Horizon Worlds, Meta’s social VR platform for Quest users, is expanding with alpha tests of new members-only spaces, allowing creators to manage up to 150 card-carrying members in their private worlds. Meta says it’s also gearing up to release Horizon Worlds on non-Quest devices for the first time.
Meta is now rolling out alpha access to its new members-only worlds, which aims to let creators build and cultivate a space in Horizon Worlds. Each members-only world can have up to 150 members, although only 25 concurrent visitors can gather at any given time.
“Every community develops its own norms, etiquette, and social rules over time as it fosters a unique culture,” the company says in a blogpost. “To enable that, we’ll provide the tools that allow the creators of members-only worlds to set the rules for their communities and maintain those rules for their closed spaces.”
Meta says moderation responsibilities can be shared among trusted members, so creators can better control who gets in and who’s kicked out, however the company says its Code of Conduct for Virtual Experiences is still in effect in privately owned spaces.
What’s more, the Quest-only social platform is also going to be available on the Web and mobile devices “soon”, the company says, adding that rules will be made and enforced “similarly to how mobile operating systems manage experiences on their platforms.”
As it is today, Horizon Worlds plays host to a growing number of user-generated content in addition to first-party worlds. The release of Horizon Worlds outside of Quest would represent a massive potential influx of users and user-generated content, putting it in direct competition with cross-platform social gaming titans such as Roblox and Rec Room.
As a similar free-to-play app, Horizon Worlds offers an Avatar Store featuring premium digital outfits—very likely only a first step in the company’s monetization strategy. For now, the company says it allows creators to earn revenue from purchases people make in their worlds, which includes hardware platform fees and a Horizon Worlds fee, which Meta says is 25 percent.
In late October, Meta showed off a tempting preview of its next-gen avatars, although it’s clear there’s still a ton of work to be done to satisfy its existing userbase. Floating torsos are still very much a thing in Horizon Worlds, and that’s despite Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s insistence that full body tracking was in the works. It was too good to be true.
For now, Horizon Worlds is only available on Quest 2 headsets in the US, Canada, UK, France, Iceland, Ireland and Spain—something we hope they change well before it ushers in flatscreen users.
This story is syndicated from the premium edition of PreSeed Now, a newsletter that digs into the product, market, and founder story of UK-founded startups so you can understand how they fit into what’s happening in the wider world and startup ecosystem.
The reignited excitement around the potential of AI as we hurtle into 2023 brings with it concerns about how best to process all the data needed to make it work. This is far from a new challenge though, and next-generation AI chips are being developed in labs around the world to address the challenge in different ways.
One of the first startups we ever covered at PreSeed Nowtakes a ‘neuromorphic’ approach, influenced by the human brain. Coming from a different direction is a brand new spinout from Newcastle University called Mignon (so new, in fact, that there’s no website yet).
Mignon has developed an artificial intelligence chipset that, according to CEOXavier Parkhouse-Parker, has “in the order of 10,000x performance improvements against alternative neural-network based chips for classification tasks”
Classification is, essentially, the process of figuring out what the AI is looking at, hearing, reading, etc — the first step in understanding the world around it, whatever use case it’s put to. Mignon’s chipset is designed to be used in edge computing as a “classification coprocessor” on devices, rather than in the cloud.
What’s more, Parkhouse-Parker says Mignon’s chipset can also train AI models on the edge, meaning the models can be optimised for the specific, individual environments in which they’re used.
A prototype design of Mignon’s gen-1 chipset
A propositional proposition
What Mignon says gives its tech an advantage over the competition is a less resource-intensive approach based onpropositional logic.
“Neural networks, the dominant algorithm in AI and machine learning today, typically require running many layers of increasingly resource-intensive calculations. They can take a very long time and a huge amount of energy to train and deploy, and they also exist as a black box; you cannot explain why the algorithms have come to a particular conclusion,” Parkhouse-Parker says.
“Mignon is based on an algorithm that can be done in a single layer, using propositional logic, maintaining accuracy but enabling calculations to be run much more quickly, using far less energy.”
