Andrew Webster
There’s a dot on your face.
A Peridot, that is. Pokémon Go maker Niantic is attempting to expand its virtual pet game with a new mixed reality spinoff for the Meta Quest 3. If you own the headset you can check it out right now.
Virtual Reality
Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Emma Roth
Meta’s Quest headsets now let you view panoramic images in VR.
As part of its v65 release, Meta has announced that Quest 3, Quest Pro, and Quest 2 owners with iOS 17 can now upload panoramic images to the Quest mobile app and view them in VR. It’s also expanding the ability to upload and view spatial videos to all iPhone users with iOS 17.
Image: Meta
Wes Davis
The best worst way to play Metroid Prime.
I have finally justified my Vision Pro purchase with the iOS version of the Delta emulator.
Sean Hollister
Meta is losing a billion dollars on VR and AR every single month.
GamesIndustry.biz did the math to put it in perspective: Zuck’s Reality Labs has burned a billion dollars every month since June 2022, and plans to spend even more: “We continue to expect operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year,” CFO Susan Li said on the Q1 earnings call.
Meta is plenty profitable overall, though: it raked in $12 billion last quarter alone.
Meta loses another $3.8 billion on VR/AR
[GamesIndustry.biz]
Andrew Webster
Hopefully there are no facehuggers in VR.
Romulus is looking pretty scary, but if you’re in the mood for something more immersive there’s an Alien horror game for VR on the way as well. Unfortunately there’s no actual gameplay in this trailer for Rogue Incursion, but the developers at Survios describe it as a “single-player, action-horror game” launching this holiday on PS VR2, PCVR via Steam, and Meta Quest 3.
Sean Hollister
This isn’t Microsoft’s first Meta/Oculus partnership, by the way.
Speaking of Microsoft hedging bets, it’s been doing that with VR since day one. The original Oculus Rift shipped with an Xbox One gamepad and could stream games from Xbox, while Microsoft simultaneously pursued its HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality initiatives.
Microsoft recently brought Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Xbox Cloud Gaming to Meta Quest, too, perhaps in preparation for today’s announce.
Sean Hollister
Remember Windows Mixed Reality?
It’s only been dead and buried for three months, and yet Microsoft has already glommed onto a new “we don’t have to make this ourselves, OEMs will do it for us” VR headset initiative. Last time, it was Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung with tethered headsets; this time, it’s Meta, Asus, and Lenovo with Qualcomm-powered wireless ones.
Microsoft sure knows how to hedge its bets!
Sean Hollister
Nilay Patel
A deep dive into Apple’s proprietary immersive video format for the Vision Pro.
One of the odder things about the Vision Pro is that it doesn’t support a lot of standard VR and 3D video formats, like the side-by-side videos you can find in lots of places. Mike Swanson has a deep dive into Apple’s proprietary immersive video format, which uses a square frame and layered videos for each eye.
Wes Davis
Apple’s next immersive video is another Prehistoric Planet episode.
The second episode of Prehistoric Planet Immersive will be available on April 19th, according to the Apple TV Plus page for the series.
The first episode was a pretty demonstration of the Vision Pro, rather than the David Attenborough-narrated, pretend nature documentary that Prehistoric Planet is. But the younger version of me that saw Jurassic Park and Prehysteria in theaters welcomes it, anyway.
Wes Davis
Experience the glamor of managing a laundromat with Arcade Paradise VR.
The Meta Quest game, which is $19.99 and available to preorder, puts you in charge of stuff like scrubbing toilets and plucking chewed gum in a 1993 laundromat. Yum!
The goal is to transform it into a fully-fledged arcade. Based on my childhood obsession with games and how awful I was at them, this laundromat would have been a very expensive three hours of my mom’s Saturday.
Victoria Song
Do I feel less lonely in the Vision Pro?
That’s what I kept asking myself when testing out spatial Personas with Wes. The short of it is your ghostly Personas are now free to interact in any SharePlay enabled app, so you can watch movies, play games, and collaborate on projects. It’s neat — and you can interact more with other people. But seeing Wes’ head just float in my office also reminded me he really wasn’t there.
Victoria Song
Meta’s been tinkering with mixed reality for 10 years now.
This video is a fun speedrun through all the VR headsets and AR glasses that Meta’s been tinkering with over the last decade. There’s a mention of Project Aria, and you even get a glimpse of some experimental smartwatch like controls. It’s a neat highlight reel, but I did chortle at how fast the video glosses over Ray-Ban Stories.
Wes Davis
Robots, virtually in disguise.
Transformers: Dark of the Moon is now available in 3D on the Vision Pro Apple TV Plus app, joining free-for-subscribers films that Apple added to its streaming service in March.
New, but not in 3D, are several other movies that probably should be — including the first three John Wick films, Armageddon, Taken, and Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol. The new crop of movies is available for between four and eight weeks, reports MacRumors.
Wes Davis
The Vision Pro bathes your eyeballs in infrared light.
You can see that in this Slow Mo Guys YouTube Short showing the flashing of the invisible-to-the-human-eye IR illuminators of Apple’s face computer, both on the front and around the lenses’ edges.
At 1,000fps, the Guys show the Vision Pro’s very fancy micro-OLED displays alternating between images and black frames, with a ring of IR lights popping on during the dark moments to help track where your eyes are looking.
Wes Davis
Is the MLB’s Vision Pro app ready for the big leagues?
Jason Snell of Six Colors details his experience with the MLB’s visionOS app now that the season is underway. Of the Gameday feature that puts a 3D-animated baseball field in your space during a game, he writes:
I couldn’t find support for Gameday when I first used the app, though later when playing back an archived stream, I did find Gameday available—from within the video playback, so you can’t use it for a game you’re not watching on the app. And it’s immersive, so you can’t put it up and then do something else, which is also probably a mistake.
Ah, the early days of the Vision Pro’s app ecosystem.
MLB for visionOS strikes out on Opening Day
[Six Colors]
Wes Davis
The Vision Pro is getting some new Apple Arcade games.
Alto’s Odyssey: The Lost City, Gibbon: Beyond the Trees, and Spire Blast will each get Vision Pro “spatial” apps tomorrow, Apple shared in a release emailed to The Verge.
Also, rhythm game Synth Riders — aka the only game I’ve been coming back to besides bullet hell shooter Void-X — has been updated with Game Center leaderboards and a pass-the-headset Party Mode.
First adopters are ambassadors for the future. Glassholes need not apply.
Victoria Song
Wes Davis
Angry Birds VR gets a mixed reality mode on the Quest.
I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs now uses video passthrough on Meta Quest headsets (and the Pico) to project your target for destruction onto a real-life table or whatever.
If you don’t have a VR headset with passthrough though, there’s been standalone version of the game on smartphones for years.
Emma Roth
Will Apple make a Pencil compatible with the Vision Pro?
A source tells MacRumors that Apple is working on just that, potentially allowing Vision Pro wearers to use the Pencil with drawing apps like Freeform and Pixelmator. Rumors suggest that Apple is planning to take the wraps off of a new Pencil next month, but there’s no word on whether it will come with visionOS support just yet.
Wes Davis
Where in the world will the Vision Pro launch this year?
Apple CEO Tim Cook told press at the China Development Forum in Beijing that China will get it this year, according to Reuters this morning, citing a Chinese state media Weibo post.
MacRumors notes that this is the first time an Apple executive has confirmed where the Vision Pro will launch outside the US this year. Rumors have also suggested Apple will prioritize UK and Canadian launches.
