Metaverse Wearable Device

A Meta-Facebook device on every face?

Metaverse wearable devices ‘could be as big as phones,’ Qualcomm CEO says  in Yahoo Finance

by Julie Hyman·Anchor

Wed, November 17, 2021, 2:57 PM·2 min read

The company whose chips power Facebook’s Oculus virtual-reality headset has already tapped into the metaverse opportunity. Now Qualcomm’s CEO says glasses could eventually be as widespread as smartphones. 

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon knows smartphones well. The company’s main business is providing semiconductors for those devices. As Apple turns toward manufacturing its own chips for its phones, Qualcomm has been working on diversifying its revenue into products and services for the automotive industry, the Internet of Things — and the metaverse. They’re not new entrants into the market. 

“For all of the devices that are being commercially deployed, you have one thing in all of them — which is Snapdragon XR,” Amon told Yahoo Finance Live, referencing Qualcomm’s extended reality version of its main Snapdragon platform. “So we’re very excited about that opportunity, and it could be as big as phones, if you have companion glasses that you carry together with your smartphone.” 

Amon pointed to Facebook’s name change as one marker of success for that company’s XR device: "Even looking at how the company is now called Meta is a reflection of how successful Oculus has been,” he said.

Metaverse products were one aspect of the diversification strategy Amon laid out during Qualcomm’s investor day on Tuesday. He outlined how Qualcomm is working on reducing its reliance on Apple, and is targeting $46 billion in revenue by 2024, including $9 billion from the Internet of Things. ... ' 

Arena Scale VR

Location based experiences.  Games, entertainment and beyond.    At large scale.   Will be be able to broadly participate in large scale games?  Considerable look at what is happening in this article.

The Virtual Arena: The Standalone LBE VR Experience!

This new two-parter looks at the influence of standalone headsets on location-based VR.    By Kevin Williams 

Covering the immersive Out-of-Home entertainment scene for VRFocus, in his latest Virtual Arena column, industry specialist Kevin Williams reports in two parts on the new phase of investment with the growth in “Arena-Scale VR – Standalone”, This first part looking at the influence the new Oculus Quest has had on the deployment of this latest phase of location-based entertainment (LBE) VR, seeing phenomenal growth in interest.

“Arena-Scale VR” – the ability for groups of players to compete in the same virtual world has proven to be a big trend in the latest phase of commercial VR entertainment. Offering a unique element for this VR application, totally unachievable from a consumer perspective. Currently, the popular trend was for backpack PC’s to be employed to supply the virtual experience – but with the advancements in technology a new category has emerged with “Arena-Scale VR – Standalone”.   ... 

Employing standalone headsets with positional tracking, and enough processing power to create compelling content, one benefit is the ability to wirelessly communicate with each other, and in some cases additional peripherals and operator management screens; removing the cost and complexity of the backpack PC solutions." 

Oculus and Eye Tracking

A natural next step, for both games and more serious applications.  In Engadget:

Oculus now owns an eye-tracking company
The Eye Tribe's visual tracking technology could be in the next Oculus Rift.   by Sean Buckley  .... 

More Useful Virtual Realities

These kinds of developments made me think of virtual worlds, which also attempted to set up alternate worlds you could experience.   So they are necessarily not only games, but places you can meet or even just hang out.  And they need to be better than a very good video conference room.    And you can then ask:  how do they need to be better?   By including a manipulable co-reality? By allowing new kinds of interactions?    Still unconvinced of easy business value.  Social value is more adaptive.

Oculus just made Gear VR way more social with voice chat and virtual living rooms
A new way to hang out with friends in VR    by Nick Statt

Oculus wants people to think of virtual reality as more than a solitary, gaming-centric experience. To that effect, the company today is launching two new features for the Samsung Gear VR headset that it hopes will encourage users to interact with one another in a virtual hangout. The first is called Parties, and it’s a simple chat system — much like game chat for PlayStation or Xbox — that lets you jump into a voice call and talk with others while wearing the headset. The second feature is called Rooms, and it’s an entirely new way of interacting with others in VR.  ... " 

Apple Continues Moves in VR

Continued interest by big players in Virtual and Augmented reality moves.  Lets see the big workplace applications.

Apple continues hiring augmented and virtual reality experts
By Jacob Kastrenakes 

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been hinting at Apple's interest in augmented and virtual reality all year, and it seems that interest continues to grow. Business Insider spotted two people who were hired by Apple over the summer after working at a pair of the biggest names in field: one at Oculus VR, the other at Magic Leap.

The two hires don't mean much on their own, but they suggest that Apple is continuing to invest in AR and VR research with the goal of eventually putting out a product. In January, the Financial Times reported that Apple already had "hundreds" of people working on AR and VR, though those employees were said to have come from acquisitions of smaller companies. Their goal, according to the report, was to eventually build some kind of headset. ..... "

Augmented Reality in the Real World

As Virtual Reality Grows, Augmented Reality Hits The Spotlight

With the excitement growing as Facebook's Oculus and HTC's Vive hit homes, the tech industry has begun to pay close attention to the sleeping giant of Augmented Reality.

" ...  AR takes a user's reality and "augments" it, adding to or changing the world that the user can see. Many companies have emerged in the space, including Magic Leap, which has raised over $1.1 billion in funding despite relative secrecy and Meta, which recently debuted a headset that augments the world around you, but requires a PC connected to work and is yet to ship. ... " 

Social Oculus App Brings Group Interaction

New Alpha social version of the Oculus VR:  Could this be used to test kinds of social behavior?  Social as a new form of augmentation?   Physical space and layered social spaces.  What are the rules of behavior?

Streetview in Virtual Reality

Not available yet, but the idea is interesting, consider all of the potential Streetview data,  A means to dive into maps virtually.    And then add augmentation for a particular application.   In VRFocus: 

" ... With the launch of Oculus’ software development kit (SDK) 0.7 at the end of August, developers have been quickly updating their virtual reality (VR) projects to ensure compatibility. StreetView VR, the Oculus Rift supporting app that lets users view Google’s street view in VR has added support to the beta software.  ... "  

Trying Again in the Metaverse

If has been quite a long time since I heard the term Metaverse.  Yet I attended the building of a huge IBM Second Life complex as a representative of our enterprise.   Shopped in the aisles of a virtual store. Interacted with abstract data as I floated through clusters of learned attraction. (Right)

Virtually walked through the halls of a building we constructed that directly mirrored the physical building I worked in.  Had meetings about doing focus groups with the virtual inhabitants.   Talked to a number of startups there.

It peaked at a million users. But then it seemed every one lost interest in navigable, 3D spaces that mimicked the real world.  Focused artificial worlds, like a 3D CAD system are common.  Yet we don't expect them to allow us to stroll through them with our colleagues, or set up social camp there.

For a business/social example, see Fidelity's Stockcity.

Second Life still exists.  And, they say, is profitable.  An interesting article says they have figured out how to make it and other virtual worlds successful.  New companies involved.  And new technologies to deliver the experience, like Oculus.  And managers of super social networks like Facebook.

Will they achieve really immersive experience that include rich communications with others?  and create profitable businesses.

Feeling Virtual Reality

In TechDirt: An area we examined to communicate feelings like 'softness' to consumers.    This is a Kickstarter thing, don't know how well it works, but worth an examination.

" ... True virtual reality — the kind we've been envisioning now for decades — is inching ever closer to, well, reality. But while most of the focus is new devices that let you see a virtual world, there are some people out there working on the other senses to round out the simulated experience. This week, we're looking at Gloveone, a haptic feedback system that wants to do for touch what devices like the Oculus Rift are doing for sight. ... " 

Shopping in Virtual Reality

Spent some time looking at how people might shop using virtual reality.  In particular was part of a retail innovation group that looked at Second Life for this.  That broader 3D environment there did change the result. Our outcome was that VR, as it existed then, did not promote shopping for the CPG categories we examined. But should the virtual environment mimic live retal?  Clearly for some domains, especially those that integrated complex 3D interaction, or information,  the outcome would be different. Retailwire examines this in a discussion.   Worth a yet closer look.  Glad to share informally.   Any other reactions?

" ... According to Walker Sands' "2015 Future of Retail Study," more than a third of consumers would do more online shopping if they were able to try on a products virtually using a device like Oculus Rift. What do you think the arrival of virtual reality technology will mean for e-commerce? How will it affect physical stores?  ... " 

Virtual Reality Emerges

Peter Fader, Wharton Marketing Prof, and others weigh in on the wearable-enabled, virtual reality marketplace.   Lengthy detailed piece.  Will this finally make them real as a new kind of interface?   One recommendation is: Emphasize business applications to avoid making them appear as a joke.   I agree:  Focus.  The general applications will follow if they make sense.

" ... A slew of new product introductions indicate virtual reality technology is coming into its own — but it’s a sector that is still waiting for a breakthrough product to win over consumers.

Following several product entries into the emerging field of virtual reality from companies like Samsung, Sony, Canon and Facebook’s Oculus Rift project, Microsoft recently launched the HoloLens, an augmented reality headset, and HoloStudio, a software development kit for the product, in hopes of jump-starting a market that could impact areas from gaming and entertainment to collaboration and business. ... " 

Fidelity Labs Develops StockCity

Have examined a number of methods that use realistic spaces to represent abstract data. Never found these methods that useful beyond attracting curiosity.  Here another example by Fidelity. With the latest technology:

" ... Fidelity isn't the first company to launch an interactive virtual city app, but it's the first to create one in which the city is built entirely out of stocks. StockCity, developed by Fidelity's research and development think tank Fidelity Labs, is a data visualization app that recreates investors' portfolios as a 3-D city.

