In 2013, I started this fan-based blog site after being inspired by what appeared to be a glimpse into an immersive future that began to unfold with the re-emergence of virtual reality technology as an exciting new medium. I was fascinated by what the founders and original pioneers at Oculus had accomplished with the success of their early Kickstarter campaign and the vision they set forth for the Oculus Rift VR headset, which promised a virtual reality experience unlike any other at the time. For Oculus, it was a wildly ambitious plan to revive an entire industry where, for decades, so many others had failed before. Nonetheless, it was that sense of excitement and enthusiasm from developers and early adopters who had experienced first-hand Oculus’ prototype headset that was so contagious, leading many, including myself, to believe that perhaps this time things were different—and they were right. Finally, the hype around VR that everyone had waited for was indeed real!

For those who may remember, OVRnews.com was initially launched under the domain name OculusVRnews.com but was later changed in 2016 to a more simplified abbreviation of the brand to avoid any potential trademark issues.

Over the last nine years, we’ve seen Oculus go (no pun intended) from being a small startup to becoming an industry juggernaut after Meta, formerly Facebook, acquired the company back in 2014 for $2 billion. Since then, the speed at which VR development and advances in immersive technology have accelerated year after year has been immensely significant in bridging the gap between virtual reality and real-world mainstream adoption far closer than ever before.

I’ve had the privilege of creating this site for all things Oculus, which has allowed me to take part in and contribute to this ever-growing VR/XR community. It enabled me to deeply explore my imagination and expand my understanding of an immersive, interconnected future behind a technology many believe to be the next paradigm shift in computing.

This site, in many ways, provided me with a sense of purpose and connection with the VR/XR community. It kept me sharp and constantly drove me to seek knowledge from other reputable industry sources on the latest VR/XR trends and hardware/software developments, which, in turn, helped me strive to keep my readers/network informed on the latest updates in the world of Oculus news. Through this, I have learned a lot and have always valued the thought of knowing that others out there may find the site’s content to be both insightful and informative. OVRnews.com was my gateway to connect with the VR/XR community, and, in a way, it allowed me to feel as though I am part of an industry that I believe will transform the way people work, learn, communicate, play, and interact with the world around them.

However, a lot has changed in the last two years following the global pandemic, and I would say the priorities in my life gradually began to shift. Due to personal circumstances, time commitments, and that internal desire to venture out and pursue something new all led to the decision that it may be time to put ‘The Unofficial Blog of the Rift’ to rest. Oh, and not to mention, perhaps the most consequential fact is that Oculus, a brand we’ve come to grow and love, is now being almost entirely phased out by Meta, which I guess makes the ‘O’ in our name somewhat pretty obsolete, huh?

So, what’s next? Well, for me, I hope and plan to still be involved and engaged with the VR/XR community. There are so many exciting new and innovative things happening within this industry that it will be hard to ignore. Of course, I’m sure we’ll continue to see plenty of Meta news in the days, months, and years ahead to keep us all talking—but hey, you never know, perhaps an opportunity will present itself down the road, and OVRnews.com will re-emerge in a new form, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. While I wouldn’t exactly bet on it, it’s nice to keep our options open…right?

Until then, for those of you who visited my site, read some articles, and enjoyed the content, I am beyond grateful for all your support, and I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart! See you in the ‘Metaverse’…

The post It’s Not Goodbye, It’s See You Around… appeared first on Oculus VR News.

As with last year’s Connect, the one-day event will be virtual, and all the keynotes and developer sessions will be streamed live on the Reality Labs Facebook page starting at 10am PST / 1pm EST. For now, there are no other official details available; however, the Meta Connect website says more information about the line-up of speakers and scheduled sessions for this year’s event are “coming soon.”

