Apple CEO Tim cook gave us a possible little baby tease for apples rumored VR headset. In an interview with china daily. The reporter asked what are the key factors for AR products and headsets to succeed in the consumer market and tim responded saying the critical thing to any technology including ar is putting humanity at the center of it and thats what we focus on every day. Timmy cook went on to later say We’re still in the early innings of how this tech will evolve and I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities we see in this space. Stay tuned and you’ll see what we have to offer. TIM! What does this mean!?! Are we ever going to put that apple watch wrist band headstrap around our skulss and see inside the macintosh meteverse!? Please mac daddy tim please… put that m2 all over my face.

You probably saw it but zuck and the reality labs team over at meta showed off some of their prototypes and the challenges they are trying to overcome in creating the perfect VR headset of the future.

The prototypes featured had some loveable names like the butterscotch headset that focused on increasing resolution, starburst man they love candy over at meta, which was built to research how to bring higher dynamic range to VR, and the gem of the interview slash showcase holocake 2 which naturally uses holography to bring all of their research together in a small form factor that according to mark can play any pcvr title but that catch you ask? it needs a fancy pants laser to run which isn’t exactly cheap or readily available. But hey meta is putting their billions to building VR of the future and I guess we can’t be mad about that.

Reality Labs Chief scientist Michael Abrash finished the showcase by sharing what a complete next gen display system could look like in a concept design entitled Mirror Lake. Which sounds like a show from the mid 2000’s on abc family. Previously on Mirror lake….This unbuilt high concept design combines advanced eye tracking, varifocal technology, and holographic lenses to make every piece of the headset thin and flat and plans to have prescription correction built in so there will be no glasses in the metaverse people. Its just not what mark wants.

Speaking of the metaverse and what mark wants some tech giants are coming together to hold a metaverse standards forum next month. As stated on the forums website, The Forum will focus on pragmatic, action-based projects such as implementation prototyping, hackathons, plugfests, and open-source tooling to accelerate the testing and adoption of standards, while also developing consistent terminology and deployment guidelines. Just a few of the high profile members include adobe, qualcomm, sony, nvidia, meta and of course ikea. So you can get frustrated building a SÖDERHAMN sectional in your virtual living room.

The Forum will not create standards itself but will coordinate requirements and resources to foster the creation and evolution of standards within standards organizations working in relevant domains. So here’s to you tech giants lets make the metaverse a magical place where our data isn’t sold to everyone who wants to make me buy solar panels… Am I the only one getting those ads everywhere?

The quest summer sale went live this week with up to 40% off for some titles and some very good deals on bundles. Make sure to check it out if you are watching this video now because it ends this weekend. Now’s the time to finally buy the resident evil 4 remake because baby you can save $4 on it. Seriously though it rarely goes on sale and 4 dollars is 4 dollars but it doesn’t matter because its good.

This week Vive went corpo with its business version of the lightweight vive flow. In this new incarnation the flow gets an optional $59 remote that acts as a virtual laser pointer. Wonder if it can distract a cat inside vrchat… anyways if your business needs a tethered vr media viewer you can grab a biz flow for $500. 

Switching over to some AR news Ukranian president Volodymiyr Zelensky recorded an official presidential address that you can watch in 3D on your desk.  The address was recorded by volumetric video capture company evercoast in kyiv to help grow communication between ukraine and the tech community to help it rebuild their digital infrastructure. At the end of it evercoast then donated its equipment to the ukrainian government. If you want to see Zelensky’s address in your room you can use this QR code here to watch.

And finally your metaverse wallet is here. Zuckerberg posted on his facebook page wow thats meta, oh gah I’m collapsing in on myself. The Zuck bucks introduced meta pay which will be replacing facebook pay and it will let you securely manage your identity, what you own and how you pay in the metaverse. With it in the future you’ll be able to buy digital clothing, art, videos music, virtual events and more. Mark later states that Ideally, you should be able to sign into any metaverse experience and everything you've bought should be right there. There's a long way to get there, but this kind of interoperability will deliver much better experiences for people and larger opportunities for creators. My question is what if I want a meta purse or satchel, or clutch? I guess I can buy those later in the meta mall…

Well that’s it, come back next friday for another VR round up and if you don’t well I’ll just become a nullbody then. Bye!

