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It's time to take stock of the week's XR events, what are the big events in the XR space this week?
domestic
There is not much news about domestic heavyweights, and the most noteworthy is the latest rendering of PICO 4S (or PICO 4 Ultra) exposed by foreign bloggers.
As we can see from the image, the device has two RGB cameras for full-color see-through, as well as four IR cameras for SLAM. In terms of appearance, the PICO 4S (or PICO 4 Ultra) is similar to the PICO 4 as a whole, and in terms of handling, the PICO 4S is equipped with a handle without a tracking bracelet.
Based on the renderings, it is speculated that the PICO 4S may have more powerful see-through capabilities, and according to previous reports, the PICO 4S with the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset will also have higher resolution and lower latency. As the successor to the PICO 4, the PICO 4S (or PICO 4 Ultra) is expected to be the high-end VR/MR device on the market.
It was previously reported that the PICO 4S will be launched in the second half of this year, and there is not much time left for PICO. With the revelation of more news, the industry's expectations for this device are also getting higher and higher, and I hope the official can let us see the truth as soon as possible.
international
Internationally, Meta has been the most exposed this week. The Information revealed multiple information including product plan, company strategy, funding situation, etc., let's take a look at them one by one.
Meta
The first is the overall strategy for XR. According to The Information, Meta's AR/VR hardware team has been asked to cut spending by 20% by 2026.
Reality Labs is Meta's division responsible for AR, VR, and metaverse businesses, and has long been Meta's "cash-burning" division. Meta has invested heavily in the AR/VR space, and only from the Reality Labs financial report data released separately in the fourth quarter of 2020, Meta has spent more than $50 billion on this unit. When you consider the total spending since the acquisition of Oculus in 2014, that figure could be closer to $100 billion.
While Zuckerberg remains optimistic about the long-term prospects of the metaverse, the company always needs to be profitable. Cutting departmental spending is currently necessary for Meta to improve the efficiency of the use of funds. At the same time, Reality Labs has also undergone a restructuring over the past year, eliminating a series of middle and senior management positions, including "more than a dozen directors and vice presidents." Optimize hardware teams for the same reason.
Then there's news about the hardware.
Meta is said to be planning to launch the Quest 4 in 2026 and the Quest Pro 2 in 2027. This information comes from at least three insiders who were deeply involved in the development of the Quest 4, and it is true and reliable. And Meta's next-generation smart glasses will be launched in 2025 and will be equipped with a HUD (head-up display).
But this time, Meta is not ready to adopt Ray-Ban's brand or design, because Meta is "not satisfied with the design". In order to project images into the user's eyes and provide a HUD, Ray-Ban's eyewear company Essilor Luxottica will adopt a "thick frame" for it, but current and former Meta employees feel that consumers may not like it.
As a result, Meta's next-generation smart glasses partnership with Ray-Ban may fall through, but Meta is reportedly in talks to acquire a minority stake in the Ray-Ban sunglasses maker.
Meta is considering acquiring up to 5% of the premium eyewear group at a valuation of about 4.5 billion euros ($4.9 billion) at current prices, according to people familiar with the matter.
In addition to The Information's revelations, Meta CTO Andrew · Bosworth also made a prediction for the development of the Meta Quest headset in the next seven years (that is, until 2031) in a recent interview, mentioning factors such as resolution, field of view, refresh rate, weight and audio solutions.
Bosworth predicts that the weight of the Meta Quest headset will be reduced by 100 to 200 grams over the next seven years (compared to 515 grams for the Quest 3 and 503 grams for the Quest 2).
Bosworth said that the future Meta Quest headset corner resolution will be at least 40 pixels per degree (PPD), possibly 50-60 PPD — compared to 25 PPD for the Quest 3.
As for the refresh rate, Bosworth said that in the future, the Meta Quest headset will have a 120Hz refresh rate, just like the Quest 3. In his opinion, this value is enough, and any more is not worth it. However, Bosworth didn't say anything dead, saying that "a higher refresh rate may be an option", but this is not the focus of Meta's research.
Samsung
That's all for Meta, and then let's take a look at Samsung's latest news.
