Chinese website that shared information about the device has seemingly been pulled.
We’re still waiting for concrete details on Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm’s “declarative announcement” from February that they’d be working together on a mixed-reality headset.
Remember when we thought the Vision Pro would be called the Reality Pro? That was because of some sneaky shell company trademark filings by (probably) Apple last year.
Turns out Apple went ahead and transferred those trademarks to itself, according to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter in Bloomberg today. It might not ever use them, but at least it won’t be surprising if it does.
Useful? Probably not, but hey, people made it happen!
That could be Apple’s official name for the Apple Vision Pro’s external battery pack. What a way to brand a battery attached by a cord! If only it magically offered more than two hours of battery life.
Mike White, who Disney appointed last year to oversee its metaverse ambitions, has left the company, according to a report from The Ankler.
While White was reportedly supposed to assume a new role at Disney after the company broke up its metaverse division in March, it appears that never came to fruition.
[theankler.com]
