The virtual reality (VR) industry doesn’t stand still for long as it was only in May 2020 that Pico Interactive launched its standalone headsets, the Pico Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye. This week, the company has announced the completion of a Series B+ funding round as well as confirming an updated model is coming in 2021, the Pico Neo 3.
Pico Neo 2
The funding round saw Pico Interactive raise $37.4 million USD, with Co-Stone Asset Management Co., Ltd., Shenzhen Yidun Media Investment Fund, Jianyin International Capital Management (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., and CCBI Tech Venture (Suzhou) Combined Debt & Equity Private Equity Fund LLP all taking part. The funding will be used to support Pico Interactive’s B2C presence in Asia, its expansion into Western markets and product development.
“Pico is looking to provide its users with the best VR experience possible through excellent hardware, a great content ecosystem and numerous strategic partners,” said Zhou Hongwei, CEO of Pico Interactive in a statement. “This funding round will not only help us strengthen the accumulation of key technologies but also introduce high-quality VR games and applications onto our consumer Pico headsets in Asian markets. In addition to the B2C growth in Asia, the funding helps us to continue furthering our presence as a leader in B2B VR solutions in the West. We’re continuously looking for ways to better support our partners and this latest financing will help give us the tools we need to make these visions a reality.”
As for the new Pico Neo 3, the company has yet to reveal any specifications regarding how it’ll be upgrading the current models. The Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye both feature a 4K resolution, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, six degrees of freedom tracking (6DoF), two front-facing cameras, a 75Hz refresh rate, 128GB of storage, and a counterbalanced design to aid comfort. The Neo 2 Eye also comes fitted with Tobii’s eye tracking technology for a range of enterprise use cases.
It wasn’t just the Pico Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye that the hardware maker launched in 2020. While companies like Facebook have abandoned 3DoF technology in favour of 6DoF, Pico is still supporting it through the G2 4K S and G2 4K Enterprise headsets. These have 4K resolution, 101° field of view, and an all-PU facial interface for easy cleaning. Plus the G2 4K Enterprise model also comes with a 16 MP single RGB camera and more storage.
When further details regarding the Pico Neo 3 are made available, VRFocus will let you know.
Wie Spree Interactive und Pico mitteilen, sind beide Unternehmen eine Partnerschaft eingegangen, um maßgeschneiderte B2B-Lösungen für den Location-based Entertainment-Markt zu realisieren.
Zudem freuen wir uns zu verkünden, dass auch unser Spiel Tower Tag in das Programm von Spree Interactive aufgenommen wird.
Spree Interactive und Pico
Spree Interactive ist ein Unternehmen aus Deutschland, welches eine komplette LBVR-Lösung für familienfreundliche Inhalte anbietet. Das System umfasst Hardware und speziell entwickelte oder angepasste Software, welche zum gemeinsamen Spielen, Lernen und Erkunden in der Virtual Reality einlädt.
„Pico Interactive und SPREE Interactive verfolgen die selben Ziele – beide wollen ihren Kunden das bestmögliche Erlebnis mithilfe der immersiven Eigenschaften der virtuellen Realität bieten, und das auf eine besonders einfache Art und Weise. Wir lieben es, wie Menschen die faszinierenden, unterhaltsamen und spannenden Welten genießen, die VR ermöglicht und freuen uns, SPREE Interactive bei seiner internationalen Expansion zu unterstützen“, sagt Oliver Wöhler, Director Key Accounts Northern Europe bei Pico Interactive.
Während Spree Interactive bisher auf die G2 von HP setzte, soll das Unternehmen zukünftig die VR-Brillen von Pico nutzen, um die Inhalte zu präsentieren. Das familienfreundliche Angebot von Spree Interactive wird von uns durch unser Spiel Tower Tag erweitert, welches euch gemeinsam in einen virtuellen Wettkampf treten lässt.
The Pico Neo 2 Eye is a standalone VR headset built for business. Going by the hardware specifications, it is an upgrade in many areas compared to the Oculus Quest. Plus, it has some unique features too, like electromagnetic tracking, wireless SteamVR streaming, and integrated eye-tracking. In this article, I share a summary of my first impressions.
