Road to VR

MAY 1, 2017

At VRLA 2017, Unity CEO and games industry vet John Riccitiello dumped a little cold water wisdom on the hype surrounding the red-hot VR industry. John Riccitiello is the CEO of Unity Technologies , one of the world’s leading game engines. Photo courtesy VRLA.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 2, 2018

The Vive Focus was most probably the best VR standalone on the market when Oculus last week announced what will be the first consumer 6DOF VR standalone headset. And so here we are again: Oculus vs HTC, America vs China, Hugo Barra vs Alvin Wang Graylin. And now the battle is on standalone headsets: Oculus Quest vs Vive Focus.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 12, 2019

The time for my Oculus Quest review has come. The Quest has a nice packaging , as all Oculus products. I really love opening Oculus products , since usually they are packaged really well, and the Quest is no exception. Oculus Quest box content (Image by Oculus). Front view of the Oculus Quest.

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VRScout

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

In an interview with VRScout, Nikk Mitchell, CEO of FXG who at the time of this article is currently quarantined at his home in Hangzhou, China and unable to physically be at the FXG headquarters said, “Thanks to VR, I haven’t been alone or bored. Oculus Quest and Oculus GO versions are set to launch within the next few months.

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 27, 2021

Oculus Quest 2 had a great Christmas. The sales of Oculus Quest 2 have been great during the holidays , and the Quest has been a Christmas gift very much appreciated by kids (but wasn’t there an age limit?). Huawei this week has announced a new pair of smart glasses, available in China for around $270. (Image from Reddit).

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 16, 2020

Like with all the other events organized by HTC China, the keynote has been held by Mr. Alvin Wang Graylin , mostly known as “Mister President”, that is famous for the passion with which he performs inspiring talks. An official launch will come in Q3 2020, at first in China and then in the rest of the world.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 30, 2021

It’s been a true emotion to launch the game in Shenzhen, China as probably the first mixed reality fitness game. It has been really special to announce our content directly in China! That’s why we decided to port it to other devices, especially the Oculus Quest that is selling so well among consumers in the last months.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 16, 2021

They are the business counterpart of the Pico Neo 3 , the consumer headset that Pico is selling in China for around $400, hoping to kickstart a consumer VR ecosystem there. Tracking is not as amazing as Oculus Insight, though. Also, the tracking of the headset seems to be slightly less reactive than Oculus’s one.

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The Ghost Howls

OCTOBER 26, 2020

While Oculus is getting all the glory for the Quest, its competitors are not sleeping. At WCVRI, China shows its strategic interest for VR. And while China always moves chaotically, I think that the push of the government is helping its VR companies. Notwithstanding all this hate, the Oculus Quest 2 is selling very well.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 13, 2022

Its latest headset, the Pico Neo 3 , was a very good Oculus Quest 2 clone , that also brought some innovations, like the DP Cable to connect it to the PC for a true PCVR experience. And for these reasons, Pico has been bought by Bytedance in 2021 … a move that many compared to the acquisition of Oculus by Facebook. The logo of ??,

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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. In that period, the Oculus DK2 ordered by Gianni arrived, and he told me that I should go to his office to try that device, and my reaction at that time was like “Oculus what??”

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 19, 2021

Image by Oculus). The other bombshell news is that Resident Evil 4 is coming to the Oculus Quest 2. On April, 21st, Oculus will host its first Gaming Showcase , with news on ‘Lone Echo II’, ‘Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge’, and many other titles. I also expect it to be consumer-oriented in China. Top news of the week.

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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. Not to mention the millions spent on marketing , especially in the US (Oculus was one of the sponsors of NBA, for instance).

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AR Insider

AUGUST 9, 2021

In an unhinged rant worthy of Rudy Guiliani, Cramer explained the metaverse is made by Unity, before correcting himself and crediting Nvidia instead. HTC, a strategic partner and shareholder of VR Education, has also started selling its ENGAGE-based product, VIVE Sessions, in China. link] Dissections in VR are FREE.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 7, 2020

While Oculus has decided to discontinue the Oculus Go and abandon completely the 3DOF sector, Chinese vendor Pico has decided to double down on 3DOF offering two new models , the Pico G2 4K S and the Pico G2 4K Enterprise , that are two improvements of the original Pico G2 4K. User Interface.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 17, 2019

Image by Oculus, from Road To VR). John Carmack leaves Oculus. In a surprise move that no one was expecting, the god of programming John Carmack has decided to leave Oculus. More info (John Carmack leaves Oculus) More info (Carmack stating he’s not satisfied with VR pace) More info (Damo9000’s sarcasm on the news).

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 17, 2021

This way it will be possible to add even eye-tracking to these enterprise device; Vive Vee, a virtual character that should represent the brand in China and the rest of the world. Roblox CEO hints at the Oculus Quest as a future platform. Pico Neo 3 launch has been a success in China. Some intriguing news on the Oculus Quest.

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 23, 2019

Oculus releases hands tracking SDK, official Link cable for Quest and more. This has been a great week for all Oculus Quest users and developers. First of all, Oculus has finally released the hands tracking SDK for Oculus Quest , letting all developers create hands-tracked application for this popular standalone headset.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 1, 2021

Oculus has also partnered with Virtuclear to offer prescription lenses for the Quest 2 for $80. All the 3 major VR runtimes (Oculus, SteamVR, Microsoft) are now compatible with OpenXR , and this means that on the runtime layer on PC, now OpenXR has been fully integrated. And yes, I use sarcasm a lot: “Hey Facebook, thanks for this”.

