Somnium Space Plans Modular 2800×2800 Standalone VR Headset With XTAL Maker

Somnium Space is planning to release a new standalone VR headset with the help of XTAL maker, VRgineers.But, wait, who are Somnium Space? You’d be forgiven for not having heard of the company before today, but Somnium has been around for a number of years working on what it claims is “the world’s only VR metaverse built on blockchain”. It operates a social VR platform of the same name, available on SteamVR, in which users can buy virtual land. In 2019 the company raised $1 million to expand its platform. The headset itself was revealed at Somnium’s own ‘Connect’ event (no, not that Connect) in Prague earlier this week. The company says its device is powered by Qualcomm’s XR2 platform with 6DOF inside-out tracking via four cameras and sports 2,800 x 2,800 displays with a horizontal field of view greater than 115 degrees. VRgineers — known for its professional-grade

The XR Week Peek (2021.12.21): Google is building an AR OS, Nike acquires RTFKT, and more!

I’m super-late with this newsletter because we of New Technology Walkers are working on some cool stuff for our game HitMotion: Reloaded! Be sure to check it out on App Lab in a few hours, even if you have already completed it in the past… 😉 And please, give it 5 stars, it’s super-important to have a positive review for our future… do it as a Christmas gift to me!  I’ll write a separate post for that, but in case you won’t read it, let me wish you all some amazing Winter Holidays to spend with the people you love the most! Top news of the week (Image by Google)Google is reportedly working on an AR operating system In some of my past newsletters, I warned you that we shouldn’t forget about Google/Alphabet in the race to our mixed reality future. Google owns the best search engine (Google), all the data of the

Someone Spent $450K To Be Snoop Dogg’s Neighbor In The Metaverse

How much would you pay to live next to your favorite celebrity in the metaverse? In case you’ve been living under a rock, NFTs are taking over the metaverse. At this point, it seems like everyone and their mother is investing in non-fungible tokens and cryptocurrency. This includes famed California rapper Snoop Dogg who—earlier this year—partnered with blockchained-based 3D open world game The Sandbox to launch his own world inside the metaverse.‘The Snoopverse’, as it’s being called, is a portion of The Sandbox metaverse owned and operated by Snoop Dogg. Earlier this month, 122 LANDs (plots of virtual land) and 67 Premium LANDs were put up for auction, allowing early investors the chance to purchase NFT property inside the ever-growing Snoopverse. How much does this land cost exactly? Well, that depends. Much like the actual real estate market, location is everything. Take it from The Sandbox user P-Ape who, earlier

Nike Just Bought Leading Metaverse Fashion House RTFKT

The company’s acquisition could be a major step forward for the metaverse, NFTs, and the digital fashion industry.Nike today announced the purchase of RTFKT Studios, a leading metaverse fashion house best known for its lineup of high-end digital clothing. Since 2020, the company has employed a variety of cutting-edge technologies such as NFTs, crypto, blockchains, and AR technology to establish a one-of-a-kind brand that blends the physical and digital worlds.What began with NFT sneaker drops has since expanded into a full-fledged digital clothing brand.Image Credit: Nike / RTFKT Studios“This acquisition is another step that accelerates Nike’s digital transformation and allows us to serve athletes and creators at the intersection of sport, creativity, gaming, and culture,” said John Donahoe, President and CEO of NIKE, Inc in an official statement. “We’re acquiring a very talented team of creators with an authentic and connected brand. Our plan is to invest in the RTFKT brand,

The XR Week Peek (2021.12.13): Horizon Worlds is now in open beta, Among Us VR is coming, and more!

This has been a pretty interesting week for me, having spoken at XR Safety Week and Stereopsia, and having published two cool articles about creating innovative SteamVR controllers and using Application SpaceWarp in Unity to almost double the framerate of your application.  But now, before starting the new week, it’s time to look back at the most important news of the previous one! Top news of the week (Image by Meta)Horizon Worlds goes open beta Finally, after two years in the works, Meta has decided to open the gates of its social VR space Horizon Worlds (previously known as Facebook Horizon). Or at least, sort of: the experience is still in beta (so this is officially an open beta stage) and it will be accessible without an invite only in the US and in Canada. Ah, and you must be 18+ years old.  The North-America-only limitation is quite a bummer for us Europeans, but