This is the Mod mic wireless from antlion. And if I can be honest at the top here it kinda blew me away. This modular mic you guessed it basically turns any device into a high quality broadcast headset. As you can see here I’ve attached it to my quest to be used for streaming and recording my voice while I’m inside the headset. 

The magic to the modmic is its Neodymium N45 strength magnets that let you easily swap this mic from your questicles to your favorite pair of over the ear headphones to use for voice chat while flatscreen gaming.

To attach the mod mic, grab the included alcohol strip and first clean the surface of your desired device, then pull out one of the two magnetic clasps found in the case.  Now remove the protective layer on the back side to reveal the 3M sticky and then with the microphone attached press and hold them both in position for one minute as to solidify their bond to your device. Antlion does suggest to leave them attached at least an hour before your first use.

The mod mic connects to your computer wirelessly with its usb dongle that uses aptx technology to transmit a full 16bit, 48khz high quality audio signal with a 20hz to 20khz frequency response range for all you audio nerds out there. To make this even more impressive it has a nearly imperceivable 34 milseconds of latency which is 5 times faster than most bluetooth devices. So its more than just a bluetooth receiver. The one caveat here is that the dongle will need to be in line of sight of your microphone but they included a usb extension cable and an adhesive cable anchor so you don’t have to use up your front ports or make a mess on your desk. 

Oh and by the way I’m using the mic to record the audio for this entire video. Are you impressed? Let me know in the comments. And while were here lets do a quick comparison of… my rode studio mic that I usually use for these unextended ubiquitous videos… the quickly quivering quest microphone that is onboard the headset… and now back to the marvelous mod mic wireless.

You may have noticed the little switch near the wind screened mic capsule… that switch swaps between an omni directional mode which gives you a wider frequency response range if you have a quieter more suitable audio environment. But If you need a little background noise reduction you can swap over to the crispier uni-directional mode that focuses the sound on whats just in front of the mic. Personally I’m a fan of the dixie chicks so I like it wide open and omni. Yeahhh.

Speaking of needing to mute, you can tap the side button for a one touch mute which is then reflected in a red light visible on both the mic and the usb dongle so you can see when you are or aren’t muted. 

Unlike some wireless mics you are still able to use it while its charging via the included usb to microusb cable. I will say this does force you to place the mic on the right side of whatever device you put it on so if you do need to charge it, the cable hangs straight down rather than the awkward cable hang over. I’m usually a left side mic guy but the right side is starting to grow on me. It will take about 12 hours of play time before needing a charge.

Lastly you can use the modmic on Windows, Mac, Linux, and the Playstation 4 and 5. No bueno for xbox unfortunately.

You can add the mod mic wirless to your VR streaming arsenal for $130 and I’ve put a link to it in the description below. Like I said at the top I was thoroughly impressed with the audio quality and the ability to swap so seamlessly between my quest for vr streams and then my headphones for regular gaming.

If you have any questions let me know and I’ll answer them in the comments below and of course I’ll catch you in the next quickie!

The team at Meta’s Reality Labs pulled back the curtain and unveiled some of their research work today in the form of some working prototypes and future designs to explain what they hope to achieve with VR in the next few years.

During the 30 minute conversation between Zuckerberg and Reality labs chief scientist Michael Abrash we learned about the 4 main problems meta is trying to solve to pass what they call the visual turing test or basically making VR look the same as our actual reality.

The first and probably the most important problem of course is resolution. The meta team is looking to reach 60 pixels per degree to try and closely match the human field of view which Mark stated would take more than 8k resolution to reach a retinal resolution in a headset. Meta currently has achieved a 55 pixel per degree display which is 2.5 times higher than on the quest 2. They showed this off in the VR prototype named butterscotch where you would be able to see the fine print on an opthamologists eye chart. To make this work Abrash did say the team created a hybrid lens and had to shrink the fov to about half of the Quest 2. But he said after trying it on it was hard to go back to regular VR because it was so sharp..

