#What is Openxr

[goodoau]

How will virtual reality affect our future?

The reality of the pandemic has opened our eyes to specific solutions and broadened our horizons for some technical problems.

This topic is deeply explored in pop culture and offers many creative opportunities for creators: https://medium.com/.../how-will-virtual-reality-affect...

[canmom]

Natalie Lawhead does good as ever, this is one of the biggest collections of game engines I've seen anyone put together.

It's worth discussing what's missing from a lot of these engines - the features that kept people with Unity instead of these alternatives. Not to say we have to stay with Unity, but the big challenges that other engines have to meet.

The biggest one is multiplatform support. Particularly if you want to release games on consoles (Android excepted), you have to deal with all sorts of opaque black-box proprietary APIs and all sorts of weird gotchas and headaches. One of the best features of Unity is that it runs, and runs well, on nearly anything. Which isn't to say Unity doesn't have its own gotchas trying to build for different platforms, but it provides a very good abstraction over a lot of difficulty.

Unfortunately, console support is a big barrier for a lot of open-source projects. Godot spells it out pretty clearly. The console manufacturers won't license their proprietary devkits to an open source project.

This means the only real alternative for console dev is Unreal, or a proprietary engine. Unreal isn't quite as universal as Unity, but it's fairly close. It handily beats Unity on high-end graphics features. However, its design is generally less flexible, and the editor is quite cumbersome and demands a pretty high-end PC. It also doesn't have the CPU performance of Unity DOTS, even though it's written in pure C++.

(For standalone VR, Unity has been pretty much the only game in town, but the situation isn't as dire as other consoles since Android is at least open source and OpenXR provides an open source abstraction layer that other engines can implement. So while there's not a great Unity alternative yet, it's entirely possible that Bevy or something else could become viable.)

That leads in to the second reason - performance. I've been watching people in the Latios Framework discord try and figure out some alternative ECS-based engine for the kind of super-high-performance code that Unity DOTS enables. Unity DOTS is kind of an engineering miracle. The Burst compiler is fantastic - only the Rust compiler can stand alongside it really (not surprising since both are based on LLVM) - and there are a lot of extremely smart design choices in how it handles e.g. ECS iteration and rendering.

There are other ECS-based game engines out there, with Bevy probably the most advanced. It's also possible to cobble together your own by combining an existing engine with an existing ECS library. The problem is that for a realistic game engine that goes beyond a tech demo, there are a lot of pitfalls that can erode the benefits of ECS (a somewhat polemic article, but a good explanation of how ECS alone doesn't guarantee great cache performance). Bevy currently doesn't have the rendering performance of Entities Graphics, although it's moving in an exciting way.

Unity is a strange beast - it's a hodgepodge of features, some of them really cutting edge, some of them more or less abandoned after the people championing it left the company. There are usually multiple ways to do any given thing (e.g. user input or UI), and it's a bit of a steep learning curve to go from 'using Unity' to 'using Unity well'. However, the good parts of Unity are actually really good. It's taken years to get them this good. It sucks to have to reinvent it.

(The third reason is of course there's a huge amount of expertise and assets and shit built up around Unity. But - unless Unity does some pretty drastic actions to regain trust, or it dies and gets opensourced - that can't be helped, the ship's going down, not now but likely in a year or two when the currently-in-progress Unity projects have been released.)

It's probably going to be pretty chaotic for a while. What I really hope is that when all the dust settles, the 'next Unity' will be free software that can thrive as much as Blender has without risking this kind of 'enshittification'. With both this and Flash, it's fucking appalling that such a huge block of cultural output could be put at risk of being erased by the actions of one company. Also it will be the year of Linux on the desktop and federated social media you guys. For real! I promise!

A great look at what Unity alternatives there are out there besides running from one for-profit corporate product to the next

[tastydregs]

Qualcomm is Preparing Developers for the Coming Wave of Smartphone-tethered AR Glasses

Today at AWE 2021, Qualcomm announced Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform, a head-worn AR software suite the company is using to kickstart a broader move towards smartphone-tethered AR glasses.

