Qualcomm launched its Snapdragon Spaces platform last year for developers to create augmented reality (AR) experiences for the company’s smart glasses. Bringing on collaborators like Square Enix and T-Mobile, the latter has announced its T-Mobile Accelerator and the six participating startups looking to create new 5G-enabled AR apps.
Krikey Minigolf
The participants will use the Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform to develop, test and bring to market new AR products and services, aided by T-Mobile engineers and Qualcomm experts. They’ll be using the first smart glasses to support the platform; the Lenovo ThinkReality A3. The six companies to join the programme are Beem, Krikey, Mawari, Mohx-Games, Pluto, and VictoryXR.
Beem – Specialises in live and on-demand communication in AR.
Krikey – An AR gaming and social media app which launched its first title Yaatra in 2020 and then avatar NFTs in 2022.
Mawari – A Japanese startup providing an AR-focused streaming SDK.
Mohx-Games – A company focused on immersive AR gaming and entertainment experiences.
Pluto – Offers Pluto VR, a shared presence communication app and PlutoSphere, for streaming high-end PC VR games without a PC.
VictoryXR – Immersive education in VR & AR.
“Smart glasses will completely change how we connect and experience the world around us,” said John Saw, EVP of Advanced & Emerging Technologies at T-Mobile in a statement. “With T-Mobile 5G we have the capacity and performance needed to power high-bandwidth, immersive AR experiences for smart glasses, but it’s the developers and entrepreneurs that will bring these new applications to life.”
Lenovo’s ThinkReality A3
These won’t be the only AR startups to join the initiative, more will be added on a rolling basis. The programme is designed to help build an ecosystem of AR experiences as smart glasses become more readily available.
While Qualcomm doesn’t build its own smart glasses, the company does make reference designs like the XR1 AR Smart Viewer for OEMs to utilise as a based model. Qualcomm has also launched in recent months its $100 million USD Snapdragon Metaverse Fund to help finance new developer initiatives.
As further details regarding the T-Mobile Accelerator are released gmw3 will keep you updated.
A new virtual reality application called Pluto wants to be the must-have app for VR gamers, facilitating chat and communication across a variety of games and experiences. You can check it out now free in Early Access.
Pluto is a virtual reality (VR) product that aims to bring people together by contecting them together in virtual space, to provide the same feeling as face-to-face conversation.
The problem with none visual communication, as Pluto VR describes it, is the loss of presence and shared understanding that comes from being able to read each other’s reactions and body language in real time. Subtle movements and facial expressions are key to successfully communication with each other and provide key information such as knowing when to speak. The solution to this problem was to be found in VR and from that idea, Pluto VR was formed and the application Pluto began development.
Following a round of investment seeking last year the company – co-founded by John Vechey, one of the foundering members of PopCap – was able to secure an impressive $13.9 million USD of funding. Led by venture capitalist firm Maveron, the injecting of cash has allowed Pluto VR to continue its work on Pluto and fulfil the goal of bringing communication to VR. Now, with the release of Pluto onto Steam Early Access, it has managed to achieve that goal.
Pluto will allow users to connect with friends while in any SteamVR application, be it an individual or multi-person application. Users will be able to call and chat with friends around the world and bring that sense of presence that comes from face-to-face conversation in the virtual space. Bring a friend or two into a multiplayer videogame and explore the world together. Create artwork while connecting with other people and share your work with ease. All of your contacts are easily accessible at anytime as well thanks to the Pluto Dashboard Overlay, meaning there is no need to exit out of applications and remove yourself from the experience.
Now available on Steam in Early Access, Pluto is available for free and is said to work with any SteamVR application. With support for the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets, Pluto aims to create new ways for users to connect, regardless of physical or vertical location and hardware choice.
VRFocus will bring you all the updates on Pluto as it continues to develop over the coming months.
Pluto, a Seattle based VR startup which reeled in a $14 million Series A investment last year, today launched their unique Pluto application in Early Access via Steam. Instead of functioning as a standalone VR chatroom like many social VR apps, Pluto brings the fabric of social VR to any SteamVR application, allowing friends’ avatars to join you for a chat inside of whatever virtual world your inhabiting.