Cas & Chary Present
Cas and Chary VR is a YouTube channel hosted by Netherland-based duo Casandra Vuong and Chary Keijzer who have been documenting their VR journeys since 2016. In partnership with the channel, Road to VR shares a curated selection of their content.
Pico’s latest VR headset is the Pico Neo 2. The company is mostly focused on the enterprise market, though consumers in Asia can buy the headsets for personal use also, hence the inclusion of wireless streaming of SteamVR content from a PC on the same network.
Hardware Specifications
There are two variants of the Pico Neo 2. Both have the same hardware specs, except the Pico Neo 2 Eye has integrated eye-tracking. The latter is the version I tested.
The Pico Neo 2 runs on Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor and has 6GB RAM. That’s a nice upgrade compared to Quest’s Snapdragon 835 and 4GB of RAM.
Image courtesy Cas & Chary VR
The display has a resolution of 3,840 × 2,160 total (1,920 × 2,160 per eye), which is beautiful and clear. For comparison, the Oculus Quest has a resolution of 2,880 x 1,600 total (1,440 x 1,600 per eye). The Neo 2 only has a single LCD panel though, while the Quest has dual OLED panels. This leads to greyer blacks and software-only IPD adjustment with a range of 55 to 71 mm. My IPD is around 59 mm, so it’s okay for me, but it does feel a little uneasy every time I put the headset on until my eyes get used to it. I prefer a physical IPD adjustment so that the lenses can be best aligned with my eyes.
The lenses and field of view aren’t much different when compared to the Quest. Both are fresnels and have a field of view of around 101 degrees.
Like many other standalone headsets, hidden speakers are built into the headband. If you want to connect your own headphones you can use the 3.5mm audio jack or Bluetooth.
Image courtesy Cas & Chary VR
One feature I like about the Neo 2 over Quest is that it has a storage expansion slot on top of the headset. The Neo provides 128 GB on-board storage, but if needed, you can put in your own SD card for up to 256GB of extra storage.
As for battery life, I was able to get about two hours of playtime while recording at the same time.
Comfort
Image courtesy Cas & Chary VR
The Pico Neo 2 has an interesting head-strap design which doesn’t use Velcro. Instead, it provides you with three adjustment holes and a dial at the back to make the headset tighter.
Image courtesy Cas & Chary VR
The battery is housed at the back, which allows for better weight distribution, thereby improving comfort. The weight of the whole headset is 692 grams. This is a little heavier than the Oculus Quest, but because of the rear-placed battery, the Neo 2 is a lot more comfortable.
Tracking
Image courtesy Pico Interactive
The Neo 2 only has two mono fisheye cameras at the front. Usually, you might get worried about controller tracking loss here, but the Neo 2 doesn’t use optical controller tracking like Quest.
Instead, it uses electromagnetic controller tracking. Without going too techy, this allows for controller tracking without occlusion issues, and it works. I tested this busting some moves in OhShape.
Controllers
Image courtesy Cas & Chary VR
The controllers have a familiar button layout, with joysticks, A+B buttons, trigger, grip, and menu buttons. It has one additional button that functions as the ‘go back’ button in Pico’s software. These controllers are not the most ergonomic and don’t have any capacitive finger sensing, but they work relatively well for most games and apps.
Eye-Tracking
The Pico Neo 2 Eye has integrated eye-tracking by Tobii. This also enables dynamic foveated rendering, which leads to higher quality visuals without using more hardware resources. There were a few eye-tracking demos on the headset, and I found it works well, especially in a demo with a mirror where I was able to compare my avatar with eye-tracking enabled versus disabled. The avatar felt a lot more life-like when I had it on, which makes me feel like this would be a great addition to social VR.
Now, here’s the thing about the Pico headset, it’s primarily built for businesses and not for consumers. So as a consumer in the West, you will likely find content lacking. Even though the headset technically runs on Android, like Oculus Quest, you can’t just sideload Quest content unless developers specifically port their games for the headset. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of developer momentum on that front though, unless a lot more consumers buy the headset.
For now, I think the Pico Neo 2 is mostly interesting for developers who are looking to create apps for enterprise.
