5G’s big players make bold, exciting predictions for 2022
Digital Trends asked many of the big players in 5G tech to predict how it will change and influence our lives during 2022, and the responses are exciting.
5G-enabled billboard in Time Squares briefly brings interactive game to masses
With Project Monarch and 5G networks, thousands of people could end up playing games powered by billboard advertising.
Niantic Labs Showcases 5G AR Demo Codename: Urban Legends
Recently, augmented reality (AR) specialist Niantic Labs has been showcasing some exciting projects in the works, like the collaboration with Nintendo on a Pikmin title, and teasing some new hardware. Then there are its plans for large-scale multiplayer on 5G, unveiling Codename: Urban Legends.
With ultra-low latency and high bandwidth capabilities, 5G is being viewed as a core technology for the future of AR and virtual reality (VR) entertainment, hence why Niantic Labs created the Planet-Scale AR Alliance last year with members including Deutsche Telekom, EE, Globe Telecom, Orange and Verizon. Codename: Urban Legends has been created to demo the combined technologies, with some of those operators already network testing the videogame.
Offering what looks to be a far more active experience than Pokemon GO, Codename: Urban Legends requires players to team up and rescue mythical allies by blasting monster with magical spells. The early tests have allowed the game to handle 10 times as many players simultaneously whilst seeing a similar level of improvement when it comes to latency.
“We’re really excited to partner with Niantic and the Planet-Scale AR Alliance to enable real-time immersive multiplayer AR gaming with our advanced 5G and MEC network enabled by MobiledgeX. Edge enablement is crucial to our ability to deliver trusted, secure user experiences that demand high bandwidth, low latency, and real-time spatial awareness regardless of the application or industry being served,” said Dr. Alex Choi, Senior Vice President of Head of Strategy & Technology Innovation, Deutsche Telekom in a statement.
“Codename: Urban Legends is just the type of creative AR multiplayer game we envisioned benefiting from our leading network, and our customers will be able to see and feel the difference 5G Ultra Wideband brings when playing the game,” Erin McPherson, Vice President, Consumer Content and Partnerships, Verizon adds.
5G is becoming more widely available with all the latest smartphones featuring the tech so hopefully, it won’t be long before Codename: Urban Legends sees a public launch. There’s still Pikmin AR to look forward to this year plus further news on Catan: World Explorers. As details arise, VRFocus will let you know.
Augmented Reality 2021 trends and predictions
For so many of us 2020 has been a year out of the ordinary for so many reasons, both personal and professional. We changed so much our lifestyle and coped with risks and dangers never encountered before, and we all … Read More
The post Augmented Reality 2021 trends and predictions appeared first on Inglobe Technologies.
Niantic Reveals 5G Partners For Planet-Scale AR Alliance
Building on the success of its augmented reality apps for smartphones, Niantic surprised attendees at Qualcomm’s December 2019 Snapdragon Tech Summit by announcing plans to offer its own consumer AR platform — hardware, software, and support for a third-party developer community. Today, the company is announcing the Niantic Planet-Scale AR Alliance, a collection of cellular partners that will help distribute “exclusive 5G ready AR content” and demonstrate 5G consumer AR experiences to the public.
Niantic’s initial partners are Deutsche Telekom, EE, Globe, Orange, SK Telecom, SoftBank, Telus, and Verizon, representing countries ranging from the United States and United Kingdom to South Korea, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, and parts of Europe. Collectively, the group’s marketing efforts and large number of retail locations could play a critical role in popularizing consumer AR across the world.
Working with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 platform, Niantic is one of several companies pushing to expand augmented reality from $3,500 industrial headsets like Microsoft’s HoloLens to affordable consumer products. Buoyed by the popularity of its iPhone and Android hit Pokémon Go, the software company has generated billions of dollars in revenue and announced initiatives to help other developers expand AR’s possibilities. Niantic believes its track record of taking Pokémon, Harry Potter, and other IPs into augmented reality will help it win customers who might otherwise look at consumer AR headsets from Nreal, Facebook, and Apple.
Today, Niantic said it’s “working to make AR experiences mirror the real world” and be persistent in the real world so its augmented experiences can be shared by “tens of millions of Niantic explorers.” As of now, the company says it has over 7 million “interesting and mapped locations” — likely gathered through use of the Pokémon app — as well as over 1 billion downloads of its existing apps. The company says its carrier partnerships will enable it to test the “reality blending” and synchronous multiplayer features with 5G capabilities like ultra-reliable low latency communications and edge computing, which are still in early deployment stages across the world.
Niantic’s deal with Qualcomm was one of the bigger and more closely held surprises at the Snapdragon Tech Summit, spotlighting the potentially game-changing appeal of the Snapdragon XR2 chipset. Qualcomm’s reference platform will enable OEMs to offer complete 5G-ready mixed reality headsets, including considerably more horsepower than is found in headsets such as today’s Oculus Quest. While a follow-up to the Quest VR headset is expected to hit stores this year, Facebook has suggested that its own AR headset is years off, leaving the door open for smaller but still ambitious companies to develop the nascent AR space.
