Virtual & Augmented Reality news

Swiss startup Typewise is showing the power of sticking at it: The team behind patented text prediction technology — whose fascination with typing productivity started off as a consumer keyboard-focused side hustle more than five years ago — has gained backing from Y Combinator and will be in the cohort pitching to investors during the accelerator’s Summer 2022 demo day early next month.
Typewise won a spot in YC (and its standard $500k backing) after pivoting to fully focus on

If you’ve used a smart voice assistant such as Alexa, Siri and whatever-Google’s-smart-assistant-is-called, you’ll probably have noticed that the tech is getting smarter every day. Google can wait on hold for you, Siri can speak in a gender-neutral voice and Alexa can read you bedtime stories in your dead grandmother’s voice. Robotics is evolving in leaps and bounds as well, as we explored in our Robotics event last month. The gap between the two — voice commands an

SAIC Mobility Robotaxi, an arm of state-owned Chinese automaker SAIC that aims to launch a commercial robotaxi service, raised $148 million (RMB 1 billion). The funds will be used to scale its robotaxi service in China, which it will operate in partnership with autonomous vehicle company Momenta.
SAIC Group led the Series B round that also saw participation from Momenta, Gaoheng Management Consulting and other institutions. The funding brought SAIC Mobility’s total valuation to more than $

The mech-powered sports game will be available on Meta Quest 2, PC VR, and Pico VR headsets on September 15th.
Resolution Games (Demeo, Blaston, Angry Birds VR) today announced the official price and release date for its upcoming multiplayer VR sports games Ultimechs. Coming next month to popular VR headsets, this futuristic competitive experience will have players going head-to-head in mech-powered soccer matches.Ultimechs will be available free-to-play on Meta Quest 2, PC VR, and Pico VR heads

Analyzing data generated within the enterprise — for example, sales and purchasing data — can lead to insights that improve operations. But some organizations are struggling to process, store and use their vast amounts of data efficiently. According to an IDC survey commissioned by Seagate, organizations collect only 56% of the data available throughout their lines of business, and out of that 56%, they only use 57%.Part of the problem is that data-intensive workloads require substan

The virtual exhibition will include Kojima Productions, Square Enix, Capcom, and others.The annual Tokyo Game Show is set to return next month in Chiba, Japan, offering attendees a closer look at a variety of highly-anticipated video games. Alongside the standard in-person event, organizers will once again host a virtual exhibition visitors can attend remotely.
【#TGS2022 Info】
This year at TGS, in addition to the merch booth, we will also have an exhibit at the online virtual venue

Valve this week released the SteamVR 1.23 update which brings with it a new set of bugs.Dead bugs, that is. The latest update to SteamVR includes a curious addition… a new SteamVR Home destination that includes CT scans of dead bugs “found lying on the ground” outside of Valve’s office. Valve's Dead Bugs1 of 2 Image courtesy ValveImage courtesy Valve
The company explains:
A CT scan involves passing X-rays through a subject at different angles—captured data is then

After a pandemic-driven cloud adoption boom in the enterprise, costs are finally coming under a microscope. More than a third of businesses report having cloud budget overruns of up to 40%, according to a recent poll by observability software vendor Pepperdata. A separate survey from Flexera found that optimizing the existing use of cloud services is a top initiative at 59% of companies — cost being the main motivation. 
An entire cottage industry of startups has sprung up around opti

Podcasting has emerged as a major billion-dollar industry, with ad revenue in the U.S. alone expected to hit $2 billion this year — a figure that’s set to double by 2024. Against that backdrop, major players in the field are bolstering their podcasting armory, with Spotify recently doling out around $85 million for two companies specializing in podcast measurement and analytics, while Acast recently snapped up Podchaser — an “IMDb for podcasts” that gives adver

In an effort to expand its social platform for virtual reality, Horizon Worlds, Meta is launching it in France and Spain today — building on the existing three markets including the U.S., Canada, and the UK where it was already available. In a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch with an unappealing photo and noted that it plans to expand the platform to more countries.
Image Credits: Mark Zuckerberg
Meta launched Horizon Worlds for all users above 18 years of age in the U.S

As the jobs market remains tight (mass layoffs and hiring freezes in tech aside), companies are laser-focused on retaining staff. One of the areas they’re investing in is upskilling, which aims to teach employees new skills in departments with which they’re unfamiliar. For example, Walmart announced in 2021 that it would invest nearly $1 billion over the next five years to provide its employees with access to higher education and training.
Unsurprisingly, “skilling” platf

While Oculus doesn’t offer much publicly in the way of understanding how well individual games & apps are performing across its Quest 2 storefront, it’s possible to glean some insight by looking at apps relative to each other. Here’s a snapshot of the 20 best rated Oculus Quest games and apps as of August 2022.
Some quick qualifications before we get to the data:Paid and free apps are separated
Only apps with more than 100 reviews are represented
App Lab apps are not repres

Stroll the metaverse in style.
VR specialty device company Surplex today unveiled a pair of futuristic sneakers that allow you to interact more realistically with VR experiences. The Surplex Full-Body Tracking Shoes, according to the company, remove the need for expensive base stations and complex tracking systems, offering a more comfortable full-body experience in the process.“Virtual Reality represents a new era for online learning, entertainment, and fun. Until now, however, VR has bee

Access live and on-demand lessons from artists around the world.Cupixel is a unique smartphone app that removes the barrier around creating art by making it possible for everyone to explore their own unique creative outlet.The app uses augmented reality (AR) and ‘Smart Trace’ technology to cast outlines of various images over the real world. You can choose from a gallery of preloaded content or project a picture from your own library onto any flat surface.Cupixel helps you develop th

TikTok has rolled a new in-app text-to-image AI generator that lets users type in a prompt and receive an image that can be used as the background in their videos. The effect is called “AI greenscreen” and can be accessed via the short-form video app’s camera screen. The new effect was first spotted by The Verge.
The launch of the new filter comes as text-to-image AI generators are becoming increasingly popular, especially with the launch of OpenAI’s DALL-E 2. It’s