SteamVR Streaming
In addition to native VR content made for the headset, Pico Neo 2 also supports streaming SteamVR content from a VR ready PC. If you want to know more about that I did a dedicated video exploring the feature here:
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The Pico Neo 2 is currently the most powerful 6DoF standalone headset out there, and I think that having specifications like leading resolution in a standalone headset and in such a small form factor with wireless content streaming is pretty impressive.
As a consumer, I think it is interesting to look at these specs as this could indicate what’s coming next in future standalone headsets.
Pico Interactive is making its Neo 2 line of standalone headsets available for purchase worldwide.
The base model is $700 while an eye-tracking variant powered by Tobii is $900.
We tried both models at CES in January and while the eye-tracking wasn’t perfect in the early demo, it also worked without calibration and the electromagnetic controller tracking technology was very interesting. The controllers were able to track even when they were behind my back, unlike the kind of tracking used with Facebook’s Oculus Quest.
The Neo 2 headsets run on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 chips, feature an SD expansion slot and are supposed to be able to stream content from a VR Ready PC “over wireless 2X2 MIMO 802.11ac 5G link with a common MIMO 5G router.”
The headsets are primarily pitched toward businesses but may offer an intriguing alternative for some folks looking to step outside the Facebook ecosystem for VR hardware. HTC also offers the Vive Focus Plus priced starting around $800 while Facebook’s Quest starts at $400 but is priced around $1,000 when bundled with features and support tailored toward businesses.
Pico’s Neo 2 Eye version is meant to allow “businesses to gain a deeper understanding of customer behavior, enhance training efficiency, improve productivity and increase overall safety at work,” according to the company. The eye tracking variant is also said to include dynamic foveated rendering to reduce “shading load in some applications” while increasing frame rate. The headsets are 4K resolution with 101-degree field of view and weigh 340 grams without the headband. Those specifications are as stated by Pico and comparing things like resolution and field of view in VR can be especially tricky because there’s no industry standard method for comparing these measurements. Likewise, streaming VR content from a PC to a standalone headset can lead to comfort issues in certain situations depending on a range of conditions including the amount of traffic on your local area network. We’ve requested a review unit from Pico so we can test it out and report back with extended hands-on experience.
With a lot of people working from home and companies looking for new ways of connecting employees remotely, virtual reality (VR) has become a handy tool. While there are numerous headsets available, standalone devices are ideal for their ease of use and flexibility. Today, Pico Interactive has officially launched its latest range to help facilitate enterprise VR engagement via its Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye headsets.
Pico Neo 2. Image credit Pico Interactive
Designed with business users in mind, both headsets feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, 4K resolution, six degrees of freedom tracking (6DoF), two front-facing cameras, a 75Hz refresh rate and 128GB of storage. Thanks to Boundless XR they can also stream content from a VR Ready PC as well as select existing PC VR platforms.
The main difference between the two is the Neo 2 Eye’s built-in Tobii eye-tracking – making the headset 20g heavier. This is ideal for companies wishing to collect user data to enhance training efficiency or improve productivity for example. Having eye-tracking included also means dynamic foveated rendering, improving graphics and battery performance.
To aid comfort over longer sessions, the Pico Neo range has been balanced so that the headsets aren’t front-heavy like Oculus Quest. The rear of the device houses components like the battery for even weight distribution.
Pico Neo 2 Eye. Image credit Pico Interactive
“We believe the Neo 2 line is helping us achieve our goal to deliver the best standalone VR hardware with AAA enterprise service and options for business,” said Henry Zhou, CEO of Pico Interactive in a statement. “Our hardware is quickly becoming the preferred devices for leading companies in medical, training, marketing and location-based entertainment verticals. We’ve partnered with some great companies to not only help professionals in their day-to-day across a variety of industries but also in times of crisis.”
While Pico partnered with Tobii on the hardware side the company also teamed up with Mozilla to bring its latest Firefox Reality web browser to the platform.
The Pico Neo 2 retails for $699 USD while the Neo 2 Eye is $899. As these are enterprise-focused, the headsets will only be sold directly to companies with enquiries place via the Pico website. For further updates on the latest Pico news, keep reading VRFocus.
Pico Interactive today announced the price and availability of both Pico Neo 2 and its eye-tracking variant, Neo 2 Eye.
Both headsets are available for purchase starting today, with Neo 2 priced at $700 and Neo 2 Eye at $900. With its new Neo 2 headsets, Pico is targeting the enterprise market and will be selling both versions direct to companies.
