Category: Mobile World Congress

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HoloLens 2.0 Launch Teased by Microsoft

Mobile World Congress (MWC) is the next major tech event on the calendar, and it looks as though Microsoft will be using its press conference to unveil the next version of its mixed reality (MR) headset, HoloLens 2.0.

Hampleton Partners Hololens

Microsoft’s technical fellow and HoloLens creator Alex Kipman released a very short video teaser for the upcoming headset on his YouTube channel. It doesn’t showcase the device in any way, more alluding to several components such as a new Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) and what looks like carbon fibre sections.

The original Microsoft HoloLens launched in 2016, purely as an enterprise-focused device retailing for $3,000 USD. While the company hasn’t yet released specific details regarding price or specs, the headset is expected to feature a wider field of view (FoV) – currently, it’s a rather narrow 35-degrees – a new generation Kinect sensor, improved comfort, better battery life and is reportedly going to be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 850 processor.

It’ll be interesting to see whether Microsoft continues down the enterprise path for HoloLens 2.0, or if it’s now considering a more consumer-friendly price point for the next-generation device. Companies and organisations like NASA and Luminous Group are always the ones shown to be using HoloLens, yet developers such as HappyGiant have already ported videogames like HoloGrid: Monster Battle to the system.

HoloLens - MixedReality

Microsoft’s Mobile World Congress press event will be taking place on Sunday, 24th February 2019 at 5pm CET (11am ET), Barcelona, Spain, with CEO Satya Nadella, CVP Julia White, and of course technical fellow Alex Kipman in attendance.

When further details regarding Microsoft HoloLens 2.0 have been released, VRFocus will keep you updated.

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HTC CEO: 5G Will Have A Big Impact On VR

HTC has surged in significance in the ten years since it launched the first Android-powered smartphone in 2008. The company remains one of the biggest names in the virtual reality (VR) industry since the HTC Vive came to market. At the Mobile World Congress (MWC), HTC CEO Cher Wang spoke of how 5G will lead to the smartphone becoming a critical part of its future VR strategy.

The changing state of the smartphone market in the past few years, with rivals Samsung dominating the high-end market and companies such as Huawei emerging to grab large shares of the budget and mid-range. Wang suggests that HTC could maintain its position by taking advantage of 5G and its knowledge of VR technology.

It has previously been revealed that Wang is interested expanding the VR technology used in the HTC Vive, the standalone Vive Focus and HTC Vive Pro to areas other than videogames, and her message at MWC suggests that the capabilities of 5G could allow this by making remote processing possible.

“I believe VIVE is the great equalizer,” said Wang. “Today we are creating VIVE Reality: the convergence of VR/AR, 5G and AI. Our lives have become so dependent on the Internet and connectivity that we can barely imagine life without it. Speeds of tens of gigabits of seconds will be transformational. 5G is the perfect matching technology for VR and AI thanks to edge computing and real time transmission. Cloud computing over 5G will enable every single VR and AR device to be the most powerful device in the world. 5G reduces the need for device-based computing power.”

Wang revealed that she was certain that smartphones were still an important part of the future of the company and the future of technology in general: “The smartphone will play an important part of the ecosystem and will be the first step to 5G for most of us,” she said. “In the future, the screen may be de-coupled from the device and projected to VR … or even to our eyes.”

HTC Vive stock image 1

Any future news on HTC’s VR projects will be reported here on VRFocus.

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Samsung Galaxy S9 Price and Release Date Revealed

Over the past few weeks there have been a number of rumours and leaks regarding the newest iteration of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy smartphone line. The Samsung Galaxy S9 has now been officially revealed.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ were announced at the Samsung Unpacked event that took place during the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona. Samsung representatives spoke of how the way that consumers use smartphones, noting that communication has become more visual than written. The Samsung Galaxy S9 is designed with this in mind.

Samsung Galaxy S9 & S9+

“The way we use our smartphones has changed as communication and self-expression has evolved,” said DJ Koh, president and Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division, Samsung Electronics. “With the Galaxy S9 and S9+, we have reimagined the smartphone camera. Not only does the Galaxy S9 and S9+ enable consumers to shoot great photos and videos anywhere, it’s a smartphone that’s designed to help them connect to others and express themselves in a way that’s unique and personal to them.”

Customers in the UK will be able to get pre-order the Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ from 25th February, 2018. Customers who manage to place their order before 7th March at 23:59 GMT will receive their devices seven days early, on 9th March. The devices will otherwise be available from 16th March from Samsung.com and selected retailers.

