Tag: Virtual Reality

Thoughts on Horizon, Facebook’s upcoming “social VR platform”

Posted on by Inara Pey
Facebook Horizon, via Facebook / OC6

I’ve intentionally held off wiring about Facebook Horizon, the social media giant’s new “social VR platform” that will be launching in a closed beta in 2020, as I wanted to absorb the news and hopefully avoid the initial blast of hype from pushing me too far into the realm of cynical response.

The announcement of Facebook’s latest attempt to get a handle on VR social experiences came at the Oculus Connect 6 (OC6) event, that took place in San Jose, California on September 25th and 26th. It was greeted with a degree of breathlessness in some quarters, with comments comparing it to Ready Player One’s OASIS and to Second Life.

Those looking at the Horizon promotional video will likely to scoff at such comparisons. Clearly, Horizon as presented isn’t OASIS – but that doesn’t mean that, along with Sansar and other similar platforms, it cannot be a foundational block upon which an OASIS like environment might in time be built upon (if one accepts it will happen, which is absolutely not a given). As such, we shouldn’t read too much into the use of such hyperbole and see it as a means to just dismiss Facebook’s new platform.

When it comes to Second Life, the comparison is perhaps closer (although Horizon as announced has no internal economic system) – but it perhaps tempting to still be dismissive simple because of the avatar appearance, which is clearly inferior and – lacking, shall we say – when compared to SL.

However, Horizon isn’t necessarily aimed at virtual world veterans who might be bothered about whether or not avatars have legs or who see customisation as a “must have”; it’s more likely (initially, at least) going to be directed towards Facebook’s own somewhat captive market, people who may well regard avatar fidelity / customisation as less important than aspects like ease of access to the things they want to do. In this, and while acknowledging it was a beast of a slightly different colour, it’s worth pointing out that the lack of real customisation (and legs and arms) with Wii avatars never stopped Nintendo selling over 100 million units.

More to the point, its also worth noting that the Horizon avatars may still be a far from done deal, as Oculus’s Chief Technology Officer, John Carmack, almost alluded when speaking at OC6:

Our avatars have continuously mutated from little floating heads through three different versions. We do not have this well-sorted out at this point.

– Oculus CTO John Carmack, OC6 (via Venturebeat)

Facebook Horizon will include a central social – dare I say – nexus – with connected worlds for entertainment and games. Credit; Facebook

My own reservations about Facebook Horizon to push social VR into the mainstream are far more fundamental, coming down as they do to things like audience, potential growth, market, and the like.

It’s undeniable that Facebook has a massive captive audience. Even with their recent upsets over data privacy, etc., the company still has an estimated 1.6 billion people using its services daily. That is a huge wellspring to tap into with a new product. But a stumbling block here is that many in that audience use Facebook whilst on the go via mobile devices and unhampered by the need to carry / use additional hardware. They also have what they see as their needs for engagement, entertainment, etc., pretty well met by the various services already at their fingertips.

Horizon is VR headset driven so, even among its own captive audience, Facebook needs to persuade people that “something they are already doing”, now requires them to go out and buy a lump of hardware (Oculus Quest) at  US$399/$499 (£399/£499) a pop to “do the same thing”. Yes, I know a social VR experience isn’t the same as social networking, but you still have to get people over that hump of understanding – and that’s potentially a hard sell.

Facebook Horizon avatar, as seen in the initial promotional video. Credit: Facebook

And that leads into market and growth. At the start of 2019, Nvidia’s co-founder & CEO Jensen Huang stated the company’s belief that around 4 million PC VR systems have been sold worldwide; even with Oculus claiming around 50% of the high-end PC VR market, that’s not a terribly exciting figure. True, we now have the standalone Oculus Quest, but that is only projected to hit sales of 1 to 1.3 million by the end of the year. So, even with Facebook saying they will be extending Horizon’s reach to other VR hardware in time, the overall VR market remains pretty small – and despite all the projections, it is taking time to grow (even Zuckerberg has stated the market is still “five to ten years” from where Facebook would like it to be).

In this, making Horizon “VR only” tends to feel a little as if Facebook is getting into a position of chasing its own tail: VR needs a platform like Horizon that needs VR that needs a platform like Horizon – and so on. Say what you sill about Linden Lab’s Sansar – at least those with an adequate PC can access it as well as those with VR hardware.

