The Chinese Government could retaliate to the U.S. ban on YMTC NAND flash memory products by banning American memory maker Micron Technology. This comes as the country initiated a "cybersecurity review" of Micron products to check if they conform to China's network security Laws. These are essentially the same grounds on which the US-FCC banned YMTC, forcing large customers like Apple to cancel orders of YMTC NAND flash products, derailing the company's growth. YMTC's 3D NAND flash products and their development roadmaps can be considered "contemporary," against those of Micron, Kioxia, SK hynix, and Samsung. If banned, China would force Chinese companies, such as Lenovo, HMD International, etc., to remove Micron from their qualified vendor lists.

PICO, a leading VR brand with independent innovation and R&D creation capabilities, has today announced the launch of the PICO 4, a next-generation, all-in-one VR headset that aims to make VR accessible to everyone by combining comfort and performance.

Equipped with the Snapdragon XR2 platform, the PICO 4 features a super lightweight body, Pancake Optics, 4K+ resolution display, and an intuitive user experience. Pioneering the next generation of VR hardware design, PICO's new headset makes the unreal real, with a more vivid, and immersive VR experience. The PICO 4 will be available on October 18th in thirteen European countries, with plans to launch in Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia this year.

Meta (Oculus) is readying its next-gen high-end VR HMD, the Meta Quest Pro. Someone left a retail-looking box behind in a hotel room, with an engineering sample. At this point we don't know if it's a Meta employee who got very sloppy with their ES, or an ISV eligible to receive an ES. It was found by a hotel employee, who also claims to be a game streamer. He claimed to have found several such boxes full of Meta samples. The Quest Pro VR appears lightweight, with no unnecessary bulk anywhere, Meta seems to have redesigned the head-straps and light-blockers of the HMD. The controllers feature a more compact appearance, as if to better with with smaller hands. Meta is expected to formally launch its "next-gen" headset at the Connect Conference on October 11, but we can't tell if this is what the company is planning to unveil.

Last week we brought you a report on how you could end up with a paperweight of an Oculus Quest 2 VR HMD if your Facebook account linked to the headset is banned. There's another aspect to this mess—voluntary account deletion. What if you decided you no longer need your Facebook account, and for whatever reason (read: privacy), decided to delete your account"? Turns out, that all the Oculus games that you own, will be gone forever, according to CixLiv on Twitter, who took the time to actually read the ToS. Deleting your Facebook account, which is a step beyond deactivating it, is a permanent erasure of your data on Facebook, which means that your Oculus profile gets deleted alongside, along with your digital rights to all the games that you purchased.

Announced today, the NVIDIA CloudXR platform will be available on Amazon EC2 P3 and G4 instances, which support NVIDIA V100 and T4 GPUs, allowing cloud users to stream high-quality immersive experiences to remote VR and AR devices. The CloudXR platform includes the NVIDIA CloudXR software development kit, NVIDIA Virtual Workstation software and NVIDIA AI SDKs to deliver photorealistic graphics, with the mobile convenience of all-in-one XR headsets. XR is a collective term for VR, AR and mixed reality.

With the ability to stream from the cloud, professionals can now easily set up, scale and access immersive experiences from anywhere — they no longer need to be tethered to expensive workstations or external VR tracking systems. The growing availability of advanced tools like CloudXR is paving the way for enhanced collaboration, streamlined workflows and high fidelity virtual environments. XR solutions are also introducing new possibilities for adding AI features and functionality.

ZOTAC got around to launching the third generation of its VR GO line of gaming backpack PCs, the VR GO 3.0. ZOTAC had unveiled it at the 2020 International CES. These devices are essentially desktop-replacement notebooks minus the display, with connectivity for a VR headset, which you wear like a backpack. This is the device's first update in over two years, with the VR GO 2.0 launching in the thick of the VR craze around 2018.

The new VR GO 3.0 comes with an improved wearable design, with better thermal insulation and ventilation for the wearer. It also gets updated hardware in the form of a Core i7-9700 processor, GeForce RTX 2070 graphics, 16 GB of DDR4-2667 SO-DIMM memory, and 240 GB NVMe SSD storage. The device comes with two hot-swappable battery packs. You can swap out a battery with at least one of them in the bay, in the middle of your game. The VR GO 3.0 supports a wide range of VR HMD standards, and is based on Windows 10. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Power up your XR displays and 5G devices because NVIDIA is taking streaming to the next level. With the announcement today of the NVIDIA CloudXR 1.0 software development kit, we're bringing major advancements to streaming augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual reality content — collectively known as XR — over 5G, Wi-Fi and other high-performance networks.