“Now in its ninth year, Connect brings together AR/VR developers, creators, marketers, and more to celebrate the industry and its growth, while also exploring what it will take to bring the metaverse to life,” the company wrote in an official blog post. “We’ll kick things off with a can’t-miss keynote including leaders in the AR, VR, and XR space, followed by on-demand developer breakout sessions.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the news in his Facebook post, along with a photo of himself wearing what appears to be the company’s next high-end headset, codenamed ‘Project Cambria’, which some say could officially be called the Meta Quest Pro. During an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast last month, Zuckerberg confirmed that the upcoming launch of the new standalone headset would be available for purchase this October.

According to Zuckerberg, the headset will feature built-in eye and facial tracking capabilities, colored passthrough technology enabling both augmented and mixed reality experiences, and is said to have a much higher-resolution screen than currently included on the Quest 2. It’s also reportedly expected to cost “significantly higher” than $800.

Be sure to mark your calendars and sign up for the latest updates at metaconnect.com for any upcoming live stream.

The post Meta Connect Developer Conference to Be Held Virtually on October 11th appeared first on Oculus VR News.

Right off the bat of the three-hour JRE podcast, Zuckerberg shared some details on when we can expect the company’s new and highly-anticipated device, stating, “For the next device that’s coming out in October, there are a few big features.” Apparently, behind the scenes, Rogan got to experience some hands-on time with the new headset and was seemingly impressed with how well it would track his eyes and facial movements that would then appear in real-time on his avatar. Zuckerberg describes these new features as part of “social presence,” which would enable users to communicate through non-verbal cues with others in VR, such as eye contact or smiling.

“The ability to now have eye contact in virtual reality, have your face be tracked so that way your avatar is not just like this still thing, but if you smile or if you frown or if you pout, or whatever your expression is—to actually have that, in real-time, translated to your avatar,” says Zuckerberg. He points out that our facial expressions play a “huge” role, stating, “there’s more nonverbal communication when people are with each other than verbal communication.”

Although Zuckerberg did not explicitly mention the device’s name during the podcast, it’s more than likely that based on the features described, the upcoming launch window, and consistent previous reports, all appear to indicate that codenamed ‘Project Cambria‘ is the device discussed in the conversation. According to reports, ‘Project Cambria,’ which some speculate could be called the Meta Quest Pro, features face and eye tracking capabilities powered by a series of new internal sensors that track a user’s eye and lip movements. Additionally, the new headset will feature high-resolution colored passthrough technology, enabling augmented / mixed reality interactions and experiences.

‘Project Cambria’ is reportedly expected to cost “significantly higher” than $800, making it geared more towards developers and enthusiasts. Zuckerberg says he plans to share more details soon at this year’s Connect conference.

The post Zuckerberg Confirms Next Meta Quest VR Headset will Launch in October appeared first on Oculus VR News.

Apparently, after seeing all the memes and criticism spread like wildfire across social media, Zuckerberg posted two new screenshots on Instagram of an updated and significantly more life-like render of his Horizon Worlds avatar and an outdoor scene depicting an ancient-looking ruin landscape. In the post, Zuckerberg admitted, “the photo I posted earlier this week was pretty basic—it was taken very quickly to celebrate at launch.” However, Zuckerberg added that Horizon Worlds is “capable of much more—even on headsets—and Horizon is improving very quickly.”

By comparison, it’s safe to say that these new images do look better. There appears to be better lighting, improved textures, and more depth to the render, and Zuckerberg’s avatar face has a sense of life to it instead of just a flat, blank expression as in the previous image. Of course, everything is subjective, but overall it’s a welcome upgrade.

Zuckerberg promises to share more details on all the “major updates” that users can expect coming soon to Horizon Worlds and the visual graphics of the platform’s avatars at Meta’s upcoming Connect developer conference. No official word yet on when the conference will take place, but last year’s event was held in October.

The post Zuckerberg Responds to Meta Avatar Memes, Promises Upgrades to Visuals appeared first on Oculus VR News.

