It’s kind of, inexplicably, impossible nearly 10 years ago that the original Oculus Rift hit Kickstarter.
A decade later, VR headsets kept getting better – but at this point it’s safe to say that the adoption of VR … will be gradual. When we’re all destined to have headsets (be it VR, AR, or a mix of both) strapped to our faces, it becomes less about a big deal * than the result of a thousand small steps. A beat saber here; a supernatural there. Incrementally better / lighter / faster headsets. Perhaps people get used to using headsets for training purposes at work. Maybe everyone suddenly agrees what a metaverse is.
This step-by-step development turned out to be true this year THOSE. There has been a lot of VR / AR news, none of it earth-shattering – but each one another step in development.
(* The only potential meteor impact, of course, is if Apple does what it loves and is late, drops its version and turns the category upside down. That was the rumor for some time.)
Let’s round up the biggest VR / AR pieces from the show.
Sony PS VR2
Credit: Sony
We’ve known for a while that Sony was working on a next-gen headset for the PlayStation 5, followed by the PS VR headset released in 2016. But beyond a kind of light “We’re working on it! ”Announcement early in 2021 and some details about the controllers a few months later, they hadn’t given many details.
They still have some cards with them, but they have shared a few more details on what is now officially known as PS VR2. Such as:
- It will have a resolution of 2000 × 2040 per eye.
- It will have a wider field of view than the first generation headset, at 110 degrees versus 96 degrees.
- It will have a refresh rate of 90/120 Hz.
- It will be able to track the movement of your eyes, which may allow you to do things like highlight surface elements by just looking at them.
- It supports foveated rendering, which is a fancy way of saying that it can use computing power more efficiently by prioritizing the rendering of whatever is at the center of your vision.
- They are building new controllers for it (see picture below) with finger recognition and the mind-boggling adaptive triggers of the PS5.
Credit: Sony
What should the headset look like? Unknown! When will it actually be sent? Still open! But since the PS VR is one of the few headsets that can even rival the Oculus Meta Quest in terms of usability, it’s nice to see Sony keep building here.
HTC Vive wrist tracker
Credit: HTC Vive
What’s the best way to process input in VR? Most of the popular headsets have opted for some type of controller in each hand. What if you just turned your hand into the controller instead?
Hand tracking isn’t a whole new idea, of course. Companies have come and gone with hand tracking as the main focus.
But HTC’s approach is a little different here. Rather than relying entirely on cameras, they hope you put sensor-tipped straps on each wrist so the system can track what the cameras can’t see – for example, when one hand is covering the other or you have your arm back for you a golf swing. The company also demonstrated how the sensors worked while attached to other objects such as table tennis tables and a NERF gun.
The company says the sensors will ship for $ 129 later this year. A catch? At least for now, it only works with the HTC Vive Focus 3 headset.
Shiftall MeganeX
Credit: Shiftall
VR headsets have gotten a lot sleeker over the years, but they’re still pretty beefy. But how much smaller can they really get?
Panasonic subsidiary Shiftall has been working on an “ultra-light, ultra-high-resolution” headset called Meganex. With speakers built into the frames and a 1.3-inch display (2560 × 2560) for each eye, they look more like massive steampunk sunglasses than a headset. While they’re designed to be lightweight and foldable, don’t expect to have to move around too much in these – you’ll have to plug them into the computer via USB-C to do the heavy graphical lifting.
Shiftall says these should ship for “less than $ 900” this year.
Microsoft is working with Qualcomm on AR chips
Credit: Qualcomm
Microsoft already uses Qualcomm chips for its HoloLens headsets, but the companies made things a little more official this week. At Qualcomm’s keynote address, it was announced that the two will work together to develop chips specifically designed for use in AR headsets, with those chips supporting each of their augmented reality development platforms (Microsoft Mesh and Snapdragon Spaces).
Nvidia Omniverse
Credit: Nvida
It’s not flashy hardware, but it’s potentially important on the software side: Nvidia this week opened Omniverse, its collection of tools that help 3D content creators collaborate in real time.
Writes Frederic Lardinois in his post in the news:
Omniverse is Nvidia’s platform that enables developers, designers and engineers to build virtual worlds together. It is the company’s platform that brings together design tools and assets from first and third party applications into a single hardware and software ecosystem. So far, Omniverse and the various Nvidia tools that support it have been in beta, but today at CES, the company removed the beta label and made Omniverse generally available to developers.
AR glasses from TCL
This one seems to be mostly a concept right now, so … well, don’t fall in love just yet. But TV, phone, and air conditioning maker TCL is trying its hand at AR glasses, offering something similar to Google Glass in a package that looks more like a standard pair. “Holographic Optical Waveguide Technology” pushes visuals onto the lens and into your field of view, and the concept video above promises to be touch-based controls built into the frames.
