The Consumer Electronics Show 2020 is now over, and to be honest, I wasn’t expecting
much news for Virtual Reality.
However, there was more news than I hoped for, and some of them made me pretty excited
about the future.
So I wanted to share that excitement by making a video on my favorite news.
Hello, VR enthusiast!
My name is Cas, and I welcome you to another DIVE INTO VR episode where we share interesting
discoveries.
If you like to see more videos like this one, please subscribe if you haven’t yet.
And check out this playlist right here.
Now, grab something to drink, sit comfortably on your chair, and join me beyond reality.
Before we start, I wanted to share something about the channel first.
Last year, we started a collaboration with RoadToVR; you probably know them already.
They are a well-known independent news publication dedicated to the consumer VR industry.
We’ve been big fans of their work for years, so we are honored to work with them more closely.
We’ve been doing it for a while already, where they share a curated selection of our
content, and we do the same.
You can do a quick search for Cas & Chary on their website, and you’ll find some of
our articles and videos there.
I’m mentioning it now because we weren't actually able to go to CES2020 this year
But Road To VR was there and with their permission, we are using their photos in this video
and giving our own impressions. But if you want more information on these highlights then I highly
recommend reading Road To VR's articles because they are usually super detailed.
And now let's get started, finally!
Let’s start with some futuristic-looking VR viewers.
These are the Panasonic VR glasses.
And these are the Pico VR glasses.
Both are supposed to be VR viewers, both lightweight and with 3-degrees-of-freedom tracking.
Since they are prototypes, we can’t be sure what these glasses are for yet, but both are
probably designed to be tethered to a phone for casual VR experiences.
Since these glasses are prototypes, take the following specifications with a grain of salt.
The Panasonic VR glasses have micro OLED panels of Ultra HD resolution that are capable of
High Dynamic Range.
HDR should give better-looking light effects, and according to the company, they are the
first ones that support HDR in a VR headset.
It has earbuds too that comes out of the sides and in the center is an IPD adjustment.
The Pico VR glasses have two LCDs of 1600 x 1600 pixels in each eye and a 90Hz refresh
rate.
These glasses come with one 3DOF controller.
So why am I excited about these VR glasses even though they use 3DoF tracking?
Plus before we could use these as gamers, they also have challenges to overcome.
Like how do we play fast-paced VR games without these glasses falling off our heads?
And how would you add cameras for 6DoF tracking in these slim designs?
I think that while these products are not perfect, this is only the beginning, and this
shows the possibilities for the future.
I personally find these glasses beautiful; they remind me of Steampunk styles, so I hope
that the VR industry will eventually go in this direction.
So what do you think?
Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to leave a like if you agree with me!
Let’s move on to the second highlight of this list.
NVIDIA announced a new feature called VRSS, which is short for Variable Rate SuperSampling.
For those that don’t know what SuperSampling is.
Without going too technical, SuperSampling is a way to improve visual quality of your
VR game dramatically with software.
Both Oculus and SteamVR have tools for SuperSampling which are already being used by VR enthusiasts.
Using SuperSampling does require a lot of tweaking per game, and your graphics card
needs to be able to handle it.
But with VRSS, NVIDIA provides a way to increase image quality without reducing much performance.
This is only for gamers running the newest RTX graphics cards though.
And not all games have been accepted by Nvidia yet.
These are the games that currently support VRSS.
What’s different here is that NVIDIA uses a Foveated Rendering technique.
They only sharpen the center of the image while anything outside of this region is untouched.
This is because NVIDIA says that viewers tend to focus their attention mostly on the central
region of the screen for VR anyway.
This technique makes it possible to efficiently use any remaining GPU processing power without
wasting it.
So if you have an RTX card, you can use VRSS immediately by updating the Nvidia drivers.
After that, you can enable the feature in the Nvidia Control Panel under
‘Manage 3D Settings’ Then the ‘Program Settings’ tab
Then click here to choose your game, scroll down and turn on the VRSS setting here.
Nvidia recommends choosing the ‘Adaptive’ setting.
Next on the list is the TEGway’s VR Thermal Haptics dev kit.
This is a haptic feedback accessory that allows you to feel hot and cold temperatures.
During CES, TEGWay showcased flexible arm and wrist sleeves, and patches on the headset
around the forehead area, which can generate different temperatures based on electric current.
The user would be able to sense heat, chill and pain along with the content.
Whether this product will ever be something we will use at home is hard to say, since
it will need to be adopted by a lot of people before it is viable for the consumer market.
That will probably never happen if these products stay separate expensive accessories with not
much content to support them.
But if you’ve watched the movie ‘Ready Player One,’ then you know why I am enthusiastic
about these kinds of technology.
The more I see companies making awesome products like these, the more I believe we will be
still alive to see a future with full haptic feedback suits that are just normal VR accessories
as controllers are now to our headsets.
Fourth on the list are the Dexmo Haptic gloves.
These are some futuristic-looking gloves!
The Dexmo Haptic Gloves are according to the company the world’s first commercialized
lightweight, wireless, dual hand force feedback glove.
The motors can generate force feedback at a maximum of 5 kilograms.
So using these gloves, your hands and fingers are tracked, and you get vibrational feedback,
but not only that!
You also get force resistance, making it possible for you to feel the difference between material
surfaces.
I’m guessing they have the same kind of concept as we’ve explained in this video,
where we tried the Senseglove, except the Senseglove is not wireless.
So the Dexmo Haptic gloves definitely sound impressive.
If you haven’t seen this video yet, then make sure to check it out for more information
about how force feedback gloves work.
A link is in the description.
Last on the list are the new Pico Neo headsets.
The Pico Neo 2, and the Pico Neo 2 Eye.
Both are standalone VR headsets with 6DoF tracking.
You could say they are an upgraded version of the Oculus Quest, although Pico does not
try to compete with Oculus since they focus on enterprise only.
But it is certainly still interesting to look at the specifications of these headsets.
The biggest difference between the two Pico headsets is that the Neo 2 Eye comes with
integrated eye-tracking.
Both headsets have one 75Hz LCD panel with 4K resolution.
Both run on a Snapdragon 845 processor, and they feature inside-out 6DoF tracking and
they come with two 6DoF controllers.
I also like that the headset is well-balanced, because of the battery mounted at the back.
One intriguing aspect of the Pico Neo 2 is its tracking.
It uses electromagnetic anti-occlusion positional tracking, which means that you won’t lose
controller tracking even if you put your controllers outside the headset’s camera viewing range.
I had the chance to try out the Pico Neo 2 and played Drunkn Bar Fight.
I was mostly testing the tracking, and I thought it was impressive; it worked well for me.
I think it would be interesting to see this tracking technology tested in other more fast-paced
games to see what it is like.
Unfortunately, Pico focuses on enterprise, so as a consumer, I wouldn’t recommend getting
it.
Because the Pico Neo 2 has its own content store, and while there are some titles on
there that you might know, you won’t be able to access the Oculus store and play Oculus
Quest games on it.
Although you can probably sideload apps on it, but that’s another story.
So here we have it.
Let me know what you think about these VR highlights and let me know what your favorite
CES 2020 news was - it doesn’t have to be something on this list.
Now a special thanks goes to our Right-Hand Patrons.
Shout out to artArmin and please do check out his VR game called Board Games VR!
The name says it already what you can do in there.
Another shout out goes to BaxornVR and his VR YouTube channel!
Yes, check it out and everyone, thank you so much for watching and see you all in the
next video.
As always VR on!
[Bloopers]