Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality News & Discussions

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Varjo's Enthusiast Grade VR Headset is Getting a Brain-computer Interface

Varjo, maker of high-end XR headsets, and OpenBCI, a company creating open source brain-computer interface solutions, today announced a new partnership that’s bringing OpenBCI’s long-awaited neural interface ‘Galea‘ to Varjo’s latest Aero VR headset, something the companies say will provide “a deeper understanding to augment the human mind.”

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

What games are you guys playing in VR?

I am currently mostly playing Onward on my Quest 2; quick game to jump in and have some fun. Here's the latest video highlighting the gameplay:

I just got my Meta Quest 2 2 days ago and am looking forward to it! I'll have to get Onward because it seems cool on Steam along with Pavlov. R8Z if you or anyone on here have any game recommendations on VR for Steam please put them on here and let's meet up digitally. I'm grateful for being able to make the first steps in this Web 3.0 future we are rapidly headed to for gaming!

Varjo's Enthusiast Grade VR Headset is Getting a Brain-computer Interface

Varjo, maker of high-end XR headsets, and OpenBCI, a company creating open source brain-computer interface solutions, today announced a new partnership that’s bringing OpenBCI’s long-awaited neural interface ‘Galea‘ to Varjo’s latest Aero VR headset, something the companies say will provide “a deeper understanding to augment the human mind.”

Oh man here we go!

[Time_Traveller]

Working in VR is more stressful and lessens productivity. Big surprise

about 4 hours ago - 16 June 2022

Companies like Meta have been putting a lot of weight into the idea of a digital exodus. There's a lot of talk that working in distraction free, virtual environments(opens in new tab) could be the future. But as it stands today, researchers say, working in virtual reality is not only more overwhelming and frustrating, it doesn't rank as highly for usability or productivity as we might've been lead to believe.

The paper, 'Quantifying the Effects of Working in VR for One Week(opens in new tab)' (PDF warning) takes a deep dive into the viability of working long term in a virtual environment (via New Scientist(opens in new tab)). Participants, all of which were employees or researchers at a university, were asked to work in VR for an entire week.

The results were less than positive.

Participants were asked to work using Chrome Remote Desktop, which if my personal experience is anything to go by was likely half the usability problem. Jokes aside, the researchers opted for an Oculus (Meta) Quest 2(opens in new tab) VR headset, so participants could use the hand tracking with a physical keyboard—a Logitech K830 with integrated trackpad if you we're wondering, nothing fancy.

Part of the reasoning behind not using the absolute highest spec headset around, was to go for "a setup delivering a comparable experience to working in the physical desktop environment."

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/working-in-v ... -surprise/

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Apple's much-rumored VR/AR headset will be released in January 2023 and be a "game-changer" for the headset industry, according to prolific Apple insider Ming-Chi Kuo.

In a publicly-available blog on Medium Kuo stated Friday:

Apple is a game-changer for the headset industry.

Kuo says that Apple VR, which he expects to launch in January, is going to be a mixed reality headset capable of both full virtual reality and mixed reality experiences.

[Yuli Ban]

If Apple was originally planning to use the M1 as the headset’s primary processor, it only makes sense for the company to swap it out for the most recent iteration of its in-house chip. Apple announced the new M2 chip at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) earlier this month, and says it offers an 18 percent faster CPU and 35 percent faster GPU when compared to the older M1 chip.

Rumors of the device’s standalone form factor have started to trickle out as well, and Gurman’s prediction that it will include 16GB of RAM could indicate a potentially more powerful level of performance than the all-in-one Meta Quest 2. Meta’s VR headset comes with 6GB of RAM and the Snapdragon XR2 Platform, so it’ll be interesting to see how Apple’s headset compares when it finally gets released.

[Yuli Ban]

[Yuli Ban]

Forget your bulky AR headsets, smart contact lenses are coming to place augmented reality displays right there on your eyeball. Last week, Mojo Vision CEO Drew Perkins volunteered to test the first feature-complete prototype of his company's design.

Smart wearables are all about super-portable convenience, and until scientists can plumb an AR display directly into your visual cortex, the smallest and most portable form factor we can imagine is that of a contact lens. Mojo Vision has been working on a smart contact lens design since 2015, and its latest prototype Mojo Lens packs in a pretty impressive amount of gear – especially for something that has to live behind your eyelid.

For starters, it has the world's smallest and highest-density display capable of showing dynamic content – a green monochrome MicroLED display measuring less than 0.5 mm (0.02 in) in diameter, with a resolution of 14,000 pixels per inch. It's got an ARM Core M0 processor, a 5-GHz radio capable of communicating at ultra-low latency, and enough accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers to track your eye movements with extreme precision, allowing the image to stay stable even as you move your eyes around.

The lens is worn with the bulk of the electronics positioned next to the nose, preserving the outer edges of your peripheral vision Mojo Vision

[Yuli Ban]

[caltrek]

Lab Training Virtual Reality: Biosafety Cabinet Edition


Introduction:

(CDC) Description

This course enables learners to apply knowledge and practice setting up a biosafety cabinet (also known as a biological safety cabinet, or BSC) in a virtual laboratory. Step into a virtual laboratory and learn how to work safely in the first-ever Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) virtual reality (VR) laboratory training course.

This course is developed for laboratory professionals and supplements the existing CDC eLearning course on the same topic.” to: “This course is developed for laboratory professionals and supplements the existing CDC eLearning course “Fundamentals of Working Safely in a Biological Safety Cabinet.

Objectives
After completing this course, learners will be able to:
• Identify the routes of transmission of infectious agents.
• Demonstrate how to don and doff the appropriate PPE for daily use at the bench
• Demonstrate how to don and doff PPE during an emergency.

