15 Years of XR, Through the Lens of Road to VR

https://ift.tt/wI0vHcs

This month Road to VR celebrates its 15th year of bringing you the most important news across the XR landscape. To mark the occasion we’ve put together an interactive timeline of major industry events and how our coverage has evolved over time.

Most Popular Articles & Milestones

Published Articles

When I started Road to VR as a college student back in October of 2011, I had no idea that it would become my full-time career and define the next 15 years of my life. It was well before the clash of trillion-dollar companies posturing to dominate the XR market. It was before the huge range of headset and glasses that consumers and professionals now have at their fingertips. It was even before the Oculus Kickstarter—the spark that reignited the modern XR landscape.

Truthfully, Road to VR started before there was any notion that VR was going anywhere other than where it was: a technology largely thought “failed” and forgotten.

It’s truly wild to think back on where this all started and how much has happened since. To mark the occasion, I turned to the data to help tell the story.

On the left side of the interactive timeline above is a (definitely incomplete) list of industry milestones like headset reveals and launches, as well as the most popular Road to VR article in a given year. On the right is the number of articles we published each year. Click to zoom into any year to see the same data month-by-month.

Road to VR has published more than 10,000 articles over these 15 years, chronicling the risings and fallings, the twists and turns, and the people, products, and companies that have made it all happen. My heartfelt thanks goes out to my colleagues Scott Hayden, Paul James, and all of our contributors and guest authors over the years who have made this journey possible.

And a question for you, dear reader: at what point did you become part of this timeline, and how? Was it the purchase of your first headset? The moment you started an XR company? Or maybe it was some specific game or application that first piqued your interest and led you down the rabbit hole? For some of you, I’m sure, your journey began well before the first year on our timeline, and I’d love to hear about it!

The post 15 Years of XR, Through the Lens of Road to VR appeared first on Road to VR.

from Road to VR https://ift.tt/7VZXtS0
via IFTTT

Pimax Aims to Take on Steam Frame with New ‘Crystal Pro’ Headset, Priced at $1,400

https://ift.tt/AW76YO2

Pimax announced its next major VR headset, Crystal Pro, which not only boasts high-fidelity PC VR streaming, but also some native standalone gameplay too.

Much like Steam Frame, Crystal Pro’s major focus is on wireless PC VR streaming, which Pimax says is built around its own Native Foveated Streaming tech.

PC VR streaming can be done via the included Wi-Fi 6E adapter, although the headset also supports an optional 60G AirLink kit, which uses a two-antenna, 2×2 multi-input multi-output (MIMO) design on the 60GHz band.

Courtesy Pimax

Pimax says it’s capable of sending the GPU’s native, uncompressed image directly to the panels in the user’s focus area, at up to 6 Gbps and under 2ms of added latency.

In addition to PC VR streaming, Crystal Pro runs both OpenXR mobile VR titles and Android applications natively, provided they can run on the headset’s Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 chipset, which is notably the same in the 2019-era Meta Quest 2.

Pimax Crystal Pro is slated to ship sometime next year, priced at $1,399. The third gen 60G AirLink is priced at $599. When bundled together, the whole package costs $1,899. You can reserve Crystal Pro now for a non-refundable $1 fee.

When it does arrive, the box will contain the Crystal Pro headset, two ringed SLAM controllers, a 16,000mAh external battery pack, and a Wi-Fi 6E adapter.

Check out the specs below:

• Optics and display: Aspheric glass lenses paired with quantum-dot LCD (QLED) display panels at 2,880 x 2,880 pixels per eye (~17 million pixels total), a 110° horizontal field of view, 35 pixels per degree, refresh rates of 72/90/120Hz, Mini-LED local dimming with 576 zones per eye, and 200 nits of brightness.
• Eye-tracking: Integrated Omnivision eye-tracking with ten infrared emitters per eye, sampling at 120Hz, used for both dynamic foveated rendering and, with the 60G AirLink kit installed, foveated streaming.
• Tracking: Pimax SLAM 2.0 inside-out tracking, combining four cameras, a motion sensor, and infrared illumination for low-light tracking. A swappable faceplate adds optional Lighthouse base-station support; an optional MR faceplate adds full-color passthrough with LiDAR depth sensing.
• Power and connectivity: No battery is built into the headset; power is supplied by the included 16,000mAh external battery pack. An optional DisplayPort 1.4a cable connection is also available for wired PC VR use.
• Onboard Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen1 (same as Quest 2)
• Comfort: A rigid backstrap design, a magnetically attached facemask and foam interface, adjustable eye relief, three remappable buttons, three microphones, and off-ear speakers, with optional DMAS 2.0 earphones.
• Modularity: Swappable faceplate, backstrap, audio components, and lens inserts.
• GPU Recommend: RTX 3080 / RTX 4070 or above
• GPU Requirement: RTX 2070 or above

Ringless Controllers & Spation Mini-PC

The company also announced its Ringless VR Controllers, which use hand tracking from the headset’s cameras, combined with an infrared-LED and motion-sensor tracking system, in place of the tracking ring used on earlier Pimax controllers.

Courtesy Pimax

It allows for full 6DOF motion controllers for PC VR, but also a standard wireless gamepad for Windows and Steam when clipped together with an included pin.

Each controller includes a TMR joystick, grip and trigger buttons, a menu button, and a linear haptic motor. A 710mAh battery, charged via USB-C, is rated for up to 40 hours of use per charge, Pimax says.

Additionally, Pimax is putting out a Steam Machine-style mini-PC, which it calls the Spation. Here’s a quick look at the specs, although there’s no price or release date yet.