This post by Jeremy Horwitz originally appeared in VentureBeat.
XR Platform Verizon Media Immersive to Provide Next-Gen Media Experiences
American telecommunications giant Verizon has dabbled in virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) technology for a while now. This week subsidiary Verizon Media has announced a new XR suite designed to aid the future of advertising and content utilising 5G called Verizon Media Immersive (VMI).
The online XR platform will enable partners, advertisers and Verizon Media’s portfolio of brands – which include Yahoo, HuffPost and TechCrunch – to enhance how consumers engage with their content, commerce and advertising.
Verizon Media Immersive will provide authoring tools, a content library and search and e-commerce to partners to help encourage the creation, distribution and monetization of emerging XR formats. As the platform utilises a WebXR toolset when companies create an experience with VMI end users can engage with the content directly through a browser, rather having to download a separate app.
“The launch of Verizon Media Immersive unlocks new opportunities for our partners and advertisers by providing the latest AR and VR capabilities to help them connect and engage with consumers in a more impactful and interactive way,” said Guru Gowrappan, CEO, Verizon Media in a statement. “Leveraging Verizon Media’s ecosystem, technology and Verizon’s 5G network give us the ability to create a scaled XR experience like no other.”
To demonstrate this a new 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E experience for Autoblog was created where you can view a 3D model online, or using your smartphone’s camera place the model in the real world. It’s this kind of interactive content VMI aims to accelerate.
Advertisers will be able to benefit as they look to merge physical products with the digital world. Verizon Media Immersive’s formats work directly with the Verizon Media Ad Platform, delivering immersive campaigns across articles, search, affiliate, commerce, and branded content, whilst providing performance tracking analytics.
Verizon Media has been able to start rolling this out thanks to 5G technology being able to deliver the vast amount of data VR and AR needs. 5G is going to play an important role in the future of XR technology, with the likes of Qualcomm, NVIDIA and HTC Vive just some of the tech giants invested. For further updates on Verizon Media Immersive, keep reading VRFocus.
Qualcomm Reveals Plan to Help Commercialize Lightweight, 5G-enabled AR & VR Headsets
Today, at an online version of this year’s Augmented World Expo (AWE), Qualcomm announced that it’s partnered with a number of global telecoms, smartphone companies, and AR/VR headset manufacturers to deliver 5G-enabled, smartphone-driven headsets to consumers and enterprise customers. It plans to do so within the next year.
The semiconductor giant has partnered with fifteen global telecoms across Asia, Europe, and North America. Qualcomm says the following service providers will be commercializing some form of ‘XR viewer’ within the next year: China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, EE, KDDI, KT, LG Uplus, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, SK Telecom, SoftBank, Telefonica, Verizon, and Vodafone.
When Qualcomm says ‘XR viewer’, it’s specifically referring to lightweight AR or VR headsets that connect to a smartphone, which in Qualcomm’s case will either be powered by a Snapdragon 855 or 865 chipset, and connect to 5G-enabled handsets via USB-C cable.
The company has also set up a validation process—called Qualcomm XR Optimized Certification Program—to make sure headsets and individual smartphones are up to snuff and work properly together.
The program is intended to certify things on both viewers and smartphones like 6DOF performance, motion to photon latency, power and thermals, and interoperability. Qualcomm will be including a badge as well, so you know what’s been certified as XR compliant.
Headset and smartphone manufacturers already going through the process include 3Glasses, iQIYI, Nreal, OPPO, Panasonic, Pico and Shadow Creator. Smartphone OEMs ASUS, BlackShark, OnePlus, OPPO, Smartisan, vivo, ZTE, are said to follow.
Earlier this year Qualcomm announced that it was effectively powering more than 30 AR and VR headsets, some of which are standalone devices incorporating Snapdragon processors.
The post Qualcomm Reveals Plan to Help Commercialize Lightweight, 5G-enabled AR & VR Headsets appeared first on Road to VR.
NVIDIA CloudXR Aims To Give Enterprise PC Graphics On Standalone Headsets
NVIDIA is launching an SDK for CloudXR, its full-stack cloud VR streaming solution currently intended for enterprise.
Standalone VR headsets such as Oculus Quest and Vive Focus Plus are preferred for enterprise use cases because they’re much easier to deploy and manage than PCs. However, mobile chips are significantly less powerful than PC GPUs, limiting the amount of detail possible.
This graphical limitation makes applications like vizualization and computer assisted design (CAD) very difficult on standalone. CloudXR aims to solve this problem by enabling companies to stream OpenVR (SteamVR) content from a nearby GPU server over a high bandwidth connection.
To be clear, NVIDIA isn’t launching a VR streaming service. This isn’t an extension to GeForce Now, a consumer offering. CloudXR is a set of software tools for companies using NVIDIA RTX Servers.
Datacenters on the national level would likely mean too much latency for most users. CloudXR is intended to run on “edge” servers- generally within the same city. Large companies using VR can rent or set up these edge servers to host their applications. While this was always technically possible, NVIDIA is providing a solution optimized across the full stack, from server to the Android app running on the headset.