Colours available at launch will be Midnight Black, Coral Blue and a new hue called Lilac Purple, which Samsung are expecting to be very popular among its audience. Some retailers are offering trade-in deals for customers when purchasing the S9 and S9+.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ offers stereo speakers, surround sound provided by Dolby Atmos and a newly refined edge-to-edge Infinity Display. The camera has also undergone significant redesign to introduce a dual aperture lens to allow for clear images In low-light. A new augmented reality (AR) Emoji feature is also being introduced.

Samsung Galaxy S9 & S9+ Colour Shades

The Samsung Galaxy S9 will be priced at £739 (GBP) and the S9+ will be £869.

Further news on new and upcoming Samsung products for AR and VR will be here on VRFocus.

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Google Confirms ARCore 1.0. Launch at Mobile World Congress

Only a few short hours ago VRFocus reported on a report that Google would be revealing more details as well as launching its augmented reality (AR) software ARCore at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018. Well those details have now been confirmed in a new blog posting today.

ARCore tree

The tech giant has confirmed that ARCore 1.0. will officially launch during the event in Barcelona, Spain, bringing advanced AR capabilities to 100 million Android smartphones. Developers can now publish AR apps to the Play Store, with 13 different models supporting the software to begin with: Google Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL; Samsung’s Galaxy S8, S8+, Note8, S7 and S7 edge; LGE’s V30 and V30+ (Android O only); ASUS’s Zenfone AR; and OnePlus’s OnePlus 5.

As for other devices the Google post states: “And beyond those available today, we’re partnering with many manufacturers to enable their upcoming devices this year, including Samsung, Huawei, LGE, Motorola, ASUS, Xiaomi, HMD/Nokia, ZTE, Sony Mobile, and Vivo.”

Developers have had access to ARCore since last year. With the roll out of ARCore 1.0. the update will feature improved environmental understanding enabling developers and users to place virtual assets on textured surfaces like posters, furniture, toy boxes, books, cans and more. And just for devs, Android Studio Beta now supports ARCore in the Emulator, so they can quickly test an app in a desktop virtual environment.

ARCore Tinman

Obviously, rolling out ARCore 1.0. is one thing but users need content to see how good AR really is. So Google has built up several partnerships with developers to showcase how they’re planning to use AR in their apps. Snapchat has created an immersive experience for FC Barcelona’s legendary Camp Nou stadium; Porsche’s Mission E Concept vehicle can be put in a users driveway; while OTTO AR offers an exclusive set of furniture to place in a home. Google has also teased  Ghostbusters World without revealing any further details.

As with Apple’s ARKit when it launched in 2017, expect there to be plenty of AR announcements in the coming days from developers launching their latest apps for Android. Google has some catching up to do, as it does VRFocus will keep you updated.

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Dirac Research’s Second-Generation ‘Dirac VR’ Audio Solution to Debut at MWC 2018

Swedish digital sound solution specialist Dirac Research has been working on improving 3D audio processing for virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)for sometime now, and later this month the company will be showcasing its latest advancements. During the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018 in Barcelona, Spain, Dirac Research will be debuting its second-generation Dirac VR solution to attendees.

Dirac Research

With this new version of Dirac VR, Dirac Research aims to deliver an upgraded 3D audio engine, increased power and processing efficiency, and a Unity plugin to manufacturers, Unity content developers, and end-users, alike.

The upgraded 3D audio engine produces improved audio performance, smoother sound renderings, and more accurate positioning of sound in the virtual plane. While the first generation solution allowed for the fixed positioning of individual sound sources on the horizontal plane, alone, Dirac VR now allows for dynamic positioning on both the horizontal and vertical planes – generating a 360-degree ‘audio sphere’ around each end-user, where sound moves freely in all directions.

“By fixing sound sources in the horizontal plane, virtual environments such as movie theaters can be recreated with pinpoint accuracy – as both the end-user and the audio sources remain in static locations,” stated Lars Isaksson, Dirac General Manager & Business Director of AR/ VR. “Our second-generation Dirac VR, however, places each user at the center of an ‘audio sphere’, thereby allowing users to experience, for example, the sound of wind whipping as it swirls around one’s head or an airplane arriving and departing on a tarmac.”

Dirac VR 1

“Producing realistic audio experiences in virtual environments is one of the most challenging projects to be tackled by our industry; yet we, as both an industry and company, understand the enormous opportunity presented by effective and immersive VR experiences – for which a perfected 3D audio solution is required,” said Mathias Johansson, Dirac Research’s Co-Founder & CEO in a statement. “With the second-generation Dirac VR solution, we proudly deliver to our industry the next critically-important tool to bringing our virtual dreams to life.”

