Logitech today announced a new integrated audio solution designed from the ground up for Meta Quest 2 to be the ultimate audio integration, the Logitech Chorus. "From the start, we wanted to help more people discover all that VR has to offer," said Vadim Kogan, head of AR/VR business group at Logitech. "Chorus enhances the fit and comfort of Meta Quest 2, while allowing those who love long play sessions to stay immersed in their favorite games and experiences through the audio integration in a comfortable design built for the VR gamer."

The new Logitech Chorus reaches a new level of immersive, ultra-realistic audio thanks to a new approach to headset design with custom-tuned off-ear acoustics. Featuring an open-back design, rotating speakers, and an integrated strap solution, this new design is the optimal solution for Meta 2 Quest users, allowing them to stay cool, while moving fast and free in the Metaverse. Nothing in or around your ear interferes with your game, your workout, or your creativity.

Raw Fury and Oskar Stålberg are happy to share the very fun news that Townscaper VR is coming this October 6th on Meta Quest VR and PICO. Townscaper was originally released in June 2020 and received rave reviews from players across the world.

This indie city builder allowed players of all experiences to build their own idyllic ocean-side towns with just a few clicks. Now fans and newcomers alike will be able to fully immerse themselves into the creative process and experience building their own quaint and colorful towns in a more immersive manner, through the power of VR. Players will be able to try this new way of building in Townscaper at Gamescom this year. You'll be able to locate the game and team over in HALL 9.1 Aisle B No: 049.

Ubisoft has recently announced during their quarterly earnings report that four games had been canceled including Splinter Cell VR & Ghost Recon Frontline while Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will be delayed until late 2023. Ubisoft's Red Storm studio and Meta had been jointly developing Splinter Cell VR before the game was canceled due to the "uncertain economic environment". The free-to-play battle royale Ghost Recon Frontline title that was being made at Ubisoft Bucharest was also scrapped after a previous delay and significant fan backlash. The open-world Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora game has been delayed until FY2023 with indications that the launch could occur towards the end of the year.

On May 26, STEPVR, an innovative company focusing on VR technology research and development, released VR Gates to the metaverse called Gates01 in Beijing. This product is similar to the "Oasis" in the movie Ready Player One. The omnidirectional motion system and the technical equipment that restores five senses allow users to enter the virtual world for sports, entertainment, education, and work. Being the world's first company to achieve MMO games in the VR world, STEPVR has surpassed companies such as Meta and taken the lead in launching software and hardware systems that enter the metaverse. The commercial version of VR Gates released by STEPVR is named Gates01. The product covers an area of approximately 3m2. The deck is a self-developed omnidirectional motion system where users can run freely and achieve running and instant stopping movements. In addition, Gates01 can also restore the sense of vision, hearing, touch, smell, and vestibular balance in the virtual world, allowing users to experience the real and immersive virtual world in a small and convenient space.

STEPVR was founded in 2013. Its founder, Guo Cheng, studied at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and obtained a doctorate degree. The company focuses on the research and development of laser positioning technology and virtual human motion capture technology. In 2019, STEPVR launched an ultra-space free-roam VR esports brand, Future Battle, in China. In less than a year, Future Battle has opened more than 140 stores through brand authorization and franchising. Despite the impact of the epidemic, there are still more than 60 partner stores to be opened. The number of users that have signed up for membership has reached 70%, and 22% of the partners have opened a second store. Through the operation of free-roam VR stores, STEPVR has gained more than 1 million users, becoming one of the brands with the most VR users in the world.