I had a chance to check out the latest build of Pluto, and used it to join the company’s co-founder, John Vechey, and communications manager, Serah Delaini, for a virtual chat.
Pluto’s desktop interface | Image captured by Road to VR
After installing Pluto through Steam, I launched it and, using a desktop interface, was able to quickly make a new account, configure a handful of avatar options, and then add Vechey and Delaini to my contact list via their usernames. Once we were connected, a call dialogue popped up on my screen; I clicked the Answer button and then put on my headset. Though I found myself standing in SteamVR’s usual ‘void’ space, suddenly the avatars of Vechey and Delaini, represented by their floating head and hands, appeared in front of me. We greeted each other and began talking, similar to a number of other social VR applications out there.
The beauty of Pluto though, is that Vechey and Delaini’s avatars stayed with me no matter which application I was in, instead of requiring that I stay in the same virtual space as them. I was able to paint in Tilt Brush and vault across obstacle courses in Climbey, all while continuing to see and talk to the pair.
For now, I can’t see their environments, nor can they see mine, save for the ability to use a keybinding to send a screenshot of my view, but the Pluto team says they’ve got a few different ideas for how users can let others participants see inside of their current VR application.
Image courtesy Pluto
Pluto is neatly managed from its own menu found inside the SteamVR dashboard, with options to hide the avatars of those you’re talking to (while allowing you to continue to hear and speak), invite new people to the conversation, and more.
Vechey told me that the company is taking a narrow focus; they want to solve VR cross-app communication and do it well, without being tempted to create yet another social VR app which is isolated from other VR apps. Part of that focus has been on optimizing for latency, Vechey said, in order to make the person to person communication feel as natural as possible. The voice chat portion of Pluto is of decent quality, and also positional, and through I don’t have any hard numbers, the back and forth nature of conversation did feel very tight.
With Pluto, you can have virtual chats with people no matter where you are inside of SteamVR, regardless of the application you’re using. Whileit’s not terribly hard to do the same sort of thing with existing voice-chat only solutions, being able to look at the avatars of the people you’re speaking with, and hear their voices actually placed in space rather than coming from inside your head, makes the communication feel a lot more immersive and natural.
Image courtesy Pluto
While most social VR apps, like Facebook Spaces, are trying to bring people into their application and then let people have experiences inside, Pluto is taking the inverse approach. By effectively creating a platform-wide foundation for VR communication, Pluto is filling an important need that the various VR platforms haven’t solved yet. If the company succeeds, it could make VR as a whole feel a lot more interconnected.
But that’s just the start. Pluto’s long term roadmap is even more ambitious and takes an impressively long view. While today, Pluto runs essentially unbeknownst to other VR applications, Vechey says that, in the future, there’s benefits to be had by making applications aware that users are chatting together in Pluto, like allowing the application to communicate with Pluto to use it’s own avatars and voice system, or vice-versa, making the whole ‘VR inside of VR’ communication that much more seamless.
While today Pluto offers little in the way of user to user interaction beyond voice and body language, the company has been experimenting with the first inklings of Pluto-to-app interactions. Serah Delaini, the company’s communications manager, demonstrated how she could send me a Tilt Brush painting through Pluto, which I could open and view inside of my own instance of the game. While many VR applications aren’t designed to handle this kind of sharing, Vechey told me, the company is working with standards groups with the hopes of advancing that discussion, such that objects and information can move more freely from one VR app to another, with Pluto as one possible bridge.
Vechey pointed out that what Pluto does—projects arbitrary information into another reality—is conceptually similar to doing AR inside of VR. Indeed, the company fully expects its solution to expand to AR in the future, and bridge AR and VR together, such that you could have users in a given Pluto chat projected into whatever reality you’re currently in, whether that be your actual reality or virtual reality.
In the long run, Vechey says, the company is building Pluto for a future where virtual people, objects, and environments are fluid, rather than intrinsically linked and quarantined within individual applications. Much like I can take a picture on my smartphone’s camera app and then share it to Facebook—where it can then be downloaded, modified, and then shared again elsewhere—Pluto’s vision of the future of AR and VR is one where we I might be able to join a friend in VR, and then choose to share a 3D model I built in Google Blocks by simply opening the application, picking up the model, and handing it to my friend, who could then take and use that object in whatever reality they are currently inhabiting. Pluto, Vechey hopes, would serve as the underlying fabric making that possible.