The demo is built using Meta’s Interaction SDK, which is part of the company’s ‘Presence Platform,’ a library of easy-to-use tools that help developers create a wide range of immersive experiences from mixed reality to natural hand-based interactions with a realistic sense of presence. Additionally, First Hand is also released as an open source project, allowing developers to access and experiment with the code so that they can utilize it to understand further how it all works and easily replicate similar interactions in their own hand-based tracking games and apps.

“First Hand showcases some of the Hands interactions that we’ve found to be the most magical, robust, and easy to learn but that are also applicable to many categories of content. Notably, we rely heavily on direct interactions,” a blog post from Meta explains. “With the advanced direct touch heuristics that come out of the box with Interaction SDK (like touch limiting, which prevents your finger from accidentally traversing buttons), interacting with 2D UIs and buttons in VR feels really natural.

“We also showcase several of the grab techniques offered by the SDK,” the company further explained. “There’s something visceral about directly interacting with the virtual world with your hands, but we’ve found that these interactions also need careful tuning to really work. In the app, you can experiment by interacting with a variety of object classes (small, large, constrained, two-handed) and even crush a rock by squeezing it hard enough.”

To help get started, Meta also shared 10 tips for developers looking to utilize and take advantage of the Interaction SDK to build great hands-driven experiences for the platform. Check out the official developer’s post for more details.

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According to Meta, the new account system will provide users “more flexibility and control in VR” as it no longer requires users to set up their VR headsets with a Facebook account. It also allows users who may have previously merged their Oculus account with the social network platform to remove it entirely if they so choose.

Meta is making it a point to emphasize that the new Meta accounts are not social profiles; but rather are a way for users to log into their VR devices and let them view and manage any purchased apps in one place. As noted in Meta’s latest blog post, once a user creates a new Meta account, users will then be prompted to create a Meta Horizon profile, formerly known as the Oculus profile. With the new Meta Horizon profiles, users can choose how they want to appear to others by customizing their username, display name, profile picture, avatar, and other information they may want to share. This will represent a user’s social presence in VR and across “other surfaces, like the web.”

While it’s not required, users will still have the option of connecting their Meta account to Facebook and Instagram to unlock “connected experiences,” such as finding their followers on Instagram to play games with in VR or simply chatting with Facebook friends on Messenger. In fact, instead of friends, the company says it’s shifting away from its current ‘Friends’ model to a new ‘Followers’ structure, a move made to become similar to Instagram’s existing model.

As for privacy controls, a new menu with three privacy options will guide users through which setting is the best fit: ‘Open to Everyone’, ‘Friends and Family’, and ‘Solo’. A user also has the option to set their Horizon profiles to private, so they can manually approve any follower request. In private mode, only approved followers can view who a user follows and who chooses to follow them. However, basic details like a user’s profile picture, username, display name, avatar, follower count, and the number of people followed are still visible to any non-followers on the platform.

While those who are new to Meta VR devices or have previously merged an Oculus account with their Facebook account need to create a Meta account and Horizon profile starting in August, the company notes that any users who currently still log into their VR device with an Oculus account can continue to do so until January 1st, 2023. After that cut-off date, they must transition to a new Meta account and Horizon profile to continue using their Meta VR device.

The post Meta VR Headsets No Longer Require Facebook Account Starting Next Month appeared first on Oculus VR News.

During a recent virtual “Inside the Lab” round table presentation, Zuckerberg, Reality Labs Chief Scientist Michael Abrash, and other members of the Reality Labs team shared a glimpse and some insight into what advanced VR technologies Meta is currently developing for the future.

The four experimental research prototypes, as seen in the video below, are each designed as a proof-of-concept focusing on solving issues such as higher resolution, focal depth, optical distortion, and high dynamic range (HDR). The goal, according to Zuckerberg, is to create a headset so advanced that it could eventually pass a “Visual Turing test,” which is a reference to Alan Turing’s imitation game, to see whether an artificial machine is capable of exhibiting intelligence equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human being. In this context, however, Meta wants its VR headset to display visuals that are so realistic that it convinces a user to believe they are viewing the real world.