With TM Roh, president of Samsung's mobile division, taking the initiative to reveal the latest developments in the XR headset at the press conference, it is becoming more and more clear about the release date of this product. Earlier this week, foreign media broke the news that Samsung will hold a developer conference on October 3, when it is likely to provide developers with a developer version of the headset so that they can start developing apps ready to launch in 2025.
Subsequently, Business Insider quickly updated the news that the consumer version of Samsung's XR headset will be available in March 2025.
Samsung has been in the XR field for a long time, but it has never launched a successful product. With the success of the Meta Quest, advances in mixed reality computer vision, and the release of the Apple Vision Pro, Samsung may have seen a lot of potential in the XR market and decided to return to the VR all-in-one camp.
The recent revelation is the first time that a specific month has been revealed among the rumors about the device. You know, the road to the release of Samsung's XR headset has not been smooth sailing. The plan to be unveiled in the first quarter of this year was forced to adjust due to the strong launch of the Apple Vision Pro in February.
It is said that the price of Samsung's XR headset will be set below Apple's Vision Pro, and maybe a lower price will really attract more prices.
In addition, Samsung is also said to be actively developing LLW DRAM memory in order to snatch orders for the next-generation headset after Apple's Vision Pro.
LLW DRAM is a high-performance special memory with a large number of I/O pins, which has the advantages of high bandwidth, low latency and low power consumption. According to Samsung Electronics, the LLW DRAM memory product developed by Samsung Electronics can achieve a bandwidth of 128GB/s while consuming only 1.2pJ/bit.
Prior to this, Apple had also negotiated with Samsung for supply in this regard, but in the end, the cooperation was not negotiated, and SK hynix won the order. But Samsung did not give up, but accelerated the development of LLW DRAM. Now, Samsung seems to be on the verge of winning the order, and its products are already in the stage of small-scale production.
According to Business Insider, Google has now restructured and upgraded the level of the relevant AR team, which shows that Google has now increased its focus on the AR space.
In fact, since the beginning of this year, Google has undergone several personnel changes and team restructurings internally, especially in the XR (extended reality) space. According to people familiar with the matter, the latest restructuring includes merging the team developing the new optical AR technology with the team responsible for Android XR, which is led by Shahram Izadi, a former head of Microsoft HoloLens who has worked on AR and XR at Google since 2017.
The reorganized team is expected to advance the development of Google Smart Glasses.
Google's AR glasses project has gone through several twists and turns, and it has been 12 years since the first Google Glass was released. The failure of the original Google Glass is related to technical limitations, the company's lack of attention, personnel changes and other factors. And now, Google has shown that it is paying more and more attention to AR, coupled with the empowerment of AI, maybe Google AR glasses really have the possibility of resurrection.
And another piece of news about Google is a little regrettable. Google recently announced that it has open-sourced its VR creative tool, Blocks, and has made it available on GitHub. Previously, Google had also open-sourced another VR tool, Tilt Brush.
In fact, as Google began to shrink its investment in VR and focus on AR, the company's related VR projects have been shut down or open-sourced.
Google's start to shrink its investment in VR and focus on AR is due to its strategic adjustment, which is also necessary for Google.
OpenAI
AI-related news is also worth paying attention to.
On July 18, OpenAI officially launched a new generation of entry-level artificial intelligence model "GPT-4o mini", calling this new model "the most powerful and cost-effective small parameter model".
It is understood that the latest "GPT-4o mini" is 96%~97% cheaper than GPT-4o, and 60%~70% cheaper than GPT-3.5 Turbo. In terms of performance, it is more powerful than GPT-3.5 Turbo, scoring 82% in the MMLU test and beating GPT-4 (version 0125) in the LMSYS Robotics Rankings.
The release of GPT-4o mini means that developers now have a lightweight and inexpensive tool that allows them to build AI applications at a lower cost.
The XR field in the second half of the year is worth looking forward to, not only the domestic PICO 4S, but also Samsung's XR headset will also make its initial debut. We will pay further attention to the relevant news, and next week, we will bring you a week's worth of XR content inventory at this time, so stay tuned.
Text/R Star Man
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