GrAI Matter Labs, a pioneer of brain-inspired ultra-low latency computing, announced today that it will be unveiling GrAI VIP, a full-stack AI system-on-chip platform, to partners and customers at GLOBAL INDUSTRIE, May 17th-20th, 2022. At GLOBAL INDUSTRIE, GML will demonstrate a live event-based, brain-inspired computing solution for purpose-built, efficient inference in a real-world application of robotics using the Life-Ready GrAI VIP chip. GrAI VIP is an industry-first near-sensor AI solution with 16-bit floating-point capability that achieves best-in-class performance with a low-power envelope. It opens up unparalleled applications that rely on understanding and transformations of signals produced by a multitude of sensors at the edge in Robotics, AR/VR, Smart Homes, Infotainment in automobiles and more.

"GrAI VIP is ready to deliver Life-Ready AI to industrial automation applications and revolutionize systems such as pick & place robots, cobots, and warehouse robots, as being demonstrated at the show," said Ingolf Held, CEO of GrAI Matter Labs. "GrAI Matter Labs has a pipeline of over $1 Million in pre-orders, and we are thrilled to enable our early-access partners and customers in industrial automation, consumer electronics, defence and more, with our GrAI VIP M.2 cards sampling today." "GML is targeting the $1 billion+ fast-growing market (20%+ per year) of endpoint AI with a unique approach backed by innovative technology," said Karl Freund, Founder and Principal Analyst at Cambrian-AI Research. "GML's 'Life-Ready' AI provides solutions that here-to-fore were simply impossible at such low footprint and power." AI application developers looking for high fidelity and low latency responses for their edge algorithms can now get early access to the GrAI VIP platform and drive game-changing products in industrial automation, consumer electronics, and more.

MediaTek today unveiled its new Genio platform for AIoT devices and introduced the first chip in the Genio family, the Genio 1200 designed for premium AIoT products. MediaTek Genio is a complete platform stack for the AIoT with powerful and ultra- efficient chipsets, open platform software development kits (SDKs) and a developer portal with comprehensive resources and tools. This all-in-one platform makes it easy for brands to develop innovative consumer, enterprise and industrial smart applications at the premium, mid-range and entry levels, and bring these devices to market faster. With MediaTek Genio, customers have access to all the hardware, software and resources needed to go from concept to design and manufacturing.

Customers can choose from a range of Genio chips to suit their product needs, and then use MediaTek's developer resources and the Yocto Linux open platform SDK to customize their designs. MediaTek also makes it easy for customers to access its partners' system hardware and software, and leverage partners' networks and sales channels. By offering an integrated, easy-to-use platform, MediaTek Genio reduces development costs and speeds up time to market, while providing long-term support for operating system updates and security patches that extend the product lifecycle. "Today MediaTek powers the most popular AIoT devices on the market. As the industry enters the next era of innovation, MediaTek's Genio platform delivers flexibility, scalability and development support brands need to cater to the latest market demands," said Jerry Yu, MediaTek Corporate Senior Vice President and General Manager of MediaTek's Computing, Connectivity and Metaverse Business Group. "We look forward to seeing the new user experiences brands bring to life with the Genio 1200 and its powerful AI capability, support for 4K displays and advanced imaging features."

Porotech, a pioneer in micro-LED and GaN-based semiconductor material technology, will be unveiling DynamicPixelTuning on its PoroGaN microdisplay platform at the Display Week event in California next week. The breakthrough makes it possible to create full-colour or tuneable-colour displays using identical pixels from a single wafer - achieving colour uniformity, while eliminating complex fabrication processes. The innovation is set to accelerate the commercialisation of micro-LEDs, mini-LEDs and LEDs to deliver next-generation display products for AR/MR/VR applications, smart wearable devices, smart displays and large-scale direct view displays.

Porotech is the first in the world to unlock dynamic colour tuning of LED chips and pixels. Its PoroGaN platform makes it possible for each individual tiny LED on an epiwafer to emit all colours of the visible spectrum. At this stage, the Porotech proof-of-concept displays are tuneable monocolour, with uniform brightness and colour for display products in the micro (µm) and nano (nm) pixel space. But the company's proprietary PoroGaN platform and Dynamic Pixel technology are paving the way to a monolithic full-colour RGB display very soon.

