The Ghost Howls

JUNE 27, 2022

It’s hot and the drought is creating some issues here in northern Italy. We have lots of non-news about Apple’s XR efforts. The hype around Apple glasses is huge , and everything that gets shared about Apple and XR gets many views. This is the story of my life for half of the posts I read about Apple. Useless news.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 26, 2023

After having announced some of the features and the price just before the launch of the Apple Vision Pro, now the company formerly known as Facebook is already working towards the launch of the device. If you are a Unity developer like me, don’t forget to subscribe to the Unity 2022 Beta dedicated to Vision OS.

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 4, 2023

I’m back to Italy after my trip to Helsinki! More info Apple Vision Pro offers an incredible hand segmentation A leaked screenshot from an Apple Vision Pro devkit shows how the Vision Pro is able to show almost perfectly the hand of the user above virtual content. But for now, we are not sure at all this is going to happen.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

I’m currently in Beijing and today I’m taking the plane to get back to Italy. Here in Italy, I have no idea where to buy any smartglasses, but I’ve seen many shops selling Ray-Ban Meta. Apple makes an exception because it is a fashionable brand itself and it has already a wide network of stores where people can buy its devices.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 5, 2021

Today in Italy it should be the day when we go pic-nicking… but given the fact that we are in lockdown, I’ll just eat a lot at home While I send you a lot of good vibes, let’s see together what have been the best pieces of AR/VR news of this week, that has been incredibly interesting! (My The rumors on the Apple Glasses are intensifying.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

As I said a few months ago , we are in the middle of a paradigm change: the cycle that started with the Quest is arriving at an end, and a new cycle driven by new technologies (mixed reality headsets) and new players (Apple, Google) is starting. They are Apple AR glasses!” I have this impression for a few reasons.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 4, 2022

Inflation here in Italy is ramping up, and the impression I have is that we are entering into a recession phase. Of course for some ad-based tech companies, the current economic situation is not the only problem, but there is another big one which is Apple and its new privacy features embedded into iOS. Image by Unity Technologies).

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 10, 2022

As a Unity developer, I am a bit envious of all of this. Image by Apple). Apple WWDC is back in June. Apple has announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be held in an online format from June 6 through 10 , free for all developers to attend. News worth a mention. Join the On|Metaverse summit.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 23, 2023

After this update, Cix Liv and other VR people (like the usual Brad) said that the rumor in town is actually not that Bytedance is closing Pico, but that Pico will focus mostly on MR to chase Apple with its Vision Pro and will shut down its VR business. Everyone was looking at him like a weird guy, it was very funny.

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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. That’s fantastic news for all Unity XR developers! More info Is Apple working on the Vision Pro since 2007?

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 13, 2021

It was too early for Unity, but they taught me about C++, C#, Java, OpenCV, OpenGL and other fancy development stuff. For who wasn’t doing AR at that time: Metaio had an amazing SDK for phone-based AR, but then it got acquired by Apple and it disappeared from the market. Since I loved gaming (who doesn’t love gaming?),

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 24, 2020

Apple threatens future support in Unreal Engine. According to an evidence presented by Epic Games, Apple has not only removed Fortnite from the Apple Store, but it has also revoked the status of developer to Epic Games. All Apple software, SDKs, APIs, and developer tools ?—?Pre-release Other relevant news.

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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). Facebook and Apple will jumpstart the smartglasses ecosystem.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

I think I’ll miss the joys of summer (and all the trophies that Italy has won), but at least I’ll be able to enjoy again some delicious hot chocolate Before leaving you to the news of the week, I’m happy to announce to you that I’ve been selected as a speaker for AWE US 2021 ! Apple VR headset may feature a 3000PPI microOLED display.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 15, 2021

August, 15th is a special day in Italy: it is called “Ferragosto”, and people go out with their friends and families and grill some BBQ in the parks, have picnics, or just chill together. Almost no one works, and people are focused on enjoying good food and good company.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 27, 2020

Another busy week has passed by, and here in Italy we just got the news that lockdown measures will start to loosen from next week, but the road to go out as we wish is still long. We’re looking for a Unity dev for a freelance gig lasting 1–2 months, ideally from Italy or a nearby country (for easier management).