Die Zeiten, in denen man online den Sprachchat nur zum Absprechen im Spiel nutzte, sind lange vorbei. Vielen Spielerinnen und Spielern gefällt es, mit Gleichgesinnten zu sprechen, auch wenn sie eventuell gerade nicht im selben Spiel sind. Discord, TeamSpeak und andere Programme erlauben diesen permanenten Austausch, doch in VR lassen sich die Möglichkeiten eines Chat-Tools natürlich aufbrechen und sinnvoll erweitern. Genau hier möchte das heute aus Steam veröffentlichte Pluto ansetzen.
Pluto: Discord für Virtual Reality
Pluto arbeitet als Hintergrundanwendung, in der ihr einen Avatar erstellen und eine Freundesliste anlegen könnt. Das Besondere an Pluto ist: Es ist egal in welchem Spiel ihr euch gerade befindet, ihr könnt eure Bewegungen auf den Avatar im Chat-Room spiegeln und auch Gespräche jederzeit annehmen oder blockieren. Für Gespräche ist es jedoch nicht zwingend erforderlich, dass ihr euren Avatar für die anderen Teilnehmer sichtbar macht.
Im Unterschied zu anderen Social-VR-Anwendungen werdet ihr in Pluto ausschließlich auf Freunde treffen. Ihr müsst die anderen Nutzer gezielt einladen, damit eine Gruppe gebildet werden kann. Wer also neue Menschen und Freunde finden möchte, der ist bei der Anwendung an der falschen Adressen. Dafür bleibt man aber auch von nervenden Trollen verschont.
If I’m not playing a game that I’m supposed to write about then chances are I’m either playing something for fun, talking about games with friends, or thinking about games while I do other things. This goes for both VR and non-VR.
Point being: gaming is a huge part of my life. As a result, I’ve got Discord installed on my PC and phone so I can stay connected to my friends while in and out of games. Often while I’m playing something, even if it’s a single player game, a friend will message me or start a call so we can chat while playing separately.
VR does not have its equivalent of this feature. Or rather, it didn’t until today. With the launch of Pluto, VR is finally getting its own version of a Discord-like social app.
Pluto works by adding itself as a background app that runs alongside SteamVR when you’re using your headset. You make an avatar, curate a contact list, and just go about your business as usual. If a friend sees you online they can start a call — with or without avatars — that runs concurrently with your current VR app.
This means that while you’re gunning down Super Mutants in Fallout 4 VR or getting in some exercise with Soundboxing, Pluto exists as an overlay between your VR world and your friend’s. If you toggle on your Pluto avatar they will see your head-tracked face and hands moving around, mimicking the actions you’re doing in your own VR world, but it’s superimposed into their environment.
In fact, Pluto even adds an overlay icon from the SteamVR menu (right down at the bottom next to Steam, Desktop, and Settings.) This makes it super easy to adjust settings (such as avatar opacity) on the fly while you’re still in your other VR experiences.
Luckily it really, really works well. A well-known blemish on the report card of VR right now is that it’s an inherently isolating experience unless you’re in a dedicated social VR app like VRChat, Rec Room, or even Bigscreen. Now with Pluto, anything can be social.
Worth nothing though is that Pluto is not intended to help you meet or find people in VR — this is to stay connected with people you already know. The developers likened it to a telephone call with avatars, or in other words, you can only dial numbers that you know, hence the contact list. As of now there are no public rooms or ways to just meet people that also use Pluto.
I first tried Pluto over a year ago when it was still in very early Alpha testing. Everything worked well back then, but it lacked polish and some key features — all of which have been added for its Early Access debut today.
But honestly, as cool as Pluto is, part of me thinks that one of the platform manufacturers (such as Sony, Oculus/Facebook, and Steam) are either working on their own more streamlined solution that will emulate these features, or are planning to buy the impressive startup outright. This type of integration feels too crucial to be left to a third-party application like Pluto.
