Apple is reportedly developing an initial VR headset as a precursor to their eventual AR glasses. The upcoming VR headset will be a niche expensive product that may only be distributed through Apple's first-party stores and will cost considerably more than competing products from Oculus, Sony, and HTC. The headset will feature custom Apple silicon more powerful than their current M1 processor and include limited AR abilities. Apple had previously planned to develop a device that would harness the processing power of a user's mobile device but has since switched to a standalone solution which has increased complexity. The Apple VR headset codenamed N301 is currently in a late prototype stage and may be announced sometime in 2022, if this timeline holds then Apple may announce their AR glasses the next year in 2023.

Tundra Labs is a new company working on custom SteamVR positional tracking solutions. The company has recently unveiled its latest product the Tundra Tracker a smaller, cheap Vive Tracker alternative for SteamVR tracking. The open SteamVR tracking system allows any company to create products that are tracked by SteamVR Base Stations and simplifies VR accessory compatibility. The Vive Tracker and Tundra Tracker are both small SteamVR tracking devices worn by the user to more accurately capture movement.

The Tundra Tracker will be "60% smaller, consume about 50% less power, weight 50% less, and have twice the battery life," compared to the Vive Tracker according to Tundra Labs founder Luke Beno. While the product is a clear competitor to the Vive Trackers they will work in tandem meaning Vive Tracker owners can expand their tracking with Tundra Trackers and vice-versa.

Microsoft Flight Simulator was built from the ground up to achieve three key goals: realism, accuracy, and authenticity of flight. Today, we're excited to share that Virtual Reality for Microsoft Flight Simulator is now available on your favorite VR headset for PC, offering simmers the deepest and most immersive virtual flight experience in the new simulator to date.

The flight sim community has been a very active and insightful partner in shaping how the team approached VR, and continues to be a critical partner in our continued development as we make further improvements and add new features to the simulation. Adding VR to Microsoft Flight Simulator was a direct result of community feedback, and we look forward to continued involvement in the future of the franchise with us.

The Wacom VR Pen is a pressure sensitive stylus controller (VR pen), with tracking system, designed for creative professionals. It is perfect for ideating, sketching and drawing in the VR space, and supports the seamless workflow between 2D and 3D (VR). Wacom's 30 years of experience in pen-technology accumulates in this stylus controller, furthering the evolution of the drawing process.

Pimax, a VR hardware manufacturer known for innovative features such as extremely wide field of view and high resolution previously demoed a prototype VR headset at CES 2020 called the Pimax 5K SUPER together with Pimax new flagship headset the Pimax 8K X. Today Pimax is announcing the general availability of the new Pimax 5K SUPER, a refreshed version of the popular Pimax 5K Plus with a wide variety of updates.

The Pimax 5K SUPER features an Industry-leading high refresh rate with a standard 160Hz and even an experimental 180Hz mode along with an updated Modular Audio Strap (MAS) that allows much greater comfort and ease of use. The headset includes the popular Pimax comfort kit face cowling, Pimax nose guard, Pimax ruggedized housing system, and Pimax VR Experience software.

Microsoft Flight Simulator is set to receive VR support later this month after a closed beta took place in October & November. VR Support will be available to all Steam VR compatible headsets, not just the HP Reverb G2 and other Windows Mixed Reality devices as originally stated. Microsoft Flight Simulator is a notoriously hard game to run and the addition of VR will require some fast hardware to run. The closed VR beta featured minimum requirements of an i5-8400/Ryzen 5 1500X, NVIDIA GTX 1080, and 16 GB memory. Microsoft is aware of the high hardware requirements and is working to introduce a series of new performance optimizations for the title.

HTC VIVE, the leader in premium virtual reality (VR), announced today a host of new and enhanced capabilities available now for the VIVE Focus Plus, the all-in-one headset designed with the enterprise in mind. In the biggest update since the headset came to market in 2019, the features rolled out today specifically address the key operational and security concerns of businesses worldwide in deploying VR solutions.

Notably, the support of device management solutions by VMware and MobileIron enables organizations to remotely manage devices, applications and settings, and use existing licenses—or obtain them directly—with no middle-man applications or portals required. Users can also connect to corporate networks remotely using built-in VPN, or stay offline if needed, to comply with security regulations.

South Korean startup bHaptics have recently announced their TactSuit X series haptic vests. The TactSuit X40 and TactSuit x16 are designed to increase VR immersion in supported games. The TactSuit X40 features 40 Eccentric Rotating Mass (ERM) vibration motors across the front and back paired with a 9,800 mAh battery which should enable 18+ hours of playtime. The TactSuit X16 reduces the number of motors to 16 and features a 4,900 mAh battery which should provide 22+ hours of use.

