Back in 2016, designer and filmmaker Keiichi Matsuda released Hyper-Reality, a concept film that imagined an augmented reality future where physical and virtual realities have merged, resulting in a “city saturated in media.” [embed]https://youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs&feature=oembed[/embed] The 6-minute film presented an exploratory – and largely dystopic – vision of how our reality could soon be overloaded and overlaid with information. Though the film is the better part of a decade old, it remains relevant to modern discussions on how we conceptualize use cases for emerging virtual and augmented reality technologies.The film was heavily circulated, covered extensively across media and news outlets when it released. Despite its confronting and intentionally provocative imagery, it has been a highly influential concept – or, perhaps more accurately, a hypothetical cautionary tale – to those working on the technologies that would enable it to become reality. Matsuda himself subsequently began working in AR following the film’s release,
Tea is Served entertains Dracula, the Mothman, and more in this short comedy VR horror.Developed by Jante Interactive with support from StoryFutures, Tea is Served sees you entertaining a most unusual series of guests, including a Wendigo, the Loch Ness Monster and Brian. You’re tasked with ensuring their needs are met by serving up food and drinks. Failing this sees you becoming the meal instead. [embed]https://youtube.com/watch?v=yYzLS8Pqy2Y&feature=oembed[/embed] For more information, here’s the full description:In Tea Is Served you find yourself as the entertainment for the annual tea party of the world’s most feared cryptids. As they shout at you from all sides, you must obey their bizarre requests until you either succeed and go free, or fail. But beware – if you fail, you might end up as dessert.We briefly went hands-on with a Quest 2 prototype during EGX 2023, serving guests across this 360° environment while your character remains stationary in
Happy Autumn everyone! Temperatures are getting colder, but not in VR… here it is going to be a very hot week with the launch of the Quest 3! Today I was thinking “Oh it’s cool that the Quest 3 is coming in a few weeks…” and then I realized that is going to be fully launched in just 2 days. Oh wow. I’m super excited, and you? Top news of the week (Image from Upload VR)Pico 5 leaks show a very ambitious product line The leaks on the Pico 5 are intensifying, which usually means that the device is going to be announced quite soon. Last week we had a first look at the controllers, while this week we had quite a confusing leak about its product line, which, if confirmed, would show an ambitious plan by the Chinese company. The leak came from China and talked about the Pico 5 product line
It’s been a bumpy ride for social VR platform Neos VR over the past two years partly due to being removed from Steam for heavily featuring its own cryptocurrency. While Neos VR was eventually reinstated on Steam, original Neos VR developer Tomáš “Frooxius” Mariančík has since departed the project and now announced a spiritual successor called Resonite.
There’s a fair bit of drama surrounding Neos VR, something you can read up on over at Ryan Schulz’s blog, which delves into the cryptocurrency-fueled rift between Mariančík and Karel Hulec, CEO of the app’s publisher Sorilax. The two have completely parted ways, with Hulec still managing Neos while Mariančík has headed a new team developing Resonite.
From what by all accounts was a bitter split, Resonite is emerging from the controversy, bringing with it what Mariančík describes as a “novel digital universe with infinite possibilities.”
“Whether you resonate with people around the world in a casual conversation, playing games and socializing or you riff off each other when creating anything from art to programming complex games, you’ll find your place here,” the app’s Steam description reads.
Like Neos VR, Resonite heavily focuses on in-app content creation, allowing users to create their own interactive avatars, art, gadgets, and “complex interactive worlds and games.”
There’s no release date yet for Resonite, however the app’s Steam page says it’s launching into early access sometime in October. Whatever the case, Resonite doesn’t appear to have ambitions to launch on Quest, PSVR 2, or mobile hardware currently, essentially setting it up to be a PC-exclusive experience likely appealing mostly to enthusiasts.
We’re curious to learn more about Resonite, and what sets it apart from Neos. Whatever the case, there seems to be a fairly substantial expected migration of Neos users to Resonite, as Resonite’s Patreon page already boasts over $14,000 monthly donations.
According to cached pages, support for Neos VR’s Patreon has decreased significantly in the past two years since the project included its own cryptocurrency and friction arose between its creators; near its all-time high of over $18,000 per-month donations, today Neos garners a little under $5,000 per month from backers.