Read more here: https://www.cdc.gov/labtraining/traini ... _BSC. html

[weatheriscool]

Variable focus thin lens designed for augmented and virtual reality headsets
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-variable- ... ented.html
by Optica

Researchers have developed a thin lens with a continuously tunable focal length. The new lens could one day make visual fatigue from augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) devices a thing of the past.

"Many of the 3D displays used in today's AR/VR devices cause discomfort after long-term use due to the vergence-accommodation conflict," said research team leader Yan Li from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. "Our lens, which is known as an Alvarez lens, can be used to alleviate this problem. This could provide a more comfortable and more realistic 3D experience that would enable more widespread use of AR/VR headsets."

The researchers describe their new lens in Optics Express. It is made from two flat, or planar, liquid crystal elements that can be moved in relation to each other to continuously change the lens's focal length. To demonstrate the new Alvarez lens, they incorporated it into an AR display system that displayed virtual images on a real-world view at different depths.

[weatheriscool]

A deep learning-augmented smart mirror to enhance fitness training
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-09-dee ... irror.html
by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore

In recent years, engineers and computer scientists have created a wide range of technological tools that can enhance fitness training experiences, including smart watches, fitness trackers, sweat-resistant earphones or headphones, smart home gym equipment and smartphone applications. New state-of-the-art computational models, particularly deep learning algorithms, have the potential to improve these tools further, so that they can better meet the needs of individual users.

Researchers at University of Brescia in Italy have recently developed a computer vision system for a smart mirror that could improve the effectiveness of fitness training both in home and gym environments. This system, introduced in a paper published by the International Society of Biomechanics in Sports, is based on a deep learning algorithm trained to recognize human gestures in video recordings.

"Our commercial partner ABHorizon invented the concept of a product that can guide and teach you during your personal fitness training," Bernardo Lanza, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "This device can show you the best way to train based on your specific needs. To develop this device further, they asked us to investigate the viability of an integrated vision system for exercise evaluation."

[Tadasuke]

Here's a graph of VR headsets connected to Steam from June 2016 to August 2022. As you can see, it grew from 0.1 million then to over 3 million now, but the growth seems linear since about May 2020. It lists also devices like Oculus Quest 2 connected to PCs with Steam. I'm not impressed by these numbers, they are not exponential enough. I expected more by now. Where's Index 2? Where are more (good) AAA VR games?



And btw, I'm not buying into all of that mobile VR crap. Even tower desktop PCs aren't fast enough for VR in my opinion, let alone mobile devices.

[Yuli Ban]

My opinion nowadays, divorced from the blind drunk hype of the mid-2010s, is that VR's heyday was meant to be in the mid to late 2020s.

Everything came together in the 2010s to revitalize the market and technology, but honestly even in retrospect, it was obvious that VR's primetime wasn't going to be for another decade. Everyone who said "it's too early" was right. Exponential growth will come in due time, when the right conditions are met. It's less "linear" growth and more "pre-knee of the curve" growth, which LOOKS linear.

The Quest 2 is great... compared to older VR headsets. But it still leaves much to be desired.

Once the Varjo XR3 can be had for under $500 while Quest 2-level headsets can be worn like glasses, then VR will be "here."

I believe the issue I had with those statements was that they were always predicated by the statement "VR is dead" or "VR is going to die again and then be reborn in a decade or two" as in "the totally dead state of VR between 1996-2012 will return." That was NEVER going to happen. Once the technology and marketing was there, there was zero chance of commercial VR returning to the sheer zombie doldrums it was stuck in for nearly two decades. But so many people who (correctly) pointed out that we needed another decade's worth of hardware and software development to realize the full promise of VR also smugly assumed that the industry was absolutely going to die off for a while rather than steadily grow.

[Yuli Ban]

[Nanotechandmorefuture]

Here's a graph of VR headsets connected to Steam from June 2016 to August 2022. As you can see, it grew from 0.1 million then to over 3 million now, but the growth seems linear since about May 2020. It lists also devices like Oculus Quest 2 connected to PCs with Steam. I'm not impressed by these numbers, they are not exponential enough. I expected more by now. Where's Index 2? Where are more (good) AAA VR games?



And btw, I'm not buying into all of that mobile VR crap. Even tower desktop PCs aren't fast enough for VR in my opinion, let alone mobile devices.

Its a start. The sad reality is that there are A LOT of underprivileged people here in the USA. Especially with current events ongoing in the USA. Those politicians aren't always doing political theatre on TV sadly.

This is presuming it is only USA based graph. I would guess worldwide no way in hell it would just be 3 million. Its still nice to see!

[Tadasuke]

This is presuming it is only USA based graph. I would guess worldwide no way in hell it would just be 3 million. Its still nice to see!

I'm not from the USA and this is a worldwide graph. VR is very, very niche at the moment. It does't count people who don't use their headsets (like almost all people with headsets that I know).

Let me be straightforward: I know 10 people with VR hardware and only 1 of them actually uses it on a weekly basis. Others just gather dust.

[raklian]

This is presuming it is only USA based graph. I would guess worldwide no way in hell it would just be 3 million. Its still nice to see!

I'm not from the USA and this is a worldwide graph. VR is very, very niche at the moment. It does't count people who don't use their headsets (like almost all people with headsets that I know).

Let me be straightforward: I know 10 people with VR hardware and only 1 of them actually uses it on a weekly basis. Others just gather dust.

I'm sort of one of those whose headset is gathering dust. Main reason being it gives me a throbbing headache and pangs of inexplicable hunger if I use it for more than 1 hour.

[Yuli Ban]