The two suits both feature Bluetooth Low Energy 4.0 and include support for SteamVR and Oculus Quest games however the number of supported titles is very limited. Natively supported games include Onward, Thrill of the Fight, and Sairento VR but can be configured to work with Half-Life: Alyx, Skyrim VR, and Fallout 4 VR using bespoke mod files. The suits can also be used in an audio-based mode for unsupported games and other media which converts audio objects to general haptic rumbles. The TactSuit X40 and TactSuit X16 are now available for pre-order at 500 USD and 300 USD respectively with deliveries expected in December.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed in the company's latest earnings call that their bet on the Oculus purchase and its latest iteration, the Oculus Quest 2, has been developing nicely. The CEO reported that sales of the Oculus Quest 2 hardware have increased fivefold in relation to the original Quest. This is great news for the democratization of VR as whole, and can become the empowerment of a virtuous cycle: more VR users means a higher install base for companies to develop experiences for, and a higher number of high-quality experiences will definitely call more users to the ecosystem. On that note, some VR developers announced that since the Oculus Quest 2 release, they've seen between 800% and 1000% increase in sales.

The Oculus Quest 2 is available for a very palatable $299 - at least considering the historic pricing on VR headsets with the specs and quality this headset affords. Of course, the mandatory Facebook integration may be a hurdle for some users; until Facebook changes their mind on this (which, rest assured, they won't), users who are particularly suspicious of the company's intentions will have to wait for a comparable headset that features no such integration. Another alternative is to resort to other ways - arguably under the "Right to Repair" act - to free themselves from it.

We've recently reported on how the Facebook account requirements that have been built-in into the latest Oculus Quest 2 could render your VR headset an expensive paperweight. The Oculus Quest 2 is one impressive piece of VR material, with the specs - and perhaps more importantly, pricing - to bring a high quality VR experience to the masses, democratizing what will someday - and without a doubt - the premier way in which we interface with the digital world. However, those same Facebook account requirements were standing in the way, for some privacy-conscious users, in actually buying or using the device. Now, jailbroken efforts have been met with success - researchers report that they've been able to strip an Oculus Quest 2 from its Facebook account requirement.

The effort, led by XRSI - a non-profit organization with the goal for promoting privacy and security in the XR space - has announced they have verified a jailbreak method for the Oculus Quest 2. This was done by achieving root access to the device. According to XRSI, there are a number of researchers and hobbyists alike working on these jailbreak procedures for the latest Oculus device, but they've been met with legal quandaries surrounding the Right to Repair (essentially, establishing the ownership of hardware and contained software by users once they acquire a technological device) and whether or not their efforts are covered under it. The efforts were somewhat bolstered by Mozilla WebXR developer Robert Long offering $5,000 to anyone capable of freeing the Quest 2 from Facebook services - an offer later matched by Palmer Luckey, Oculus' departed founder. XSRI is working hard to insert AR/VR headsets into the Right to Repair provision.

A German website, Heise.de, has discovered a bug in HDMI 2.1 chipset that causes black screen issues on specific hardware. On AV chipsets sourced by Panasonic, and used by Denon, Marantz, and Yamaha HDMI 2.1 AV receivers, the chipset experiences a specific issue of a black screen. More specifically, the bug happens once you connect Microsoft's newest console, Xbox Series X, or NVIDIA's Ampere graphics cards. When connecting these sources at resolutions like 4K/120 Hz HDR and 8K/60 Hz HDR to Panasonic HDMI 2.1 chipsets, the black screen happens. This represents a major problem for every manufacturer planning to use the Panasonic HDMI 2.1 chipset in its AV receivers, meaning that the issue has to be addressed. The Audioholics website has reached out to Sound United and Yamaha to see what their responses were, and you can check them out below.

Today, Lenovo announced it has become a reseller of Varjo's human-eye resolution VR and XR headsets. This further deepens the existing collaboration between the two enterprise-class manufacturers and allows customers to easily access a complete solution for their professional virtual and mixed reality workflows. Through the reseller agreement, users can purchase "Certified for Varjo" workstations along with any device available in Varjo's portfolio via Lenovo's distribution channels.

