This Week in ARExperience
January 20, 2022 by Jon Jaehnig
- BRCvr, the outfit that has been bringing Burning Man to life in AltspaceVR during the pandemic, has announced the first ever BRCvr Film Festival. The festival will include live viewings of three immersive films followed by question-and-answer sessions with the artists, as well as a pre-party and additional talks by the creators behind BRCvr.
- GigXR announced a partnership with Permanente Health Care Ventures, a subsidiary of Northwest Permanente P.C. The partnership will begin with a three-module mixed reality course on dealing with cardiac emergencies.
- Hardware-agnostic WebAR platform 8th Wall has announced a partnership with “advertising supply and audience targeting solution” Ericsson Emodo.
- High-end headset manufacturer and enterprise software provider Varjo announced the rollout of a VR cloud streaming feature to select clients as part of the ongoing pre-market phase of their recently announced Reality Cloud platform. The service drastically reduces the onboard computing power and memory space required to run XR software by supporting the experience on remote servers.
- The exploration and adventure game Garden of the Sea, action shooter Final Space VR – The Rescue and VictoryXR’s Frog Dissection Simulator are among new titles on the Quest store.
- Speaking of Quest, AR Insider estimates that as many as over 2M Quest units may have sold over the holidays bringing the total Quest (1 and 2) count at least close to 10M. The estimate is based on new downloads of the Quest app required to set up devices and use some social features. Meta itself has been famously opaque in terms of exactly how many units have actually shipped.
- As a final note on Meta, the company’s own Vivek Sharma told Digiday that Meta’s three virtual worlds, one for live events, one for work, and one for socializing and games, will one day become more closely integrated and will become available on more devices.
- Magic Leap’s highly anticipated second-generation mixed reality headset will be made available to select healthcare companies prior to its market-release.
- Ready Player Me put out a year-end report that concluded with teasers of upcoming projects for the year ahead including more customization options, monetization tools for creators, custom Ready Player Me NFTs, and more.
A lot of the trends from this week’s news are likely to turn up again if you follow this publication for more than a few cycles. After all, Magic Leap and Varjo both expanding product availability in beta programs only means a better product when those devices and services open up to more consumers.
There was also a lot of news (and speculation) from Quest who right now, for better or worse, are pretty much the entire consumer hardware market, and they make up a large portion of the consumer experience market as well. We’ve heard Zuckerberg talk about interoperability and cross-platform experiences before, but to hear someone at Meta actually talking about opening up Horizon virtual worlds is definitely thought provoking.
Speaking of interoperability, keep in mind that Ready Player Me is doing with NFTs what a lot of people say will one day be the whole future of the technology – cross platform asset integration. As the buzz around NFTs has gotten greater more and more game designers are coming out of the woodwork to say that cross-platform assets just aren’t possible, but that doesn’t stop Ready Player Me from bringing us that future with a Metamask integration.