Outside of Neo 2 Eye’s integrated eye-tracking from Swedish firm Tobii, the two variants differ only slightly in specs. Neo 2 Eye is 20 grams heavier and comes with slightly more RAM than the standard version to account for eye-tracking, something that’s tasked with things like foveated rendering, UI selection, and making social VR more of a natural experience, as a user’s eye movement is translated to a virtual avatar.
Image courtesy Pico Interactive
When we tried out Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye at CES 2020 earlier this year, we called it the next best standalone after Oculus Quest for its comfortable thanks to Pico’s inclusion of a rear-mounted battery, serviceable positional and controller tracking, and overall experience.
The headset’s two motion controllers aren’t tracked optically like, for example, Oculus Quest though, instead using tracking based on a NDI’s Atraxa controller platform which fuses data from an on-board electromagnet (EM) and inertial measurement unit (IMU). This essentially allows Neo 2’s controllers to be immune from controller occlusion.
The internet is an intrinsic part of our everyday lives and championing this is the virtual reality (VR) space is Mozilla with Firefox Reality. This week the company has released Firefox Reality 10, adding new features to expand and improve the experience for users.
The big update for Firefox Reality 10 is support for WebXR. Originally planned for 2019, the rollout this week aids improvements in cross-device functionality so that websites can work with a variety of controllers without the need to write individual support. The browser will still work with WebVR – the previous version – as most web content which is VR compatible is WebVR content.
“This will help our partners and developer community gracefully transition to WebXR without worrying that their audiences will lose functionality immediately. We will eventually deprecate WebVR. We’re currently working on a timeline for removing WebVR support,” notes the Mozilla Blog.
A useful feature the general public will notice is the addition of gaze navigation support in Firefox Reality 10. This allows you to control various browser functions without the need of a controller, useful for those who can’t use a controller. Scrolling, selecting and typing are all possible if your controller suddenly stops working.
Smaller improvements include dual-controller typing for those you prefer to use both hands, download management options; better privacy and security when online and DRM video playback.
For the launch of Firefox Reality 10 Mozilla has also announced a partnership with Pico Interactive. The browser will come supplied with all Pico headsets including its new Pico Neo 2 standalone headset. Firefox Reality already supports headsets such as Oculus Quest, Oculus Go and HTC Vive, with Pico now added to that list. The Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye are Pico’s latest enterprise-focused headsets with 4K resolutions, inside-out tracking and 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF) controllers.
Last month saw the company release Hubs Cloud for Amazon Web Services (AWS). Currently, in Early Access, organisations can build private or public social spaces for a range of use cases such as connecting with clients or teamwork, all through their AWS account.
As Mozilla continues to update Firefox Reality, VRFocus will keep you updated.
CES is a strange conference. Across endless aisle after endless aisle a mixture of companies looking for suppliers, distributors, press or investment present wares in hope of making the year ahead one of major success for their business. The conference always presents a roadmap for the future of technology and it has been that way since the ’60s. Seeing the actual pathway ahead, though, is difficult to find through the manufactured hype and “best of” awards.
So I understand the comments we see from folks who want to know what was “good” at the conference who might be confused by vastly differing reports and reactions. Is the reporter able to describe what actually happened in their demo, or is their vocabulary lacking in describing if something went wrong? Do they gloss over issues? Are they sold the promise of the technology if bugs are worked out in a couple more years?
With this in mind, and the joy I know is already delivered so rapidly by Valve Index at home and Oculus Quest in a carrying case in my hotel room, I found myself largely unimpressed by almost all the AR on display at CES and much of the VR too.
“There is no doubt Oculus Quest has shown what the right mainstream consumer device is and while there was nothing immediately that will give the Quest a run for it’s money, I did try the new Qualcomm reference design and some other tech that suggests next year there should be many more all-in-ones that should get consumers and enterprise excited for the near future of VR,” AR and VR investor Tipatat Chennavasin explained in a direct message.
There were still hints of the future at CES 2020, but I need to address the difficulty and cost involved in polishing these technologies to the point of actual usefulness for businesses or mass appeal to consumers. That’s what this post is about.