Next up is focal length. Because our eyes change shape and flex for focusing and looking around, when this is paired with a solid immovable lens things can become uncomfortable quickly. So on top of needing the retinal display resolution you need a depth of focus that can also hit that 60 pixels per degree number at all distances for near and far rendered images. Since currently this doesn’t exist meta worked to achieve this with varifocal technology that moves the lenses dynamically using eye tracking. This was built in the concept design iterations of half dome that has been progressing since 2017. 

Coupled with the focal length challenges is then fixing optical distortion. This is now being done in software and mark says it needs to be dynamic rather than static through software. To research this reality labs built a distortion simulator with 3D tv technology so they test out new lens designs without actually building all new headsets which can take months. This tech again relies on eye tracking to only render what the user is focusing on rather than the whole scene which is necessary to cut down on the processing power cost and subsequently the heat that is produced from the device to be safe for your face.

Lastly let's get our nit on. Meta really wants to push HDR in VR headsets to try and match the dynamic range and light we see in real life. Right now we get around 100 nits for a VR headset while the desired nits for a tv is around 10,000. To research this challenge Reality labs made another prototype called starburst that put a super bright lamp behind the lcd panels. I personally just love those noctua fans on the top. Mark touted the prototype to be the first HDR VR system that they know of in existence which is pretty cool and said obviously its wildly impractical in this first generation of its design but its has been invaluable in learning a bout HDRl in vr.

All of these paths and challenges have led to one fully fleshed out design that you may have actually seen on this channel before. Combining everything they have learned to create visual realism and pass the visual turing test Meta has created holocake 2. We’ve seen Andrew bosworth in a photo with the headset on before. The design is the lightest and thinnest headset Meta has ever created and Mark stated it can run any existing PCVR title. The team at reality labs removed the need for thick and heavy pancake lenses by not sending light through a lens, but it sends light through a holograph of a lens. Which as he explains holographs are recordings of what happens when light hits something. So basically the lenses inside the holocake are much thinner and flatter holographic models of the standard heavy lenses we see today Kind of like what we saw from Nvidia a few months ago.. They then combine this with polarized reflection to reduce the effective distance between the display and eye for a more efficient use of light.

But here’s the bad news. Which I feel like in this interview Zuck is the dreamer and Mike was the cautious yet optimistic Dad coming in with reality. In its current state Holocake 2 requires specialized lasers to give it the proper light source it needs to be a usable headset. The lasers that it uses in testing currently aren't available in consumer products nor at the cost, performance and size that is needed for this headset to be a consumer ready stand alone product. But he did have this to say…. “The jury is still out”

Lastly to end the video Mike shared the latest headset design Meta is working on to try and combine all of that research from the last 7 years entitled Mirror Lake. This is what a complete next gen display system could look like. So this design combines the advanced eye tracking, varifocal tech, and holographic lenses to make everything thin and flat. It also plans to have prescription correction remove the need for glasses attachments. But again I’ll let daddy mike give the warning.

So meta has given us a great and transparent look at what they have been working on for the past few years and the plans for the future. It all looks very exciting. What year do you think we will see a headset with holographic lenses? Or will we see one at all? Let me know down below and I’ll catch you in the next quickie. Sorry this one wasn’t exactly quick…

Recently meta put out two trailers for its vision of vr and the metaverse. The trailer showed off a concept design for a vr headset and an interesting concept for finger tracking. The headset shown in both trailers is of course much sleeker than the quest or what we’ve seen of the leaked project cambria headset. These concepts play out the future meta is looking to build but some internet things cropped up showing that the road for meta to get there might be rough.

On a news forum posted by the startup cultivator Y combinator current and former employees commented on Meta’s recent plans to push pause on commercial production of new ar glasses, portal and other hardware.

