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HTC’s Vive Ultimate Trackers Now Compatible with All SteamVR Headsets

October 1, 2024 From roadtovr

HTC announced that its Vive Ultimate Tracker is now compatible with third-party PC VR headsets that support SteamVR.

Originally developed for the Vive Focus 3 and Vive XR Elite, Vive Ultimate Tracker is a puck-like device that comes equipped with two cameras, allowing it to track its position without external devices or base stations, supporting both object and full-body tracking.

Released last November for $200, Vive Ultimate Tracker is now compatible with SteamVR headsets, which includes tethered PC VR headsets such as Valve Index, but also standalone devices capable of connecting to PCs, such as Quest 3 or Pico Pico 4 Ultra.

This follows a beta program launched earlier this year to to test compatibility with other SteamVR-supported headsets, including Quest. The company says feedback from the program helped improve the tracker’s precision, connectivity, and overall user experience.

This also means Vive Ultimate Tracker can work independently from a headset as well, so it can be used to track the movement of people or objects, making it useful across multiple fields.

While priced at $200 per device, users looking for basic full-body tracking only require a minimum of three trackers, which can be had in a $600 bundle, which includes the required Vive Wireless Dongle ($39 MSRP). This allows you to track each foot (with supplied straps) and one placed on your hips.

Newly Reduced Quest 3 Price and Quest 3S Pre-orders Now Available on Amazon

September 26, 2024 From roadtovr

The newly discounted Meta Quest 3 (512GB) is now available on Amazon, along with pre-orders of the new Quest 3S (128GB) and (256GB), with that sweet, speedy Prime shipping. All now include the promised bundle that includes Batman: Arkham Shadow and a three month subscription to Meta Quest+.

It wasn’t initially clear exactly when the newly reduced Quest 3 price would hit—would we have to wait until Quest 3S actually launches on October 15th?

Turns out, nope! The newly discounted Quest 3 (512GB) is now available on Amazon for $500. Just yesterday the headset was listing at its original price of $650. It also now includes a bundled copy of Batman: Arkham Shadow (releasing October 22nd) and a three month subscription to Meta Quest+.

The Quest 3 (128GB) model is being phased out, with its own price reduced to $430 while stock remains. At the time of writing, Amazon says it’s already out of stock. But it’s currently offering an even further discounted refurbished Quest 3 (128GB) for just $380. The refurbished unit does not appear to include the Batman Arkham Shadow and Meta Quest+ bundle.

As for Meta’s new Quest 3S, both models can be pre-ordered on Amazon ahead of the October 15th release date, with the (128GB) model for $300, and the (256GB) model for $400. Both include a bundled copy of Batman: Arkham Shadow (releasing October 22nd) and a three month subscription to Meta Quest+.

Important note: right now the Quest 3S (128GB) is showing delivery from Amazon right around release date, but the Quest 3S (256GB) isn’t expect to deliver until the end of November. It’s unclear if this is a fluke. We’ll be keeping our eye on the date, but in the meantime it looks like ordering the (256GB) headset direct from Meta may mean an earlier delivery.

Other places to check for Quest 3S stock and favorable delivery dates include Best Buy, Newegg, Walmart, and Target.

Not sure if you should get Quest 3 or Quest 3S? Compare the specs and get our take right here.

Precision Glass Maker Completes Major Factory Expansion in Anticipation of AR Glasses Demand

September 26, 2024 From roadtovr

In a strategic move that underscores the expected growth of the AR industry, SCHOTT—a global leader in advanced optics and specialty glass—has announced the completion of a new production facility in Kulim, Malaysia. This development comes just a day after Meta unveiled its latest AR glasses prototype.

The new facility in Kulim is set to significantly boost Schott’s production capacity for optical components, which are crucial for AR devices. The plant is expected to create approximately 400 engineering and production jobs.

“This new site will significantly enhance Schott’s capacity to supply high-quality optical components to international high-tech industries, including Augmented Reality (AR),” the company says.

Schott’s expansion is timely, aligning with the industry’s anticipation of a surge in demand for AR lenses and optical components. The company’s longstanding presence in Penang, Malaysia—where it has operated for 50 years—has laid a strong foundation for this new venture. The Kulim facility complements the Penang site, enhancing Schott’s ability to supply high-quality optical components to international industries.