Qualcomm says its Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform offers a host of machine perception functions that are ideal for smartphone-tethered AR glasses. The software tool kit focuses on performance and low power, and provides the sort of environmental and human interaction stuff it hopes will give AR developers a good starting point.

Still in early access, Qualcomm is initially working with Felix & Paul Studios, holo|one, Overlay, Scope AR, TRIPP, Tiny Rebel Games, NZXR, forwARdgame, Resolution Games, and Trigger Global. Snapdragon Spaces is slated for a more general release in Spring 2022.

Qualcomm isn’t leading the push with its own hardware though. It’s tapped smartphone and AR hardware OEMs including Lenovo, Motorola, OPPO, and Xiaomi as early partners to support what it calls a “cross-device horizontal platform and ecosystem.” Lenovo’s ThinkReality A3 smart glasses tethered to a Motorola smartphone will be the first to work with Snapdragon Spaces.

When Qualcomm makes the push early next year, it will be relying on its telecom partners including Deutsche Telekom, NTT DOCOMO, INC. and T-Mobile U.S.; Qualcomm says more will be announced later.

“Snapdragon Spaces enables developers to build 3D applications for AR glasses from scratch or simply add head-worn AR features to existing Android smartphone applications to drive a unified, multi-screen experience between the smartphone screen in 2D and the real world in 3D,” the company says in a press statement. “Developers will also receive a robust resource library that includes documentation, sample code, tutorials, knowledge bases, and tools to help accelerate their development.”

The company says its platform will include environmental understanding features such as spatial mapping and meshing, occlusion, plane detection, object and image recognition and tracking, local anchors and persistence, scene understanding, positional tracking and hand tracking.

Image courtesy Qualcomm Technologies

Snapdragon Spaces includes SDKs for Unreal Engine and Unity, and is based on OpenXR. It will also integrate with Niantic’s recently launched Lightship ARDK platform, something Qualcomm says will expand Lightship’s reach to “outdoor head-worn use cases and inspire people to explore outside, and to connect and play with others in real time through multi-player functions.”

Qualcomm further announced that it’s acquired the team and “certain technology assets” from HINS SAS and its hand-tracking and gesture recognition subsidiary, Clay AIR. Wikitude, an AR technology provider, is also joining Qualcomm, which includes the absorption of Wikitude’s AR userbase of 150K+ developers.

The post Qualcomm is Preparing Developers for the Coming Wave of Smartphone-tethered AR Glasses appeared first on Road to VR.

[gameappstudio]

Unity vs Unreal 2021: New Released Updates

Unity engine and the unreal engine has far more history than another gaming engine to provide the game more realistic. Unity3d gaming engine was developed by unity Technologies in 2005 at Apple Inc's worldwide Developers as the exclusive gaming engine at that time. 

It is the particular most popular game development engine for the IOS, and Android mobile game development such as Pokémon GO, Monument Valley, Call of Duty, and much more. Recently, Unity Technologies makes an update for a better interface and functionality for the game developers.

Unity 3d:

1. Graphics: Fixed a Metal enforce depth clearing issue when "Don't care" load action was used

2. Asset Pipeline: Fixed an issue where the artifact dependency would get ignored.

3. Scripting: Add Game Object link to Warning message: "SendMessage cannot be called during Awake, Check Consistency, or OnValidate.".

4. Version Control: Added notification status icons.

5. Animation: Fixed a potential crash when generating asset previews, if destructive methods were called in user callbacks.

Games Developed in Unity engine 2021:

Black Book

Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!

Death's Door

Everhood

Pokémon Unite

Secret Agent HD

Super Animal Royale

Apart from the Unity3d engine, Unreal is also the most popular game development engine which was developed by Epic Games

Unreal engine:

1. Editor: 3D: Config Editor that lets users easily design their nDisplay setups for LED volumes or other multi-display rendering applications.

