Top CES 2021 VR announcements

As UploadVR points out, this year's CES went all-digital for the first time, making it a smaller affair than in past years. But there were a few interesting announcements in the AR/VR space. Here's some to check out. [Note: Some of this information appeared in earlier editions of Inside XR.]

Lenovo's new AR smart glasses

• The $12B company's "ThinkReality A3" glasses virtualize up to five 1080p displays.
• The glasses are equipped with an 8-megapixel camera, two fish-eye cameras, and room-scale tracking.
• Though lighter than ThinkReality's original headset design, the glasses do still need to be connected to a PC or Motorola smartphone.

Panasonic’s super-slim VR viewer

• Panasonic revealed an updated design of its lightweight, tethered VR glasses, which now have cameras for inside out 6DoF tracking and dual 2.6K micro-OLED panels with High-Dynamic Range (HDR) capability and 120Hz support.
• The glasses would connect to PCs or 5G smartphones via a USB-C cable.
• Panasonic hasn't said when it might release the glasses or how much they would cost.

Pollen Robotics' Reachy Robot with VR

• The French startup revealed teleoperation functionality for the humanoid robot using a VR headset and controllers.
• Users could control Reachy remotely to perform tasks like picking up and placing objects. The robot can "learn from the demonstration of the humans who control it."
• Reachy, an open-source robotics platform, costs $17K and is geared toward robotics research.

Madison Beer's VR performance

• Sony announced an immersive concert experience for Oculus and PSVR, starring a digitized version of the singer-songwriter.
• Beer performs a medley of songs from her upcoming debut album, “Life Support," in the experience due out sometime this winter. The album itself is due out on Feb. 26.
• Watch how Beer was digitally recreated in this video.

Vuzix Next-Gen Smart Glasses

• The enterprise-focused eyewear company announced its latest smart glasses powered by microLED technology for displaying digital information.
• The sleek device, which uses an Android-based operating system, looks "close to something you’d be comfortable wearing out in public on a daily basis," according to The Verge.
• New York-based Vuzix hasn't revealed a price point for the glasses, which are due out later this summer.

SenseGlove's haptic gloves

• The Dutch startup launched its Nova haptic feedback gloves for VR training purposes, which can simulate shapes, resistance, and more in VR.
• The wearable controllers have a per-finger tracking system that allows users to "experience collisions, textures, and button clicks where they happen — on your fingertips or the palm of your hand."
• They cost ~$5K a pair and are geared toward professional training at the commercial level.

Starting next month, Oculus Quest 2 users will be able to add multiple login accounts and share apps, making the headsets easier to share with family and friends. These are two of the most requested features for the Quest, according to the Oculus blog.

More:

• This means multiple users — up to three secondary accounts per device — will be able to log into the headset using their Facebook profiles.
• An app sharing feature will allow the primary account holder (only) to share their library of games and apps with those secondary local profiles. Each user will have their own profile-specific achievements and game progress.
• Secondary account holders can also buy their own apps on the shared device.
• Both are coming to the Quest 2 as experimental features in February, followed by the original Quest at a later date.

Designer Dominik Hofacker created a neat video showing off a macOS Reality concept with Apple AR glasses. The concept design shows a user putting on the fictional glasses and interacting with an all-virtual operating system at a desk.

More:

• The concept could bode well in a post-pandemic economy as more people work remotely. It transforms real-world desks into interactive workstations with an AR keyboard and displays for emails, documents, etc.
• The operating system is called macOS Reality, and scans the environment before allowing users to interact with the floating VR interface with pinch and touch gestures. In the video, the user grabs a 3D dinosaur from a website and manipulates it separately from the interface.
• Hofacker, a former Facebook Reality Labs intern, said his concept is separate from the OS that runs natively on Apple Glasses (realityOS) and "requires separate hardware for computational power."

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has released an AR phone experience featuring nearly 50 artworks in digitally-rendered galleries. The Met Unframed (2021) lets users play trivia and other games to unlock shareable AR versions of different works.

More:

• The Met worked with Verizon on the free, mobile-only 3D experience, which has a sampling of galleries that “evoke or nearly replicate” the actual museum.
• Users can click on works at each gallery and access descriptions and audio guides, plus minigames to unlock a third layer called “Unframed." This allows each user to temporarily "borrow" the work and place it into their surroundings via AR on a smartphone.
• Artnet's Ben Davis spent two hours in the experience and describes how to use it. However, he concluded that it shows "just how peerless a feat of technology a physical room — and being in it — is for experiencing art.
• The Met Unframed is available for five more weeks on 4G or 5G mobile smart devices.

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• Nvidia announced its 3060 graphics card, which starts at $329 and ships in late February; it's a "good pick for PC VR gaming on a budget," UploadVR notes.
• Rokid unveiled its new binocular and tethered XR glasses, Rokid Vision 2.
• Universal Orlando Resort's future Epic Universe is rumored to be getting a VR experience where guests would pilot their own virtual broomsticks.
• "Cave Digger" publisher VRKiwi and AR studio Nieko plan to release "Crystal Raiders VR," a multiplayer adventure set in a medieval castle, this spring for PC VR headsets.
• VR Fitness Insider covered this week's VR game releases for workouts, which include "Brain Beats" for PSVR, a croquet title, and a piñata bowling game.
• Fingerpaint Art Restoration, now out for the Quest and Quest 2, allows users to recreate works of art through virtual finger-painting.
• Former Microsoft Bing VP Derrick Connell has joined the advisory board of Mesmerise, a VR firm focused on virtual conferences, meetings, and events.
• Nextech AR Solutions has renewed its agreement with Poly for an initial $470K over six months.
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Tweet of the Day: HTC Vive data shared by "Reality Check" author @JeremyDaltonXR shows how more people are using VR for work and studying, rather than gaming: