XR Developer News - August 2024

Pieter Siekerman

— 8 min read
XR Developer News - August 2024
Pico Motion Trackers for leg tracking

It's summer and things are a bit quiet, which is nice considering what seems to be in store for us in XR in the next three months. Obviously Meta Connect at the end of September is the peak of XR season, but Snap, Google & Samsung and HTC are all reportedly poised to launch new things as well. It's a good time to be in XR!

Below you'll find a collection of interesting XR developer news that popped up in August. As always Meta is very active, but it's definitely not alone. Read on and let me know if I missed anything!

Oh, and if you find value in this newsletter and it helps you out as an XR professional or enthusiast, consider becoming a paid subscriber at $10 per year. It helps me cover the cost of hosting the newsletter (with ghost.org and plausible.io) and you'll have my sincere gratitude!

Meta

  • One thing you can always count on with Meta is each month there will be a Quest/Horizon OS update. And of course, this month was no exception, with v68 (release notes, SDKs). As far as the headline features are concerned it was a minor update for developers, with some performance improvements to OpenXR apps.
Meta Quest v68 Update: A New ‘Layout’ Utility App, Faster App Downloads, and More | Meta Quest Blog
The Meta Quest v68 software update begins rolling out today, and we’re introducing a new Layout utility app for redesigning your real-world spaces, making it easier to manage your in-progress downloads, and more.
Meta Quest Blog
  • The first rumblings of what v69 may contain are also appearing, while people are exploring what lesser known improvements there were in v67 and v68, like in occlusion and in tracking of controllers and hands on Quest 2.
  • Separate from the regular cadence of OS (and related platform SDK) updates, Meta often has some other new things to play with throughout the month. This time those included new acoustic ray tracing capabilities for audio, an updated overview of how developing on Mac is supported (still no way run directly from Unity in Play mode without build and deploy unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, which is the biggest hurdle) and improvements to the Horizon Store.
Immersive, Realistic Audio in VR: Introducing Acoustic Ray Tracing in Audio SDK
Enhance immersion and social presence with Acoustic Ray Tracing and Audio SDK. These capabilities enable accurate room acoustics so you can increase realism, deepen engagement, and anchor players in complex virtual worlds.
  • Although Meta is preventing developers from access to the raw camera feed on Quest, some developers are finding (admittedly unpractical or likely soon to be patched) workarounds.
  • Meta Spark Studio v187 was released.
  • Meta CTO Andrew Bozworth published an interesting interview with Chief Scientist Michael Abrash as part of his Boz To The Future podcast, looking back at the first 10 years of Oculus / Quest and ahead at what's to come. Worth a listen!
Boz to the Future Episode 19: The Future According to Michael Abrash | Meta Quest Blog
Welcome back for another episode of Boz To The Future, a podcast from Reality Labs. In today’s episode, our host, Meta CTO and Head of Reality Labs Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, is joined by our very own Reality Labs Research Chief Scientist Michael Abrash.
Meta Quest Blog
  • If you're considering applying to Meta's Lifestyle App Accelerator (deadline October 15), have a look at these webinars in which the core people at Meta that are running it share some additional context.

XR Hardware

As mentioned in the intro, the fall should be very interesting when it comes to XR hardware, with several new devices expected.

    • There are however several important caveats to note there: it's only launching in China with no plans announced for the rest of the world and Pico slashed its investments in XR significantly in recent months so it remains to be seen how committed they really are. This might just be a Pico 4 refresh which was already so far along when the strategy shift happened that it made more sense to just ship it, even with a very much reduced consumer strategy.
    • It also announced first party support for Gaussian Splatting, which I'm curious to see whether Meta does the same at Meta Connect.
  • An interesting addition were a set of leg trackers that can be coupled with the Pico 4 Ultra and some of its predecessors. I'm curious whether any other headset makers follow Pico's example in that area, as leg tracking has been pretty problematic without extra sensors like this.
Pico Motion Trackers Add Leg Tracking To Pico Headsets
Pico Motion Trackers add leg tracking to Pico 4 Ultra, Pico 4, and Pico Neo 3 and feature a clever rapid calibration technique.
UploadVRDavid Heaney
  • Magic Leap release v1.9.0 of its OS, which contains some improvements to OpenXR, some developer tools and other minor updates.

XR Software

  • Snap released v5.0.17 and v5.0.19 of Lens Studio and highlighted the new AR features around clothing which is rolled out as part of those updates.
Cutting-Edge Tech Powers Instant 2D to 3D Virtual Clothing
Instantly upscale your AR Fashion Lenses with new Garment Transfer 2.0 and Garment Generation.
Create & Play Developer Challenge
Unleash Your Creativity with the first ever Niantic Studio Challenge
8th WallJul 30, 2024 . 2 min read . Community
  • Niantic released v3.7 of the Lightship ARDK, with some small bug fixes.
  • Unity apparently overhauled it's forum structure, so it looks like I missed a few interesting XR posts from them in July about releases in the areas of OpenXR, AR Foundation 6.0, PolySpatial 2.0 pre-release and the latest version of that (pre.11).
  • Godot 4.3 was released, with several XR related improvements, some of which specifically targeted at OpenXR and Meta Quest. Looks like the results of Meta's recently announced support for Godot are starting to show.
Godot 4.3, a shared effort
With over 3,500 commits authored by over 500 contributors, the latest Godot Engine release comes packed full of new features and improvements.
Godot EngineGodot Engine
  • PlayCanvas is releasing v2.0 of its Engine, which is mainly about cleaning up deprecated aspects of v1.0 to prepare for future development.
  • ARCore 1.45.0 was released, which adds control over the device's flash light for better AR functionality in dark environments and adds support for AR Foundation 5.
  • TikTok Effect House v4.4.0 and v4.4.1 were released.
  • three.js v167 was released.

Other XR tidbits

  • A few interesting webinar and podcast episode recommendations this month:
#1405: Mixed Reality Game Design from Cubism to Laser Dance with Thomas van Bouwel – Voices of VR Podcast
Voices of VR Podcastkentbye
    • In preparation for XR Hack (organized by XR Bootcamp) the team held a series of sessions preparing participants for the event. They covered a range of topics, most at an introductory level, but there are some interesting talks in the list. Worth checking out, especially if you're interested in Logitech's MX Ink stylus.
  • Other good resources readers shared with me this month, that are worth checking out:

Upcoming XR events

A bit about this newsletter

Each month I try to round up all the interesting developments in the XR developer landscape. New hardware and software releases, events, interesting tooling, etc. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, for instance if I missed anything which definitely should be in this monthly round up next time.

I've modified the subscription model a bit, switching to a $10 per year option for readers that would like support this newsletter financially (there are some hosting costs involved, so contributions are welcome!). If you're finding that you are a regular reader and get some real value from it as a professional, consider supporting!

I'm quite happy with how the audience is growing, now around 500 readers (email and web combined) for each edition. Glad to see there seems to be demand for it and I hope it is useful!

Read more