"Many existing VR offerings in the market today are enterprise versions of a consumer designed product," said Mike Leach, solution portfolio lead, Lenovo. "However, Lenovo's professional workstations and Varjo's VR and XR headsets are specifically engineered to perform in the most sophisticated and demanding enterprise use cases. Our ability to offer customers a single point of purchase for certified workstations and VR/XR devices streamlines access to the tools needed for immersive workflows that are changing the way we work today."

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.

We've all been there - we've all looked longingly at someone elses' flashy paperweight - an Escher puzzle, a coffee mug, a smartphone, a badly flashed GPU or even a face mask are all worthy contenders vying for our attention. Facebook, however, has been turning the paperweight game on its head, and in the real world too - some users who bought the most recent Quest 2 headset (which is apparently selling pretty well) are being given the opportunity to adorn their desks with this high-tech, low-key paperweight due to its Facebook-required integration. Essentially, users who have their Facebook accounts banned (or, more specifically, with pending verification) have been met with difficulties in actually using their Quest 2 (which, by all accounts, is a huge step forward for the VR space).

In a recent interview with Chris Pruett, Facebook's Director of Content Ecosystem at Oculus it was revealed that the Oculus Quest 2 launch had been a huge success exceeding the companies expectations. Chris Pruett commented that the Oculus team "really couldn't be happier" with the launch and noted the headset was selling "faster than Quest did" and "maybe a little bit beyond what we expected". VR developers have been echoing these comments with Rec Room noting a 250% larger launch over the original Quest and a 10x increase in sales.

The data from Rec Room also shows that the majority of Oculus Quest 2 purchases are from people trying VR for the first time which is great news for the VR industry in general. Facebook has been able to keep up with the demand for the new headset which has evidently proven to be a great success even with controversy surrounding the Facebook account requirements.

Editor's Note: This is written by Arm vice president and general manager Paul Williamson.

Over the last year, I have been inspired by the innovators who are dreaming up solutions to improve and enrich our daily lives. Tomorrow's mobile applications will be even more imaginative, immersive, and intelligent. To that point, the industry has come such a long way in making this happen. Take app stores for instance - we had the choice of roughly 500 apps when smartphones first began shipping in volume in 2007 and today there are 8.9 million apps available to choose from.

Mobile has transformed from a simple utility to the most powerful, pervasive device we engage with daily, much like Arm-based chips have progressed to more powerful but still energy-efficient SoCs. Although the chip-level innovation has already evolved significantly, more is still required as use cases become more complex, with more AI and ML workloads being processed locally on our devices.

HTC VIVE, the leader in premium virtual reality (VR), today announced an exclusive partnership with PNY Technologies to distribute the new VIVE Pro Secure headset in North America. The new VIVE Pro Secure is designed to meet the specific privacy and security requirements of secure environments that require Authority to Operate (ATO)—such as government agencies and organizations—in addition to education, medical, and financial institutions. This professional-grade VR system provides all the benefits and features of the award-winning VIVE Pro, including top-tier graphics, premium audio, and SteamVR room-scale tracking, with hardware modifications that restrict all radios, cameras, and wireless communication functions for secure performance.

Use-cases for VR in government organizations have multiplied over the years and continue to grow as agencies adapt many of the best practices deployed in the private sector for use in training, data visualization, and manufacturing, among other applications. However, one of the major barriers to any technology adoption for organizations that require ATO is access to hardware that meets specific security and privacy requirements. The new Vive Pro Secure is a first-of-its-kind system offering hardware modifications to ensure optimal performance in the most demanding secure environments.

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.

HP has today announced the Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition VR headset with advanced tracking technology to create "human centric" experiences. The HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition VR headset is an upgraded version of the recently released HP Reverb G2 headset with added cameras and sensors to track eye movement, pupillometry, heart rate, and facial expressions. This data can be used with the advanced machine learning algorithms of the Omnicept SDK to capture physiological responses. The headset's firmware safeguards the sensor data at every moment of capture and no data is stored in the headset.

The HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition VR headset maintains the impressive resolution, inside-out tracking, and 3D audio of the HP Reverb G2 while adding a suite of new sensors and cameras to deliver enhanced monitoring. These new sensors enable eye tracking and gaze to determine focus and engagement levels while also enabling foveated rendering for reduced GPU and higher image quality. They also allow for heart rate monitoring which can be used in wellness treatments along with facial expression monitoring capabilities for more natural and engaging conversations. The HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition is expected to be available in Spring 2021. Pricing will be shared closer to product availability. HP Omnicept SDK is expected to be available in Spring 2021 and will include a flexible business model.

Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, is powering better-than-ever virtual reality (VR) gameplay and experiences with the launch of Oculus Quest 2, the first-to-launch VR device powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Platform. Oculus Quest 2 is a culmination of years of collaboration between Qualcomm Technologies and Facebook to create the most advanced and immersive gaming VR experiences for consumers to-date.

Purpose-built for extended reality (XR), the Snapdragon XR2 Platform unlocks staggering improvements including twice the CPU and GPU performance compared to its predecessor which powers the original Oculus Quest headset. The Snapdragon XR2 Platform delivers significant performance enhancements in Oculus Quest 2 including:

Respawn Entertainment, a studio of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:EA), and Oculus from Facebook today announced during Facebook Connect that the highly-anticipated upcoming Virtual Reality (VR) title, Medal of Honor : Above and Beyond will release on December 11, 2020, worldwide. This new innovative and immersive title blends films and games into one, and will be available on the Oculus Store for Oculus Rift and Steam with OpenVR support and cross-platform play.

"The Medal of Honor franchise has always been a powerful series that tells the untold stories of war heroes, and from the beginning of this series in 1999, our goal has been to create grounded and emotionally authentic games that are true to the experiences of people that fought and lived through it," said Peter Hirschmann, Director, Respawn Entertainment. "We're honored to share these moving first-hand stories from survivors and veterans of WWII and deliver an immersive VR gameplay experience that provides high-flying action and emotional, intimate storytelling in equal measure."

In a recent video accidentally published on the Facebook Blueprint developer site and officially confirmed by the vice president of Facebook Labs details all the new features and changes found on the Oculus Quest 2. The leak confirms many of the existing rumors about the upcoming headset which is set to be announced later this week at Facebook Connect. The Oculus Quest 2 will feature the Snapdragon XR2 processor which has been specifically designed for AR/VR devices and should provide a significant performance increase over the Snapdragon 835 found in the original quest.

The Oculus Quest 2 will feature "nearly 2K Resolution per eye" which would put the total resolution at just under 4K possibly 3,840 x 2,160. The video did not mention if the display refresh rate would be increased from the 72Hz found on the original Quest but the XR2 platform can support up to 90Hz screens. The ram has been increased to 6 GB from the 4 GB found on the original and max storage has been expanded to 256 GB.

NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling is a deep learning technique developed by NVIDIA that uses AI to intelligently upscale rendered frames. This technology which must be individually added game by game allows for significant performance boosts by running the game at a lower resolution and upscaling the output to a nearly identical level of detail. This technology relies on the Tensor Cores found in RTX 20/30 series GPUs and allows for a performance boost of up to 70%.

In a recent Q&A thread, NVIDIA announced that the new DLSS 2.1 will bring VR compatibility along with 8K, and dynamic resolution support. The introduction of DLSS 2.1 will help enable more immersive VR titles on next generation headsets. VR headsets typically expect a consistent frame rate of 90 FPS at resolutions up to 2880x1600 with some headsets such as the Valve Index taking that up to 144hz. DLSS technology will allow VR games to be natively rendered at half resolution and intelligently upscaled to ensure high frame rates and quality.

The VirtualLink Consortium which included the likes of NVIDIA, AMD, HTC Vive, Oculus VR, Valve, and Microsoft introduced the USB-C VirtualLink standard in 2018 and was debuted by NVIDIA on the RTX 20 series founders cards. The goal was to simplify VR headset connections by combining power, video, and data over a single USB-C cable. A few niche VR headsets such as the StarVR and XTAL integrated the VirtualLink connector but the standard struggled to receive major adoption.

Valve had planned to introduce a VirtualLink connector for the Valve Index but was canceled due to technical issues. The only major headset to utilize the port is the Oculus Quest however it only uses the USB-C connector and not the VirtualLink standard. NVIDIA excluded the port from their RTX 20 series Super cards and AMD never released a card with the connector. The official VirtualLink website currently redirects to the Wikipedia page for the standard and with NVIDIA excluding the standard from all of their RTX 30 series cards it's safe to say the standard is officially dead.

Facebook Technologies, a subsidiary of Facebook Inc. and owner of Oculus, has today "temporarily" suspended sales of Oculus VR headsets in Germany. The news is coming today after Oculus announced that all of the new Oculus accounts have to move to the Facebook login system before January 1, 2023, when all of the current Oculus accounts will be suspended. The German data protection law is extremely suspicious of Facebook's behavior and how they handle user data in general, so Oculus has potentially decided to stop the sales to avoid any possible antitrust regulations from the German government. The exact reason is unknown, and it is yet to be revealed, however, the suspicions laid out here may be part of the reason.