Hopefully you were able to tune into our second annual Meta Quest Gaming Showcase today. But if not? Don't worry, we've got you covered. Below you'll find a recap of every announcement from today's show (and all of the trailers too). NFL PRO ERA, Among Us VR, Red Matter 2, Bonelab—the list goes on. Best of all: Every game we showed off today is slated to release within the next year.

We're also celebrating today's show with a sale in the Meta Quest Store. Grab games like Moss and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners so you can get caught up before the sequels drop later this year. And we gave away the world the showcase took place in as a new Home environment—look for Crystal Atrium under the Personalization tab of your settings menu.

AR/VR device shipments revised up to 14.19 million units in 2022, with an annual growth rate of 43.9%, according to TrendForce research. Growth momentum will come from increased demand for remote interactivity stemming from the pandemic, as well as Oculus Quest 2's price reduction strategy. Microsoft HoloLens 2 and Oculus Quest 2 are first in market share for AR and VR, respectively.

According to TrendForce, the topic of the Metaverse has driven brands to actively plan for and stimulate product shipment performance. However, the AR/VR device market has yet to experienced explosive growth due to two factors: component shortages and the difficulty of developing new technologies. In addition, cosmetic and size considerations have made the more optically and technically difficult Pancake design the first choice for new high-end products. Furthermore, various embedded tracking feedback technologies key to enhancing the user's immersive experience such as eye tracking and 6DoF further affect the development progress of a new product as a whole. Since there are no new foreboding products on the horizon, TrendForce believes, no other branded products have a chance at supplanting the current mainstream status of Oculus or Microsoft until at least 2023.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. today announced the company has opened Extended Reality (XR) Labs in Europe. Europe already has a thriving augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) community and Qualcomm Technologies is committed to making XR the future of mobile computing. The XR Labs will focus activities on XR R&D, engineering and key technology development areas such as advanced hand tracking and gesture control, 3D Mapping and SLAM/Localization services, multi-user experiences, and image recognition. Also, XR SDKs providing access to foundational XR technology including object and geo-tracking.

The new labs in Europe build on Qualcomm Technologies' commitment to make XR accessible to the masses and will be located across six cities in Europe initially, with the intention to add more in the future. The goal is to help design lightweight, sleek headworn glasses and make innovative technology available for developers through Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform to build experiences that will transform everyday consumer, retail, industrial, enterprise, education and healthcare. Qualcomm Technologies is pushing the boundaries and charting its course to everyday use through continued R&D advancements.

The latest Steam Hardware survey from January 2022 shows significant growth for VR headsets with the number of connected units reaching 3.4 million or 2.14% of Steam users. This is up from 2.95 million in December 2021 with the Meta Quest 2 responsible for the majority of this growth now accounting for 46.02% of the VR headsets used on Steam despite being able to operate without a connected computer. Meta now controls 67.3% of the PC VR market with Valve coming in second at 14.4%, HTC third at 11.2%, and Microsoft fourth with just 5% market share. The total number of monthly-connected VR headsets has risen 29.5% since this time last year but it remains to be seen if this growth will continue past the holiday season.

Exponential demand growth for remote and unmanned terminals in smart home, logistics, manufacturing and other end-user applications has driven iterative updates in Wi-Fi technology. Among the current generations of technologies, Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) is mainstream while Wi-Fi 6 and 6E (802.11ax) are at promotional stages, according to TrendForce's investigations. In order to meet the connection requirements of industry concepts such as the Metaverse, many major manufacturers have trained their focus on the faster and more stable next generation 802.11be Wi-Fi standard amendment, commonly known as Wi-Fi 7. Considering technical characteristics, maturity, and product certification status, Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are expected to surpass Wi-Fi 5 to become mainstream technology in 2022, with global market share expected to reach 58%.