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 17, 2021

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. This could be The Unity Cube 2.0. Apple is working on a whole spatial ecosystem.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 1, 2020

Developers can develop AR experiences with Zappar using the tool they like the most : Unity, native Javascript, A-frame, C++. Unity launches MARS tools. After many months of teasing them, Unity has finally launched the MARS tools, a suite of tools to build easily Augmented Reality experiences in Unity without knowing how to code.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 21, 2021

When a journalist of IGN Italy was trying to install the new Xbox Wireless Headset on the platform, he was greeted with an Italian message saying “The VR goggle must be updated”. Learn more (XR Collaboration) Learn more (Unity College). (Image by Microsoft). Xbox VR support has been leaked, or maybe not. Some XR fun.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 4, 2020

While in Italy we get ready for the “Phase 2” of the lockdown, I write the best AR/VR news of the week just for you! At the same time, Apple having always mediocre graphics cards on its laptops and its closed ecosystem have not helped much either in keeping this VR support alive. Top news of the week. Image by Road To VR).

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 26, 2020

Coronavirus is back in Italy and from yesterday we’re having new restrictions like a night curfew, some kind of shops closed, etc… I hope that you and the people you love are safe. Simple WebXR” aims at bringing WebXR to Unity. It looks very interesting, and as a Unity developer, I want to experiment with it. Learn more.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 19, 2021

It’s a nice summer day here in Italy, and I hope things for all of you are going well. This is confirmed also by a previous prediction by the CEO of Unity, which foresees that in 2030 VR headsets will be as popular as gaming console: that is mainstream, but still not as TV, for instance. Top news of the week.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 19, 2023

We all joked about Samsung waiting for the Apple Vision Pro announcement to copy it, but according to some rumors, this is exactly what is happening. Learn more (Join The Survey) Listen to me and Gian Gianluigi Perrone invited me to his MindCathedral Youtube channel to speak about the Apple Vision Pro.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Italy won the Tennis Davis Cup, and that was pretty cool to see (the match between Sinner and Djokovic was just incredible). More info Discover Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro cost estimations A Chinese firm has tried to estimate the cost of the components of both the Quest 3 and the Apple Vision Pro. Will we meet there?

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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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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. Is this really what Apple wants? (Thanks Robert Scoble for this news!). This is one of the weirdest rag-doll experiments in Unity.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 10, 2019

If you will be in Italy, please come visiting me! Is Apple partnering with Valve on AR? A report by DigiTimes claims that Apple is partnering with Valve for the production of its AR glasses. More info (Apple and Valve partnering) More info (Road To VR’s skeptical editorial on the news). Image by Eurogamer).

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

This was to be expected and it is no big deal: VisionOS 2 is coming today and this is great news by itself because it is bringing a lot of new features and improvements to the Apple device (three of these features are actually launching later this year, but all the other ones are coming now).

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 20, 2022

I work with VRrOOm on VR events, and this let me even be featured on the Unity blog , but how these events will evolve in the long run when the pandemic will (hopefully) end is a mystery. We only lack the Zombie apocalypse… and for this reason, I have played Resident Evil 4 VR … you know, to train for it, just in case).

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 3, 2023

It was our hope for Google entering the AR race together with Meta and Apple. More info (Meta Quest+ gaming service) More info (Cross-buy available for Meta Quest+ games) Unity announces AI tools when Valve stops AI games This week has been an emotional rollercoaster for games (VR and not) made with the support of artificial intelligence.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 28, 2024

And yes, there is also my Unity Cube. In Italy, its starting price, VAT included, is €330. Meta is democratizing mixed reality, putting it in the hands of most people possible, a different approach from the one of Apple. There is a lot of content to play and new amazing games like Metro Exodus and Alien are coming soon.

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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. Even the big players like Sony, Apple, and Microsoft have substantially reduced their production estimates for 2022, whilst processor manufacturers talk of delays into 2024.

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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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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 20, 2020

I’ve preordered my basic $299 one (€349 in Italy) and it will arrive on October, 15th. For sure the announcement at FC and the release date in 2021 have been studied to put some pressure on Apple , which seems to be the only rival to Facebook for what concerns the AR future. Maybe who invented the name was a fan of this song.

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