Which is not to say I think Horizon cannot succeed; certainly, Oculus have been down this road a few times with other products so as to have been able to learn a few lessons they can put before Facebook. Although even that is a bit of a double-edged sword; Oculus’ own attempts to leverage social VR haven’t been massively successful,, and they are now going to wind down Spaces and Rooms (both of which have been available to Oculus Go and Gear VR as well as the more recent Quest) due to declining use.

On the social side, looking back, it’s kinda embarrassing at all the stages that we’ve gone through at Oculus. Way back in the early days, I did the social API so people could co-watch Twitch and things. And then we had Spaces and Rooms on Gear and Go. Now we have Horizon.

– Oculus CTO John Carmack, OC6, via Venturebeat

Of course, Horizon will offer a lot more than either Spaces or Rooms, but even so; far from being the “arrival” of social VR, it’s hard not to look on Horizon as more of another step along the way to trying to prove the need for social VR over the more general means of electronic social interaction. And even if the VR market does take 5-10 years to mature – that’s a long time for Facebook to iterate and improve Horizon, and it’s not like they’ll be short of revenue in order to do so.

There are other questions surrounding Horizon. For example, will it have any form of transaction system? If so, what kind? Facebook’s nascent Libra blockchain (assuming it comes to fruition and retains its idealism – see Andreas Antonopoulos’ take on this)? How will people react to Horizon using Facebook’s existing “real identity” and blocking tools and all the baggage of data gathering and use that goes with them? And so on.

But these kinds of questions can only be answered over time and as Horizon progresses; for now, I admit to being curious about Horizon and its potential impact (or otherwise). However, it’s not a platform I’ll be exploring. For one thing, I don’t see the point of investing in VR hardware yet (although that time will likely come). More particularly, even if I had a headset, my personal preference is to keep as far away from Facebook as possible.

High Fidelity changes direction (2)

Posted on by Inara Pey
via High Fidelity

In April 2019, as I reported in High Fidelity changes direction: the reality of VR worlds today (& tomorrow?, Philip Rosedale announced that High Fidelity would no longer be sitting within the content creation / public space provisioning area, and would instead switch to focus on software / platform development. This announcement has now been followed with a blog post by Rosedale that expands on the company’s immediate plans for the future.

In the May 7th, 2019 post Rosedale indicated that the company is shifting its emphasis even further and will be downsizing its workforce by 25% (some 20 people) in the process. The blog post is brutally honest – kudos to him for being so open – and its commentary gave me pause to mull a few things over before offering any lay thoughts of my own.

In stating the reason for the change, Rosedale points to the lack of take-up of VR headsets:

If you had asked me when we started the company in 2014, I’d have said that by now there would be several million people using HMDs daily, and we’d be competing with both big and small companies to provide the best platform—but I was wrong. Daily headset use is only in the tens of thousands, almost all for entertainment and media consumption, with very little in the way of general communication, work, or education.

– Philip Rosedale, Toward A Digital World, May 7th 2019

On the one hand, for those of us who never brought into the whole “VR will be a US $70 billion a  year business by 2020” simply on the basis of the “gee whiz” factor ascribed to it, nod knowledgeably and mutter, “told you so”. But this would rather miss a good portion of the point. As I’ve also pointed out in these pages, VR could in time come to have an impact on our lives in a variety of ways, and there are markets available today that could be – dare I say – revolutionised by its presence.

The problem is, no-one has yet found a way to substantially break into those markets for a variety of reasons. Take education, for example (a big focus for High Fidelity in the past): yes, VR could revolutionise teaching in many areas, but until the cost of headsets has come down substantially to the point where schools can afford to equip a class of 25-30, until questions of controlled access and the provisioning of virtual environments for schools and colleges to access (or build for themselves), the widespread integration of VR teaching remains a horizon vision.

Philip Rosedale, High Fidelity founder and CEO (centre) makes the first of what are now two announcements about the company’s direction, on April 5th, 2019

However, when it comes to the broader metaverse in particular – the starting point of Rosedale’s blog post – VR is really just one component. As he notes, since its inception, High Fidelity has worked hard on many of the foundational requirements for a broader framework in which to set “the metaverse”.

We’ve been working as a company for six years now writing open-source software and creating test events and experiences to enable this imagined place to come into existence. We’ve created a 3D audio engine that can handle large crowds, an open-source graphics engine with live editing, scalable servers, a blockchain-powered currency and marketplace, and more.