Emerge, a social virtual connection company, today announced the launch of the Emerge Home system: the first product to enable immersive 'bare-hands' tactile experiences in the Metaverse. A recent study from National Research Group, uncovering consumer views of the Metaverse found that the majority are excited about the Metaverse, but 78% of consumers say "when interacting with people virtually, I miss the ability to physically touch and interact with them." Online, we miss non-verbal cues, sensory experiences, and ways of feeling things together. As virtual worlds become the epicenter of shared social experiences, they still lack a key pillar of our human experience - the ability to use our bare hands to feel, interact, and physically connect with those who matter most to us, our "inner circles".

The Emerge Home system consists of three components: the Emerge Wave-1 device, the Emerge Home social virtual experience, and the Emerge Home mobile app. The Emerge Wave-1 is a new tabletop device that invites your bare hands to be your controllers. Around the same footprint as a 13" laptop, it emits sculpted ultrasonic waves that allow users to feel and interact via touch in the virtual world. Through the use of Emerge's patented technology, the Emerge Wave-1 creates a mid-air field of interaction up to three feet above the device and 120 degrees around it.

Shiftall Inc., a fully owned subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation, will reveal MaganeX, its stylish, lightweight, high-dynamic-range (HDR), virtual-reality (VR) glasses at CES 2022 this week incorporating Lightning 2.6K x 2.6K (2560 x 2560 resolution) micro OLED (organic light emitting diode) displays on chip (DoC ) and all-plastic Pancake optics from Kopin Corporation.

Shiftall, a fully owned subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation, presents MaganeX which is an ultra-lightweight, 5.2K HDR VR headset supporting 6 degree-of-freedom (DoF) head position detection and various SteamVR applications. The MaganeX has a very small form factor thanks to Kopin's 1.3" displays and the slim Pancake optics. The small, lightweight form factor makes the glasses comfortable to wear for extended periods of time, unlike today's bulky VR headsets. The very advanced VR glasses also provide for interpupillary distance (IPD) and diopter adjustments so that they can be used without corrective lenses. The foldable frame with built-in speakers makes it easy to carry.

The world's largest trade show dedicated to innovation is back! The 2022 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) will take place from January 5 to 8 in Las Vegas. Among the innovations presented, Actronika's haptic vest Skinetic promises to be a sensation. Skinetic allows users to experience a new generation of immersive VR by allowing them to feel life-like sensations of every interaction within the virtual world. Virtual reality has evolved a lot in recent years thanks to the improvement of VR headsets. But the experience can't be truly immersive because although they allow us to see and hear, headsets don't let us touch. It is therefore necessary to develop haptic technologies to integrate touch into virtual experiences.

"A few players are beginning to add the sense of touch into VR. However, the tactile illusions are still very flat. We decided to take this technology from black and white to full color!" explains Gilles Meyer - CEO of Actronika. Armed with more than 30 years of expertise in haptics (science of touch), Actronika created a device to feel real-life sensations for unique virtual experiences: the Skinetic vest. From gaming to training, it enables a totally immersive experience - the user can feel every raindrop in a storm, wind when standing near a cliff edge, or even the impact of bullets during a war game.

EM3, a VR start-up company, recently released an ultra-thin VR glass prototype named Ether. The thickness of Ether is only 6.8 mm, and its weight is around 37 g. It is by far the lightest VR near eye display solution. Due to the current weight and size of the VR helmets, users will develop physiological discomfort after wearing them for about 20 minutes, limiting the applications to immersive VR games. Other Metaverse scenarios such as social networking, online education, training, design, conference, and convention, would request lighter yet smaller VR glass. Since 2014, numerous companies have been trying to reduce the thickness of VR headsets. However, limited by the principles of optics, it is difficult. Not until recently, companies using Pancake optics reduced the VR headset thickness to 25 mm in total and the weight of 160-180 g. Nevertheless, there is still a gap between VR headsets to VR glass.

The EM3 Ether prototype glass contains two micro-displays, 2560x2560 pixel resolution in full color. The FOV (field of view) per eye is 80° for now. EM3 claims that by using a larger format micro-display, the FOV per eye is expected to increase to 100° while the total thickness of the glass is unchanged. The Ether prototype adopts tethered design, which can be connected to a smartphone. According to EM3, Ether uses a unique near eye optical module, which converges full spectrum light within a short length to achieve precise imaging, therefore significantly reducing the VR glass's thickness. According to EM3, the company's goal is to launch its VR glass product Ether in late 2022.

Factors such as the rising popularity of topics related to the metaverse and UGC (user-generated content), as well as the rapid increase in AR/VR device shipment, will likely result in the creation of a growing body of virtual reality content in the market, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. TrendForce expects annual global virtual reality content revenue to grow at a 40% CAGR from US$2.16 billion in 2021 to US$8.31 billion in 2025.

TrendForce further indicates that gaming/entertainment, videos, and social interactions comprise the primary categories of virtual reality content. Incidentally, as the construction of the virtual world and the development of virtual reality content are unlikely to be accomplished by only a handful of companies alone, companies in this space will therefore place an increasing emphasis on UGC instead. Leading companies will likely leverage the build-out of virtual reality platforms/environments and the provisioning of developmental tools/interfaces in order to not only lower the barrier to entry for content creation, but also raise user participation, thereby driving up the content market for virtual reality applications.

Mark Zuckerberg has recently announced a rebrand of Facebook to Meta during the companies Connect 2021 AR/VR event. This change will involve the dissolution of the Oculus brand for hardware naming and will also introduce an arguably more significant change in that Oculus/Meta accounts will be disassociated with Facebook accounts removing the need for a Facebook account to use the headsets. This change has allegedly come about due to the negative connotations regarding the Facebook brand and to encourage new users who aren't interesting in creating a Facebook account. While these changes won't be fully implemented until 2022 some users have reported that Oculus support is able to unlink Facebook accounts immediately while retaining purchases and most non-social features on the headset.

Andrew BosworthAs we've focused more on work, and as we've heard feedback from the VR community more broadly, we're working on new ways to log into Quest that won't require a Facebook account, landing sometime next year. This is one of our highest priority areas of work internally.

Today at Connect 2021, CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced Meta, which brings together Facebook's apps and technologies under one new company brand. Meta's focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses.

The metaverse will feel like a hybrid of today's online social experiences, sometimes expanded into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It will let you share immersive experiences with other people even when you can't be together — and do things together you couldn't do in the physical world. -It's the next evolution in a long line of social technologies, and it's ushering in a new chapter for the company. Zuckerberg shared more about this vision in a founder's letter.

HTC VIVE today announced VIVE Flow, a compact, lightweight immersive glasses device that transports its wearers wherever they want or need to be - anytime, anywhere. "With VIVE Flow, HTC is taking technology in a new direction, focusing not on what we do, but on how we feel. Maintaining our wellness has come to the forefront in the last few years, with so many millions feeling stressed every day, so it has never been more important to take time out to calm our minds, and VIVE Flow provides the perfect opportunity to escape our four walls and immerse ourselves in our ideal ambience," said Cher Wang, Chairwoman and CEO of HTC. "Meditation, gentle stretches, brain training, streaming our favorite shows or even meeting friends or coworkers in VR with VIVE Sync can all be enhanced by a device light and compact enough to fit in our pocket. VIVE Flow represents the next evolution of technology, as we take a more holistic view of how we can make life better."

"Relaxation means different things to different people," said Nanea Reeves, CEO of leading XR wellness service TRIPP. "It's important to find your own version of zen, whether that means meditating, watching videos, or playing games. The fact that HTC gets it, that we can use VR in these ways that can benefit peoples' emotional and mental well-being is something that I personally am very excited about as is our entire team at TRIPP."