With the NVIDIA CloudXR platform, any end device — including head-mounted displays (HMDs) and connected Windows and Android devices — can become a high-fidelity XR display capable of showcasing professional-quality graphics. CloudXR is built on NVIDIA RTX GPUs and the CloudXR SDK to allow streaming of immersive AR, MR or VR experiences from anywhere, whether from the data center, cloud or at the edge. And with NVIDIA GPU virtualization software, CloudXR scales efficiently allowing multiple users or tenants to securely share GPU resources.

AMD today announced the AMD Radeon Pro W5700, the world's first 7 nm professional PC workstation graphics card. It delivers new levels of performance and advanced features that enable 3D designers, architects and engineers to visualize, review and interact with their designs in real time, dramatically accelerating decision-making processes and product development cycles.

The AMD Radeon Pro W5700 workstation graphics card features the high-performance, energy-efficient AMD RDNA architecture and state-of-the-art GDDR6 memory to handle large models and datasets, and is the first PC workstation graphics card to support high-bandwidth PCIe 4.0 technology. It is ideal for professionals who push performance beyond traditional 3D design by generating photorealistic renders of their concepts and reviewing virtual prototypes of their designs in virtual reality (VR) environments.

PAX East 2019 brought with it some exciting news, and the world of virtual reality no doubt sees this news as the biggest in quite some time. Valve has finally made good on their promises from yesteryear, bringing in personnel to work on both the hardware and software side of the VR market. We first saw a hint of this via a prototype VR HMD late last year, with leaked specs confirming it was Valve's own design going beyond the established competition at the time from HTC Vive and Oculus. Since then, the Vive Pro has come out with an even higher-end version using eye-tracking to target prosumers initially, and also showcasing foveated rendering that will no doubt herald VR getting more mainstream and allowing for a higher graphical fidelity as well.

The so-called Valve Index has been listed on Steam now, with no other information to see than from the image below. We know it is coming in a couple of months, perhaps even during Computex although it is unlikely. It certainly looks similar to the prototype HMD, and presumably retains the 135° field-of-view and 2,880 x 1,600 total resolution. No mention of the Steam Knuckles controller here, but that is no surprise for a teaser. What we can tell is the headset has a physical slider, presumably to assist with pupillary distance calibration, as well as fairly large lenses that extend outwards which may assist with IR-based tracking. There is no mention of HTC anywhere here, and it would be right up Valve's alley to introduce this at a relatively affordable price point to then make up on software and distribution (savings via Steam) instead. Perhaps we will see the long-rumored Half Life VR as a launch title? Time will tell, and this may well be the big boost to gaming VR that is sorely needed.

The Vive Cosmos was not the only major announcement coming out of HTC's Vive business unit at CES this year. While that has massive mainstream appeal, the company was quick to let us know that it was still to early to comment further than what has already been covered in the aforelinked news post. Instead, they invited us to their suite to take a closer look at the Vive Pro Eye- one of the few things that really stood out for us at the trade show.

The Vive Pro Eye is, as the name would suggest, a new SKU with integrated eye tracking in the Vive Pro HMD. Working together with Tobii, the Vive Pro Eye allows for a more natural control mechanism within VR via eye controls, which in turn means a revamped menu navigation system is possible. This allows for increased accessibility to end users with disability, more optimization on VR performance, and detailed analysis of VR experiences for both the client and the businesses alike. Read past the break for a breakdown of our experience with the Vive Pro Eye, and the various demos on hand to showcase the feature.

If you've just experienced deja vu, it's because the HyperX Orbit S headset we went hands-on last evening packs Audeze-made planar magnetic drivers, and features head-tracking. Californian audiophile headphones and DAC maker Audeze fancies a bigger slice of the gaming audio pie, and has swan-dived into the competitive market with a feature-packed monstrosity, the Mobius.