– Philip Rosedale, Toward A Digital World, May 7th 2019

Could it be that, moving the focus of VR headsets off to the side until they do gain real, broad-based market traction, some of this additional technology, combined with what had already been achieved through non-VR centric 3D spaces, demonstrate real world uses cases business (and others) might want to adopt? And in doing so, might this further lay practical foundations for wider acceptance of the concepts inherent in a “metaverse” type of setting, one that could in time also more naturally offer VR HMD support if / when the latter does start to become more a part of working environments?

That’s what High Fidelity is now setting out to explore, by delving into the idea of a virtual workspace solution.

For two weeks, we sent everyone home, with their computers, and created a private tropical island where we could work together all day, mostly wearing headphones but not HMDs—we didn’t prescribe the medium of use.

Within the first couple of days it was obvious we were onto something. The 3D audio was always on, perfectly realistic and comfortable. We found ourselves walking around and interacting with each other the same way you would in a physical office. We put up whiteboards and spaces for teams … What if the general trend toward remote and distributed work … could be accelerated even faster by virtual worlds?

– Philip Rosedale, Toward A Digital World, May 7th 2019

Again, for those of us who have been around long enough, this approach might ring a bell. Back in 2008-2010, another company Rosedale founded (but had since departed in an active capacity) tried a similar idea through a product called Second Life Enterprise (SLE), designed to provide companies with a “behind their firewall” implementation of a Second Life based virtual environment for collaborative working.

That idea ultimately failed – although it’s fair to say the reasons for that product’s failure were potentially more rooted in how it was implemented and the walls Linden Lab placed around it to (presumably) protect their IP than in any disinterest in the concept of virtual work spaces or sleazy associations appended to SL itself. And times have moved on a good deal since then; if nothing else eight years on, people are now more au fait with things like virtual spaces, avatars and the like to potentially be more open to virtual working environments.

So time will tell if this new approach works for High Fidelity – again, Rosedale admits there is no certainty in the move. But after six years – most recently with a lot of effort poured into high-profile events – High Fidelity is still struggling to grow an audience, and it really wasn’t clear if anything would substantively change in the next six years if they kept on that road. As such, this a brave move for a start-up to take, and a dose of realism when it comes to the state of play with the VR market. And in the meantime, as the blog post also makes clear, High Fidelity will continue to support its open source VR platform.

Which leads to a final question. Is this a sign that more VR-centric virtual spaces could face some hard decisions? Quite possibly. High Fidelity actually isn’t the first to hit the wall of slow VR take-up. In 2017, Altspace VR announced its imminent closure, but was ultimately saved when Microsoft stepped in.

But again, caution should be exercised if tempted to see this as a sign of the future for something like Sansar. If nothing else, the latter doesn’t have the weight of US $73 million investment sitting on its shoulders, quietly demanding the way be shown towards some kind of future return. Plus, Linden Lab have a viable source of income through Second Life, a platform they are committed to continue to develop and (hopefully) grow. If nothing else, this allows them the potential to throttle / steer the development and growth of Sansar to meet the realities of their potential marketplace without the worry of external pressures.

In the meantime, to High Fidelity, one can only say “good luck” with the new endeavour, and it will hopefully be interesting to see where it leads.

High Fidelity changes direction: the reality of VR worlds today (& tomorrow?)

Posted on by Inara Pey
Philip Rosedale, High Fidelity founder and CEO (centre left) addresses the weekly General Assembly meeting in High Fidelity, Friday, April 5th, 2019. Credit: High Fidelity

On Friday, April 5th, Philip Rosedale stunned attendees at High Fildelity’s weekly General Assembly meeting (see the video here and embedded at the end of the article), when he announced that the company would no longer be sitting within the content creation / public space provisioning area with its platform, and that forthwith all public spaces hosted by the company, together with the large-scale events they have been hosting would cease as the company switches tracks to focus sole on software / platform development.

The news was greeted with a sense of shock by High Fidelity users, and the company certainly moved very quickly to follow through on the announcement, shutting down all of the public spaces it has hosted, included social spaces and their flagship Avatar Island, which opened just over a year ago as a means of showcase virtual commerce, shopping and the power of the platform’s micro payments capabilities (see Commerce in High Fidelity, this blog, February 2018).

