Welcome to Tuesday's Inside XR! in today's issue:
- Mozilla will invest in its Hubs VR chatroom following a restructuring and layoffs of 250 employees.
- Nreal’s Light XR glasses will debut in South Korea on Aug. 21 and additional markets later this year.
- Our roundup of new job postings in AR/VR (premium only).
To enjoy this content and more, consider upgrading to premium! For a limited time, we are offering a 14-day free trial. If you like what you see, you can subscribe for less than $2 a week ($100/year), or $10 per month. For that, you'll receive Inside XR advert-free, along with content only our paid subscribers receive. Click here to give it a try.
Thanks again for your support,
|
|
|
Mozilla Hubs
Mozilla will invest in its Hubs VR chatroom following a restructuring. The company behind Firefox said it would lay off 250 employees, about a quarter of its workforce, as it seeks to organize a "new product organization" beyond its flagship web browser.
More:
- The company's new "product organization" aims to create new revenue streams and ship products faster. Mozilla's initial investments will be in Hubs, Pocket, VPN, WebAssembly, and others.
- The Mozilla Hubs Twitter account said it remains unclear how, exactly, the restructuring will impact Hubs, an online 3D collaboration platform that uses web-based technologies to create VR spaces for desktop, mobile, and VR platforms.
- As a result of the layoffs, Mozilla will shutter its Taipei operations. The company will refocus some of its remaining 750 employees on other projects.
MOZILLA BLOG
|
|
Pre-orders are now open for Nreal’s Light XR glasses, which will debut in South Korea on Aug. 21. The lightweight glasses will be sold individually or as a bundle with an LG Uplus network mobile phone plan, which comes with either the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 or the LG Velvet smartphone. They will be available in other markets, possibly the U.S. and Europe, by the end of this year.
More:
- The bundled package includes the glasses, smartphone, and a 5G data package for the South Korean cellular carrier LG Uplus network, along with corrective lens frames, magnetic nose pads, and a VR cover.
- Users can tether the glasses on any 5G-compatible Samsung Note 20 series smartphone.
- LG Uplus plans to launch AR and VR apps, called U+AR and U+VR, that are compatible with the device.
- From Twitter: @RealityRendered wrote: "Can't wait to try these out!!! Too bad there are no in person conventions to try it at!!"
ENGADGET
|
|
|
|
HTC will shift its focus from consumers to museum and educational uses for the Vive Cosmos Play. The company said the 4-camera version of Cosmos is "best suited" for enterprise and institution uses and will no longer be sold on HTC's consumer website.
More:
- Cosmos Play debuted in February as a lower-end and cheaper version of the Cosmos. At $500, it has four-camera inside-out tracking rather than the Cosmos' six cameras.
- HTC says it will sell the Play to businesses and institutions that want VR as a conference solution or viewer technology showpiece.
- HTC has two remaining gaming-focused VR headsets: the $699 Vive Cosmos and $899 Cosmos Elite.
- Vive Cosmos was the least-used headset among Steam’s VR users in its latest hardware survey.
UPLOAD VR
|
|
Pro Putt by Top Golf
Tournaments for the upcoming VR Fitness Summit will take place Sep. 3 through 12, with a total prize pool of $25k. VR gamers can register to compete in games like "Audio Trip," "FitXR," "Creed: Rise to Glory," "The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners," and more. The summit comes from Ryan Burningham's Virtual Athletics League.
More:
- It's the largest collaboration between VR studios and the largest prize pool yet for an online VR event.
- Qualifiers for some tournaments start this week and run through Sept. 3.
- The Pro Putt by Top Golf tournament, which includes a $5,000 prize pool, will have qualifiers Aug. 17-23.
- The summit also includes speaker sessions on VR fitness and sports, including VR boxing and fitness through VR aerobics.
- VR Fitness Insider will announce more Esports tournaments and contests every day this week.
VR FITNESS INSIDER
|
|
A Kickstarter campaign has launched for Anouschka, an XR experience that aims to empower Black girls. The interactive story follows Amara, a Black teen living in Amsterdam who travels back in time to connect with generations of women and save her grandmother and twin brother from a family curse.
More:
AR POST
|
|
New research suggests that VR users have a higher navigational efficiency and less disorientation than non-VR users. A study shows that VR users perform better on spatial-based knowledge questions.
More:
- The study indicates that VR could help older individuals boost their navigational abilities and spatial memory, which is the ability to recall locations and spatial relations between objects.
- VR games can add to spatial learning even more than immersive desktop games, according to the researchers.
- The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal "Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking."
IANS
|
|
QUICK HITS
Gaming news
General VR news
*This is a sponsored post.
|
|
|
|
Beth Duckett is a former news and investigative reporter for The Arizona Republic, who has written for USA Today, American Art Collector, and other publications. A graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, she won a First Amendment Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination for her original reporting on problems within Arizona's pension systems.
|
|
|
Editor
|
Sheena Vasani is a journalist and UC Berkeley, Dev Bootcamp, and Thinkful alumna who writes Inside Dev and Inside NoCode.
|
|