2. Support: For OpenColorIO and multi-GPU for color matching of Unreal Engine content to a physical camera while enabling nDisplay to scale more efficiently

3. Rendering: Render from multiple using Movie Render Queue, eliminating the need to go through Sequencer setups.

4.OpenXR: In the Unreal engine, The OpenXR plugin offers support for Stereo Layers, Splash Screens, querying Playspace bounds, and motion controller visualization.

Latest Games Develop in Unreal Engine 2021:

Mass Effect Legendary Edition

Aliens: Fireteam Elite

Back for Blood

Bravely default

Bus simulator 21

Grand Theft Auto : The Triology

Choose the best engine for 2021 and You can also Turn to the Leading game app development company.

Want to know the Unity vs Unreal: Updates Till March 2021 Follow the link below:  https://gameappstudio.com/unity3d-vs-unreal-engine-whats-new-in-both-until-march-2021/

[mft-toyama]

via @matt_fuad

Our OpenXR plug-in is available in preview! Try it out and let us know what you think: https://t.co/zaJwji6rRn@unity3d #unity3d #xr #ar #vr pic.twitter.com/GsezwLFg8z

— Matt Fuad (@matt_fuad) December 17, 2020

[thenewsvideos]

Watch Microsoft has just added the OpenXR standard to its Windows Mixed Reality devices, which aims to make it easier to port virtual reality apps and games between platforms. Virtual reality has a lot of potential, but the number of different platforms and hardware makes things complicated – especially with certain games being exclusive to different devices. For example, Robo Recall is only available on the Oculus Rift. If you’re a HTC Vive owner, then there’s no official way to play that game – though there are a few fiddly workarounds. The best VR prices and deals 2019Our pick of the best VR gamesThe best VR headset 2019 While OpenXR won’t stop platforms from having exclusive games, it does mean that if an exclusive game moved to another platform, the process would be much easier. It could also potentially make it possible to use different headsets with different platforms, for example using the PlayStation VR headset on a PC. What is OpenXR? OpenXR is an open and royalty-free platform.. video

#Games - #video -

[toomanysinks]

Microsoft promises an open HoloLens ecosystem

At its MWC keynote in Barcelona today, Microsoft promised to keep the HoloLens ecosystem open. That means third-party app stores and browsers, for example, with Mozilla already announcing its Firefox browser for HoloLens today.

“Developers will have the freedom to create their own stares as first-class citizens,” Microsoft’s HoloLens chief Alex Kipman said today and stressed that developers will also have the freedom to create great web browsers.

All of this should be obvious, but there have, of course, been times in Microsoft’s history where an open ecosystem was not exactly what the company focused on. And browser competition was surely not on the top of the company’s list during the browser wars. That cost the company dearly, both financially and in terms of developer goodwill. Maybe that’s why it is now making this announcement, too.

“We believe in an open API surface area and driver model,” Kipman said. “We will continue to participate in guiding open standards like OpenXR so anyone can innovate with our headset from the sensors that are being used to the differentiated experiences that are being created.”

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/24/microsoft-promises-an-open-hololens-ecosystem/

[roseacisco]

Microsoft promises an open HoloLens ecosystem

At its MWC keynote in Barcelona today, Microsoft promised to keep the HoloLens ecosystem open. That means third-party app stores and browsers, for example, with Mozilla already announcing its Firefox browser for HoloLens today.

“Developers will have the freedom to create their own stares as first-class citizens,” Microsoft’s HoloLens chief Alex Kipman said today and stressed that developers will also have the freedom to create great web browsers.

All of this should be obvious, but there have, of course, been times in Microsoft’s history where an open ecosystem was not exactly what the company focused on. And browser competition was surely not on the top of the company’s list during the browser wars. That cost the company dearly, both financially and in terms of developer goodwill. Maybe that’s why it is now making this announcement, too.

“We believe in an open API surface area and driver model,” Kipman said. “We will continue to participate in guiding open standards like OpenXR so anyone can innovate with our headset from the sensors that are being used to the differentiated experiences that are being created.”

[fmservers]

Microsoft promises an open HoloLens ecosystem

At its MWC keynote in Barcelona today, Microsoft promised to keep the HoloLens ecosystem open. That means third-party app stores and browsers, for example, with Mozilla already announcing its Firefox browser for HoloLens today.