One of the driving forces behind the decision is that High Fidelity is currently unable to gain major traction – and this despite major pushes to do so with some large-scale events pushed out to the media for promotion, and the former monthly stress tests of the system, trying to push concurrency rates up to determine just how well High Fidelity domains can handle multiple hundreds of avatars. Which is not to say all events are coming to an end: the platform’s popular bingo sessions are set to continue and – taking a leaf from Sansar’s book – High Fidelity is promoting coverage of the first operational launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with an in-world event on Thursday, April 11th.

High Fidelity have, until now, straddled themselves across the software development, content creation and event hosting environments in both trying to generate an audience for their platform and develop the platform itself. Going forward, they plan to focus solely on the latter

However, moving away from large-scale event hosting and hosting domains and environments to try to encourage user growth and instead turning to users and (I assume) suitable partners for audience-generating content, means the company will no longer be pulling against itself trying to both develop the software and platform and provide engaging content and events intended to acquire an audience and encourage their retention.

Which, when you think about it, is pretty much what Linden Lab have, for the most part, been trying to do with Sansar. While the company have provided various social spaces, for the most part they have left content development to users, or have facilitated content creation on behalf of partner organisations (Intel, HTC, the Smithsonian, OpTic Gaming, Roddenberry Entertainment to name a handful) through Sansar Studios – and it has recently been indicated that we’ll be seeing more of this in the future.

One potential benefit of the move for High Fidelity domain creators is the move will hopefully spur more interest in their environments, as Rosedale noted:

By shutting down our public servers, I actually make the prediction that there will be… more people concurrent across the servers that you guys run than us. So I’m not saying that we’re giving up on the servers, I’m saying that I want you to run them.

– Philip Rosedale, April 5th, 2019

Another aspect of the decision is the slow growth of VR in the broader public marketplace. In this, High Fidelity is possibly more vulnerable than other platforms, in that while it has a Desktop option, it has largely marketed itself as “the” VR virtual spaces company. All of their major event activities; for example, the monthly One Billion in VR events, the FutVRe Lands festival, etc. (bold emphasis my own), have all been VR-centric in their titles, potentially spurring a feeling among a broader audience that High Fidelity isn’t for them due to the lack of any personal HMD.

One of the factors influence High Fidelity’s decision is the slow take-up of consumer VR

Which is not so say others platform built to try to ride the wave of VR don’t also face issues building an audience. For example, much is made of the “success” of VRChat (which can be played both in VR and via desktop), yet the fact is, its average and peak hourly concurrency is only roughly one tenth that of Second Life. But, having said that, the take up is likely to come in time. In fact, as I’ve noted in other articles on VR, right now there are clear niche markets / environments where VR can have a significant impact  – if someone can leverage them correctly: education; training / simulation; architecture / design / prototyping; healthcare; visualisation and computer modelling, etc. And in the future, as VR / AR (or more particularly MR / XR)  do start to gain a broader consumer audience traction, then opportunities for broader virtual environments will arise.

There is perhaps a broader take-way from the High Fidelity announcement: and that is, companies like High Fidelity, Linden Lab, Altspace VR, etc, are likely to face something of an uphill battle to gain an audience for their emerging platforms, even when VR does gain a firmer consumer foothold.

This is not Second Life in 2004. Second Life actually took off like a rocket, once it got working. Even though it had tons and tons of problems… but it took off like an absolute rocket. And the reason that it did, I think, was that this experience of bringing a lot of people together and letting them build things together live, well, in the time frame when we built Second Life, it had never, ever been seen by anyone …

The problem we have today is that that’s just not true. The internet affords us many, many, many, many different ways to be together as people, for example, or just to chat. And so one of the things we are up against here is that there is not as much of a genesis moment … Coming on-line you just don’t have the kind of meme in the sense of a grand or cultural meme kind of written out there like Second Life did. That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to make it. It simply means that we have to be more clever and the strategy that we use to get people in here has to be somewhat different.

– Philip Rosedale, April 5th, 2019

In other words, Second Life has been successful because, at the time of its birth and in the years of its initial growth, it was largely unique on all fronts in the way it captured people’s imaginations*, and its broadness of scope and its ability to embrace people’s imaginations and desires meant it could gather an audience to its shores long before anything came along to seriously challenge it.

This is no longer the case. Today, the digital realms we have at our fingertips are limitless, be they for gaming, socialising, sharing, entire virtual environments, and so on. Whatever we might be seeking, the chances are there is already something there to sate appetites. Even creators can build and mod for a range of games and environments and – through the likes of Unity and Unreal and so on – build environments, all without necessarily getting too hung up on arcane tools built-in to platforms.