The user which is cracking me up 

deadassfifr posted, I am a software engineer working at FB on Quest 2 etc. I go back and forth on this stuff in my head, but at this point I get the sense that it's basically a disaster. The incentives and management strategy at FB is not congruent to solving very difficult mobile hardware/software problems that they actually have.

The Quest 2 doesn't have the horsepower to drive a good experience and it still runs out of battery super fast. I think upper management expects this issue to be solved by incremental hardware improvements, but the fact is that mobile phones are pushing up against the same moore's law limits that are hitting the rest of the industry. They could maybe extract 1 order of magnitude better performance out of the package if they put together a great hardware team instead of licensing some crap out from Qualcomm. I think this is basically what Apple is doing, but I don't see it happening at FB.

The incentives at FB are more suitable for corporate climbers and constant schizophrenic over-sharing of ideas. You are never free from the next review cycle, and it has points baked in to basically evaluate your people skills. This seems fine at first, but the end result is that every single person ends up vying for a little piece of every one else's time, in order to demonstrate some "impact" in that sense. Every day is another hour of meetings with 20 different people. It's driving me crazy, and I think it will do the same thing to any passionate low-level engineer (either hardware or software).

Everybody has to be a leader, very little real work is getting done.

There is also some kind of incentive to generate more features and crap for e.g. horizons. I understand they're trying to throw a bunch of things at the wall to find what sticks, but the content teams don't seem to understand the efficiency constraints, and with so many silly features it feels like death by a thousand cuts.

John Carmack is very vocal pointing at various actual problems that need to be solved, but at this point browsing his feed is starting to feel kind of sad and hopeless. The incentives will always create messes faster than they can be cleaned up. The software will get slower while it needs to be faster. The hardware won't provide significant compute upgrades we desperately need. I guess we'll wait for 1-2 more reorgs until they move away from the failing VR push.

I think we would be seeing a very different outcome right now if Oculus hadn't been bought by FB, but that ship has sailed. Most of the Oculus people either quit or were fired when they decided to kill desktop VR in favor of mobile (a decision that is now being re-evaluated). It's just one bad decision after another.

Sorry for such a negative post. Maybe I should try some of those mindfulness classes so I can calm down.

A possible former employee responded that they quit after learning the work culture was more driven on execution rather than innovation stating a core critique of reality labs culture is that it doesn't produce anything new, but copies from others with ruthless execution.

Again this could be unsubstantiated and from people who are playing  pretend on the internet but I found it quite interesting and the way they described things felt like they knew the inside pretty well. What are your thoughts on all of this? Let me know down below and I’ll catch you in the next quickie

We finally got a little more information in the newly released Among Us VR trailer and an interview with the game’s project director so let’s go ahead and jump in..

Right off the bat from the trailer we hear some voice chatter between two players as they pass another in the hallway, showcasing that we no longer will have to call an emergency meeting to talk with our fellow crew mates.

The games project director Mike Traficante explained in an interview with tech radar that 

In among us vr the rule of thumb is if you can see another person you can hear them. Volume of course depends on the distance between you and the other character. So you may want to go ahead and prepare your inner creep and start hiding behind doors to listen to what's going on inside. Maybe you’ll eavesdrop upon a body being sliced into a hambone.

On the flipside the imposters can also do this but keep in mind they will not be muted inside those vents either so if the imposter is an excitable mouth breather they might be easily sus’d out.

If you do end up getting whacked though you won’t see your death in first person, your screen will go black and you’ll get a cutscene just like the flatscreen version. Once you become a ghost of yourself you also get proximity chat with your fellow dead crewmates but also you get to listen in on the other active players while completing your tasks.

Lastly if voice chat is too much and I have a feeling it just might be, AVR will offer quick chat lobbies to keep it chill and quiet for us boring elders.

Customization will be available for your character's suits and of course there will be hats. The team at schell games stated they will be listening to what the players really want and really need to make sure the game gets the support that will be most appreciated when it comes to future updates.

Mike also shared that the movement system will be smooth motion while restricting your view to a smaller circle in front of you to help fight motion sickness for those that are susceptible to it. So for those old school VR players unfortunately no teleportation here. 