Courtesy Pimax

Compute

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D (or equiv.)
• GPU: AMD RX 9070 XT or Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti
• Memory: 32GB DDR5-6000 (16GB × 2)
• Storage: 1TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD
• Power: 1000W SFX power supply

Connectivity

• 1 × USB4 (Type-C) + 6 × USB 3.2 Gen 2 (Type-A)
• Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, 2.5G Ethernet
• 2 × DisplayPort 2.1 + 1 × HDMI 2.1 + 1 × USB-C DisplayPort 1.4a

In the meantime, you can catch Pimax’s full product presentation here:

The post Pimax Aims to Take on Steam Frame with New ‘Crystal Pro’ Headset, Priced at $1,400 appeared first on Road to VR.

from Road to VR https://ift.tt/v3A19Mu
via IFTTT

This App Lets You Actually Experience Meta VR Glasses’ Field of View Before You Upgrade

https://ift.tt/RkFzHJ8

Meta announced its VR Glasses at Connect last month, which is looking to appeal more to productivity and casual content by virtue of its high pixel density micro-OLED displays. They do however serve up a noticeably lower field of view (FOV), but how noticeable?

As someone who’s gone hands-on with Meta VR Glasses, there’s really no optimal way of describing its FOV. It’s simply one of those “see it to believe it” sort of things.

The company’s tethered standalone, which offers a ~100 g of on-head weight, is coming sometime in Spring 2027. Before you fork over the $1,300 in hopes of an upgrade, you might want to check out its 70-degree horizontal FOV yourself.

To get a good idea, Duuro Plays has put together a WebXR app that you can run on Quest 3 that lets you click between Quest 3’s full FOV and VR Glasses reported FOV, according to Meta. Simply click the link above when in Quest’s own native Internet browser.

More precisely: Quest 3 has a 110° horizontal × 96° vertical, which translates to ~119° diagonal FOV. VR Glasses have a 70° horizontal × 66° vertical, which translates to ~88° diagonal FOV. You can see the full spec sheet and launch info here.

If you don’t have a Quest 3, Meta has also published its own developer tool and provided a short clip of it in action. It’s arguably less useful than seeing for yourself, although this should give you some idea:

Note: Quest 3’s larger FOV is thanks to its comparatively bulky pancake lenses, which are placed roughly 40 mm away from large LCD panels. Along with battery and compute, it makes the whole on-head package 515 g.

Contrary to Duuro Play’s explanation in the link above, Meta VR Glasses also use pancake lens optics, albeit smaller ones coupled with micro-OLED panels, and not silicon carbide waveguides as stated in the FAQ. The creator of the tool has confused Meta VR Glasses with the company’s Orion AR glasses prototype.

The post This App Lets You Actually Experience Meta VR Glasses’ Field of View Before You Upgrade appeared first on Road to VR.

from Road to VR https://ift.tt/sIg6hpr
via IFTTT

PSVR Exclusive ‘Astro Bot Rescue Mission’ Running on Quest 3 is the Latest in VR Mod Explosion

https://ift.tt/84q1P6H

AI vibecoding has caused a veritable explosion in the VR modding scene. The latest to benefit: PSVR exclusive and critically acclaimed platformer Astro Bot Rescue Mission (2018).

The News

VR modder ‘Bigmak94’ has released another mod, this time bringing Astro Bot Rescue Mission to Quest 3 and PC VR.

Also known for their Super Mario Galaxy VR mod, Bigmak94 asked AI agent Claude to modify shadPS4, an open-source PlayStation 4 emulator for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

The modder reveals in a Reddit post that Claude effectively output two versions: a native Quest 3 version you can sideload and play on-device, and a PC VR version you can stream to other headsets. Check it out in action below:

Like all VR mods, users need a copy of the game in question, which needs to be dumped from the console. You can find information on that and how to install the so-dubbed ‘AstroQuest’ mod via the project’s GitHub.

Notably, the mod includes 6DOF headset tracking, native controller mapping, and immersive spatial audio. While the standalone Quest 3 build is considered fully functional and playable, the headset’s mobile GPU is “pushed to its limits,” Bigmak94 says. Native standalone visuals are said to run at lower resolutions and visual fidelity compared to the original PS4 hardware or the PC VR mode.

What’s more, users can also pair and play via PS5 DualSense controller, which stands in for the PS4 controller the game expects, including the proper buttons, sticks, touchpad, motion sensors, rumble and light bar.

My Take

When Sony unveiled PSVR 2 in February 2022, I was fully expecting Astro Bot to get a port, an upgrade—something—if only based on how successful and critically acclaimed the plucky little platformer had proven to be only four years earlier on the original PSVR. After all, it was Sony’s own Japan Studio to develop the game, so it seemed like a shoe in.

Sadly, it never was ported to PSVR 2. And its sequel, Astro Bot (2024), was a flatscreen-only game, underlining just how little Sony cared about bringing one of its most successful VR titles to the new platform. And while Astro Bot isn’t abandonware by virtue of the fact you can still buy it on the PlayStation Store, it’s pretty close.

Now, with the ability for more users to explore the often byzantine process of modding and decompiling games now thanks to AI agents like Claude, Astro Bot is really only the tip of the iceberg. Users have been following this same basic workflow with a number of games, including the recent VR mod for Titanfall 2 (2016). And I can’t wait to see (and play) more.

The post PSVR Exclusive ‘Astro Bot Rescue Mission’ Running on Quest 3 is the Latest in VR Mod Explosion appeared first on Road to VR.

from Road to VR https://ift.tt/r7l5ZKx
via IFTTT