Dirac VR will be available for demo at MWC 2018, from 26th February through 1st March 2018. For any further updates keep reading VRFocus.

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A Red Bull F1 Car Comes To Digital Life Thanks To AT&T & Microsoft HoloLens At MWC

AT&T have been using the HoloLens to show off their ‘Connected Car’ services at Mobile World Congress (MWC). The short presentation covers the advantages of their connected car services by showing an Augmented Reality (AR) ‘hologram’ of a car moving through a city.

The AT&T connected car has features that allow other cars to communicate with each other to alert other cars in the area of hazards such as ice and re-route cars around accident sites. The presentation even covered how expanding this service to cover a while city could improve infrastructure.

HoloLens

AT&T also demonstrated another Augmented Reality experience involving a Red Bull Formula 1 car. Hovering above an actual Red Bull Formula 1 car was an exploded diagram of Red Bull car, the presentation highlighted certain areas as the presenter talked about each section. AT&T said during the presentation that they provide the infrastructure that allows real-time data to be transmitted from the F1 team at the track to engineers at their home base.

They also showed a birds-eye view of an F1 circuit, complete with tiny cars racing around, hovering above the physical F1 display car.

You can watch videos of both presentations, recorded by You Are Here below.

VRFocus will bring you further updates on the HoloLens and AR as it develops.

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Optofidelity and Futuremark On Measuring VR Latency

Futuremark and Optofidelity have revealed the fruits of their partnership, a device for measuring latency and performance of a virtual reality (VR) device, at Mobile World Congress (MWC).

VRFocus spoke to the companies as they showed off a full breakdown of the time difference between a VR user moving their head, and the head mounted display (HMD) updating what is on the screen. The product also allows for viewing of a full breakdown of CPU and GPU activity, so any potential bottlenecks can be located.

You can watch the full video below.

VRFocus will continue to keep you updated with news from MWC and GDC.

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HTC Vive’s Tracker Puck Put to the Multiplayer Test in Cover Me!!

The currently ongoing Mobile World Congress (MWC), Barcelona, hasn’t offered too many surprises this year. High-end virtual reality (VR) is in a state of re-evaluation right now; assessing the highs-and-lows of a year in consumers’ hands whilst attempting to push boundaries even further. The HTC Vive Tracker puck is an interesting argument for new offering new experiences, and Master of Shapes’ Cover Me!! does just that.

Three different devices working with two HTC Vive Tracker pucks, Cover Me!! is a multiplayer videogame designed to operate with the lowest barrier for entry possible. Don’t have a HTC Vive but your friend does? No problem, pick up your smartphone and join in. Battery need charging on that smartphone? Still no problem! Grab a tablet instead. Or maybe, providing you’ve got enough HTC Vive Tracker pucks, go for three-player with all of these devices.

The videogame itself is a very simple first-person shooter (FPS) built using both original and prefabricated assets. In the demonstration version at MWC, the tablet player was the host of the match – essentially the ‘dungeon master’, able to customise the colours of the enemies and map as well as taking the perspective of any other player – the smartphone player had their device mounted on a plastic gun, upon which a HTC Vive Tracker puck was also mounted, and finally there was a player in the HTC Vive itself. The smartphone and HTC Vive players existed within the same space, able to move around the roomscale environment and see one another upon their respective displays. The tablet player – also equipped with a Tracker puck – was represented by a camera.

Perhaps more interesting however, was Master of Shapes’ assertion that they have the technology to create real world object-placement within an experience. Simply by attaching four points of detection (similar to when setting up the HTC Vive’s roomscale chaperone itself) an object within the real world can not only be marked, but actually integrated into the videogame. Exactly what the developer plans to do with this technology – if anything – is not yet known, however the comment that ‘it should be a feature in every game’ would suggest that the path of least resistance would be to present the technology to the VR development community for widespread adoption.

Master Of Shapes - Cover Me

Cover Me!! itself also has an uncertain future. Master of Shapes, by the teams’ own admission, are not videogame developers. They typically create a product for a specific market or contractor and then wave it goodbye; continued support for a ‘finished’ title is not their area of expertise. That being said, it’s clear that the team are invested in the versatility of the experience they have created, so expect to hear more from Master of Shapes – if not Cover Me!! – in the VR scene somewhere down the line.

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VR vs. This. Damn. Week.

“This is stupid.”

That was my summary of the situation to my girlfriend this morning at 1am after I’d dragged myself off of the floor following a truly hectic Monday. I’m giving you the summary, since the longer version is indeed much longer and involves gratuitous amounts of yelling and swearing at my PC.