Thus, and even if / when VR does become far more consumer mainstream, any attempt to build a world-girdling, audience-rich metaverse is going to face something of a challenge without a significant fiscal weight behind it. Not just in terms of developing the technology, but also into the marketing and PR and – most importantly – the licensing of content. To put this last point another way: were OASIS real, would all the models, characters, and so on from major franchises / brands seen within it really be user-built, or would they more likely be the result of hefty licensing deals that brings the content to the platform whilst protecting the rights (and royalties) of the licensors?

But this is looking further down the road. Right now, High Fidelity’s decision is worth marking; how much of a wider impact it has is a matter yet to be seen.

* Revised, from the original after Will Burns correctly reminded me Active Worlds predated SL.

Thoughts on VR and AR, part 2: AR, MR and beyond

Posted on by Inara Pey
via proximie.com

This article is designed to be the second part of a short series offering personal thoughts on the broad state of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR, together with mixed reality, or MR) as they appear to stand at the end of 2018, and where they might be going over the course of the next few years.

In doing so, I’m not attempting to set myself up as any kind of “expert” or offer predictions per se; I’ve simply been gorging myself on a wide range of articles and reports on VR and AR/MR over the last few weeks to make sure I’m caught up on things. In part one, I covered VR; This part therefore examines AR/MR, with an emphasis on headset / eye wear, as it is these tools that particularly interest me.

Compared to VR, AR/MR has been much more a slow burner in terms of press interest. The reason for this is simple: outside of a few headliners like the original Google Glass, Microsoft’s HoloLens and, most recently, Magic Leap One, AR/MR eye wear hasn’t really caught the media’s attention. However, in assessing the state of the VR and AR/MR markets over the next 3 years, SuperData predicts something of a rapid rise in AR/MR adoption, which could see the technology generate revenues very slightly in excess of those predicated by SuperData for VR by the start of 2022.

AR / MR revenue trends, 2018-2021. Credit; SuperData

Even allowing for these figures including smartphone AR applications, this forecast might seem optimistic, but there are reasonable grounds to suggest they are not beyond the realm of possibility – if, perhaps a slightly holistic view is taken. I say this for a number of reasons: the increasing use of AR/MR in a range of workplace  / service environments; the release of development platforms for AR on smartphones and mobile devices; and availability / development of new headsets; although there are some caveats.

I’d like to examine these ideas in turn, starting with adaptation of AR/MR in enterprise-type environments. In doing so, I’m limiting myself to briefly covering just three examples: Google’s Glass Enterprise Edition, Microsoft’s HoloLens and a company called Osterhout Design Group (ODG).

  • Using the basic Google Glass concept (2013-2015) Glass Enterprise Edition re-lunched in mid-2017 with 50 US companies using it in engineering, training and services including GE Aviation, Boeing, Volkswagen, AECO, and DHL, and with a range of healthcare uses, including Augmedix and Brain Power (see Google Glass: The Comeback?, July 2017 for more).

  • Microsoft’s HoloLens has been similar adopted by a range of companies including Volvo Cars, Japan Airlines, BlueScope Buildings and Trimble (architecture and building design), Autodesk, together with widespread adoption in healthcare from training through to major aspects of surgery in hospitals around the world. Most recently, the US Army has given Microsoft US $480 million to develop the HoloLens for troop training and combat missions, while NASA utilises it both on the International Space Station (Project Sidekick) and as a mission / prototyping visualisation tool (projects OnSight and ProtoSpace).

  • Osterhout Design Group (ODG) – a company that potentially help Microsoft develop the HoloLens when they sold 81 patents related to AR and head-worn computers to the software giant for US $150 million in 2014. Have released a family of AR glasses, the R-7 and R-7HL (“hazardous locations”) specifically designed for use across business and industrial applications, providing heads-up information displays and overlays. In 2017, ODG launched the R-8 and R-9 glasses, utilising Qualcomm’s more powerful Snapdragon 835, with R-8 intended to start bridging the gap between “enterprise” and consumer use.
The ODG R-8 and R-9 headsets, launched at CES 2017. Credit: Engadget

There are other examples of AR headset use in business (and entertainment) to be sure, but I hope the above are enough to make the point. Highlighting the use of AR systems in the workplace is important (as it is with VR – see part 1 of this series) because familiarity with them in the workplace could help spur people’s  willingness to bring it into the home as affordable consumer systems start to appear, because: because a) they have experienced it within their workplace and have seen it benefit them; b) the hardware involved is (more-or-less) the “same” as the hardware they are buying (familiarly encourages both trust and experimentation).