Highlights and News From Snap’s Lens Fest 2021

It’s hard to believe it, but it has been a year since Lens Fest 2020. This annual event is when Snap reaches out to the developer community. That includes Snapchat lens creators as well as those who create experiences for other apps and websites using Snap’s camera API, camera kit. Last year, the Lens Fest saw major updates to Snap’s creator software, Lens Studio, as well as a focus on creating lenses with social impact. So, what did this year’s three-day-long event bring? A Whole Lot of Energy Lens Fest isn’t just a developer’s conference. Because anyone can be a lens creator, the event is an opportunity for Snap to celebrate all of the people that contribute to their platform – professionally or otherwise. “Lens Fest is our annual, global event that highlights innovation and creativity from every corner of the lens creator community,” Snap co-founder and CTO, Bobby Murphy,

HTC is Getting into the NFT Craze with the Opening of Its Own Store Soon

HTC is opening a non-fungible token (NFT) store soon that its says will host all forms of digital art, including AR, VR, and XR pieces.

The store, which will open on December 17th, is set to first offer NFTs featuring the works of Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939), which is being offered as a part of a collaboration with the Mucha Foundation.

The NFT sale will coincide with the opening of the ‘Mucha to Manga – The Magic of the Line’ exhibition in Taipei.

Here’s a video in Chinese about the show, displaying some of Mucha’s iconic art.

The store is said to offer complete control over the number of NFT editions and the format of the sale, with both fiat and crypto currencies accepted as payment.

HTC says a new NFT series will come to the store each month until April 2022, which will conclude with what it describes as “a special auction.”

For those of us in the VR space, all of this may seem a bit out of left field for the company, which over the years has built itself a significant niche in creating enterprise VR hardware. HTC is no stranger to jumping on the crypto bandwagon though. In 2019 the company released Exodus 1, a blockchain-focused smartphone that acts as a hardware wallet for storing cryptocurrency among other things.

How NFTs fit into all of that, well, there’s no telling how deep of a commitment the store actually represents. The company’s VIVE Arts initiative has been involved in bringing art-themed content to Viveport, but moreover it bringing VR to cultural institutions in limited-time exhibitions at the Tate Modern, London’s Royal Academy of Arts, Taipei’s National Palace Museum, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris, Washington D.C.’s Newseum, and St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum since its founding in 2017.

Granted, NFT auctions are a far cry from bringing art to the masses—they primarily function as crypto-investment vehicles—although the earning potential for both the creators and buyers can’t be overstated.

The storied Christie’s auction house oversaw the sale of one NFT for $69 million back in March, something many NFT creators have hoped to replicate. Whether HTC makes those sort of headlines isn’t certain. At least Alphonse Mucha didn’t exclusively paint bored apes.

This article was originally published on roadtovr.com

HTC Launches Vive Arts NFT Store

HTC Vive is getting into VR NFTs. But don’t pick up the pitchforks yet; maybe the idea of a VR NFTs works? Maybe?A blog post today announced the launch of the Vive Arts NFT store. It’s essentially a browser-based sales gallery – the platform will reportedly offer a chance for artists to sell art made in VR and AR as well as other digital works. HTC says creators will be able to decide the amount of copies of a work they can sell as well as whether to accept cryptocurrency or actual currency (for lack of a better term). The NFT Store will be hosting a sales meeting on December 17 in which it will feature NFT-ized works from Czech artist, Alphonse Mucha (pictured below) in collaboration with the Mucha Foundation. Before we make too much fun of the news (tempting as it is), there is perhaps some merit

The XR Week Peek (2021.12.06): Upload VR Showcase, Apple headset rumors, and more!

I guess all companies have finished their important announcements before US Thanksgiving and now we are in a calm moment where there is some news here and there, but nothing incredible. Probably we’ll hear new big shots fired at CES in January 2022. So yes, this roundup won’t be amazing… interesting, but not exciting. I know, I’m too honest… and this is not good for views on my blog. So let’s try to rephrase this last paragraph using the same style used by VR Youtubers in the title of their videos to attract more people: THIS EXPLOSIVE WEEK IN VR HAS CHANGED EVERYTHING!!!!! YOU MUST READ THIS POST!!!!!!!!!! PS I’ll be a panelist at the XR Safety Week today and at Stereopsia (remotely) on Wednesday. If you may be interested, follow me 🙂 Top news of the week (Image by Upload)The Upload VR Showcase has been full of announcements about VR games Upload did it