“Developers will have the freedom to create their own stares as first-class citizens,” Microsoft’s HoloLens chief Alex Kipman said today and stressed that developers will also have the freedom to create great web browsers.

All of this should be obvious, but there have, of course, been times in Microsoft’s history where an open ecosystem was not exactly what the company focused on. And browser competition was surely not on the top of the company’s list during the browser wars. That cost the company dearly, both financially and in terms of developer goodwill. Maybe that’s why it is now making this announcement, too.

“We believe in an open API surface area and driver model,” Kipman said. “We will continue to participate in guiding open standards like OpenXR so anyone can innovate with our headset from the sensors that are being used to the differentiated experiences that are being created.”

Via Frederic Lardinois https://techcrunch.com

[un-enfant-immature]

Microsoft promises an open HoloLens ecosystem

At its MWC keynote in Barcelona today, Microsoft promised to keep the HoloLens ecosystem open. That means third-party app stores and browsers, for example, with Mozilla already announcing its Firefox browser for HoloLens today.

“Developers will have the freedom to create their own stares as first-class citizens,” Microsoft’s HoloLens chief Alex Kipman said today and stressed that developers will also have the freedom to create great web browsers.

All of this should be obvious, but there have, of course, been times in Microsoft’s history where an open ecosystem was not exactly what the company focused on. And browser competition was surely not on the top of the company’s list during the browser wars. That cost the company dearly, both financially and in terms of developer goodwill. Maybe that’s why it is now making this announcement, too.

“We believe in an open API surface area and driver model,” Kipman said. “We will continue to participate in guiding open standards like OpenXR so anyone can innovate with our headset from the sensors that are being used to the differentiated experiences that are being created.”

[tastydregs]

How OpenXR could glue virtual reality’s fragmenting market together

Enlarge /

OpenXR is like a girl reaching for a moon, or something...

Khronos

8 with 7 posters participating

Consumer-grade virtual reality (and, to a lesser extent, augmented reality) is only a few years old, but it’s already an extremely fragmented market. Wikipedia lists almost 30 distinct VR headsets released by dozens of hardware makers since 2015. Creating a game that works seamlessly with all of these headsets (and their various runtime environments) can be a headache even for the biggest studios.

OpenXR is out to change all that. With Monday’s release of the OpenXR provisional specification, Khronos’ open source working group wants to create a world where developers can code their VR/AR experience for a single API, with the confidence that the resulting application will work on any OpenXR-compliant headset.

"By accessing a common set of objects and functions corresponding to application life cycle, rendering, tracking, frame timing, and input, which are frustratingly different across existing vendor-specific APIs, software developers can run their applications across multiple XR systems with minimal porting effort—significantly reducing industry fragmentation," Khronos said in a statement announcing the provisional release.

Unity through abstraction

Releasing such an open standard has been the result of nearly two years of work from dozens of member companies, including pretty much every big name in the VR/AR space. And getting all those stakeholders to agree on what, exactly, should go into the industry’s first open development standard wasn’t easy.

Enlarge /

The list of companies supporting OpenXR is like a who's who of the VR/AR space.

"You all get together for the first time, [creating a standard] seems like an insoluble problem," Khronos President and Nvidia VP Neil Trevett told Ars. “It took a while, but the way the working group ended up solving that is having an extensible forward-looking architecture that has abstraction layers."

Rather than creating one pre-defined best way for everyone to do things in VR, the OpenXR group created an API that takes the focus away from specifics. “Input is a perfect example," Trevett said. “In an OpenXR application, the application never refers to a physical device. All the actions that it needs in the app are abstracted actions like ‘grab,’ ‘jump,’ ‘point,’ whatever it is you want it to do."

These abstracted actions can then be bound to the specific and varied inputs used by each of the various OpenXR headsets at a hardware level. “You can go from a Hololens 2 with hand gestures to a Vive with a distinct button," Trevett said. “It future-proofs you, too. If you have foveal tracking, you can just bind that to whatever actions you want in the UI as well." And OpenXR developers can still use whatever 3D graphics library they want, with OpenXR providing a framework to make the images look correct on any headset.

