Like every year in January, we got CES – one of the most
influential tech events in the world. I always look forward to it because many
VR and AR companies always keep their mouths tightly shut UNTIL the event.
I’ve been covering these VR/AR highlights ever since 2016 and every year, as our industry grows,
the news seems to get more and more exciting. This year as well, so today,
I’ll share the most interesting highlights!
I’m Cas, and this is your channel for free content about XR. All I
would love from you is to smash that like button. And now, join me beyond reality.
What is this thing that came out of nowhere? This is Unlink VR,
and apparently, it can make any cabled PC VR headset wireless. Yes, you heard that
right. This means we could make the Valve Index or even the HP Reverb G2, wireless.
The company even claims they can do this at lossless quality,
full 4K, and no compression and latency. What they use is laser beam transmission,
which is 40 times faster than Wi-Fi and supports future bandwidth demand. So it
should work with any VR headset, and it should be ready for next-gen VR.
This is pretty exciting! If it REALLY works. This kind of tech is challenging to make. Hence,
we haven’t seen many companies try it. And Unlink VR was showing this off during CES,
but as far as I could tell, people couldn’t test it and could only see it work through a video.
So take this with a grain of salt until we see some actual tests.
But they explained how it works. You’ll get a transmitter that’s connected to your PC via
DisplayPort and USB-C. This transmits hi-speed lasers containing the VR data, and a special
laser steering system directs this to the receiver sensors. These sensors are attached to the headset
or player’s body. Interestingly, multiple sensors can be placed to ensure data flow
doesn’t get interrupted. The player will also carry a receiver hub that attaches to your belt.
This hub converts the optical signals from the sensors on the player’s head or body back to
the DisplayPort. It also contains a battery that supplies the headset with power via USB.
This looks a bit like the HTC VIVE wireless solution, but its tech is different. The
VIVE solution uses WiGig. Unlink VR says that their light-based tech is better than WiGig as
theirs benefit from being more persistent, reliable, and have a higher range. Plus,
WiGig has no room for improvement for next-gen VR. This is indeed true with the VIVE Wireless Adapter
as it’s not able to take advantage of the full resolution of the newest VIVE Pro 2.
Back to Unlink VR, I am skeptical until I see it working, but hey, nothing wrong with
hoping, right. I’ll definitely reach out and see if they can send a review unit.
Do you think this tech would work? Let me know in the comments below.
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bHaptics is the manufacturer of these VR haptic suits
that supports most major VR headsets and are compatible with over 100 games and
apps. This is why it’s so exciting that they are also coming with these VR haptic gloves!
This is the TactGlove. The first consumer-friendly haptic gloves designed to use with compatible
camera-based hand tracking systems like Meta Quest and Ultraleap’s Leap Motion.
The gloves include little motors that give (I quote) “delicate and sophisticated feedback”
(end quote) and it should last about 4 hours on a full battery. They’re made of stretch fabric
and there is a set of inner gloves that can be easily washed between uses. There will be
three sizes at launch: medium, large and extra-large and It will be available at
299 dollars per pair, which is really not a bad price for haptic gloves. Developer
kits will start shipping in Q2 of this year, followed by an official consumer launch later.
It’ll also work with the bHaptics SDK, like the suits, so this is good news as this means the
developers who already work with them should have an easier time implementing these gloves,
and for us, it means we’ll actually have games to play with them – unlike the
enterprise haptic gloves we’ve seen around. I’ll for sure be reviewing these gloves this year.
Now, remember this Steampunk-looking Panasonic VR glasses? I covered it during my CES 2020
highlights and back then, they were still concept glasses with no release date. But now, 2 years
later, they’re actually releasing! They’ll come from Shiftall, Panasonic’s subsidiary, who are the
makers of this SteamVR compatible tracking system, so they’re not unfamiliar with the VR space.
This new lightweight VR headset is going to be called the MeganeX
and it’ll be compatible with SteamVR. It’ll support 6DoF with camera-based inside-out
tracking. It will include OLED microdisplays with this [Show on screen: 2560x2560] per
eye resolution at 120Hz. There will pancake optics in there,
and it will support DisplayPort alternate mode on USB-C or you can use DisplayPort plus USB 2.
Interesting specs. But what also excites me, is that we seem to move towards
a new era of tiny, comfortable, and compact VR glasses that actually look good. As you can see,
the MeganeX will be worn like glasses as it has a foldable frame,
this even includes built-in speakers, and it will only weigh 8.8 ounces (250g) without a cable.