This article was originally published on roadtovr.com
Artificial intelligence has been a part of Talespin since day one but the company has been leaning more heavily into the technology in recent years including through internal AI-assisted workflows and a public-facing AI development toolkit. Now, Talepsin is announcing an AI lab “dedicated to responsible artificial intelligence (AI) innovation in the immersive learning space.” “Immersive Learning Through the Application of AI” AI isn’t the end of work – but it will change the kinds of work that we do. That’s the outlook that a number of experts take, including the team behind Talespin. They use AI to create virtual humans in simulations for teaching soft skills. In other words, they use AI to make humans more human – because those are the strengths that won’t be automated any time soon.
Meta announced it’s introducing new anti-piracy measures for Quest developers that the company says will protect VR apps from “unauthorized modifications and potential security breaches.”
Called the Platform Integrity Attestation API (Attestation API), Meta says its new system is designed to detect whether an app’s server is interacting with an untampered VR device, thereby ensuring whether an app is authentic or not.
The Attestation API includes things like secure device authentication, hardware-based app bans, protection of financial and enterprise app data, prevention of external data misuse, and other anti-piracy measures.
In a developer blogpost, Meta calls it “increasingly important to instill a consistent method for validating the integrity of apps in order to provide a secure and safe user experience for everyone.”
It remains to be seen what effects this will have on modding communities, since modders for Quest games such as Beat Saber may inadvertently run afoul of the new token system at the core of the Attestation API.
“Once integrated, the API will provide you with an ‘attestation token,’ which you can use to determine if an app running on a Meta device has been tampered with,” Meta says. “This token is cryptographically signed by the Attestation Server to reinforce the security and reliability of the attestation process.”
At the time of this writing, we have not yet received a response for comment from Meta on what effects it may have on those communities. We’ll update this piece when/if we do.
Meta is allowing developers to opt-in now for their Quest apps, which spans Quest 2, Quest Pro, and the upcoming Quest 3, whcih is slated to launch in late 2023. Meta has published documentation for both Unity and Native.
This article was originally published on roadtovr.com
The metaverse can be summed up as the augmented world. So, naturally, it has implications for travel. How and when people travel may both seriously change as spatial communication and digital twins make some kinds of travel less likely, while AR and automation reimagine the travel that we do engage in. A report by Booking.com for Business, titled “The Future of Business Travel” explores the next 30 years of travel. AR and Space Hotels The report begins with “A Timeline of Future Business Travel Predictions.” To the potential dismay of augmented reality enthusiasts, the report puts AR in 2027 – the same year as “space hotels”. The report acknowledges existing AR use cases including augmenting areas with contextual information. However, the authors are waiting for something better. .ueea79c34cc93012709802bc574a8f92b { padding:0px; margin: 0; padding-top:1em!important; padding-bottom:1em!important; width:100%; display: block; font-weight:bold; background-color:#FFFFFF; border:0!important; border-left:4px solid #E74C3C!important; box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0,
This week VR is dead again. Sorry to inform you about that. It’s been good to dream about the metaverse, but now we can all get back to frying potatoes at McDonald’s and binge on Twitter during the free time. Ah no, not even that because also Twitter is dead. Now it’s called X and aims at becoming the Western WeChat. Luckily there is AR that is still strong, and we can hope to wear Google AR glasses soon… ah no, they are dead too. But we can still rely on Meta that is still spending billions on XR and… OH NO, THE QUEST PRO DIED TOO. Long story short, this week has been a cemetery. Like an out-of-season VR Halloween. But I hope you’ll enjoy this newsletter coming from the world of the undead anyway… Top news of the week (Image by Apple)Apple starts accepting applications for Vision Pro devkits Apple has started
The European Commission is already setting out to tackle Web 4.0. There’s quite a bit to unpack here, including the EC approach, the 4-point plan that they recently published, and – of course – what they mean by Web 4.0. What Is Web 4.0? It’s not a typo and you’re not asleep at the wheel. While most of us haven’t gotten the hang of Web 3.0 yet, Europe is already setting the table for Web 4.0. Don’t worry, this is just a new terminology for something that’s already on your radar. “Beyond the currently developing third generation of the internet, Web 3.0, whose main features are openness, decentralization, and user empowerment, the next generation, Web 4.0, will allow an integration between digital and real objects and environments and enhanced interactions between humans and machines,” reads the EC’s report. So, essentially, “Web 4.0” is the metaverse. But, why not just call
