The Oculus Rift S is real and arrives in spring for $399
...the biggest improvements to the Oculus Rift S are a move to the company’s inside-out “Insight” camera tracking system and modest updates to the display resolution. The biggest surprise is that this headset is being built in partnership with Lenovo and the Rift S seems to have strongly inherited Lenovo’s design ethos for its VR products, for better or worse…
The Rift S will be replacing the Rift in the Oculus product lineup.
Here’s what’s different:
- Small resolution increase per eye from (1080 x 1200) to (1280 x 1440), improved lenses
- Frame rate is dropping from 90hz to 80hz
- Switched from OLED to the LCD panels used on Oculus Go
- 5 onboard cameras for inside-out camera tracking
- Ships with updated Oculus Touch controllers, same as what ships with Quest
- Loses the on-ear headphones for cheaper-sounding near-ear speakers similar to Oculus Go
- Ditches the flexible strap for a rigid “halo” design like the PlayStation VR headset
- FoV is “slightly larger” on the Rift S compared to the Rift, Oculus tells us
- No manual adjustment of distance between your eyes (IPD)
- PC spec requirements are largely the same, though you may need a faster CPU we are told
- More expensive than the last generation at $399 versus $349
- Launching in spring 2019
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/20/the-oculus-rift-s-is-indeed-real-and-arrives-in-spring-for-399/
Augmented reality when? We asked Magic Leap, Facebook, Google, and more
[Over a dozen short interviews in this article.]
THE FUTURE OF COMPUTERS IS SPATIAL
There’s no question that some serious technical challenges stand in the way of developing a pair of XR glasses that are stylish enough that you’d want to wear them for extended periods in public. The components needed to put enough computing power into a small space on a person’s face—and keep it all cool—just isn’t yet ready for prime time. Tech companies still struggle to deliver graphics at the kind of resolution the human eye is capable of seeing, to extend the field of view to something approaching the eye’s natural field of view, and to create eye tracking that follows the human gaze accurately. From a consumer point of view, the mixed reality experiences I’ve seen so far feel like works in progress.
Plenty of XR content–the experiences–will have to be available, too, including games and other entertainment. And there’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Software developers don’t want to invest big dollars in creating XR experiences until they see that the hardware is selling but that people won’t want the hardware until there are plenty of games and entertainment to play on it.
These issues will be worked out. The days of squinting into a little black rectangle and pecking at apps are probably numbered. Will it be some form of XR glasses that liberate us from that paradigm? Maybe. Or, as Camera IQ’s Allison Wood suggests, XR may show up in a variety of devices.
It may come down to a question of how truly important digital content is to living life productively and enjoyably—and how much control companies give consumers over that content. Will people really want digital layers and holograms to be showing up in their worldview all day? If they’re OK with that in XR glasses then will they be equally comfortable with it in something like AR contact lenses? How about just jacking the digital content right into the optical nerve? How close is too close?
It’ll be consumers that decide these things over time. The people and companies above, and others like them, will have to listen closely to successfully navigate the technological shift over the next decade.
See the full story here: https://www.fastcompany.com/90315733/augmented-reality-when-we-asked-magic-leap-facebook-google-and-more
Scope AR Snags $9.7 Million to Expand Its Enterprise Augmented Reality Platform
The funding will enable the company to extend the reach of its enterprise AR products, such as hands-free workflow guidance platform WorkLink and AR telepresence solution Remote AR, for mobile devices and AR headsets like HoloLens.
See the full story here: https://next.reality.news/news/scope-ar-snags-9-7-million-expand-its-enterprise-augmented-reality-platform-0194812/
GDC 2019: Unity “investing heavily” in augmented reality tech
Unity is investing heavily into both virtual and augmented reality as it looks to enable developers utilising the tech both in and out of the games industry.
Unity has already been used to develop AR games such as Niantic’s Pokemon Go and Ludia’s Jurassic World Alive.
But it wants to become a key partner for even more developers as it seeks to become a leader in the emerging technologies.
"A lot of opportunities"
As part of that mission, Unity has developed the AR Foundation, a toolset that lets creators build apps for both ARKit and ARCore through one platform. But it has a number of other tools powering AR development.
Unity, of course, wants to position itself right at the centre of AR’s growth.
“In general Unity is looking outside of gaming and we want to be there to enable these new platforms and new industries,” says Miller.
He adds that in the near future, he expects AR will work through mobile phones and on specialised headsets. But in future, he expects to see more head-mounted technology.
See the full story here: https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/70263/gdc-2019-unitys-augmented-reality-plans-were-investing-heavily/
This Guy Spent an Entire Week in a VR Headset. Here’s How It Went Down
"This is quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever done, but welcome to a week in the future," he said in a video about the experiment.
Wilmot worked, ate and exercised inside virtual reality. Sleeping in the headset turned out to be "more comfortable" than Wilmot anticipated, though his eyes burned a bit.
"If one is feeling stressed, they can load into a natural environment for ten minutes and relax," he said in the video.
See the full story here: https://www.sciencealert.com/this-is-what-happens-when-you-spend-a-whole-week-in-vr