“I think we’re in the middle right now of a big step forward towards realism. I don’t think it’s going to be that long until we can create scenes with basically perfect fidelity,” Zuckerberg said at the round table event.

As we build toward the metaverse, we’re researching how to develop a virtual reality display system where what you see in your headset is as vivid and detailed as the physical world. Mark Zuckerberg just shared the details here https://t.co/jinbBB4stF pic.twitter.com/toxEcYABT8

— Meta Newsroom (@MetaNewsroom) June 20, 2022

To tackle what Meta called “retinal resolution,” the company revealed a prototype headset codenamed ‘Butterscotch,’ which is said to offer about 2.5x as many pixels as the current Meta Quest 2 headset, allowing a user to read the fine print on a 20/20 vision line eye chart. By comparison, the Quest 2 supports 20/60 vision. To achieve the 55 pixels-per-degree (ppd) needed to boost the resolution, which is just slightly short of Meta’s 60 pixel-per-degree retina standard, the team had to condense the pixels over a smaller area, limiting the field of view to about half that of a Quest 2. The company says it also had to develop a new hybrid lens for the headset that would fully resolve the higher resolution.

Another key challenge is focal depth. Zuckerberg showed off the ‘Half-Dome‘ prototype, which uses eye-tracking and varifocal optics to tackle variable focal depths and allow users to focus on objects from any distance. The Half Dome series of prototypes, which Meta began building in 2017, initially utilized mechanical varifocal displays to dynamically change the distance between the display and the lens based on where the user was looking to deliver a proper depth of focus. In later iterations, the team moved to an electronic varifocal system by replacing all moving parts with a thin stack of liquid crystal lenses, resulting in a significantly more compact, silent, and reliable varifocal experience.

Zuckerberg notes that, unlike with traditional monitors that are a set distance away, in VR and AR, you need to be able to focus on things that are very far away but also clearly focus on objects that are very close to your face.

Then there’s the ‘Starburst’ prototype, which may very well be the first known VR headset to support high dynamic range (HDR), according to Zuckerberg. Meta’s latest VR headset, the Quest 2, can produce about 100 nits of brightness. Starburst, on the other hand, is said to achieve a peak of 20,000 nits, essentially making it one of the brightest HDR displays ever built. As a result, this would enable the user to experience colors and brightness levels as natural and realistic as they would in real-life. In its current form, Starburst is a tethered device that is way too bulky and heavy—requiring the user to hold it by a pair of handles to support its weight. “[Starburst] is wildly impractical to consider as a product direction for the first generation, but we’re using it as a testbed for further research and studies,” says Zuckerberg. “The goal of all this work is to help us identify which technical paths are going to allow us to make meaningful enough improvements that we can start approaching visual realism.”

Finally, there’s ‘Holocake 2’—a working experimental VR headset that uses holographic display optics and can already handle playing PC VR experiences. The goal of this prototype is to be able to pack all of Meta’s advanced state-of-the-art technology into the most lightweight and thinnest VR headset possible.

By combining holographic optics and polarization-based optical folding, emulating a “pancake” lens but with a much thinner form factor, to dramatically shorten the path of light from the display to the eye, Meta can substantially reduce the size and weight of the headset and develop a super-compact device.

While the experimental headsets that Zuckerberg showed off briefly during the presentation exist as actual hardware, Meta also revealed one other prototype, referred to as ‘Mirror Lake’, that’s essentially an ambitious concept that still needs to be proven. In time, the goal is to incorporate all these advanced visual technologies into a single device.

“It [Mirror Lake] shows what a complete next-gen display system could look like,” according to Abrash, who later added: “But right now it’s only a concept with no fully functional headset yet built to conclusively prove out this architecture. But if it does pan out though, it will be a game changer for the VR visual experience.”