And when it comes to launching into the market, Mignon could have a strong advantage, too.
“The investment and commercial scale required for success in the semiconductor industry is significant. Some of the biggest challenges for many other competitors in this sector is that they rely on non-standard, or ‘exotic’, features which are not easily scalable within the current semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem,” says Parkhouse-Parker.
Instead, Mignon’s chipset uses a standardCMOS fabrication approach, meaning mass-production is much more straightforward.
How can it be used?
Edge AI has already made a notable difference to consumers’ lives. Just look at how the likes of Apple and Google have put AI chips into their smartphones to run tasks like face and object recognition in photos or audio transcription locally, increasing privacy and speed, and reducing data transfer costs.
Parkhouse-Parker says Mignon could eventually make a difference here, along with in the next generation of ‘6G’ telecoms networks, where signal processing could be optimised by AI
But the first market they’re looking at is industrial spaces where connectivity and energy resources are low, but there’s a need for high-performance AI classification.
And while the tech isn’t ready for it yet, Parkhouse-Parker says Mignon is working towards another selling point that its offering enables — “explainable AI.” That is, transparency around how and why AI made a particular decision.
To give a timely example, if you ask OpenAI’sChatGPT to explain a concept to you, you can’t see why it comes up with the specific answer it gives. You just get answer based on the pathway it took through its sea of data in response to your prompt.
In an industrial setting, where AI might be making business-critical decisions, or decisions with safety implications, it would be very useful to be able to look back and see how the AI came to the conclusion that it did.
“With neural networks, all of the inferences are done within a black box, and you cannot see how or why this node connects to this node, or how things have been calculated. With Mignon, because it’s based on propositional logic, it allows for a researcher to be able to look in and see exactly where a decision had been made, and why, and what led it to that point,” explains Parkhouse-Parker.
Mignon wants to make it possible for this kind of accountability to be available via software, which could be appealing in fields such as medicine, defence, and the automotive industry.
The brains behind the Mignon product. L-R: Professor Alex Yakovlev and Dr Rishad Shafik
Their research into taking theTsetlin machine and putting it into computational hardware caught the attention of deep tech venture builderCambridge Future Tech, which–among others–also works withGitLife Biotech andMimicrete, who have previously featured in this newsletter.
Since spring last year, Parkhouse-Parker (Cambridge Future Tech’s COO) has been working on developing a commercial proposition for Yakovlev and Shafik’s research. He has taken the CEO role at Mignon as it spins out of the university.
Getting to market
First on the to-do list for the new startup is further refining its technology with the development of a ‘generation-2’ chipset before they bring it to market.
“Even though we’ve got fantastic performance improvements, and it’s actually quite remarkable, this has all been done on the 65-nanometer node, which is an old technology and should mean worse performance improvements, because effectively the transistors are bigger, and that’s what makes us really remarkable,” says Parkhouse-Parker.
“We think that when we move to a 28-nanometer node, that all of the numbers we have the benchmarks are going to be significantly greater at this scale.”
Commercial validation is obviously another important step after that. The eventual goal is to partner with fabless chip companies to build the Mignon technology into a commercially available system-on-a-chip. Mignon has a number of hires planned for the near future to help it get there.
Mignon CEO, Xavier Parkhouse-Parker
Investment plans and future potential
Parkhouse-Parker expects the spin-out process to be complete in March this year, after which they will formally open a £2.55 million funding round.
This will be used to expand the team, develop, test, and fabricate the next generation of chipset, and to get commercial validation in a number of verticals. Software to allow AI development on the chipset is also a key part of the roadmap.
Eventually, Parkhouse-Parker wants Mignon’s combination of low-power performance and widespread compatibility to usher in whole new opportunities for AI
“What Mignon does is open up a possibility for what is genuinely a completely new world of devices that people haven’t even thought about yet. Think about the opportunities that would be there with product people like a Steve Jobs or a Jony Ive that could use this and run wild with the potential. I think there really is a completely new world of possibilities.”