So read on to understand what’s truly going on in VR and AR.
VR: Advances In Field Of View, Controller Tracking, And Headset Size
VR headsets at CES 2020 demonstrated advances on several fronts. None of these were entirely new, or entirely perfect, but all point to possibilities for the future.
Smaller Headset Designs
Several companies at CES demonstrated pancake lenses which dramatically reduce the physical size of VR headsets. These also generally featured a reduced field of view compared with current designs.
The one I found most interesting was Panasonic’s “VR Eyeglasses” which combined an incredibly light design with an innovative lens separation adjustment. Read my story about the Panasonic glasses.
While Pico showed a similar conceptual design alongside their Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye I didn’t see any physical adjustment for lens separation on their glasses design. So the Pico glasses design made me extremely uncomfortable in a matter of seconds. The distance between my pupils is wider than many and I usually need that adjustment (which is found on both Index and Quest) to have a comfortable experience in a VR headset.
Huawei’s slim VR Glass design was also demonstrated by Nolo combined with their front-facing 6DoF tracking system as an add-on. BoxVR worked reasonably well in this configuration, but the $500 VR Glass plus Nolo kit only tracked my hands while facing forward. Under no circumstances would I be interested in a VR headset in 2020 or beyond that doesn’t let me turn around.
Combining pancake lenses with microdisplays is nothing new of course — eMagin showed this off in 2015 before even the release of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Since then, microdisplay suppliers have claimed that headsets using this kind of display system are just around the corner. But now we’re finally starting to see major consumer electronics companies explore this idea, which may mean it is now closer than ever to being in an actual product.
Expanded Field of View
Some VR headsets at CES 2020, like the nearly $8000 Xtal and all the Pimax systems, featured an expanded field of view compared with headsets like Oculus Quest and Valve Index.
Xtal demonstrated an impressive $50,000 motion simulator with their headset integrated into a flight helmet with its wide field of view and 4K per eye resolution offering incredible sights flying in an F-18 over Dubai. While enjoyable, I noted some distortions at the edges of the lenses.
The Pimax Demo
Pimax frequently makes promises then delays delivering on them again and again. We’ve also heard numerous reports of problems with their hardware ranging from minor to major.
While my colleagues found Pimax demos at previous events, my first Pimax Demo was at CES 2020 and the first time I put a Pimax 8KX on my head I tried Boneworks.
The first thing I noted is that content popped in at the edges of the display a second or two after the rest of the scene. When I mentioned it, the demo (said to be running from an RTX 2080 TI) was switched to parallel processing and that solved the problem, but within about five minutes the right eye started blinking to black every few seconds.
I asked for another 8KX to try with Boneworks and this one didn’t have the problems I saw before. Its wide field of view invited me to look around a little more and the high resolution of the panels were certainly nice, but I found myself also constantly distracted by the significant distortions and bending of the scene at the edges of the lenses — more significant than the distortions I saw with Xtal. My right hand also lost tracking with 8KX, but that’s not entirely unusual for SteamVR Tracking in convention settings.
We’ve heard some people with Pimax headsets artificially reduce the field of view of the system through software adjustment to avoid these distortions while still enjoying a relatively expanded field of view. My colleague Tatjana returned to the Pimax booth later in the CES week to try both the 8KX and Artisan. Aristan is Pimax’ newest headset which ends up priced comparable to Valve Index when you include controllers and base stations. She played Boneworks and Fruit Ninja and found herself sick to her stomach afterward. I, too, left the Pimax booth a bit woozy.
There are Pimax defenders out there and those who will find the expanded field of view a good fit for their strong stomachs and top of the line graphics cards. Indeed, I got sick repeatedly over my 12-hour play through of the Boneworks campaign with Valve Index, but didn’t get uncomfortable as quickly as I did with that Pimax demo at CES.
Surely a wider field of view is something we want in future VR headsets but I remain unconvinced we’ll see it at an affordable price other than from a major platform like Facebook, Valve, Sony, Google, or Apple with large teams developing both optics and eye tracking technologies which could make these devices more comfortable.
Overall, the repeated delays for Pimax products and less than stellar impressions at CES 2020 means that we will keep using words like “claim” to describe plans for products pitched by this company.