The announcement closely follows Meta’s reveal of its ‘Orion’ AR glasses prototype, highlighting a significant industry push towards more immersive and compact AR experiences. For AR to become a mainstream technology, it needs to be built upon technologies than can be affordably manufactured at scale. Schott’s expertise in delivering high-precision optics—and its anticipatory expansion—positions the company to be a key supplier in this evolving market.

Schott has been a longstanding partner of Lumus, which makes unique waveguides for AR. It’s likely the new facility has been geared toward the kind of manufacturing needed to manufacture Lumus optics at a large scale. Meanwhile, Meta says it new Orion glasses rely on silicon carbide lenses, rather than glass, to achieve a wide field-of-view.

Schott’s Advanced Optics business unit has a global manufacturing network with centers in Germany, North America, Switzerland, and China; the expansion in Malaysia is a strategic addition to this network.

Meta Releases ‘Horizon Hyperscape’ for Quest 3, Letting You Explore (and maybe eventually upload) Photorealistic Places

September 26, 2024 From roadtovr

During Meta Connect’s big Quest 3S unveiling yesterday, where the company showed off the $300 headset for the first time, Meta announced it was also releasing a new app exclusively for Quest 3 that lets you explore photorealistic spaces. And they aren’t like the 360 photos you’ll see in Google Street View either; they’re full photogrammetry scenes you can actually walk through.

Meta calls the app Horizon Hyperscape, which is now available to Quest 3 and Quest 3S users in the US for free.

The company notes its photorealistic environments were created using mobile phone scans and cloud-based processing, highlighting however that Horizon Hyperscape is a “demo experience to showcase our vision for photorealism, as a profound new way to feel like you’re physically there.”

While users can’t upload their own photo scans “today,” on stage at Connect CEO Mark Zuckerberg underlined “you can use your phone to scan a room and recreate it, or step into a room that someone else has scanned and shared,” making it seem like that functionality seems could come at some point in the future.

For now, the app features a handful of large-scale photogrammetry scenes, which include explorable spaces, such as EastWest Studios in Hollywood, and densely packed artist workshops from Daniel Arsham, Rebecca Fox, and Gil Bruvel.

All of it feels a bit like Valve’s now-defunct Destinations Workshop tools for PC VR, released in 2016, which allowed users to similarly explore and upload photogrammetry scenes. We’re betting Meta wants to make it a bit simpler from an end-user perspective when it comes to capturing and processing the massive number of photos required to create such a detailed environment though.

YouTube is Finally Set to Get Social Viewing on Quest

September 25, 2024 From roadtovr

Nearly two years ago, Meta announced that Quest’s social space, Horizon Home, would allow users to watch YouTube videos together—something we’ve been wishing was easy to do in VR for a long time. Excitement waned, however, when the feature never actually made it out the door. Now the company says social viewing for YouTube is finally ready.

It’s been possible to watch YouTube videos together with friends in VR; it just hasn’t been easy. Downloading additional apps—which often have their own accounts, avatars, and friends-lists—is a lot of hoops to jump through. Ideally the feature would just be built right into the existing YouTube VR app on Quest.

That was the plan anyway. Back in 2022, Meta announced that social viewing was coming to YouTube VR on Quest. But then it just… never happened.

Better late than never, anyway. Meta today announced… again… that YouTube VR is getting a social viewing feature. The company says users will be able to initiate a co-watching session from within the YouTube VR app, which will allow others to join you inside of your Horizon Home to watch the same content.

At this time we don’t know for sure how many users can join the same session, but our understanding is that the social viewing feature should support not only flat YouTube videos, but also immersive 180 and 360 VR content as well.

Meta says the feature will begin rolling out next week.

Logitech Launches MX Ink, the First Official Stylus Accessory for Quest

September 25, 2024 From roadtovr

Logitech today announced the launch of the MX Ink stylus. This officially supported Quest accessory aims to give users a more precise and natural input method for applications like design, drawing, and visualization.

On Quest, hand-tracking is great as a low-barrier input for basic cursor-like input, while controllers are great as a flexible and high performance input for gaming and applications that need lots of distinct inputs like buttons and sticks. But now Quest headsets will have a third option: the MX Ink stylus from Logitech.

The MX Ink stylus is available starting today, priced at $130 for the stylus alone, or $170 for the stylus and the MX Inkwell accessory—a convenient place to store and charge the stylus. There’s also the MX Max ($50) which offers a prime drawing surface if you’re going to use it for 2D input on a desk. The stylus supports Quest 2 and Quest 3-series headsets.