Continue reading “Thoughts on VR and AR, part 2: AR, MR and beyond” →

Thoughts on VR and AR, part 1

Posted on by Inara Pey
via proximie.com

I haven’t written too much about “consumer” virtual reality and / or augmented reality during 2018, primarily because this past year has been rather quiescent when compared to 2017 and earlier, so outside of one or two events, there hasn’t been that much I’ve been prompted to write about. As such, and as we pass from 2018 to 2019, it seems a good time to take a broad look at both and where they might be going, at least from a purely armchair perspective.

In doing so, I’m not attempting to set myself up as any kind of “expert” or offer predictions per se; I’ve simply been gorging myself on a wide range of articles and reports on AR, VR and mixed reality over the last few weeks to catch up on everything, and with this article I’ll focus on virtual reality.

(Note that in writing this article, I’m deliberately ignoring two products that involve VR: Microsoft Mixed Reality and Apple’s rumoured AR / VR system. The former, because Microsoft appears to be playing a much longer game, and it is unclear how MMR will impact markets down the road; the latter because it’s unclear how Apple’s product will mix AR and VR, it’s overall capabilities, price point or precise nature.)

Consumer focused virtual reality has always had a hard mountain to climb. From the start, predictions of its growth verged on the ridiculous. At the end of 2015, for example, TrendForce claimed sales of VR hardware, software and services would hit US $70 billion by 2020, a figure that, at the time tended to be taken for granted despite the fact that when it was made, the consumer versions of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive hadn’t even started shipping. Nor were TrendForce alone in the hyping.

Consumer-focused VR was drastically over-hyped before the first consumer version of the Oculus Rift had even launched  – something which had perhaps come back to haunt it. via TrendForce

Obviously, VR hasn’t achieved anything like this kind of volume, but it is growing. In 2017, for example, total VR hardware and software sales reached US $2.8 billion, three years ahead of the time frame IHS Markit (one of the more reserved analytics companies looking at VR in late 2015) predicted. In 2018, this increased to US $3.3 billion; a relatively modest growth, but not unexpected given that outside of the Oculus Go, there haven’t been any major releases of VR headsets. This modest growth in sales, coupled with the lack of exciting new hardware releases has perhaps lead to more negativity around VR being voiced than previous years. However, 2019 could be the start of a “turnaround” for VR.

VR’s current and projected growth. Source: SuperData

As it is, SuperData, which specialises in analysing the computer and gaming sectors, predicts that the VR market will double total revenues to US $9.6  billion in 2019. They further suggest revenues could grow to US $19.0 billion by the end of 2021. These might again sound like inflated figures – particularly the idea of a five-fold revenue increase in just three years, but there are actually two or three reasons to suggest why 2019 could well see significant growth in revenue for VR, and which will see it continue to trend upwards at a rate somewhat faster than seen thus far.

Up until the arrival of the Oculus Go earlier in 2018, consumer VR hardware had been more-or-less split into three areas: high-end tethered systems requiring upmarket PCs to power them; units dependent on the use of smartphones for a more limited immersive experience, and what might be termed a purely games oriented solution in the Sony Playstation VR. As such, all have been somewhat limited in their appeal / reach.

Oculus Go: 2560×1440 @ 72Hz screen; 101-degrees field-of-view; 3 DoF tracking; Snapdragon 821; price and on-board storage: US $199 / 32 GB and US $249 / 64 GB

However, in 2018 the Oculus Go arrived, and in 2019 it is set to be joined by the Oculus Quest and the Vive Focus. The significance of these three units is that they are entirely self-contained and provide an immediate VR experience right out-of-the-box. No need to hook up a heavyweight PC (possibly at added expense) for the heavy-lifting, or to have a suitable smartphone to provide the visuals.

While both the Quest (shipping in 2019) and the Focus (currently only available in China) have yet to  become globally available, their potential impact might be seen in the positive response the Go generated at launch, as noted by SuperData:

Oculus Go is part of an important movement. Facebook sold more units of the standalone headset in its launch quarter than they did the Oculus Rift in the entire first half of 2017. Its price and convenience are proving to be selling points.