HTC is said to be launching a new VR headset within the next couple days and thanks to @evleaks we now have a pretty good idea as to what to expect. Although we don't know the actual hardware specifications, it's supposed to be a stand-alone headset that doesn't require a PC to work, although the massive leak that appears to be presentation slides, does give away quite a lot of details.

For starters, there are details explaining that the Vive Flow as the new headset is called, can be paired over Bluetooth with smartphones and you can use the phone as a controller. It'll also be possible to stream content to the Vive Flow via Miracast from smartphones and possibly also other sources. The headset appears to be powered via a USB-C cable, although the pictures are ambiguous, as the Vive Flow is sometimes wired to a phone, but most of the time it doesn't appear to be connected to anything, not even a power source.

Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, has introduced its first product designed to empower the next generation of immersive storytellers. The new RF5.2 mm F2.8 L Dual Fisheye lens brings stereoscopic 3D virtual reality (VR) capture to the EOS R5 camera as part of the EOS VR System, which also includes a future firmware update for the EOS R5 camera to support use of this lens with new VR shooting specific functions, as well as new upcoming Canon EOS VR software solutions for conversion and processing.

As the world's first digital interchangeable dual fisheye lens capable of shooting stereoscopic 3D 180° VR imagery to a single image sensor the complexities of virtual reality production and the ability to view the content in full capacity, are greatly streamlined for seasoned professionals and newcomers to the craft. In order to truly experience the captured content by this system in its truest form, a compatible VR headset is recommended for use such as the Oculus Quest 2, allowing the viewer to immerse themselves in the content—by simply moving their head to provide a vivid, incredibly wide view.

VR and AR headsets might not have been quite the success they were expected to be, mainly due to cost, but now, a Japanese company has developed what has to be one of the weirdest VR headsets to date, one that's meant to be used in bed.

The HalfDive VR headset, or BMD (Bed-Mounted-Display) from Diver-X is trying to implement a range of new features that have never been seen before in a VR headset, such as "wind feedback. This is simply done by a pair of fans built into the headset that outside of adding a touch of wind in your face effect, can apparently also be used for cooling down the user.

Other more normal features include a 3D audio system that consists of four speakers placed around the head, a force feedback system based on what might best be described as friction bands, vibration feedback via an "audio exciter" and foot controllers in addition to regular hand controllers.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced an intent to form the Open 3D Foundation to accelerate developer collaboration on 3D game and simulation technology. The Open 3D Foundation will support open source projects that advance capabilities related to 3D graphics, rendering, authoring, and development. As the first project governed by the new foundation, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is contributing an updated version of the Amazon Lumberyard game engine as the Open 3D Engine (O3DE), under the permissive Apache 2.0 license. The Open 3D Engine enables developers and content creators to build 3D experiences unencumbered by commercial terms and will provide the support and infrastructure of an open source community through forums, code repositories, and developer events. A developer preview of O3DE is available on GitHub today. For more information and/or to contribute, please visit: https://o3de.org

3D engines are used to create a range of virtual experiences, including games and simulations, by providing capabilities such as 3D rendering, content authoring tools, animation, physics systems, and asset processing. Many developers are seeking ways to build their intellectual property on top of an open source engine where the roadmap is highly visible, openly governed, and collaborative to the community as a whole. More developers look to be able to create or augment their current technological foundations with highly collaborative solutions that can be used in any development environment. O3DE introduces a new ecosystem for developers and content creators to innovate, build, share, and distribute immersive 3D worlds that will inspire their users with rich experiences that bring the imaginations of their creators to life.

Colorful Technology Company Limited, a professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards, all-in-one gaming and multimedia solutions, and high-performance storage, announces the launch of the GPU History Museum in partnership with NVIDIA. COLORFUL has recently relocated to Shenzhen New Generation Industrial Park. With that, COLORFUL is proud to announce the launch of the first GPU History Museum in China. The museum will showcase the beginnings of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), to the development and evolution of graphics cards up to the present generation.