The big “hump”
There’s no clear road from where Mignon is now to that future. Aside from the additional development work to refine the chipset, there’s a shift in mindset required from the people who build AI applications.
“The big ‘hump’, as one of our advisors calls it, is that it’s a new way of doing artificial intelligence,” says Parkhouse-Parker. “The transition between neural networks and Tsetlin is not incredibly significant, but it will require a little bit of a mindset difference. It may require new ways of thinking around how artificial intelligence problems can be designed and how these things can be brought into market.
“There’s a great community already being built around this, but that’s one of the biggest challenges — building a Tsetlin ecosystem and transitioning things that are neural networks into Tsetlin.”
But despite these challenges, Parkhouse-Parker believes Mignon’s vision is very much achievable.
“Several orders of magnitude improvement warrant a look at something that’s new, novel, and exciting.”
The article you just read is from the premium edition of PreSeed Now. This is a newsletter that digs into the product, market, and story of startups that were founded in the UK. The goal is to help you understand how these businesses fit into what’s happening in the wider world and startup ecosystem.
NotGames, the indie studio behind ingenious propaganda simulator Not For Broadcast (2022), announced it’s releasing a separate VR version in March, coming to SteamVR and Meta Quest 2.
Releasing on Steam and the Quest Store on March 23rd, Not For Broadcast VR is putting the power of mass media into your hands, as you control what people see and how they see it in your very own TV studio control booth, set in an alternate ’80s timeline in Britain.
Promising all of the original game’s dystopian tale of power, greed and resistance, the VR adaptation seems like a natural fit for the seated, button-heavy game—looking a bit like Please, Don’t Touch Anything.
The game is chock full of egotistical celebrities, dishonest politicians, and strange sponsors—and the show must go on uninterrupted. Pop in your lineup of VHS tapes, frame and edit shots, bleep out expletives, and keep everything moving smoothly—even as disaster strikes outside your window. Whatever you do, your mission is to keep those ratings up.
You can wishlist the game now on Steam. We’re still waiting for the Store link for Quest, however we’ll update this article when we see it. In addition to its VR launch, the game is also coming to PlayStation and Xbox on March 23rd as well.
At the time of this writing, the flatscreen version of Not For Broadcast has garnered an ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ user review score on Steam, coming from over 7,000 players.
A number of the attractions of watching live sports carry over into esports. However, unless you’re watching an esports tournament in person, a lot of those attractions go away. Interactions with other fans are limited. The game view is limited. The game is flattened and there’s little environment ambiance. Virtex wants to fix that.
A History of Virtex
Virtex co-founders Tim Mcguinness and Christoph Ortlepp met at an esports event in 2019. Mcguinness presented the idea of “taking that whole experience that we were doing there in the physical world and bringing it into the virtual world,” Ortlepp said in a video call with ARPost. The two officially launched the company in 2020.
“The first thing we had to do was get something that we could show to Meta,” said Ortlepp. “For us, Echo was a good community to start with.”
Virtex got the green light from Meta. It also got Jim Purbrick who had previously been a technical director at Linden Lab and an engineering manager for Oculus.
“Moderation is an area where he had a big impact on us,” said Ortlepp. “We need live moderators to keep people safe… If now we have two or three hundred people in the platform, what if we have ten thousand people? Can we keep users safe and prevent a toxic environment?”
Meta’s support also meant that Virtex could finally launch its beta application. The beta is still technically closed – meaning that it isn’t on any app store, and you have to go through the Virtex website to access it. However, the closed beta isn’t limited. Testers have the opportunity to participate in “test sessions” – live streamed games every Thursday.
The platform held its first major tournament in December, with another about to kick off as this article was being written. Games are scheduled every week into the spring.
A Tour of the Stadium
Right now, the Virtex virtual world consists of a stadium entrance, a lounge area, and a commentator booth in addition to the stadium itself.
“The purpose [of the entrance and lounge] is really to set the stage for the user, to welcome them,” said Ortlepp.
In the lounge, users can socialize, modify their avatars (through a Ready Player Me integration), and even watch a miniaturized version of the live match. The lounge itself is still being developed with plans for mini-games and walls of fame. Connected areas including a virtual store and bar area are also in the works.
