The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 9, 2020

HoloLens 2 availability has been expanded to 15 new regions : Italy (YESSS!), The HoloLens 2 Development Edition will become available in 10 additional countries by the end of the year: Canada, Germany, France, UK, Ireland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Italy. More info (Unboxing video on Upload VR).

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The Ghost Howls

JANUARY 28, 2023

Anyway, in these two weeks, even with some difficulties, I’ve managed to work quite at the same pace that I had in Italy , and we are going full speed ahead in improving the platform (some news about it is coming very soon…). While still in Italy, I verified that Microsoft Teams, Unity, and Github were accessible from China.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 10, 2022

As a Unity developer, I am a bit envious of all of this. It’s interesting that HTC is keeping the name Vive both for VR and Web3 solutions. I am in the team organizing On|Metaverse Summit 2022, the first international B2B summit on metaverse and virtual transformation in Italy. News from partners (and friends).

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Road to VR

APRIL 13, 2017

Development is divided evenly across the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift platforms, each accounting for 31% of projects created, with other major VR platforms such as Samsung Gear VR, OSVR, and Daydream rounding out the bottom numbers. VIGAMUS Academy, Italy. image courtesy VR First. University College London, UK. University of Florida, USA.

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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”. Vive Facial Tracker works also with non-HTC headsets. Learn more (XR Collaboration) Learn more (Unity College). (Image by Microsoft). Some XR fun.

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The Ghost Howls

APRIL 13, 2022

It has become one of the headset manufacturers with the biggest worldwide market, and the market leader (together with HTC) in the B2B virtual reality sector. The pre-orders for the beta will start on April, 15th (at 12 pm) in Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, and France, and a few weeks later in Italy and UK.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 1, 2020

HP and Microsoft have a long track in offering enterprise hardware, so this headset may battle HTC on his own land (B2B). First of all, Peter Chou, ex founder of HTC , has launched his startup XrSpace, with his first VR headset Mova (that you can see in the header image of this post), together with its social XR platform Manova.

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The Ghost Howls

AUGUST 24, 2020

There is a lot at stakes, because if these two companies won’t settle (and I think that they are just firing big shots before finding an agreement), Unreal Engine developers won’t be able to develop properly for Apple XR devices, and they will have all to migrate to Unity. The same on Twitter. Other relevant news. Image by Epic Games).

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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! Image by HTC Vive). HTC is now selling Vive Cosmos Elite headset-only. Finally, HTC is selling the Vive Cosmos Elite not only as a full bundle anymore but also as a headset-only option for $550.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 27, 2022

It’s hot and the drought is creating some issues here in northern Italy. The Metaverse Standards Forum has already gathered many important players of the XR sector like Unity, Unreal Engine, Meta, Microsoft, Lamina 1, NVIDIA, and even other relevant companies like IKEA and Adobe. Image by HTC Vive). Top news of the week.

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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. The only company not much affected by it is HTC, that manufacturers its headsets in Taiwan and not in Mainland China.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 26, 2018

This surprised me because, in Italy, the most important people of an IT startup must speak English, because they needs this language to connect with abroad customers and partners. The project evolved over time and when in 2016 HTC released the Vive, they immediately thought about integrating VR into their solution. My envy intensified.

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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). The answer is not so trivial.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 10, 2019

If you will be in Italy, please come visiting me! HTC is now selling certified refurbished Vive HMDs for $400. HTC has started selling again the OG Vive headset, but this time selling second-hand devices. Here you are the Eventbrite page ) I can’t wait to see who will win the VR Awards tomorrow ! The hype is rising….

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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. A new FCC listing appears for an HTC Vive headset. And in fact, a new request to FCC for a new device has arrived from HTC. But I can speculate.

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 3, 2023

We already saw this problem happening when HTC departed from the Steam platform to build its Viveport store because hardware sales were not enough to have an ambitious business. Muse looks a lot like ChatGPT integrated inside Unity. Let’s see: Google is still working with Qualcomm and Samsung on a mixed-reality headset.

