This Week In XR: Mojo Adds $21 Million To Series A, Hot Take On Quest 3, The Techno Optimist Manifesto
Take on the heat with the new Quest 3. I'm also impressed with other improvements like phase and room scanning. The interface is also very good. The first thing you see when you start the system is the physical room you are in using the color camera. Your spawn point is anywhere in the physical world, regardless of where you are. The digital screen sits above reality, just as it sits above the cartoon environment that was the point of creation of Quest 2. The camera's colors are so good that I can read email on my iPhone with headphones on . It seems much more natural.
This YouTube video claims to show off the Quest 3's advanced graphics, but it's misleading. While the headset's graphics are a little better, the environment feels more fake, so pick your poison. Now the bad news. Although the new Quest 3 is sleeker than the Quest 2, it is heavier and better looking. I miss the open sides of the Quest Pro to dissipate heat. As a result, the Quest 3 may not be as suitable for fitness. XR needs its own Game of Thrones. Maybe passing MR will finally make this possible.
Mojo Vision is getting its Mojo back after being snubbed by Contact Lenses in a $43 million Series A round. Mojo Vision, which abandoned its ambitious contact lens project to focus on microdisplays, announced another Series A round of $22.4 million, doubling its previous tranche to $43.5 million. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Khosla Ventures. The company's display is much denser (14K PPI) than Apple's Vision Pro micro-OLED display (3400 PPI).
Universal Music by Sue Anthropic. The complaint alleges that Claude 2 used Katy Perry's "Roar," Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get You Want." Next week on this week's XR podcast, our guest is legendary music producer and executive Albie Galut, who's going to talk to us about this.
Qualcomm is laying off more than 1,258 people in Santa Clara and San Diego. The company has 51,000 employees in the Golden State. "Given continued uncertainty in a busy economic and demand environment, we plan to take additional restructuring measures to continue investing in growth and diversification opportunities," the company said in a statement. It seems that most of the people laid off are in sales, corporate communications, accounting and human resources.
Marc Andreessen's new optimistic technomanifesto. Writing a manifesto declaring your beliefs is great, but the tech world depends on messages from billionaires. That's not hard to say considering what he's accomplished since the invention of the browser in 1992. Andreessen founded Netscape and it became one of the most successful tech venture capital firms in history. "We believe that the techno-capitalist machine of markets and innovation never stops, but continues to grow," he wrote. “Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the pinnacle of progress and the realization of our potential. "I like it, but I'm not quite sure how I feel when Andresen says, 'Our enemies are corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, cartels.' But it's interesting. If you're reading this, you should.
Even Roblox is tired of remote work. In a letter to employees, CEO David Bashucci told the company it was time to ditch that sweet Airbnb in Portugal and move back to San Mateo. Ironically, this is the company closest to the metauniverse. They recently launched their own version of video chat. It turns out that being virtual is great when we have to be apart, but not so much when we have to be together.
Mythic Realms turns your home from a quest app lab into a mixed reality fantasy role-playing game . Speaking of games that use MR, Penticore Games' Mystic Realms is coming to the Meta Quest platform today via App Labs. The full game is expected in 2024.
Wonderland and Robot Invaders have teamed up to find a new way for players to play in virtual reality. The companies have converted the first levels of the upcoming Meta Quest VR game , Dead Secret Circle , so you can play all three levels using the headset's browser. It's now free at Wonderlandengine.com.
The 10th Advanced Business Summit opens October 24-26 in Houston. The Augmented Enterprise Summit focuses on commercial and industrial applications of AR/VR/MR (XR) and other emerging technologies related to the metaverse. Augmented Enterprise is the best opportunity to see how the world's largest companies are implementing significant digital transformation with XR and learn about the solutions they are ready to implement in the modern workplace.
This Week in XR is also a podcast hosted by the author of this column, Ted Shilowitz, futurist at Paramount Global, and Ronnie Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. Our guest this week is Jake Zimm, executive vice president of virtual reality at Sony Pictures Entertainment, “Ghostbusters; Rise of the Ghost Lord” next week. We can find it on Spotify, iTunes and YouTube.
what we read
The Metaverse is dead because Silicon Valley is no fun (fast business)
Elon Musk's Neuralink aims to merge humans with AI. How many brains will be damaged along the way? (Seagal Samuel/Vox)