In the stadium itself, users can see and interact with other spectators. They can watch a 3D reproduction of the live game in real time, or watch a Twitch stream of the game on a jumbo screen above the stadium floor.
“We feature the video because we didn’t want to take away from esports viewers what they’re currently used to,” said Ortlepp. Virtex wants to give spectators options to explore viewing in new ways, without leaving them in an entirely unfamiliar setting.
A teleport system allows faster movement to different areas of the stadium, including the stadium floor to watch from within the game or even follow players through the action. This is possible thanks to the unique solution that Virtex has developed for recreating the game within the virtual stadium.
The studio also adds special recording and hosting tools like camera bots for streaming games within the stadium to Twitch and YouTube. Aspects of the stadium’s appearance can even be changed to match whatever game is being played.
“We are the platform. Ideally, we don’t ever want to be the content creators,” said Ortlepp. “So we have certain user modes for the ones that are actually operating the tournaments.”
When Can We Expect an App?
Virtex Stadium is up and running. But, the team plans to spend at least the next few months in their “closed” beta phase. For one thing, they really want to have their moderation plan in place before making the app more discoverable. They’re also still collecting feedback on their production tools – and thinking of new ones.
Further, while the platform currently has a decent schedule, the team wants to work with more games and more gaming communities. That includes other VR titles as well as more traditional esports. Ideally, one day, something will be happening in Virtex no matter when a user signs in.
“Where do we take it from here? There are no standards – no one has done this before,” said Ortlepp. “The virtual home of esports is basically the vision. It’s something we don’t claim yet – we have to earn it.”
It’s Not Too Early to Check It Out
Everything about Virtex is exciting, from their plans for the virtual venue itself, to their passion and concern for their community. Ortlepp said that the company is “careful about making dated timeline promises.” In a way that’s a little frustrating but it’s only because the company would rather hold off on something amazing than push something that falls short of their vision.
Ioanna is a writer at SHIFT. She likes the transition from old to modern, and she’s all about shifting perspectives. Ioanna is a writer at SHIFT. She likes the transition from old to modern, and she’s all about shifting perspectives.
By 2027, Europe has the potential to fully rely on domestic production of battery cells, meeting its EV and energy storage demands without any Chinese imports. That’s according to the latest forecast by Transport & Environment (T&E), a campaign group, which analyzed a range of manufacturer reports and press releases.
The European NGO further estimates that, in 2030, the companies with the largest battery cell production in the continent will be CATL, Northvolt, ACC, Freyr, and the Volkswagen Group.
About two-thirds of Europe’s needs for cathodes — an integral battery part — could also be produced in-house, the report finds. So far, 12 companies plan to become active in this part of the battery supply chain, with 17 plants announced in the region. Existing and scheduled projects include Umicore in Poland, Northvolt in Sweden, and BASF in Germany.
Northvolt’s first battery cell produced at the company’s Ett gigafactory in Sweden. Credit: Northvolt
Projections about the refining and processing of lithium are optimistic as well. While 100% of the refined lithium required for European batteries is imported from China and other countries, the bloc is expected to meet 50% of its demand by 2030. T&E has identified 24 projects so far, including Vulcan Energy Resources in Germany and Eramet in France.
The NGO warns, however, that these scenarios will not be realized unless backed by sufficient and timely funding, highlighting that the US’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) could attract European talent and factories to America.
“Europe needs the financial firepower to support its green industries in the global race with America and China,” Julia Poliscanova, senior director for vehicles and e-mobility at T&E, said. “A European Sovereignty Fund would support a truly European industrial strategy and not just countries with deep pockets. But spending rules need to be streamlined so that building a battery plant does not take the same amount of time as a coal plant.”
From steam power and electricity to computers and the internet, technological advancements have always disrupted labor markets, pushing out some careers while creating others. Artificial intelligence remains something of a misnomer — the smartest computer systems still don’t actually know anything — but the technology has reached an inflection point where it’s poised to affect new classes of jobs: artists and knowledge workers.
Specifically, the emergence of large language models – AI systems that are trained on vast amounts of text – means computers can now produce human-sounding written language and convert descriptive phrases into realistic images. The Conversation asked five artificial intelligence researchers to discuss how large language models are likely to affect artists and knowledge workers. And, as our experts noted, the technology is far from perfect, which raises a host of issues — from misinformation to plagiarism — that affect human workers.
To jump ahead to each response, here’s a list of each:
Lynne Parker, Associate Vice Chancellor, University of Tennessee
Large language models are making creativity and knowledge work accessible to all. Everyone with an internet connection can now use tools like ChatGPT or DALL-E 2 to express themselves and make sense of huge stores of information by, for example, producing text summaries.
These new AI tools can’t read minds, of course. A new, yet simpler, kind of human creativity is needed in the form of text prompts to get the results the human user is seeking. Through iterative prompting — an example of human-AI collaboration — the AI system generates successive rounds of outputs until the human writing the prompts is satisfied with the results. For example, the (human) winner of the recent Colorado State Fair competition in the digital artist category, who used an AI-powered tool, demonstrated creativity, but not of the sort that requires brushes and an eye for color and texture.
While there are significant benefits to opening the world of creativity and knowledge work to everyone, these new AI tools also have downsides. First, they could accelerate the loss of important human skills that will remain important in the coming years, especially writing skills. Educational institutes need to craft and enforce policies on allowable uses of large language models to ensure fair play and desirable learning outcomes.
At CES 2023 Pimax was showing off its latest high-resolution headset, the Pimax Crystal, which uses new lenses and new displays for what the company says is its clearest looking image yet. And while it’s definitely an improvement in many areas over the company’s headsets, there’s a key flaw that I hope the Pimax will be able to address.
Pimax Crystal employs new lenses and promises to be rid of glare and god rays that were apparent in prior Pimax headsets (and many others) which used Fresnel lenses. That, along with high-resolution displays, purported HDR capability, swappable lenses (to trade field-of-view for pixel density), and up to a 160Hz refresh rate. For a full breakdown of the headset’s spec, see our announcement article.
At CES 2023 I got to see the headset myself for the first time. Although the headset is technically capable of running in standalone mode, I saw it running as a PC VR headset with SteamVR Tracking.
Pimax Crystal (pictured without the SteamVR Tracking faceplate) | Photo by Road to VR
Naturally, the demo I was shown was running Half-Life: Alyx—arguably VR’s best looking game—to show off the detail the headset can reproduce with its 2,880 × 2,880 (8.3MP) per-eye displays. From the quick hands-on I got with Pimax Crystal, I could see this was a big step up in clarity over the company’s prior headsets, especially with regards to edge-to-edge clarity. The visual basics were solid too in terms of pupil swim, geometric distortion, and chromatic aberration. There was a little mura visible on this headset but nothing egregious as far as I could tell.
But there was one thing that immediately stood out to my eyes which otherwise foils a good looking image: blur during head movement. While the static image seen through the headset looks quite sharp, as soon as you start moving your head to look around the world you’ll see a lot of blur—that’s a problem for VR considering that your head is very frequently in motion.
Photo by Road to VR
My best guess is this is being caused by persistence blur; a display artifact that’s mostly solved on other headsets and is thus rarely seen anymore. Persistence blurring is is caused by the display staying lit for too long, such that as you turn your head the pixels remain lit even while their position becomes inaccurate (because they are ‘frozen’ in place each frame, until the next frame comes along and updates the position to account for your head movement). Most headsets employ a form of ‘low-persistence’ which counteracts this issue by illuminating the display for only a fraction of the time between frames, such that as you move your head the pixels aren’t ‘frozen’ in place, but are actually unlit, leaving your brain to fill in the gaps without seeing the pixels blur between frames.
The amount of blur I saw through Pimax Crystal I would say notably compromises what is otherwise an impressively clean image, though there’s a chance that Pimax could fix this issue, depending upon exactly what’s causing it.