Alternative Tracking Systems With Pico
The Pico Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye, priced at $700 and $900 respectively, featured occlusion-resistant electromagnetic tracking. In the Neo 2, for example, I played Angry Birds and was able to pull back the slingshot while keeping my head turned away from the controllers. This is something I can’t do in an Oculus Quest. The Neo 2 also balances weight to the back better than Quest’s front-heavy design.
The Neo 2 Eye demonstrated Tobii’s eye tracking for the first time I’ve seen in a standalone design. Also for the first time I’ve seen, the headset tracked my eye movements without calibration. Typically, Tobii asks each wearer to point their eyes at a few dots at different corners of the scene to calibrate, and I was told that option is still available. The eye tracking without calibration seemed to work alright — I was able to target enemies in a scene by just pointing my eyes at them — but when I pointed my eyes downward it seemed to lose tracking.
I’d need more time with the $700 Neo 2 to say more, but I found it to be the only Pico device I’ve ever tried I might actually be interested in using. However, Neo 2 is only sold to businesses.
AR: Tracking Lacking, Power Problems And Severe Field Of View Limits For Years To Come
During the course of CES my colleague David Heaney described simply something that’s hard to grasp about the market for AR head-worn gadgets: Recognizing occlusion in your environment is to AR what 6DoF tracking is to VR.
This is to say that if an AR headset with see-through optics inserting digital content into your real-world environment cannot reliably understand when a person or object blocks simulated content from your view, the illusion meant to be provided by the hardware is broken. The same is true of VR headsets that do not track the position of your head. For example, if you wear an Oculus Go VR headset and decide to lean forward or stand up, the illusion of VR that you were enjoying is instantly broken.
Discomfort or confusion often follows in either case of severely limited VR or AR, and this represents a death sentence for the hardware. Failing to provide 6DoF tracking, or recognize occlusion, is so uncomfortable, I believe some headset wearers are discouraged from wearing the hardware ever again. Of course, some can learn to work around this limit.
There are fans of Oculus Go who understand its limitation and use the device as a low-cost personal media viewer. Nreal AR glasses, for example, provide a relatively large field of view for a similar genre of content. Still, without a complete and constantly improving understanding of the environment around the wearer, AR glasses like the $500 Nreal (and there were a lot of copycats at CES) are likely to consistently fail this test. Without passing this test walking out in the real world, the appeal of these kinds of AR hardware platforms is minimal to developers, to businesses, and to consumers.
“I would agree that for AR glasses to be truly useful and game changing, they would need not only solid 6DOF tracking (which none of the slim AR glasses I tried had), object occlusion, and object permanence but also really intuitive and reliable 6DOF input which was not also shown,” Chennavasin wrote. “I appreciate the effort being done by all the companies but it still looks like consumer AR is still years away.”
This roadblock for AR relates to two others — power consumption and field of view. Most AR glasses fail to deliver anything close to the amount of digital content to your eyes seen through most VR headset designs. This means that even in HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap 1 — two dedicated AR headsets — you need to move far away from the digital content to get a full view of it and truly enjoy the sense of immersion it brings. Again, some can get used to this limitation but the bulky size and high price of these AR systems ($2,300 for ML1 and $3,500 for HoloLens 2) also prevents them from appealing to consumers.
Lastly, building the most detailed map of your environment typically means on-board cameras need to keep scanning the room to keep the map updated. Using those cameras drains power. One of the key reasons the first generation of phone-powered VR headsets were retired so quickly is because those headsets drained power from a device you needed to last the day for other tasks. So do phone-powered AR systems like Nreal have a shot if they drain phone battery power just like the already-defunct Gear VR, and are used for the same types of content as the $200 Oculus Go starting at more then double the price?
“I agree that power is a (possibly the) key constraint for HMDs. It’s one reason why active depth cameras are not the best solution for occlusion, and we are seeing 6D’s approach of using low power RGB sensors, combined with efficient Neural Net co-processors providing solutions to occlusion,” explained Matt Miesnieks, the CEO of spatial recognition company 6D.ai, in a direct message. “The first low cost AR headsets do need refinement, but we have some visibility into roadmaps, and as that refinement is primarily driven by software, we will see improvements very rapidly.”
With Nreal in particular I saw software that needed significant refinement, both in tracking and stability, to become more usable.
Short Term Potential Advances In AR And VR
CES 2020 confirmed to me what we’ve already seen elsewhere.
Tilt Five’s forthcoming consumer AR system uses a novel retro reflective method delivered as a game board that tunes for both a relatively wide field of view and the specific case of tabletop games. These aren’t glasses you’ll take out into the real world and since you are localized to the game board, occlusion isn’t as much of a concern. Tilt Five cost $879 during its recent Kickstarter for a three-pack of glasses and there are extensions to the board to expand it vertically to provide more height to the augmentation effect. Altogether, Tilt Five represents one of the most promising short-term AR projects we’ve seen. I contacted Tilt Five CEO Jeri Ellsworth and she suggested there may even be a way to charge companion phones, with a a pass through hub, while also powering the glasses.
“We have a huge advantage by containing our system.,” Ellsworth wrote in a message. “We also limit the compute on the device…by doing re-projection and in headset tracking which saves power.”
Shipping a hardware crowdfunding product isn’t easy, so there’s a lot to prove for Tilt Five, but after CES 2020 I’m still left thinking Ellsworth’s company remains the most interesting AR project approaching the consumer market in the near-term.
When it comes to VR, we know the future of the medium features wireless, higher field of view, more tracking of body features in a wider range of conditions and smaller, more well-balanced headsets. But taking all the best pieces of CES 2020 VR systems — Pico’s better balance, Xtal’s wide field of view, Panasonic’s slim design — and then polishing these features, adding on more and supplying them with content is an entirely different level of challenge than preparing an interesting demo.
I’m talking about spending billions of dollars and there are only a few companies positioned to make that sort of investment in the next couple years.
At CES this week, Pico unveiled a pair of its latest standalone VR headsets, Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye. While the company is targeting enterprise customers in the West, the Neo 2 line is eyeing up the same hardware category as Facebook’s Oculus Quest, and doing a solid job at that.
The only appreciable difference between the the Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye is that the latter includes integrated eye-tracking from Swedish firm Tobii. It also comes with slightly more RAM than the standard version to account for eye-tracking as well as a different color scheme; Neo 2 is white and Neo 2 Eye is dark grey. I’ll get to eye-tracking below, but for now let’s talk about the Neo 2 line in general.
Pico Neo 2
The first thing I noticed about my short time with Neo 2 was how comfortable and well-balanced it was—more so than Quest’s front-heavy design—thanks to Pico’s inclusion of a rear-mounted battery, which is incorporated with the headset’s ratchet system with a single knob. An overhead strap is a rubbery affair that has a few fixed length settings, something I wish was instead a bog standard velcro strap for easier and more accurate fitting, but it did the job.
Photo captured by Road to VR
As a company, Pico has been pretty cognizant about weight distribution in the past with its 2016-era Neo headset, which cleverly housed the battery in a Nintendo-style tethered gamepad, so it’s nice to see the company is still focused on keeping one of the heaviest pieces of a standalone VR headset in good balance.
The second thing I noticed was its slightly mushy, albeit entirely serviceable optical positional tracking. To its credit, Neo 2 wasn’t jittery or too lurchy like the company’s previous Pico Neo from 2017, putting Neo 2 in the ‘acceptable’ range for tracking.
My demo didn’t quite live up to Oculus Quest, which by all accounts is the bar to reach when it comes to inside-out tracking for head and hands, but with a useful guardian system and pass-through capability to boot I was mostly satisfied Neo 2’s 6DOF tracking. Granted, the CES show floor’s bright lights and bustling crowd make for a challenging tracking environment, so I’ll have to reserve my ultimate judgement until I see it in a wider range of environments.
By this point, you’re probably wondering whether this really a hands-on piece or a straight-up comparison to Quest, which sells to consumers starting at $400. And you’d be right in saying its a bit of both. The only other real device in the product category currently is HTC Vive Focus Plus, which hasn’t presented much competition for Quest in the West. That said, Pico Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye are set to launch at some point in the West to businesses for $700 and $900 respectively, both with 128GB internal storage. Meanwhile, Facebook charges $1,000 for the 128GB Quest through it’s ‘Oculus for Business’ program.