The Audeze Mobius is an around-the-ear gaming headset that packs the company's finest 50 mm-class planar-magnetic drivers that have been tuned with a gaming-optimized sound-stage; and incorporates head-tracking positional audio technology, much like the HyperX Cloud Orbit S. On the software side of things, a virtual surround DSP takes in real-time input from the headset on the exact spatial position of your head compared to a static display (much like a VR HMD), and accordingly moves the audio perspective. The software is pretty intuitive and lightweight, and doesn't come with too much DSP bloat. We went ears-on with one of these, and the sound-quality blew our minds first, and the realism the head-tracking feature adds to gameplay took care of the rest. Head-tracking audio headsets could gain popularity among gamers who don't want a display within an inch of their eyes.

HyperX is bringing in a large selection of gaming peripherals to CES 2019, beginning with its new flagship gaming headset, the HyperX Cloud Orbit S. This headset implements two killer features - Audeze planar-magnetic drivers; and Waves Nx head-tracking. Audeze is a well-known brand among audiophiles and music composers, and makes audio monitors for studios. HyperX is sourcing 50 mm planar-magnetic drivers from the company that provide an extremely wide frequency-response range, and high SNR. This is probably the first gaming headset to feature audiophile-grade drivers, which are probably re-tuned by HyperX with a gaming-focused soundstage.

The next killer feature, Waves Nx, is a combination of positional audio DSPs, and hardware head-tracking, similar to VR HMDs, which in real-time moves the audio perspective of your game, and emulates a virtual 7.1 setup over the stereo drivers. This would help even if your display is static and your head is turning to track opponents in a competitive online shooter. You get three detachable cables based on cord length, type, and usage scenario. HyperX is developing two variants of this headset. The full-featured one is priced at USD $329, and the one without Waves Nx head-tracking goes for $299.

In June 2016 Valve announced 'Destinations', a Steam workshop not easy to find anymore, that allowed the end user to enter real and fictitious scenarios through the magic of virtual reality. The idea was intriguing, but the media was not completely sold and judged Valve's proposal as both "the best and the worst of VR". From all this, however, came a singular discovery: those who reverse-engineered its code discovered in it the HLVR acronym, which initiated a wide debate about the potential appearance of a Half Life VR (HLVR) version specifically developed for VR headsets.

Lending further credence to this hypothesis was Gabe Newell's announcement in February 2017 that Valve was preparing three big titles for virtual reality- two of them based on Source 2, and one of them based on Unity. More such signs appeared in the summer of 2018, and everything was pointing towards this project being indeed real, that it would likely be based on Source 2, and that it would offer a full-fledged blockbuster title that this generation of VR has been desperately seeking. We now have more data courtesy a "leaked email" to Reddit user 2flock that suggests Valve's work is apparently going beyond just VR game development, as images of a prototype device seen below confirm that Valve is also working on its own VR head-mounted display (HMD), one whose development would also be more advanced than initially suspected.

ZOTAC Technology, a global manufacturer of innovation, is excited to officially announce the VR GO 2.0, the world's first VR Backpack PC refreshed from the ground up. The VR GO 2.0 improves the untethered VR experience with high-end performance repackaged into a more compact, ergonomic chassis.

UNLEASH NEW REALITY
The VR GO 2.0 is designed for unlocking the potential of VR across industries and businesses in entertainment, product development, medical practice, design, education, customer service, eSports, and much more. Integrating mobility and high-performance hardware, the revamped backpack solution empowers life-like immersion with zero compromises to latency and reduction in visual quality with today's leading VR headsets.

The system comes with the powerful and efficient NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 graphics with 8GB memory while an Intel Core i7 processor and 16GB DDR4 memory provides the horsepower and bandwidth to sail through intensive tasks, delivering an ultra-smooth experience. The VR GO 2.0 is further equipped with centralized ports and top mounted I/O ports dedicated for easy VR HMD connectivity.

Mixed reality headsets seem to present a new opportunity for the Virtual Reality segment, and Samsung has taken advantage of this trend by announcing the new Samsung HMD Odyssey+, a product that stands out for a novelty in its OLED displays that eliminates the screen door effect. This is a visual artifact of displays where the fine lines separating pixels become visible on the screen. This effect hurts the visual experience, but it can also cause dizziness or nausea.

Samsung say they have solved the problem with an innovation called "Anti-Screen Door Effect (Anti-SDE) Display". This technology helps to increased the perceived resolution of the displays, and according to Samsung the user will have a perceived screen density of 1,233 PPI. The actual density is 616 PPI on a conventional AMOLED, but with the new Anti-SDE AMOLED technology that resolution promises to double virtually before our eyes.