For one, it’s possible that the headsets being shown at CES 2023 were still not fully tuned and that low-persistence hasn’t been properly tuned (or maybe isn’t even enabled yet). In that case it might be a matter of final tweaks before they get the correct display behavior which could reduce persistence blur.
Another factor could be the headset’s ‘HDR’ capability. While I don’t believe Pimax has shared any information on peak brightness, it’s possible that the display can’t do both low-persistence and HDR brightness at the same time (indeed this is a challenge because HDR needs high brightness while low-persistence needs pixels to be illuminated only for a minimal amount of time).
And still there’s other possibilities—this might not be persistence blur at all, but simply slow pixel switching time causing some form of ghosting, which could be an inherent limitation of the display or maybe something that could be tweaked.
– – — – –
Ultimately I’m pretty impressed with the clarity and wide field-of-view of the Pimax Crystal, but the blur I’ve seen during head movement compromises the image in my book. My gut says this is probably a persistence blurring issue, though it could be something else. We’ll have to wait to see what Pimax says about this and if they’re able to make improvements by the time Crystal ships.
Photo by Road to VR
Speaking about Crystal shipping; the headset was originally planned for release in Q3 of 2022, but that date has slipped. Although the company hosted a ‘Pimax Crystal Launch Event‘ back in November, at CES 2023 Pimax said the first headsets will start being delivered at the end of this month, though the company also indicates that it won’t reach full production capacity until the middle of the year. Even when the first units do start shipping, key accessories and features, like the headset’s standalone mode—which makes up about half of its value proposition—aren’t expected to be available until unspecified points in the future.
Gorilla Tag is undoubtedly a hit. Its primate-centric locomotion style and infectious game of tag has vaulted it into the top spot as the most-rated game on the Quest Store, surpassing even the Meta-owned rhythm game Beat Saber. Now, the indie team behind Quest’s most popular game revealed they’ve generated over $26 million with Gorilla Tag.
Speaking to VentureBeat, developer Another Axiom has reported that its gorilla-themed game has not only brought it home big with $26 million from in-app purchases, but it’s also attracted a larger glut of players than previously reported.
Having initially launched on App Lab in March 2021 and later released on the official Quest Store this past December, devs behind the free-to-play game say it’s managed to reach a peak monthly active user count of 2.3 million now. On Christmas, which is when Meta typically sees a big influx of users, over 760,000 users played Gorilla Tag.
It is free-to-play on Quest—its biggest platform—although a paid Steam Early Access version is available as well for PC VR headsets, costing $20, which comes along with an equal value of its in-game currency, shiny rocks.
Therein lies Gorilla Tag’s monetization strategy, as in-app purchases include a range of cosmetic items such as hats, glasses, and seasonal items like Santa beards and candy canes.
Developer Kerestell Smith told Road to VR last month that its main driver to get players in the door (and spending cash) was via some well-timed virality on TikTok, with the hashtag #gorillatag seeing 4.4 billion views to date.
Today, the game sits at over 52,000 reviews, ranking above Beat Saber’s 46,000 reviews, making it the most-rated game on the platform. At the time of this writing, Gorilla Tag is the fourth best-rated free game on Quest, sitting behind GYM CLASS – BASKETBALL VR, Innerworld, and First Steps for Quest 2.
Check out the full rankings from this month, which we break down into best and most rated games for both paid and free titles on Quest.
RealWear’s Navigator series of enterprise “assisted reality” headsets just got bigger. The company recently announced the Navigator 520, an updated version of the series flagship model released just over a year ago.
Improvements Due to New “HyperDisplay”
The RealWear Navigator 500 launched in December of 2021 and it does what it was designed for well. But, in XR, doing something well is seldom used as an excuse not to improve. As a result, you have to look pretty closely to notice the differences between the 500 and the recently announced 520. At least, looking at it from the outside.
Looking at side-by-side product images, you can notice that the Navigator 520 has improved eye relief – that is to say, that the screen is farther from the wearer’s eye. In industry settings, this means that users can see more of their surroundings while still getting what they need on the display. It also improves eye comfort, which is important in a device designed for all-day wear.
