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December 23, 2021 by Jon Jaehnig

There’s no shortage of quality XR news this week. Which is good, because ARExperience is taking a break for the holidays next week. So, soak in all of this week’s quality content, and we’ll see you in 2022.

• The XR Research Awards announced that they have received an “incredibly overwhelming” eighty-nine proposals but that they expect to announce winners within the week. The organization provides funding and support to researchers studying the intersection of XR and human behavior.

• FIFA began testing “Video Assistant Referees” or “VAR.” The software tracks players on the field and uses augmented reality to help referees make more accurate calls on the field. A similar system is used in sports to illustrate calls that have already been made, but using the system to make the initial call is a new move.

• The AltspaceVR comedy show Failed to Render announced a special holiday show featuring Israel Garcia and Al Gonzales as well as host Kyle Render. The show, “Polar Wonderland” is taking place live in AltspaceVR from 10 p.m.EST to midnight on Christmas night.

• Meta and VictoryXR announced that they will create 10 “Metaverse Universities” in the form of digitized college campuses for spatialized remote activities.

• VR gaming platform Rec Room announced that it has closed a $145M funding round.

• Video calling app Rakuten Viber has released analysis of the use of their AR lens feature since it was launched in partnership with Snap earlier this year. The analysis consists of information amalgamated from the 7.3M users that have experimented with lenses since June. Among the findings:
  
  
  • Women are more likely to use AR, making up 56% of Lens users despite being only 46% of Viber users. Female users were also slightly more likely to capture and send media within the app than male users.
  
  
  • While app use generally, and AR use in particular, will often be associated with younger users, the demographics using Viber AR effects turn this on its head with the largest number of users being 30-40 (23%) followed by 40-60 (18%) followed by the under-17 crowd (13%).

• Speaking of Snap, the camera company has continued its ongoing collaboration with the LA County Museum of Art with a new lens inspired by the Obama administration while drawing attention to other black artists and activists. One of the earliest SnapxLACMA lenses has also become the first AR art piece to become a part of LACMA’s permanent collections.

The major takeaway this week is that almost all of the news is strictly based around social experiences. No big hardware, no pure tech plays. Snap, Rakuten Viber, Rec Room, Meta, AltspaceVR, all social apps doing what they do best.

That’s not to overlook the first two articles on our list this week. Both of these points highlight how XR is working its way into age-old institutions like sports and education. We tend to look at XR as something entirely new. In many ways it is, but in most ways it is only empowering us to do the things that already make us human.