While the stylus is certain to be a more niche input device for the headset, it caters to a subset of VR apps which are focused on creation. That would be apps for things like 3D modeling, painting, sculpting, and drawing—the kind of apps where being able to point to a very specific point in space feels way more natural with a stylus than a controller.

When I got to try an early version of the MX Ink stylus earlier this year, I was impressed with the way it was integrated into the overall Quest experience. As an official ‘Made for Meta’ accessory, the headset acknowledges that you’re pairing a stylus (rather than controller) and walks you through the procedure.

Once it’s paired, it works just like you’d hope: you see a 3D model of the stylus in front of you, and you can use it as a basic pointer in the standard Horizon OS interface. The buttons on the stylus emulate the buttons on the controller, so you can do things like drag-to-scroll and press buttons. You’ll also see a battery-life readout in the same place you’d normally expect to see it for the controllers.

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While the stylus does a reasonably good job of emulating the controller, the real reason for this thing to exist is for apps that have been built especially with it in mind. Not only do these apps show a model of the stylus (or their own interpretation of it) they also support the pressure-sensitive tip and pressure-sensitive side button, which allow for smooth input for parameters like brush stroke size.

We’ve reached out to Logitech hoping to get a complete list (inclusive of the “many more” at the very bottom), but for now Logitech currently lists the following applications as supporting the MX Ink stylus:

Arkio
Engage
Gravity Sketch
Gesture VR
Painting VR
Osso VR
Vermillion
Thrasher
Figmin XR
Fundamental VR
Hololight
Open Brush
Elucis
ShapesXR
Visionwear
Needle
“Many more”

Meta Reveals ‘Orion’ Prototype AR Glasses with Impressive Field-of-view and Wireless Compute Unit

September 25, 2024 From roadtovr

Meta today revealed a prototype of its first pair of AR glasses, codenamed Orion. The glasses are impressively compact, have a class-leading field-of-view, but also relies on a wireless compute unit that goes in your pocket.

Although Meta has been selling its Ray-Ban smartglasses for several years now, the company hasn’t actually shown any glasses-sized device with a display—until now.

Meta says it has been working on Orion for years to make something that’s truly glasses-sized, while still retaining a wide field-of-view, and the performance necessary to drive the display and processing.

The purported 70 degree field-of-view is class-leading for something in this form-factor, but still small compared to typical VR headsets. In order to achieve this wide field-of-view, the company says it had to use silicon carbide for its lenses instead of glass or polymer. From the description, it sounds like the Orion AR glasses are using a diffractive waveguide, with silicon carbide as the underlying medium. While other glasses have used diffractive waveguides, using silicon carbide as the underlying medium allows for a higher refractive index, allowing light to be directed into a wider field-of-view.

Achieving this properly glasses-sized device does require a bit of a ‘cheat’—much of the headset’s computing power is off-loaded into a compute unit designed to slip into your pocket. However, the company has made the compute puck wireless which eliminates a core complaint: the bothersome cable that would have to run from the glasses to the puck.

While the glasses are said to handle core capabilities like head-tracking, the compute puck takes on the work of rendering the content. Off-loading that rendering power to the puck means the headset can not only be smaller, but cooler too, relieving the key issue of heat dissipation on such a compact device.

And Orion leans on yet another device to complete its experience: a wristband loaded with sensors. The EMG wristband can detect subtle movements of the user’s hand and fingers, allowing for precise input without the users needing to hold their hands up in front of them.

Meta is also making sure that AI is built-in from the start, allowing functionality similar to Meta Ray-Ban, but with the benefit of a display.

With a 70 degree field-of-view, immersive content isn’t the focus. Instead, the underlying OS and capabilities are leaning mostly into flat panels and spatial computing.

Meta is clear that the Orion glasses are still just a prototype, but “not a research prototype”. That means the company actually thinks it can bring a comparable device to market—using these very technologies. The company says it will be mostly using the device internally to continue to hone its size, performance, and cost.

“While Orion won’t make its way into the hands of consumers, make no mistake: This is not a research prototype. It’s the most polished product prototype we’ve ever developed—and it’s truly representative of something that could ship to consumers. Rather than rushing to put it on shelves, we decided to focus on internal development first, which means we can keep building quickly and continue to push the boundaries of the technology and experiences,” the company wrote in its Orion announcement.