The HTC VIVE Pro Full Kit is one for the enthusiast, with the full bundle launching with the updated Steam VR 2.0 compatible base stations for a total play area of an incredible 10m x 10m, over three times that of the original. Also included in the Full Kit is a new set of pro controllers in the iconic blue colour. The VIVE Pro headset itself features a resolution of 2880 x 1600 (an increase of 78% over the original), with a built-in deluxe audio strap and slimlined cable management.

TPCAST, the leader in wireless Virtual Reality (VR) and the first-to-market with a wireless VR solution for Head-Mounted Display (HMD), today announces the launch of its Business Edition (BE) Wireless VR Adapter for the North America market. The first version will be supporting the HTC Vive HMD and support for additional HMDs will be released during Q3 2018. The TPCAST BE Wireless Adapter simultaneously supports two to four users, while preserving the HTC Vive's high video quality and maintaining the latency under 2ms. The BE adapter is targeted to support multi-user VR activities across a variety of verticals including medical, automotive, real estate, training and other multi user VR applications. The product will be sold by TPCAST directly and will also be available through TPCAST's channel partners in Q2 2018.

The TPCAST Consumer Edition (CE) Wireless Adapter is the only PC VR Wireless Solution available in the market today and has been shipping in North America since November 2017. TPCAST technology is a breakthrough in the VR field, creating a wireless connection between the PC and the VR headset, providing VR users a unique, truly immersive experience. The TPCAST adapter attaches to the HTC Vive headset, replacing the need for the Vive's clunky umbilical cord. The TPCAST adapter has enhanced the VR user experience, providing consumers and enterprise users the freedom to walk, jump, and spin without worrying about the cable.

HTC Vive today announced that the HTC Vive Pro Head Mounted Display (HMD) will be available for $799 with global pre-orders starting now. The company also announced a $100 price reduction for the current Vive full kit, bringing it down to $499 across the globe. All Vive Pro HMDs purchased by June 3rd, which will begin shipping on April 5th, will come with a free six-month trial to Viveport Subscription, where consumers can choose up to 5 titles per month from the more than 400 titles available.

"With the Vive Pro we are delivering the best quality display and visual experience to the most discerning VR enthusiasts. Our goal has always been to offer the most premium VR platform available and to drive adoption for VR," said Daniel O'Brien, HTC Vive General Manager, US. "By lowering the price of the current Vive, we are making VR more accessible while expanding the potential market for developers. Whether you're a VR enthusiast or new to the platform, there's never been a better time to join the most complete VR platform available."

If you quite enjoyed the original Blade Runner, even after 35 years of its release (like this editor) and enjoyed Blade Runner 2049 even more (also like this editor), then you're likely interested, at some level, in the upcoming VR adventure. Blade Runner: Revelations is a VR video game that's being developed by Seismic Games and Alcon Media Group, and has an expected release date of mid 2018.

The story is set right after the original Blade Runner, and its events lead up to the Blade Runner 2049 narrative. Gamers will take on the role of Harper - an experienced blade runner that aims to keep 2023 Los Angeles safe. Caught within a twisted replicant plot, players will be tasked with searching for evidence to piece together the truth in some events. Gameplay features include access to a flying spinner, unique weaponry and the Esper image reconstruction technology. And contrary to most VR games, Blade Runner: Revelations features a free-movement design, though it's not a full liberty one, much like the real world's.

TPCAST, the Wireless VR Solutions leader, announces its Next-Generation Wireless VR Technologies, TPCAST ​​2.0, which utilize the new generation ultra-low latency codec technology and an upgraded TPCAST ​​real-time data control protocol. These combined technologies pave the way to allow TPCAST to continue to deliver high video quality, low latency, and real-time data transmission. The introduction of these new technologies, supporting short, mid and long-range distances and covering multiple VR deployment ranges, strategically places TPCAST in the forefront of the future evolution of the Wireless VR Market.