While there’s important platform considerations not to be ignored, here I’m looking mostly at how Neo 2 compares to Quest from a hardware and capabilities standpoint.
Tracking aside, what did fare remarkably well was Neo 2’s 6DOF controllers. Although it doesn’t have the precision or finessed ergonomics of Oculus Touch, its range of motion and overall reliability seems more than acceptable for the headset’s enterprise-focused use-cases.
Unlike Quest, which uses inside-out tracking to track both the headset and Touch controllers, Neo 2’s controller tracking is based on a NDI’s Atraxa controller platform which fuses data from an on-board electromagnet (EM) and inertial measurement unit (IMU), resulting in a positionally tracked controller that doesn’t suffer from occlusion (but may suffer from sources of EM interference). I didn’t get a chance to put it through the ringer with something like Beat Saber (an easy benchmark for latency and accuracy), but it felt more than acceptable throughout.
Photo captured by Road to VR
The controller’s plastic feels a tad on the cheap side, and button placement isn’t the greatest, although I was glad to see thumbsticks instead of touchpads here. Ergonomically it isn’t anything to write home about; it’s more wand-like and uses a ‘click-to-grip’ button, whereas most headsets have moved toward a ‘hold-to-grip’ trigger.
Integrated stereo speakers are very similar to Quest’s (hidden in the head-band), though I couldn’t get a good feel for them considering the noisy show-floor environment.
On both Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye I played Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs (2019), which I know quite well from my review of the game. Although frame rate wasn’t at all where it needs to be right now on that game in particular, I suspect the Neo 2’s Snapdragon 845 would be more than up to the task after a little bit of headset-specific optimization; in this case it seemed that Pico just grabbed for the nearest game they could to have something to show at CES.
The headset’s Snapdragon 845, which should be capable of running VR apps at an acceptable frame rate for the 3,840 × 2,160 (1,920 × 2,160 per lens) LCD panel, which is clocked at 75Hz. For comparison’s sake, Oculus Quest offers dual panels with a per-lens resolution of 1,440 × 1,600 at 72Hz, driven by the more demure Snapdragon 835.
Image courtesy Pico Interactive
Neo 2 uses a single panel with software-based interpupillary distance (IPD) adjustment, something that Pico says should serve users with an IPD of between 55mm–71mm. My IPD is a smack down the middle at ~63mm, so I didn’t have any issue, but a physical IPD adjustment is greatly preferred for its ability to help a wider range of people get their eyes into the sweet spot of the lens.
Pico Neo 2 Eye
Then there’s the Neo 2 Eye, which integrates Tobii’s eye-tracking tech. I had the opportunity to go through the Neo 2 Eye demo, which was nearly identical to the one I tried at Vive Pro Eye (which also uses Tobii eye-tracking) at CES 2019.
One of the big benefits Pico is trumpeting for Neo 2 Eye is its foveated rendering, which is supposed to improve performance by only rendering the scene at full resolution where your eye is looking, while reducing resolution in the periphery. Unfortunately the lower-resolution in the periphery was more noticeable than I would have hoped for an eye-tracked solution. Ideally you aren’t supposed to notice the edge of the high-resolution center, which should be locked onto the user’s fovea (the center view of the eye which sees in high detail). It was simply too inaccurate a demo for the illusion to work, which is a shame because we’ve seen remarkably solid Tobii eye-tracking in other headsets.
Though the foveated rendering was easily noticeable, it did what foveated rendering is designed to do: allow for higher frame rates and more complex scenes.
To that effect, I was told the headset was using a generalized eye-tracking profile, which was a possible reason why it wasn’t offering the sort of accuracy I’d seen in Tobii’s tech on the PC-tethered Vive Pro Eye. Again, it’s something I’ll have to test in a less hectic environment where we can go through a proper eye-tracking calibration process and see if Pico was truly able to use Tobii’s tech to its fullest on the mobile VR platform.
And while we’re looking forward to testing the Pico Neo 2 in the conditions of our choice, the hardware seems an admirable entry in the 6DOF standalone category. In may not match Oculus Quest in a few categories but businesses looking to get a solid, lower cost 6DOF standalone with slightly more horsepower, resolution, and the option of eye-tracking wouldn’t be remiss by casting a curious gaze at Pico’s latest and greatest.