Of course, RealWear didn’t just move the same display and called it a new product. The company was able to improve eye relief by improving the display itself. The Navigator 520 features the company’s new HyperDisplay technology integrating a larger eye box and a higher-definition screen with brighter colors.
“With the launch of RealWear Navigator 520 we’ve continued to put ourselves in the shoes of a modern frontline professional who wants to stay connected and empowered,” RealWear Chief Product Officer Rama Oruganti said in a release. “This product brings together a year of major improvements and innovations on the RealWear platform.”
The hardware similarities are a benefit to the Navigator 520, as the modular device is compatible with a number of components and accessories already developed for the Navigator 500, including the voice-operated thermal camera announced by the company in November 2022.
Is Upgrading to the Navigator 520 Worth It?
Whenever an updated version of a standby comes out, there are two natural responses: excitement and skepticism. Is it worth updating to the 520 if you already use the 500? Is the 520 worth the extra money while the 500 is still available for less?
There are demos that simulate the 520’s resolution difference behind the HyperDisplay link above so you can get an idea of the display changes. It’s also worth asking whether your particular use case would benefit from improved eye relief. Are long shifts and situational awareness pain points in your particular situation?
It’s also worth remembering that given the cross-compatibility between the two devices, upgrading from the 500 to the 520 doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to replace any modules, accessories, and mounts that you may already be using.
What is the cost difference? The Navigator 500 is $2,500 and the Navigator 520 is $2,700. If you’re looking at getting started with RealWear, the difference may be negligible given all of the improvements of the newer model.
If you already have a fleet of 500s, replacing them all could be rough. However, replacing 500s with 520s as needed might be the way to go given component compatibility. And, after all, one year seems to be becoming the standard XR product cycle these days. RealWear headsets are built to last, but that doesn’t mean that the specs were never going to go out of date.
Options for Improvement
RealWear is keeping up with the trend in XR wearables these days, namely releasing new devices while the previous generation still has a shelf-life. While this can be frustrating when it means replacing whole fleets of units, the Navigator 520 in RealWear’s product structure provides flexibility for users at different stages of device deployment.
Swedish company LKAB has discovered what’s claimed to be Europe’s biggest deposit of rare earth metals, promising a critical boost in the continent’s trade security and green transition.
“Rare earths” are a group of 17 chemical elements composed of scandium, yttrium, and lanthanides. Contrary to their name, rare earths are actually abundant; their rarity stems from the complexity of their extraction, separation, and refining, which can generate toxic and radioactive waste, negatively impacting the environment.
But despite their environmental hazards, they are crucial for the manufacture of numerous high-tech products. This ranges from household goods (TVs, computers, and smartphones) to medical equipment (X-Ray and MRI scanning) and defense systems (jets and night vision tech, among others).
Most notably, they’re also key for the clean energy transition, as they are components of the magnets used in EVs and wind turbines.
LKAB’s discovery, however, could be a game changer. The state-owned company said that it has found a deposit — named Per Geijer — of over one million tons in the Kiruna area, located in Lapland within the Arctic Circle.
The Per Geijer deposit is in close proximity to existing mining operations in Kiruna. Credit: LKAB
“Electrification, the EU’s self-suffiency and independence from Russia and China will begin in the mine,” Sweden’s Minister for Energy, Business, and Industry, Ebba Busch, said in a statement.
“We need to strengthen industrial value chains in Europe and create real opportunities for the electrification of our societies. Politics must give the industry the conditions to switch to green and fossil-free production,” she noted.
Reducing reliance on foreign supply chains and ensuring access to critical raw materials is an integral focus of the EU agenda as well as Europe’s aim to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.
“Lithium and rare earths will soon be more important than oil and gas,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed during a speech in September. “Our demand for rare earths alone will increase fivefold by 2030,” she added, highlighting the imperative to avoid becoming dependent as on oil and gas.
In the same line of thought, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton underlined the need for action. “Take China, with its quasi-monopoly on rare earths and permanent magnets and prices rising by 50-90% in the past year alone,” he wrote. “Supply of raw materials has become a real geopolitical tool.”