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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. Senior Unity Developer Join our Unity team and be at the forefront of innovation in the global mobile-AR industry.

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The Ghost Howls

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

I am back in Italy! Mark Zuckerberg, but also Unity CEO John Riccitiello) that should mark the beginning of the serious adoption of new technology. This was pretty weird to me because I never saw a single one of them in Italy. Plus Huawei headset is compatible only with Huawei phones, while HTC is more open.

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The Ghost Howls

FEBRUARY 24, 2020

The damn coronavirus has arrived in my city in northern Italy, but I’m still alive and kicking, reporting you the most interesting XR news of the week! Image by HTC Vive). HTC expands its Cosmos offering and teases the future with Proton. This has been a pretty interesting week for HTC Vive. Top news of the week.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 20, 2022

Today, while I’m packing my stuff up to go back to Italy, I want to tell you a few words about my experience there, and if I think it has been worth going. I was not so sure I wanted to go, because from Italy to Austin is a long trip, but I decided to try this new adventure… and well, I’m more than happy of having done that.

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The Ghost Howls

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

The Unity Beta to develop for the Vision Pro is still not available, so many devs like me can’t even play with the emulator. If you add VAT, in Italy it will cost €600. The rumors from Mark Gurman talk about a new cheaper version, which can have a more mass market appeal, forecasted for 2025-2026.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 4, 2023

Because if Apple is just going to repeat the same use cases of the HTC Vive and Meta Quest 2, but selling it at $3000, it is just going to fail spectacularly. This is great news because MRTK 3 introduces better compatibility with Unity standard tools than its previous version. But the big question is the “how”. For what purpose?

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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

JANUARY 3, 2019

Mister President launching the Vive Focus (Image by HTC). That’s why the other companies, like HTC and Pico, have decided to aim at the enterprise market. In May of 2017, Unity CEO John Riccitiello forecasted two things : That harsh times with people saying that VR is a fad would have come. It’s 2019.

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The Ghost Howls

MAY 17, 2021

Image by HTC Vive). HTC launches Vive Focus 3 and Vive Pro 2. In the end, the rumors were correct and HTC launched two headsets at VIVECON: the Vive Pro 2 and the Vive Focus 3 Business Edition. But this device got also some criticism: first of all , HTC has not released new controllers and still sells it with the old Wands.

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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. Companies like Pico, HP, Valve, and HTC are already performing very well in this sector. The rise of enterprise.

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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. In a side event happening after AWE, HTC has announced a bunch of updates of Vive Focus 3 that have the potential of revolutionizing the Location Based Entertainment in VR (LBEVR o LBVR) sector.

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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

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 I suggest you exploit this opportunity, of course.

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The Ghost Howls

JUNE 8, 2018

I’m very interested in this device, that’s why I dedicated various articles to it, like the tutorial on how to get started with Go on Unity , how to stream the headset content to an external screen and my comparison with the Vive Focus. Unity development.

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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. The name was of course inspired by “The Unity Cube” application (Image by Rob Cole). The Guncube. Two are seen in the image above right.

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The Ghost Howls

DECEMBER 2, 2024

We don’t have Thanksgiving in Italy, but I know it’s a very important celebration in the US, Canada, and a few other countries, so I hope all of you who celebrated it had a great time with your family. Happy Thanksgiving weekend to all my American friends! The VR discounts of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend continue!

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The Ghost Howls

JULY 25, 2020

The facial interface TACTAL made my HTC Vive more heavy on the front , and being quite thick and rigid, also made the headset slightly more uncomfortable and reduced my field of view. My HTC Vive with installed in the TACTAL facemask. A final mention goes to the fact that now it is summer and here in Italy it is quite hot.

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The Ghost Howls

MARCH 14, 2020

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. Some countries are more “infected” than others.

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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. This kind of seamless interface is great and it is exactly the same one that HTC already offers with the Vive Focus Plus and Viveport Streaming and that I’ve tried and appreciated. Rift line gets discontinued.

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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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