An upward spiral

As of today, only two sets of VR headsets have provisional OpenXR support: Collabora’s open-source “Monado" headset and Microsoft’s “Mixed Reality" line of products. Other member companies like Oculus and Epic have announced intentions to add OpenXR support to their products later this year. By then, Khronos should be ready with a version 1.0 release that will differ only slightly from today’s provisional version.

From that point, with hardware and engine makers on board, all that’s left is for VR and AR software makers to embrace the new open standard. On that score, Trevett seems pretty confident that developers will see the benefit in coding their upcoming projects with the new libraries.

Enlarge /

Which would you choose?

Khronos

“It's kind of an upwards spiral," he said. “The first step is to get the hardware vendors. Then, if all of the key platforms support OpenXR APIs, why wouldn't developers use it? No one is losing; it's hard to pinpoint a loser."

“OpenXR since the beginning has had a lot of positive energy and urgency," Trevett continued. “I think people kind of realize everyone can benefit. Obviously it's not going to be magic, but I think it can make a difference, because everyone wins."

The other outcome, of course, is that some VR company or other tries to stick with its own proprietary API and pushes for that to become the de facto standard for the industry. That’s what happened with 3D graphics and Microsoft’s DirectX, which leveraged Microsoft’s near-monopoly as PC gaming’s sole operating system to cripple wide uptake of the open source OpenGL alternative.

But Trevett notes that there’s no major company currently operating in the VR/AR space that has the kind of power to really take on OpenXR at this point. Even Microsoft, far from trying to extend DirectX into some sort of DirectVR standard, “has been one of the most active" supporters of OpenXR, Trevett said. “You're definitely seeing the new Microsoft.“

“Every open standard has a nemesis, except OpenXR [so far]," he continued. “Which means [a competitor] is about to appear from somewhere. It's bound to. It's a law of the universe, like gravity. Actually it's a good thing, because anything in isolation without competition, it's not good."

But now that OpenXR is a reality, Trevett seemed hopeful that the VR hardware market can avoid the fragmenting, damaging competition between standards that game development has faced in the past. “Of course the most important win is the end-user. Not only do they have much more confidence they're going to get the apps that they want, without Oculus looking over the fence at Vive or vice versa... It's a classic betamax vs VHS thing. If you can solve that, it gives more end-user confidence, which hopefully helps everyone."

[fazeupmag-blog]

New Post has been published on Fazeup

New Post has been published on https://www.fazeup.tk/2019/05/arm-mali-d77-solves-a-few-of-vrs-efficiency-issues/

Arm Mali-D77 solves a few of VR’s efficiency issues

Hype for digital actuality has actually died down over the previous couple of years, owing to a mix of costly hardware, so-so efficiency and movement illness, and a scarcity of person content material. The trade is at present caught in a little bit of a rooster vs. egg state of affairs, the place a scarcity of shoppers deters funding in high-end content material. Extra highly effective and cost-effective VR hardware for the lots can be wanted to interrupt the impasse.

Editor’s Choose

15 finest VR apps for Google Cardboard, Google Daydream, and Gear VR! (Up to date 2019)

Digital actuality is taking off in an enormous means. Nevertheless, it’s nonetheless a really younger trade. There are a number of VR platforms, together with three cellular platforms with Google Cardboard, Google Daydream, and Gear VR. Of …

Arm is seeking to overcome a few of these technological hurdles with its first ever show processor (DPU) designed particularly for VR: the Mali-D77. In a nutshell, the Mali-D77 offloads frequent VR processing duties from the GPU, liberating up assets for larger body charges whereas additionally serving to to cut back movement illness.

Contained in the Arm Mali-D77

A lot of the Mali-D77 relies on 2017’s Mali-D71 for flagship smartphones and different high-end functions. It has the identical compression decoder, layer scaling, HDR help, and colour administration items. Nevertheless, the brand new design has been optimized to help 3K resolutions at 120fps, with help for 4K resolutions at as much as 90fps.