I’ve just finished a well deserved holiday, which explains why there’s not been a VR vs for a few weeks, it’s time I’ve been owed for a very long period that I had finally been able to cash in. Partly. Frankly I needed a break. I needed a longer break than I was able to shoehorn in the schedule. But then again we all do. It’s been a very stressful few months for Team VRFocus as we’ve gamely battled on despite being somewhat undermanned. A situation that has since been rectified with the addition of Rebecca, who I’m assuming you’ve read something from yesterday or today already and Nina whose recent videos have set Youtube all of a tiswas between pro-mobile virtual reality (VR) and anti-mobile VR folks. (A topic we’ll go into next week if possible as I’ve simply no time to do so on this one.) But yes, I was back and within the space of a few hours I was on my back. Knocked for a loop by a sucker punch combo of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) and the Game Developers Conference (GDC). Any semblance of rest painstakingly achieved obliterated because some utter nits somewhere had the clever idea to host the damn things at the same time.

Angry At Laptop

We’ve had this discussion before about the tech event calendar of course, and specifically about events relating to VR. Since the last time I mentioned the ludicrousness of the tech events calendar and how people seem to be unable to target actual gaps in in it we now have a day listed down on our little internal spreadsheet where there are FOUR, count them, FOUR events taking place at the same time. Again, we’ll be talking about this topic til the proverbial headset-wearing cows come home (would that be in ‘moo-scale VR’?); but both of these events are so big in the grand scheme of things, you have to wonder that when the second saw that the first had confirmed their dates that they hadn’t maybe considered doing something to avoid it. Because holding two events of this magnitude at the same time helps absolutely no one.

  • It doesn’t help companies and studios
  • It doesn’t help the events
  • It doesn’t help the press
  • It doesn’t help the industry
  • And it sure as hell fire doesn’t help you, the consumer

No, they aren’t exactly the same audiences but there’s the little problem of having quite a lot of the same content. Companies and studios end up either have to run two events at the same time, potentially increasing their costs and spreading themselves super thin or having to miss out. The events end up cannibalizing their own interest from enthusiasts, who may well have to pick one or the other to attend. The press are spread thinner than they otherwise would be, which actually means a net loss of coverage for the events, the creators and the products which then knocks on to you Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms/Dr./Prof./Rt Hon. Reader-Person who then is less informed. All of us are obviously trying our best in such a situation but the result is still, at the end of the day, less.

I just don’t understand the logic. Say we were holding a big annual event and, let’s say so was, I dunno, VR Scout. Annual events that take place in the same month. We aren’t, but let us say we are. If that was the case at the beginning of the year/end of the preceding year I’d like to think one of us would have the sense to hit up the other for a chat beforehand to make sure we weren’t climbing all over each other and if we were see if we could do something about it. It’d be in our best interests. Yes, one is in America and one is in Europe but it is a global audience, following a global travelling circus. So next time could the resident ring masters at MWC and GDC maybe think ahead a little? Crikey, if CES has, praise be to all that is holy, seen enough sense to finally shift themselves so that next year’s event isn’t immediately after New Year I’m sure someone at both events has the sense to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

They won’t of course; but I can but hope.

 

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Adobe Developing VR Advertising Systems

Adobe is showing off a project at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona this week concerning advertising in virtual reality (VR). At the moment it is only a prototype from Adobe’s research labs and involves watching 2-D videos theatre-style.

Presently the adverts work thus: If you are watching a video through a virtual theatre such as the ones provided by Netflix and Hulu, the system will interrupt viewings of the video, similar to traditional TV adverts, but can also show additional information to either side or above the user, such as further information on the product, access to coupons or even the opportunity to tweet from within the VR world.

Adobe Primetime Director of Product Management Campbell Foster said in an interview with Variety; “With 360, it’s not clear what content is going to look like beyond gaming. For entertainment, VR is a lot more promising than AR.”

adobe-vr-2

Since the product is still in early stages, it’s currently focused on the theatre-style viewing, and is optimised for use with mobile VR platforms. Mr. Foster also said that it was possible that VR adverts could eventually take advantage of the features currently used in Adobe’s traditional advertising, such as detailed analytics and consumer targeting.

Mr. Foster also suggested that when the ad unit was developed further, it might be possible to ‘beam’ the user out of the theatre setting and place them somewhere else for the duration of the advert, and then return them when the advert was complete.

For further news on Adobe’s VR projects, it will be on VRFocus.