NVIDIA claims the quality is “indistinguishable” from tethered PC VR when running on 5G or high bandwidth WiFi (the kind businesses tend to have access to).
If 5G can be successfully deployed and reach its promised speeds, CloudXR could some day be integrated in consumer VR platforms. HTC is listed as an official partner for CloudXR, and NVIDIA hints that consumer implementations could come in the future. But for such a service to be financially viable it may require a much larger VR market, given the GPU servers could only be used in the same city as the headsets to which they stream.
The post NVIDIA CloudXR Aims To Give Enterprise PC Graphics On Standalone Headsets appeared first on UploadVR.
NVIDIA Unveils CloudXR 1.0 SDK to Advance VR/AR Streaming Over 5G & Wi-Fi
In the future cloud-based gaming could be key to reducing the size and weight of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) devices, taking away a lot of the need to have a whole PC on your face. In a step towards that possibility, NVIDIA has announced its CloudXR platform software development kit (SDK) to enable streaming across 5G and enterprise networks.
Built on NVIDIA RTX GPUs, CloudXR has been designed to facilitate streaming of immersive XR experiences from anywhere, whether from a data centre or the cloud to connected headsets, Windows and Android devices.
Whether it’s over 5G, Wi-Fi or a high-performance network, CloudXR should enable graphics-intensive applications to be run on low-powered mobile devices thanks to NVIDIA’s GPU-powered edge servers. That means consumers can play the latest VR titles while businesses can speed up design reviews to increase creative productivity.
The SDK enables streaming of OpenVR applications to the aforementioned devices, wireless or tethered, and is currently in Early Access for developers to sign up to. The CloudXR platform includes NVIDIA RTX hardware, NVIDIA Quadro Virtual Workstation (QvDWS) drivers, and the CloudXR SDK.
To help push this technology forward NVIDIA has teamed up with Ericsson and Qualcomm Technologies as they look make wireless 5G VR a reality.
Qualcomm detailed its intentions earlier this year announcing the Snapdragon XR2 platform and it reference design headsets. While Ericsson its developing the high-performance 5G networks needed to connect everything.
While these steps are towards the future as the 5G rollout continues, those in the US can try cloud VR computing first-hand thanks to gaming service Shadow and its Shadow VR Exploration Program which arrived in beta last month. Or there’s Mozilla’s Hubs Cloud which allows organisations to build their own social locations depending on requirements.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of NVIDIA and its latest VR/AR advancements, reporting back with further updates.
Qualcomm Reveals XR2 Reference Design For Potential Powerful Oculus Quest Competitors
Qualcomm is today announcing a new reference design VR headset based on its XR2 chipset that’s said to be 5G-capable.
Qualcomm regularly debuts new reference designs to show what’s possible with its latest processors and this new VR headset design is its most advanced yet. The company’s processors are at the core of both the Oculus Go and Oculus Quest VR headsets, though both systems from Facebook use relatively older and more affordable processors from Qualcomm. The Snapdragon 820 series from Qualcomm was first announced in 2015 and Oculus Go uses the 821. 2019’s Oculus Quest uses the Snapdragon 835 which was announced in 2017. The XR2 platform Qualcomm is promoting in 2020 is a VR and AR-focused variant of the 865 which was first announced at the end of 2019.
This latest processor and reference design is said to be capable of split rendering over a 5G wireless connection — that is, some processing is done on the headset itself and some is done at a cell tower where power-hungry processors could theoretically draw photorealistic visuals for the headset. In theory, this would allow a relatively lightweight wireless VR headset to offer the kinds of impressive visuals which are currently delivered by an expensive high-powered PC over a wired connection. Qualcomm announced support for split rendering via a wireless connection to a nearby PC last year and the Pico Neo 2 is said to support this functionality.
It may be years still before this type of rendering pipeline is broadly available to consumers. Hugo Swart is in charge of the VR and AR efforts at Qualcomm and said in a conference call with journalists it is likely we’ll see trials of 5G for VR and AR uses this year and initial deployments sometime in 2021. Cellular network technology upgrades usually take place over many years and only some cities get support first. Likewise, Facebook and other companies building VR and AR headsets try to keep their hardware costs to a minimum to access the largest set of price-sensitive buyers. That usually means using the cheapest (sometimes older) components whenever possible.
Still, the latest reference design meshes together a series of technologies, some of which might make it into more headsets more quickly than 5G. The device uses NDI’s electromagnetic controller tracking, for instance, which we saw demonstrated at CES on the Pico Neo 2. This type of tech still tracks the controllers even if something — like your body — is between the headset and the controllers.
Here’s a video showing how that technology works.
In addition to 5G, Qualcomm says its reference design supports up to seven cameras. Two of them are internal for eye tracking and four are external, two each for showing passthrough views of the environment and two for head tracking. Device manufacturers could also also add face-tracking via another inward-facing camera. Qualcomm says the device also includes an infrared emitter to track hand movements and head movements with the same cameras and “2Kx2K per eye dual panel LCD support,” though the XR2 is supposed to be able to support even higher resolution panels as well.
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