The TPCAST 2.0 technology includes three main features. The first element is the ultra-low latency codec, capable of compressing VR content on a 50:1 ratio which significantly reduces the bandwidth required for video data transmission while bounding the latency to 1ms. This easy-to-use, stable, and ultra-low latency codec enables TPCAST's product family to deliver consistently high-quality real-time video transmission. The second feature of the TPCAST 2.0 technology is its scalability making it easy to adapt to any headset including 3k, 4k, and 8k video resolution HMDs in the market. The third feature is the capability to preserve the user experience compared to a wired connection. TPCAST's proprietary technology, and accumulated VR knowledge base, gained by its long-term leading position in the Wireless VR space, enables TPCAST's products to deliver a stable and commercial-grade VR experience.

As part of Microsoft's "12 Days of Deals" push towards achieving more and better sales of Microsoft-branded products, the company has pushed a pretty hefty discount for its MR HMDs mere months after their release. The discounts see the Acer Windows Mixed Reality, Dell Visor, HP, and Lenovo Explorer take price-cuts of $200 over the base price, while Samsung's Odyssey HMD sees a much more level $50 price-cut.

With a move so close to holiday season and in the wake of steep discounts from Virtual Reality headset makers Oculus and HTC, Microsoft is pushing as hard as it can towards shipping enough units to build a new VR ecosystem. Consumers are the ones that stand to gain the most here, however. Though if you want to get your hand son one of these, be fast: the Acer and Dell options are already sold out, and the others' supply might also be inferior to the demand. So go there, and grab them while they're hot.

HTC, a pioneer in innovative, smart mobile and virtual reality (VR) technologies, today held its VIVE Developer Conference 2017 (VDC2017), where it announced VIVE WAVE, a VR open platform and toolset that will open up the path to easy mobile VR content development and high-performance device optimization for third-party partners. 12 hardware partners, namely 360QIKU, Baofengmojing, Coocaa, EmdoorVR, Idealens, iQIYI, Juhaokan, Nubia, Pico, Pimax, Quanta and Thundercomm, announced their support for the integration of Vive Wave as well as the VIVEPORT VR content platform into their future products. Vive Wave is a clear step forward in bringing together the highly fragmented mobile VR market that has growth up in China the last several years. It saves tremendous efforts by allowing developers to create content for a common platform and storefront across disparate hardware vendors. Over 35 Chinese and global content developers have already built VR content optimized for Vive Wave, with 14 showing live demos at the event. Vive also unveiled the VIVE FOCUS, its highly anticipated premium standalone VR headset for the China market that is also based on the Vive Wave VR open platform.

LG demonstrated their prototype VR headset at the Game Developer Conference earlier this year. It was widely known as the LG VR HMD, since it lacked a proper name at the time. Mobiel Kopen, a very popular Dutch publication, later discovered a LG filed patent revealing the device's name to be the UltraGear. LG's UltraGear headset, just like the HTC Vive, employs Valve's SteamVR tracking technology. Both headsets even share a similar controller design. However, LG has implemented two 3.64" OLED displays into the UltraGear, which features a 1440 x 1280 resolution and an impressive 90 Hz refresh rate to beat out both the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets. But LG's innovative flip-up design is the real differentiating factor here. The concept is to give users the option to lift the front of the headset when they want to exit the VR world.

In addition to slashing the price of Oculus Rift HMD Set down to USD $399, Oculus VR announced a new standalone VR headset for the masses, the Oculus Go, which at USD $199, is significantly cheaper than the Oculus Rift, while not being that much costlier than the $129 Samsung Gear VR. Oculus Go lacks the fully-tracked motion sensors or inside-out tracking of the Oculus Rift, which helps keep its price down. It retains the essentials, including a 2560 x 1440 pixels display resolution, new lenses, and 3D spatial audio built into the headset. Oculus VR plans to put Go in the hands of developers by November 2017, with mass-production expected to begin shortly after, and retail availability some time in 2018.

Oculus VR announced that its pioneering Oculus Rift VR HMD has finally emerged from its early-adopter pricing, and will be sold at USD $399 a piece, going forward. The company had been facing increased competition in HMDs from the likes of the HTC Vive, and tech majors Microsoft announcing their VR/AR standards. Each $399 Rift bundle comes with Touch controllers, sensors, and six free apps that give you hours of entertainment including Epic's arcade shooter, Robo Recall, and our creative tools, Medium and Quill. Oculus VR, throughout its press-release, emphasized that the $399 price isn't a limited-period offer, and that the pricing is "permanent."