Amazon Prime Video is Getting a Well Overdue Relaunch on Quest, Including Offline Watching

September 25, 2024 From roadtovr

Amazon today released a new version of its Prime Video app for Quest, which is letting you do one thing the 2019-era version never got around to: downloading and watching videos offline. That ought to put Travel Mode to good use.

The original Prime Video VR app for Quest hasn’t seen much love since it was launched in 2019, although with the entrance of Quest 3S and overtures to mobile app developers to stock the Horizon Store with 2D and spatial apps alike, Amazon is launching a new version of the video streaming app, supporting Quest 2/3/Pro. And Quest 3S, of course.

The new version, named Amazon Prime Video, is now live, letting you sign into your Prime account and watch the regular slate of movies, TV, and sports, although it’s now boasting the ability to download and watch content offline.

It also includes multi-user profiles, and access to X-Ray, the IMDb-powered pop-up for extra information, such as actors currently on screen.

This comes as Meta kicks its spatial app framework into high gear, promising more rapid development of traditional 2D apps.

512GB Quest 3 Gets a Big Price Drop While 128GB Model is Phased Out

September 25, 2024 From roadtovr

Say goodbye to the 128GB version of Quest 3, as the company is slated to only offer the 512GB version moving forward, and at a new, more attractive price.

With the entrance of Quest 3S, and the discontinuation of Quest 2 and Quest Pro, Meta’s lineup is shifting a bit to make way for its new entry level XR headset, Quest 3S.

Released in late 2023 for $650, the 512GB version of Quest 3 is still the company’s best-in-class XR headset. Originally released at $500, Meta today announced at Connect it’s retiring the 128GB version, slashing the larger storage option to the new $500 price tag.

You can still get a 128GB version though, now priced at $430 while supplies last. Although it’s not a crazy price cut, it’s certainly not something to sneeze at if you absolutely need a great XR headset today and don’t want to go down a half-step with Quest 3S, which is being offered starting at $300 for the 128GB version and $400 for the 512GB version.

Quest 3S is slated to launch on October 15th, offering the same resolution and Fresnel optics as Quest 2, but with the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR gen 2 chipset as of Quest 3. Check out the full specs compared side-by-side to see how it stacks up.

So to recap, here’s the Quest line-up as it stands today:

Quest 3S (128GB) – $300
Quest 3S (512GB) – $400
Quest 3 (128GB) – $430, discontinued and available while supplies last
Quest 3 (512GB) – $500
Quest Pro (256GB) – $1,000, discontinued and available while supplies last
Quest 2 (128GB) discontinued, out of stock
Quest 2 (256GB) discontinued, out of stock

New Quest Accessories Include Breathable, Open-periphery Facial Interfaces & New Controller Charging Dock

September 25, 2024 From roadtovr

Meta finally unveiled the long-rumored (and leaked) Quest 3S, but that doesn’t mean we’re getting a torrent of new accessories. While most Quest 3 accessories work with Quest 3S, Meta also announced two new model-exclusive facial interfaces that may turn some heads, and a new controller charging dock too.

Note: We’re tracking down prices, and will update once that information is made public.

Quest 3S Breathable Facial Interface

Working out in a VR headset can be an awesome way to burn calories, but it also is usually a pretty sweaty affair. Enter the Quest 3S-exclusive ‘Breathable Facial Interface’ which looks to give your eyeballs some much needed fresh air.

The “perforated yet immersive” fabric design also comes with a silicone face pad exterior that should make wiping down the inevitable sweat buildup that much easier.

Quest 3 Open Facial Interface

We’re still hunting down product images of this one, but Meta says it’s also launching an Open Facial Interface, exclusive to Quest 3.

Quest Pro fitted with stock open facial interface | Image courtesy Meta

The low-profile replacement facial interface promises to let you better blend real and mixed reality, leaving your periphery open similar to how the stock facial interface works on Quest Pro. It also promises a removable face pad for easy cleanup.

And with an open-face design, like the Quest 3S Breathable Facial Interface, it also promises to be breathable than the stock face pad.

Touch Plus Charging Dock

There’s also set to be a new Touch Plus controller charging dock, since Quest 3S doesn’t feature charging pins like on Quest 3. They do however share the same Touch Plus controller, which can be docked (hence the new accessory), supporting both Quest 3 and Quest 3S.

The charging dock is said to allow for “drop-in charging for Touch Plus, which comes with rechargeable batteries and an extended cable to charge Quest.”

We’re at Meta Connect to hunt down all of the missing details, and will update this article with pricing and respective release dates, so check back soon.

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