Shiftall says they are focused on SteamVR compatibility, but
it’ll also include the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 chipset. It’ll be available for consumers
sometime in Spring this year at an estimated price of 900 US dollars.
HTC VIVE also came with something new, a VR wrist tracker for advanced hand tracking for
the VIVE Focus 3. As the name suggests, it will be worn on the wrist and is tracked with the
Focus 3 inside-out tracking system. Kinda in the same way as to how the controllers are tracked.
HTC says your hands are still tracked even if the tracker is out of the camera’s view because
it uses high-frequency IMU data and an advanced kinematic model. This allows for hand tracking,
even while using objects like gun controllers. For example,
they’ve shown this with a NERF gun, and it indeed,
looks like it tracks a lot more accurately than other hand-tracking tech out there currently.
As the Focus 3 is focused on enterprise and is very expensive at 1300 dollars,
this is likely only interesting for businesses like location-based entertainment venues.
The VIVE Wrist Tracker will be available starting early 2022
at 129 dollars in the US and at a later stage to Europe and the UK.
Now, let’s also talk about some cool AR announcements. The first one is a short one but
during Qualcomm’s press conference, they announced a partnership with Microsoft. They’ll be working
on developing custom AR chips to enable a new wave of power-efficient, lightweight AR glasses to
deliver rich and immersive experiences. Further, in the software department, Microsoft Mesh, the
company’s foundation for building multi-user XR applications, will be integrated with Qualcomm’s
XR development tools called Snapdragon Spaces. I think this is pretty exciting as these are
two major tech giants building for XR together. So I can’t wait to see what
they’ve got in store for us. Let’s hope for consumer stuff, too *fingers crossed*
AR glasses are also coming fast nowadays. They used to be only for enterprise,
but more and more consumer glasses are popping up,
and they’re getting affordable. Like the Nreal Light that I’ve reviewed not so long ago,
link is below. Now we have another one coming for the consumer market—the Razor MR glasses
by ThirdEye. is not new in the market as they’ve been successful in the enterprise AR
space. Now they are using what they learned and releasing a consumer product for the first time.
These are the Razor MR Glasses. It has an all-day wearable form-factor that
looks like regular glasses. They’re lightweight, will include birdbath
optics with 70Hz refresh rate and 43-degree field of view (which seems small but on MR glasses,
that can look like a 120-inch display from a distance). It’ll also feature diopters,
which is nice for nearsighted users as they don’t have to wear their own glasses. It’ll
also have two noise-canceling microphones for voice control, and built-in stereo speakers.
The glasses can be connected to an Android or iOS device that supports DisplayPort output,
laptops and tablets with a USB-C port, and even gaming consoles through HDMI adapters.
The battery life is 8 hours, and it seems to run its own OS too, Android 9,
which sounds like it can also be used standalone, although I can’t verify this to be sure.
But the company promises over 100+ apps available, ranging from mixed reality
games to exercising apps with personal trainers, interacting on social media, and watching movies.
An interesting aspect here is that ThirdEye wants to
bring their enterprise software to consumers as well, like something that they call RemoteEye,
that can, for example, be used to get real-time help from maintenance crews for
fixing things at home or take an inventory of home assets for insurance purposes. They
also have something called RespondEye, which can be used to communicate with a caregivers
remotely. Like your doctor can view the patient in real-time with AR annotations.
I think this is a pretty good future as it could make professional help much more accessible.
The Razor MR Glasses are already in production and will be shipping later this year. No price
has been announced yet, but I have a feeling it may be expensive. What do you predict?
Now some bad news. The Nvidia RTX 3090 Ti is announced which should be 11 percent faster
than the previous RTX 3090. No price or firm release date yet,
but it’s expected to launch in June. Why is this bad news? Well,
no one can probably buy it :’( Now, one of the most exciting
news during CES for me personally was the formal announcement of the PSVR2 specs of the VR headset
and controllers by Sony. I will keep this one short because you can watch my
previous video on this, where I give a complete overview with excitement. The link is below.
And that’s it. I feel like these VR and AR highlights during CES are getting better
and more exciting each year, which is of course, awesome. What are your thoughts on
these news pieces, and what is your favorite highlight? Let me know in the comments below,
and don’t forget to click that Fabulous link below and thumbs up button as support 😉
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especially these Patrons down below. As always, XR on!