That narrower field of view as we’ve shared before will give quite the advantage to the vent traversing imposters making the VR version a lot harder for the crewmates but this is where the beauty of that proximity chat function comes in to level the playing field.

When translating the skeld into VR, Schell games also made sure to design the elements within the ship to be obvious what can and can’t moved around or picked up for tasks. 

https://www.techradar.com/features/among-us-vr-will-be-more-chaotically-fun-than-the-original

Taficante explained that “We have tasks that came over almost untouched from the original game, but there are some tasks that are pretty different because you have to interact with your hands,“VR presents new opportunities and so it made sense to add new tasks.”

In the trailer we get to see how some of these tasks look in first person VR including aligning machine parts, submitting scans, uploading data, priming shields and a new whack a mole minigame inside the medbay entitled reaction time. This task will track if you have completed it and time how quickly it took you to finish. Fun fact if you can beat 9 seconds you are better than game director Mike..

For a quick moment we did get to see the skelds camera system and its birds eye view of the ship's innerworkings looking like a flowers for algernon maze. Then Last but not least we did finally see a first person murder sequence. Which honestly it wasn’t much to write home about. We didn’t see a knife or anything in the players hand so I wonder if  this may be all that we get.

Either way I’m excited for this game and as for the release date there hasn’t been any change from the holiday 2022 assessment from back in april, so I’d still expect that steam leak date of mid december, and be happily surprised if it comes earlier. Thanks again for watching and I’ll catch you in the next quickie.

Getting a new quest? Get $30 free store credit on me by using my oculus quest coupon code: https://www.oculus.com/referrals/link/QuestQuickie/

My Favorite Oculus Quest 2 Accessories:

Quest 2: https://amzn.to/3PfvOi7

BOBO Battery Headstrap: https://amzn.to/3FvYVcw

Kiwi Pro Grip Covers: https://amzn.to/3l09346

VR Cover Facial Interface: https://amzn.to/3L1prf8

Quest update 41 is beginning its roll out today, here’s what’s new!

The big star of version 41 is that finally, horizon home is now a reality. You can now invite a friend into your home environment to hang out in your somewhat personal virtual space, watch a movie or jump into a multiplayer game together.

For movie watching currently oculus tv is the only supported app but meta has stated that this is just the first step in their long term vision for home and they will be adding more features and improving the experience over time. 

A reminder here that quest updates roll out slowly to make sure everything is working correctly so if you don’t see it today don’t worry like high school graduation it does eventually happen.

To try this feature go into your friends list in the people slash party app and from there you can invite the fam over to see your horizon home.

Up next more parental supervision tools are hitting the quest. As stated by meta teens will now initiate a request for their parents to respond using the oculus mobile app.

I’m just imagining now kids yelling Mom let me play gorilla tag now!

Once parental supervision is set up parents can block specific apps like we saw in update 40, approve downloads from the store via a notification in the oculus app, see all the apps their child owns, purchase notifications, headset screen time, a list of their oculus friends and lastly the ability to block oculus link and airlink to prevent their child from accessing VR content on their PC. We all know how spicy Steam vr can get.

And again meta plans to evolve the parental control features on a regular basis, probably because they’ve been in trouble with the law when it comes to children and VR. Meta wanted to remind everyone that quest devices are intended for use by people ages 13 and up so I guess the bulk of vr chat and gorilla tag users are officially against the terms of service

Now you can invite your friends over virtually and check on your kids quest activity, are you excited for these version 41 features? Let me know down below and I’ll catch you in the next quickie.

Getting a new quest? Get $30 free store credit on me by using my oculus quest coupon code: https://www.oculus.com/referrals/link/QuestQuickie/

My Favorite Oculus Quest 2 Accessories:

Quest 2: https://amzn.to/3PfvOi7

BOBO Battery Headstrap: https://amzn.to/3FvYVcw

Kiwi Pro Grip Covers: https://amzn.to/3l09346

VR Cover Facial Interface: https://amzn.to/3L1prf8