That’s because the all-time greatest virtual reality gaming system, the Nintendo Virtual Boy, is now available (in emulator form) on the Vision Pro via the VirtualFriend app. I’ve been testing this emulator for some time — check back soon for my impressions.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some Red Alarm to play.
⭕ If you’ve got USB-C on a reference design GPU, you may not need the adapter at all. Some report you can plug the headset right into certain cards once you install the app.
❌ Sony’s dongle doesn’t have Bluetooth; I’ve spent hours trying to get PS VR2 controllers to work well on desktop, despite using a Sony-approved Bluetooth dongle.
A new environment in the Paramount Plus app for the Apple Vision Pro transforms your surroundings into Bikini Bottom, complete with SpongeBob, Patrick, and Squidward’s homes. If you decide to watch SpongeBob in the environment, SpongeBob himself will join you with a bowl of popcorn.
In the Apple Vision Pro, that is. Disney Plus has rolled out a National Geographic edition virtual environment for its visionOS app that lets you watch movies in a snowy corridor in Iceland’s Thingvellir National Park.
The environment uses “3D models captured on-site using photogrammetry,” according to Disney’s announcement. When you watch a movie, it turns dark and shows you the Northern Lights!
It’s a busy time for Alien fans, with Romulus hitting theaters soon and a TV series in the works. But don’t forget about Rogue Incursion, a promising VR game that got a new trailer at SDCC. It’s launching in holiday 2024.
Apple has released Lake Vrangla, one of two Vision Pro Environments that have spent months marked “coming soon,” and boy is it moody.
So what is Lake Vrangla? Well, it’s a small lake roughly 25 miles west (as the crow flies) of Oslo, Norway. You can see it fog-free on YouTube. Seems pretty!
Whatever this “Vision for you” is, the silhouette HTC shows at the end looks very pointedly Vision Pro-like, while also looking like it fits into the HTC Vive Focus 3 design mold.
The video hints at “a new kind of power.” Perhaps it involves that new Snapdragon XR2 Plus Gen 2 headset chip with 4.3K-per-eye resolution support, which Qualcomm said it’s working with HTC (among others) on.
Demos on this Meta blog show how the company will implement its promise to bring AI to its VR headsets. Like the company’s Ray-Ban smart glasses, you can ask it questions about things you see (in passthrough), and it will answer.
The experimental feature rolls out in English next month, in the US and Canadia (excluding the Quest 2).
What happened to the metaverse?
‘The Metaverse’ author Matthew Ball discusses the new update to his 2022 book and how the Apple Vision Pro and AI fit into the spatial internet.
Customers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the UK can now buy Apple’s VR headset. It’s the second wave of international expansion, following China, Japan, and Singapore last month. When the headset launched in February, it was exclusive to the US.
Google’s Rick Osterloh mentioned the elusive XR collaboration briefly in his onstage appearance at Unpacked, without providing any new details. That’s the at least the third time we’ve heard about it without actually hearing anything at all about it. But I guess now we know it’s still a thing in the Osterloh Android era?
As summarized by Ball:
In the interview, we discuss the three “epochs” in Meta’s Metaverse strategy, what it will take for total VR / MR headset sales to cross 100 million annually, his the specs of his dream headset, Meta’s spending on Reality Labs, whether and when developers might get access to the Quest’s raw camera feed, the many inventions required to ship optical AR glasses, the role of AI, and more.
I’m now convinced of that after adding one using the free Dock Pro app. Now, some of the Vision Pro apps I use most (along with time and battery percentage) are just right there, waiting. Adding third-party apps is tricky and involves finding app URL schemes, though.
Don’t get me wrong; I like the hand flourish to open apps in the visionOS 2 beta. But sometimes, a dock is just better.
Apple’s Vision Pro: five months later
On this episode of The Vergecast, a look back — and forward — at Apple’s headset.
In its quest to build a cheaper headset, Apple has asked manufacturers for technical details needed to develop 2-inch or 2.1-inch displays with a pixel density of 1,700ppi (or about half the Vision Pro’s 3,386ppi), according to an Elec report cited by UploadVR yesterday.
Assuming the same aspect ratio, the outlet pegs the resolution “somewhere around 2600 x 2300,” or just over two-thirds that of the current headset.
The headset is now available to buy in China, Japan, and Singapore, with Apple documenting the international launch via a recent blog post.
The Apple Vision Pro will also roll out to Germany, France, Australia, the UK, and Canada on July 12th, with preorders for those regions available starting today at 5AM PT.
“Every person who I’ve shown it to so far is just like... their reaction is giddy,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg says in an interview. Perhaps at Meta Connect in September?
You can read more about Meta’s AR / VR roadmap in a report from last year by my colleague Alex Heath.
Game developer Creator just showed a new trailer for Starship Home, its augmented reality cosmic gardening sim for the Meta Quest 3, during the UploadVR Showcase. The game is up for preorder now at a discounted $17.99, with a “Summer 2024” release date, Meta announced.
Some jitteriness aside, I still think the game is promising in a casual Tamagotchi or Animal Crossing sort of way.
Sony is developing just two PSVR 2 games, Android Central reports. Two! That’s not a great sign.
If you already have a PSVR 2, you’ll be able to hook it up to your PC starting in August, so that might make it more useful. But mine has been in a closet for months, and still I don’t see a reason to take it out.
[Android Central]
Joking aside, Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey made good on his promise to announce a new head-mounted display during a talk at Augmented World Expo. He said little about the new project, though, except the quote above — and he suggested it’s still in the early stages.
Luckey also mentioned “adult entertainment” could be the most promising VR hardware niche for a small company, since mainstream companies won’t touch it. He emphatically did not say that’s what he’s working on here.
What’s in that case that says “Oculus Development Kit” in front of Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, appearing beside Bigscreen VR’s Darshan Shankar and moderator Stephanie Riggs at Augmented World Expo? The new headset Luckey said he’d announce at AWE?
Nope! It’s exactly what you’d expect. A vintage 2013 DK1.
The feature has been limited to Apple’s Camera app since launch, but third-party apps will be able to record in the format starting later this year.
Meta forms new Wearables group and lays off some employees
Meta’s Reality Labs is undergoing its biggest restructuring in years by separating into two orgs: Wearables and Metaverse. A small number of employees have been laid off as a result.