– Stephanie Llamas, SuperData Head of XR data research

What is particularly interesting about the response is that it has not been limited to purely “home” use. While the Go is marketed as an “entertainment” headset, it has already been seen as a means of expanding VR’s use within enterprise markets. Take Walmart as an  example.

Continue reading “Thoughts on VR and AR, part 1” →

AltspaceVR acquired by Microsoft

Posted on by Inara Pey
Courtesy of AltspaceVR

What a ride. We cried, we laughed, we overdosed on caffeine… but now we’re dancing in our headsets! For those of you that didn’t witness the drama of the last few months, we had to close down in July but thanks to the love you sent out to the internet, others took notice.

With the AltspaceVR team on-board we look forward to building the world’s pre-eminent mixed reality community.

So opens a blog post from AltspaceVR announcing the company has been acquired by Microsoft, as confirmed by an announcement by the tech giant at its Mixed Reality Event. It marks the end of a rough couple of months for the company.

In July (as I covered here), the AltSpaceVR was set to say “goodbye” in early August. It would have been a sad end to a company which had done much to lay the basis of “social VR”, and had hosted events featuring the likes of Reggie Watts, Drew Carey and Bill “the Science Guy” Nye; the company even hosted events with NBC news during the 2016 US Presidential election.

However, rumours soon began circulating that perhaps the company might continue, and on August 15th, barely a week after closure, the company confirmed this looked like it would be the case and theey were in talks with a third-party. At the time, many thought Oculus VR co-founder and wannabe political backer, Palmer Luckey might be behind moves to rescue / revive AltspaceVR (see here). ow we know that third-party was in fact Microsoft – led, apparently, by Alex Kipman.

Kipman, a 17-year veteran at Microsoft, cut his teeth with the company on the Xbox, and created the Kinect motion controller. Since 2015, he has been a technical fellow for the company’s Operating Systems Group, with a specific focus on the company’s evolving AR systems, such as the HoloLens, which he also credited with inventing. The AltspaceVR blog post notes in reference to him:

Many members of the AltspaceVR team worked hard in the following days and weeks to make sure the technology lived on. They connected with Alex Kipman and found a natural overlap between his goals for mixed reality and their hopes for the future of AltspaceVR. 

Alex Kipman, the man behind Microsoft’s HoloLens, and seen as key to the company’s acquisition of AltspaceVR

The AltspaceVR blog post also lays things out pretty clearly: not only has Microsoft acquired Altspace VR, they have no plans to absorb it: the company will apparently be free to continue working with other platforms and maintain its identity as a business entity.

AltspaceVR will stay AltspaceVR. Microsoft is most interested in preserving the current community that uses AltspaceVR to connect and interact with new and old friends. These first few months will focus on fostering our community and making sure AltspaceVR remains a friendly, welcoming and vibrant place to hang out in virtual reality.

AltspaceVR will continue to work on PC and Mac in 2D mode, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Daydream by Google, and Samsung Gear VR.

Does this mean AltSpaceVR will be integrated into the AR offerings Microsoft has and is planning? Insofar as the HoloLens itself is concerned, the answer appears to be “no” – at least for the present.

However, the Microsoft is aiming to distinguish its “mixed reality” platform for VR headsets running Windows 10. and will be releasing a slew of headsets with OEM partners at an aggressive Us $299 pricing start point. So it might be that they see AltspaceVR  – or capabilities developed from it – as a potential fit into this arena as it grows. Again, as the AltspceVR blog post notes:

Microsoft is excited to incorporate communications technology into our mixed reality ecosystem. AltspaceVR takes personal connections, combines them with real-time experiences, and leverages immersive presence to share experiences. Situations of people, places, and things have deeper meaning and in turn, are more memorable. We’re excited to see how far this technology can go.

Inside AltspaceVR: avatar customisation

Of the move, Microsoft had this to say via a press release:

AltspaceVR is one of the pioneers in immersive communications bringing people together in virtual reality from over 160 countries to attend meet-ups, comedy shows, yoga classes, dance parties, and large-scale events …

With the AltspaceVR team on-board we look forward to building the world’s pre-eminent mixed reality community.

The full terms of the deal have not been released. Prior to hit financial difficulties earlier in 2017, AltspaceVR had raised some US $26.3 million in funding through two rounds of investment, with US $16 million raised in 2014, and a further US $10.3 million raised in a second round of funding led by Raine Ventures.