The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 22, 2021

As a long-time AR enthusiast, and one of the first to have tried Google Glass in Italy, I have to admit that I will consider AR mainstream only when it will be on glasses that we will wear all day , when we’ll live in a completely shared mixed reality world (the AR Cloud). The answer is not so trivial.

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Augmented Reality Magic Leap AR Apple 542

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 2, 2020

The damn coronavirus continues to impact all our lives: the fact that many countries are applying restrictions on flights to and from Italy is, for example, creating various nuisances to my job. This is one of the weirdest rag-doll experiments in Unity. Coronavirus impacts headsets production and kills F8 and GDC. More info Buy it now!

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Hand tracking AR Oculus HTC 299

The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 10, 2019

If you will be in Italy, please come visiting me! Image from Amazon). The first one is called Almalence and is a Unity plug-in (already available on the store) that should improve the clarity of images inside the Vive Pro Eye. Here you are the Eventbrite page ) I can’t wait to see who will win the VR Awards tomorrow !

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Augmented Reality Google Machine Learning AR 185

The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 14, 2025

Im back in Italy after my very positive experience at CES! Apart from the Amazon top classification, last week I also reported about the Meta Horizon companion app for phones topping the Apple App Store. Its been great going there from all points of view: as a blogger, enthusiast, and entrepreneur all sides of me are happy.

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Sony Las Vegas Amazon Ukraine 438

The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

I’m currently in Beijing and today I’m taking the plane to get back to Italy. An Amazon ad appearing on the streaming platform Peacock shows the Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S and the caption: “Meta Quest, starting at $299.99”. Here in Italy, I have no idea where to buy any smartglasses, but I’ve seen many shops selling Ray-Ban Meta.

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Unity Kenya Samsung AR 367

The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 1, 2024

It was also the week when I returned to Italy, and eating my mother’s pasta again made me excited, too. The past week was the week of the Meta Connect, with all its amazing announcements that made all of us excited. Next year, I should eat my mother’s pasta while watching the Meta Connect to have double excitement!

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Apple Unity Ukraine AR 385

The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 28, 2023

After a few days where we thought we were all living in a big oven, here in Italy we’re having the first taste of Autumn, with the temperatures going down and a lot of rain falling from the sky. Another leak regarded the release date: an Amazon listing put the availability date of the Quest 3 starting from October, 10th.

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Samsung Google Magic Leap Microsoft 369

The Ghost Howls

MAY 17, 2021

Oculus Quest 2 has disappeared from all Amazon EU websites. Kudos to Shachar Weis for discovering this: he told me about this news, and I have verified that it has disappeared completely from Amazon Italy and Amazon France, while some Redditors confirmed that the same holds for Amazon UK.

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Eye Tracking HTC China Amazon 431

The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

I’m still here in the US for some days after having attended AWE, planning to meet some interesting people before heading back to Italy. Unity has bought Weta Digital for 1.6B. Unity has just bought Weta Digital for 1.6B. You can read some of my hands-on articles on my blog (e.g.

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AR Unity Virtual Reality Google 399

The Ghost Howls

JULY 13, 2021

Probably I should tell you that I was busy with VR projects, but the truth is that I have been celebrating a lot lately, especially the recent victory of Italy in the Euro 2020 soccer championship. Amazon Lumberyard becomes opensource. Amazon has launched some years ago its 3D engine called Lumberyard, derived from Crytek’s Cryengine.

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Virtual Reality AR Oculus Augmented Reality 379

The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 20, 2021

From time to time, I like to look at the adoption graph of XR shown by John Riccitiello (the CEO of Unity) in 2017 , where you can see that the real acceleration of immersive technologies should start around 2022-2023. 2021 will be the year that in Italy we’ll have the first most serious rollout of 5G in the biggest cities.

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Virtual Reality Trends China HTC 545

The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 8, 2021

Today is a special day in Italy when families prepare the Christmas Tree, so I decided to publish a very special post that is a big gift to the whole XR community. Amazon sold me a moulded nylon grip for an AR-15 airsoft rifle… it was time to start work building my first development “Mule”. Why had they settled on this shape?

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Controllers Haptic Hardware Simulation 544

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 14, 2020

If you don’t have enough of this stuff, Amazon is your friend. There are lots of grants around, and here we can participate in some research grants offered by Italy or European Union. Doing business in Italy is very hard now, but there are countries, for instance in Africa, that have not been much affected by the outbreak yet.

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Italy AR Virtual Reality China 379

The Ghost Howls

JULY 25, 2020

A final mention goes to the fact that now it is summer and here in Italy it is quite hot. bHaptics made it very easy for the developers to implement it thanks to a Unity prefab that must just be dragged into your project. Once you are inside Unity, you can import these patterns and play them to play the haptics effect.

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Haptic Unity Gaming HTC 448

The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 28, 2024

And yes, there is also my Unity Cube. In Italy, its starting price, VAT included, is €330. You can purchase it on the Meta website or on authorized resellers like Amazon. There is a lot of content to play and new amazing games like Metro Exodus and Alien are coming soon.

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Controllers Hand tracking China Gaming 436

The Ghost Howls

JULY 28, 2019

and this is good from one side, but stressful on others… much thanks to air conditioning to make me survive in that oven that is Italy in these days!). Amazon Prime Video comes to Oculus mobile devices. Amazon streaming services come to VR. Amazon has selected some cool VR experiences like “Invasion!”

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Magic Leap Oculus Controllers Amazon 177

The Ghost Howls

APRIL 16, 2020

Someway, Dino Audino , which is basically the Bruce Springsteen of film teaching books publishing in Italy (they released fundamental books from academics like Vogel, Katz as well as popular directors such as Maurizio Nichetti), knew about me and we met in Rome. It will be available on Amazon soon. It depends on who am I working with.

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Filming China Virtual Reality Study 537

The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 20, 2020

I’ve preordered my basic $299 one (€349 in Italy) and it will arrive on October, 15th. I think the name ARIA is a mix of AR and AI , because the glass goes around collecting data for the AI, and since ARIA means also “air” in Italy, it can be a suggestion about the fact that it is used outside the lab.

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Oculus AR Data Gaming 546

The Ghost Howls

MARCH 23, 2020

Jokes apart, before starting, let me send a big hug to all of you that are in quarantine because of the coronavirus and thank all the people that in these days have cared about me after having heard the sad news about Italy (Simon, David, Daniel, Suzie, Mark… John that has been so kind… Sebastian, and many others!). Top news of the week.

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Oculus Magic Leap AR Augmented Reality 228