StockCity was developed for virtual reality headset Oculus Rift, and it's also compatible with the Google Chrome Web browser. In StockCity, each stock in a portfolio is a skyscraper, and the height of each tall building is determined by its closing stock price. Buildings are clustered together in neighborhoods that represent market sectors.  .... " 

See also, Fidelity Labs.

Virtual Reality Boom Beyond Gaming

In Ars Technica:  For a while there it seemed like VR was being used much less outside of gaming. Now the tide seems to have turned.   This article is rich in surprising examples. " ... Considering that the new wave of virtual reality doesn’t even have any consumer-facing hardware products at the moment, it’s pretty incredible how many different companies and industries are already exploring the medium’s potential. It might be gaming that convinces millions of people to put a VR headset in their house, but it could very well be these non-gaming uses for virtual reality that turn the devices into what Oculus is already calling “the final compute platform.” .... " 

Newspaper Goes to Virtual Reality

A curious example of how newspapers are looking at using virtual reality.  Look at the tag link below  for examples about how we experimented with this.   I have not though, been in Second Life for a number of years.  It has not led to the establishment of useful virtual spaces in VR as yet. The gaming angle in VR has not combined well with serious business applications.

" ...  Gannett (GCI), publisher of USA Today and dozens of regional publications, has released its debut report made specifically for the Oculus VR headset: an interactive view of a farm in Iowa designed to accompany a series of newspaper articles being published by the Register this week. It’s the very start of what will likely be a wave of journalistic experiments with virtual reality in the next few years, and this project shows that there’s still some thinking to be done about what news organizations should be trying to accomplish in the medium. ... " 

Military Glasses

In Defense One, an example of 'military glasses'.  How are these different from Google Glass?   First with more of an emphasis on usable, task oriented augmented reality.

" ... The glasses, called simply the X6, are from San Francisco-based Osterhout Design Group. They look like the lovechild of Google Glass and the Oculus Rift, providing more information to the wearer than the small window on Google’s much-maligned headset but not obstructing vision like the Oculus Rift. (Admittedly, for spy glasses, they lack a certain subtlety.)

At a recent innovation symposium at Defense Intelligence Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., Bobby King, vice president of special projects for Osterhout, demonstrated how the headset provides situational intelligence.  Defense One looked through the glasses at a static, two-dimensional map and suddenly structures appeared in three dimensions related to objects of interest. King confirmed that the map was just a regular print of a satellite photograph. With that particular app, the glasses send information to a server that then processes the image against others to determine the location depicted. The glasses then present data from the database visually in the form of structures, special instructions, clues, etc. The view was smarter and more useful than what you would see with Google Glass, but didn’t get in the way of the user’s ability to actually see, like a clunky virtual reality headset. ... "  

Virtual Reality Visualizing Big Data

Beyond eye candy, and permitting in space interaction.  This has been done before, but not very usefully.   See some of our minor investigations.  Now another approach:

In Silicon Angle: " ... the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have the answer. We recently reported on its experiments with Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headgear recently acquired by Facebook, which are a fine example of the way VR can help us to better understand data. DARPA has modified Oculus Rift in such a way that futuristic cyberwarriors can visualize three-dimensional network simulations – in some cases with the goal of better targeting them for attack..... " 

Good background piece.  Now does this really add significantly to the modes of interaction and pattern discovery?

Oculus Rift

In Gizmodo, continued raving for Oculus Rift.   Here a hands on look.  Still I don't think that most people would be comfortable with the 'strap a screen to your head', extreme 'no hands', 'artificial context' environments.   Our own experiment with much earlier ideas led right to vertigo.  But I these an eventual future? I think they are.

" ... So the Oculus Rift is fantastic. If you've used it in its original incarnation, you know that it's incredible. It's virtual reality done better than you've ever seen it before. It's revolutionary. And it's nothing compared to what's coming next. I mean Oh. My. God. Dubbed Crystal Cove, the newest model of Oculus isn't meant for consumers. It's also not just the 1080p upgrade that's been floating around (though it does have a glorious 1080p panel). It's a lot more than that. ... " 

Drone with Oculus Support

IEEE Spectrum reports on a natural progression, the interaction of physical devices, like drones, and Augmented reality interfaces, like the Oculus Rift. display.   The connection between our senses and mobile sensory devices.  A way of extending your mobile range, with many of the issues about privacy and regulation.  We will see more of this developing.  With video and many images.

Facebook Zuckerberg Interview on VR

In Wired:  In particular the mention of virtual reality.  Thought leaders can drive fringe technologies very quickly to millions of people. Its hard to move them otherwise.   Talking about the Oculus acquisition.

 " ...  What made you feel that — just like you were saying a couple years ago that Facebook should be “mobile first” — the company should eventually be “virtually reality first”?

ZUCKERBERG: When you put on the headset and you try it out, you really do feel like you’re there within seconds. Then you realize that the system that’s delivering this experience is using commodity hardware with cellphone screens, and can be manufactured for a low number of hundreds of dollars, and this can be in a lot of people’s hands. It’s something that people talked about for a long time, but I think now the economics and performance are finally there where this could work.  ... "