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VRScout

SEPTEMBER 18, 2017

Last year, the inaugural VR On The Lot brought together major players from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Europe, and China for a two-day exploration of the intersection between entertainment and technology. Tony Parisi , Global Head of VR/AR at Unity Technologies. LIFE VR, Unity, Unreal Engine, VRC and DTS (an Xperi company).

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 24, 2020

Oculus devices will require a Facebook login. The enormous piece of news of the week is tha t Facebook has communicated that from October, 20th, all people that want to use an Oculus device for personal use will have to use their personal Facebook account to log in. Top news of the week. Image by Tweakanalogy). The same on Twitter.

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AR Insider

MARCH 1, 2021

The PSVR tethered headset remains the market leader, and will not go quietly into the night when challenged by the Oculus Quest 2. The product allows users to create 3D content on top of CAD models without a game engine like Unity. Let’s dive in… Sony Confirms New Playstation VR2 for PS5 with New Controllers.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 16, 2021

My silly app The Unity Cube is now in 20th place among the best-rated applications on App Lab ! Finally, Facebook has released passthrough APIs for Quest 2, so you can create AR/MR apps for the Oculus standalone headset. Space Pirate Arena to come soon to Oculus Quest. Absolutely not bad for an app… that is just a cube.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

DECEMBER 14, 2016

Unity was reluctant to put a final date on the launch of Editor VR when it was last shown at Unite 2016 in November, but we now know it will be with us very, very soon. All of the features we’ve seen on-stage so far are expected to be included in the experimental release, though we’ve reached out to Unity to confirm this.

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AR Insider

AUGUST 30, 2021

The Pico VR headset is sold to consumers in China, while in the West it’s primarily used for enterprise applications. After the free September 9th update, the VR game will expand to allow 2 players wearing Oculus Quest 2 VR Headsets to freely roam in 100 square feet of shared playspace. I Expect You To Die 2 Released This Week.

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UploadVR Between Realities podcast

OCTOBER 20, 2016

The very first Vision VR/AR Summit was home to keynote addresses from established leaders in the emerging industries, leaders such as Gabe Newell of SteamVR, Palmer Luckey of Oculus, and Dr. Richard Marks of PlayStation VR. Vision VR/AR Summit Asia will take place in Beijing, China at the NUO Hotel on December 14th and 15th.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 31, 2022

Meta abandons the Oculus name on Twitter. Some weeks ago, Meta announced that it was going to remove the name “Oculus” from almost all its products and services to substitute it with “Meta”. This week we had an important step in that direction, with the historical “Oculus” account on Twitter being rebranded to “MetaQuestVR”.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 16, 2020

SenseGlove is currently producing its DK1 device , that can be used both with Vive systems (in this case, a Vive Tracker is attached to the gloves to provide the positional tracking) or Oculus systems (in this case, the Oculus Touch controllers are used). Structure of the Unity SDK (Image by Senseglove). Applications.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 11, 2020

This is a cool video of me unboxing the Nreal Light Devkit: I have to say that I loved unboxing this headset : while Nreal has not reached the mastery of packaging that Oculus has, it has done a great job: the external box is in a very elegant silver color, and the case of the glasses is small and beautiful.

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ARVR

JANUARY 6, 2023

A leading Unity 3d game development services provider explained that gaming is the biggest driver of VR and it will certainly continue in the near future. Facebook and Rising Metaverse Technology Facebook acquired a virtual reality development company called Oculus, which included the Oculus Rift.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 26, 2021

He stresses that he wants his metaverse not to be like these ones… but I also have to remember you that currently, Oculus is the most closed VR platform. Oculus Quest 2 goes 128GB and MR. The Oculus Quest 2’s update pace is always impressive: every month we have new features to play with. Image by Facebook).

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 2, 2020

In the meanwhile, the community is still rioting about the Facebook login , and /r/Oculus should now be called /r/FacebookBannedMyAccount because this is the only topic people are talking about. More info (New features of OpenXR) More info (OpenXR in Unity) More info (OpenXR in Microsoft products). OpenXR slowly increases its adoption.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 3, 2019

Actually, the first launch has happened in China with the Vive Focus at the end of 2017, but we had the full development of the ecosystem now. This year we saw the launch of: Oculus Go ; Lenovo Mirage Solo ; Vive Focus ; Pico Neo / G2 ; S hadow VR; and the announcement of the Oculus Quest. Standalone headsets. PC VR headsets.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 16, 2020

Valve Index and Oculus Quest were on sale again. This week the Valve Index and the Oculus Quest have been put back in stock. Oculus and Valve have probably taken out all the devices they had in the warehouses so that to ship them before Half-Life: Alyx and the sale has been a big success. Image by Oculus). Who knows….

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 18, 2018

Prior to VeeR, I worked for Sierra Ventures, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley and led the Chinese investment in Ximalaya.FM (largest audio content platform in China at 6 billion dollar valuation) and Social Touch (largest social media SaaS company in China) which both successfully exited. You are very active on Quora.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 1, 2020

They should guarantee better tracking both for the headset and the controllers; The controllers are smaller and seem a mix between the Oculus Touch and the WMR 1 controllers. I don’t see this device stealing the scene from Oculus, since Oculus is cheaper, but I’m quite sure this new headset will be able to grab a good market share.

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 21, 2020

Me wearing the Oculus Quest. On the other side, PC gamers are appreciating the high-quality Valve Index (even if it has some reliability issues ), and casual gamers are loving the Oculus Quest. This year, I’m not going to make an exception, also because my predictions for 2019 performed pretty well.

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