While LKAB is already investing heavily in the project to move forward, President and Group CEO Jan Moström emphasized that there’s a long road ahead. He expects that it’ll take several years to investigate the deposit, assess its profitability, and evaluate the sustainability and environmental impact of the mining process. Following that, LKAB can proceed with an environmental review application and a permit application.
“If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will take at least 10 to 15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market,” Moström explained.
Providing that LKAB finds a way to mitigate the environmental cost entailed in mining, the Per Geijer deposit could provide Europe with the impetus in needs to ensure domestic supply of critical raw materials and facilitate its green transition.
A new XR startup is set to change the way we approach interactive experiences, combining portability, functionality, and style in its line of wearable tech. In just its first year of business, VITURE already received a number of significant recognitions for its flagship product, the VITURE One XR glasses. These accolades include being named a CES® 2023 Innovation Awards Honoree, one of TIME’s Best Innovations of 2022, and winning the Fast Company 2022 Innovation by Design Award.
The company has also made a significant impact on Kickstarter, raising more than $3 million for the VITURE One XR glasses.
Let’s take a look at how VITURE is breaking barriers in the wearable tech industry and how it plans to change the way we experience XR.
The VITURE One XR Glasses
The startup is known for its flagship product: the VITURE One XR glasses.
Combining functionality and style, their XR glasses are set to change the way we engage with content. Designed to deliver unique audiovisual experiences, the glasses utilize HARMAN AudioEFX technology, which delivers immersive audio experiences via a near-ear surround system and electrochromic film, which enables users to switch between Immersive and Ambient modes.
Aside from incorporating impactful technology into the VITURE One, other patented features enable the glasses to deliver next-level immersive experiences. These include accessibility features, such as the swappable nose bridge pads, the option to adjust the XR glasses to your eye prescription, a magnetic connector for easier linking to other devices, and head-tilt navigation for fully hands-free navigation.
The VITURE Story
As an avid gamer himself, VITURE co-founder and CEO David Jiang saw an opportunity for on-the-go entertainment. According to Jiang, he noticed that in-person experiences, such as sports games, are vastly different when viewed on TV. He wants to continue developing AR/XR technology that will allow users to access such immersive experiences, as well as super interactive sports experiences, in a virtual setting.
“With portable gaming and entertainment becoming more prevalent than ever, we’re pleased to bring the first stylish XR solution to the market that can handle streaming and AAA gaming on the go,” said Jiang in a press release shared with ARPost.
After working on other major projects, such as Google Glass, and noticing the growing need for on-the-go mobile gaming experiences, he connected with progressive inventors in 2021 to start working on the VITURE One XR glasses.
Through Jiang’s experiences, studying at the Harvard School of Design, working as a Microsoft intern, and working at Google, he discovered how users interact with personal technology. This discovery was a major influence on how the VITURE One XR glasses are designed, putting an emphasis on providing users with an optimal experience.
As an expert in spatial tech, as well as in AR tech and design, Jiang was able to design innovative wearable tech that’s both functional and fashionable.
Redefining the Future of Wearable Tech
What’s next for VITURE?
The VITURE One, together with its Mobile Dock, was available for demos at CES 2023. Aside from being able to try out the XR glasses, attendees had the opportunity to be among the first to see the Mobile Dock in action.
VITURE One XR glasses and Mobile Dock
This new addition to the VITURE lineup will allow users to access new features, such as multiplayer mode, and compatibility with other viewing and gaming devices, such as the Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, and TV sticks.
Aside from the Mobile Dock, there are also plans to create additional apps and features for the VITURE One neckband, shortly after the XR glasses are released with full availability in March.
Far from being just a wearable tech for gaming, the VITURE One XR glasses are also designed to elevate the way we stream our favorite content. Whether it’s using the apps through the neckband or using connections to other devices, users will be able to stream their favorite content anytime, anywhere.
VITURE’s awards continue to fuel VITURE’s drive for innovation. Aside from the accolades, the team greatly values the feedback received from early testers and users.