For a more in-depth overview, you can see Zuckerberg and Reality Labs Chief Scientist Michael Abrash discuss more on the challenges and the possibilities of each experimental prototype here in the video below:

The post Meta Reveals VR Headset Prototypes Designed to Achieve Visual Realism appeared first on Oculus VR News.

In a video posted on Facebook, Zuckerberg is seen wearing the new, highly-anticipated headset blurred in the clip and demoing a mixed reality experience called The World Beyond. Built using Meta’s Presence Platform, a tool designed to help developers create immersive mixed reality experiences, the demo utilizes Cambria’s advanced onboard camera sensors and full-color passthrough technology to blend the physical and virtual world together.

The “full-color passthrough version” of The World Beyond will only be available on Project Cambria, Zuckerberg says; however, Quest 2 users will be able to experience a simplified grayscale version of the demo soon via the App Lab.

Meta also posted a two-and-a-half-minute overview video of its Presence Platform, which highlights some of Project Cambria’s full-color passthrough capabilities in action. Check out Meta’s Presence Platform video below:

While Meta has yet to provide pricing details or an official release date, the new headset is said to cost “significantly higher” than $800 and is due to launch sometime later this year. Cambria is one of four new headsets expected to be coming from Meta. Recent reports suggest the company plans to release the other three headset models by 2024.

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The Information‘s report claims to have seen an internal roadmap that outlines the company’s plan to roll out multiple new headsets over the next two years, starting with Meta’s upcoming high-end VR headset, codenamed Project Cambria, expected this September.

According to The Information‘s report, the headset will likely cost around $799. However, a spokesperson for Meta clarified that the price of Cambria, which focuses more on work and productivity, would cost “significantly higher” than previous estimates but did not offer any specific details as to how high the official cost would be when it launches.

An updated version of Cambria, codenamed ‘Funston,’ is already in the works and is reportedly set to launch sometime in 2024. As for the other two headsets in the pipeline, the report states that the next-gen iterations of the Quest 2 are codenamed ‘Stinson’ and ‘Cardiff,’ with a projected release expected in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

Meta’s long-awaited AR glasses, codenamed ‘Project Nazare,’ are also due for release in 2024, along with a less expensive pair of smart glasses called ‘Hypernova.’ Both will supposedly pair with a wrist-worn wearable device that uses differential electromyography (EMG), essentially enabling the wearer to control the glasses effectively with their mind. Unlike Project Nazare, which is the company’s high-end pair of standalone AR glasses, Hypernova will require a user’s smartphone for its connectivity and computing power.

In addition, the company has ambitious goals to deliver an even lighter, more advanced design pair of AR glasses in 2026, followed by an upgraded version in 2028. For more details, check out The Information’s original report here.

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Those visiting the Oculus.com website will now be redirected to a new ‘Meta Store’ website. The new site is home to Meta’s entire lineup of hardware products and devices, which right now just includes the Quest 2 virtual reality headset, Portal, and Ray-Ban Stories.

The launch of the storefront website happens to coincide on the same day the company announced that it would be opening its first physical retail store in Burlingame, California, which will also feature all its latest hardware products.

As it appears, it looks like the Oculus brand is hanging on mere life support. Ever since Meta first announced back in late 2021 its plan to phase out the Oculus branding, we’ve seen the company gradually replace the beloved Oculus brand with the Meta name, including rebranding its flagship VR headset Oculus Quest 2, as Meta Quest 2.

But not all is lost quite yet. Although Oculus.com now redirects visitors to the new URL, the Oculus.com domain still appears to showcase the company’s vast catalog of VR game titles and experiences, including the Oculus blog and its VR developer resources. Additionally, the Quest companion smartphone app, which is required to use the VR headset, still has the Oculus brand as the name. Though it’s safe to say that it’s likely only a matter of time before the remaining remnants of what’s left of Oculus will be gone forever and replaced with Meta branding by the year’s end.

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