The most important modifications come within the type of two model new hardware acceleration items for VR functions. The Mali-D77 helps Lens Correction and Asynchronous Timewarp in hardware, somewhat than operating these algorithms on the GPU. Arm estimates this will release about 15 p.c of GPU assets, which will be put in the direction of boosting body charges. Transferring this load over to the DPU additionally supplies a 40 p.c bandwidth saving and 180mW of energy per VR layer. Good.

Lens Correction is required in VR headsets to offset the sunshine curvature of the headset’s lenses. Barrel Distortion is utilized to every rendered body as a way to offset the Pincushion Distortion impact of the lenses. Consider this as overcompensating or “reverse distortion” in order that the lens distortion truly finally ends up displaying the right picture. Historically that is performed on the GPU, taking over additional cycles and time. The Mali-D77 does this all on the DPU.

As well as, the Mali-D77 performs chromatic aberration correction utilizing an identical reverse distortion technique. With this utilized, picture colours can be displayed appropriately throughout the complete lens, together with within the corners the place colour separation distortion can happen.

What’s Asynchronous Timewarp?

Lens Correction is somewhat self-explanatory, however Asynchronous Timewarp is a bit more concerned. Right here, Arm is utilizing the show processor to rotate, skew, and warp photos to compensate for the wearer’s actions whereas mitigating any GPU or different show pipeline latency.

With present era hardware, X, Y, Z axis motion monitoring is up to date in sync with the GPU, as a result of the GPU has to render the change in view every time you progress. With Asynchronous Timewarp, the 2 are no-longer-updated collectively. You may transfer your head in between GPU body updates, and the Mali-D77 can warp the present body to match your head motion.

This can be a delicate impact, because it solely lasts for a fraction of a second in between rendered frames and doesn’t eradicate the necessity for quick body charge rendering. Nevertheless, it significantly will increase the fluidity and smoothness of motion and movement, as updates can happen much more continuously than the GPU body charge. The disconnect between your physique shifting and seeing a visible replace is the main explanation for movement illness in VR, so the Mali-D77 may help rather a lot on this regard.

X, Y, Z axis motion knowledge is fed on to the Mali-D77 from the CPU, bypassing the GPU stage completely. This can be a very totally different means of doing issues and as such would require builders to make the most of a brand new set of growth instruments and methods. That is arguably the most important hurdle with the D77. Luckily, Arm engineers work carefully with initiatives like OpenXR, so we might see an API announcement for simplified developer help sooner or later.

Total, the Arm Mali-D77 is an clever and logical development of the heterogeneous computing thought to assist remedy a few of digital actuality’s greatest hardware points. There are nonetheless different hurdles within the wi-fi communication, monitoring, and value segments of VR left to unravel earlier than mainstream adoption will be reconsidered, however the Mali-D77 helps to crack among the efficiency points.

Supply

[britishvr]

So, what happened to OpenXR? by Del_Torres #vr #oculus #rift https://t.co/FGvrE1bDbw

So, what happened to OpenXR? by Del_Torres #vr #oculus #rift https://t.co/FGvrE1bDbw

— British VR 🇬🇧 (@BritishVR) February 16, 2019

from Twitter https://twitter.com/BritishVR February 16, 2019 at 02:31PM via IFTTT

[3evolutions-blog]

5 obstacles to adopt Mixed reality (XR)

According to a 2018 survey, more than 80 per cent of executives believe Mixed Reality (XR) will create a new way for companies to interact, communicate and inform, while 27 per cent say it is very important for their organisations to be a pioneer in XR solutions. And yet growth has been slow for both. The consumer sector and the enterprise sector have experienced similar amounts of growth, but the majority consensus is that this growth has been weaker than hoped for consumers category. So what are the five biggest barriers to entry and how easy are they to overcome? No standardisation  There are more than eight different VR/AR platforms that developers work on, with no clear leader in sight and no concerted effort towards standardisation. Major platform companies with advanced software, hardware and content capabilities may be able to go it alone by taking advantage of ‘winner takes most’ platform dynamics, but others will need to work together in robust ecosystems to overcome the lack of standards and realise the full potential of their investments. There is an OpenXR initiative from the likes of Oculus, Vale, Unity, Epic, Samsung, Magic Leap and Google, among others, which aims to develop a cross-platform VR standard so applications only need to be written once to run on any VR system. Until the standard is in the market, purchasing decisions on extended reality may be held up. 02 Hardware Currently VR and AR headsets are bulky and expensive, tethered to specific platforms and unable to display realistic pictures. This has alienated consumers and hindered the development of business-to-consumer XR. Again, AR is performing better than VR in this area. Although the VR/AR can be viewed with a smartphone, the support is limited with the smartphones of the top-tier manufacturers such as Apple, Google, Nokia, Motorola, Samsung. Other smartphone manufacturers cannot implement these technologies in the smartphone to have lower price and retain their market share. In a market with no clearly defined leader, even Microsoft HoloLens has issues with convenience and price tag, which lowers the chances for widespread corporate use, according to Andrew Makarov, head of mobile development at MobiDev. The answer might be right under our noses as mobile phones are proving successful at delivering AR, although with VR they’re less consistent. Ironically, there’s already evidence that the smartphone itself will disappear as extended reality spreads. In the future, phones will be smart wearables, like earbuds that have biometric sensors and speakers, or rings and bracelets that can sense motion, and glasses that record and display information. 03 Limited content For consumers, lack of content has proved a huge problem. Oculus Rift rushed into its huge investment in hardware, but when the headset launched, there was almost no content. Oculus is spending millions into content, but the killer app isn’t clear. There are only a few companies right now that know how to make good extended reality content and, for professional developers, it may not be worth their time or budget relative to the installed base. We believe that AR, which overlays virtual images on to the real world, as with the sensational game Pokémon Go, is likely to spread faster than VR in business to consumer thanks to its ease of use and existing content. There is a sense that businesses are looking for use-cases; IKEA has a furniture app that’s brilliant. I can put chairs in every corner of my room. But that’s not enough of an incentive for a consumer to invest. The forthcoming Harry Potter Wizards Unite AR game, in which players find objects, fight each other or unite to defeat monsters, will be an important demonstration of potential. Microsoft’s HoloLens is working with developer Black Marble on truServe, a scene of crime investigation app which allows users to overlay clues, keep track of what you know and place virtual markers or gather multimedia evidence without disturbing the physical scene and potentially tainting evidence. It’s a little like a crime scene investigation game, so as developers see what Harry Potter can do, they will take inspiration for business uses. 04 Different design language  This is film-maker Sir Ridley Scott’s problem: when the eye isn’t targeted to just a small range of viewing, but can rotate 360 degrees, designers have to adapt to an entirely new way of creating things. Designers need to get a 3D game engine, learn how to sculpt, animate and rig complex things when they actually want something that’s easy to use in a familiar environment. It’s about internal buy-in. People don’t like change. Innovation tech companies have to find internal stakeholders to prove they have to spend some money to make some money. 05 No optimisation Software and devices used across industries will have to be optimised for 3D experiences. According to a Survey 2018, potential adopters are deterred by the lack of proof of return on investment, and the challenge of integrating the technology with existing systems and processes. In most cases the benefit of XR is measured on user experience, which is difficult to quantify and compare against costly software and device investment. Unlike cloud-based solutions or analytics and machine-learning, the business case is less tangible. To overcome this, Amazon’s Sumerian, Google Blocks and Adobe Aero, among others, offer building-block technologies, tools to build extended reality experiences through drag-and-drop assets. An early prototype built on Sumerian by Fidelity Labs involves a repurposed 3D virtual persona, or host, that provides voice-guided visualisation for investment data. Virtual hosts are probably the biggest building block of Sumerian that’s obvious right now. Having a character you can make eye contact with, set up in the same way you’d set up an Alexa skill, just drag and drop in a browser, is very attractive for some customers. You don’t need specialised programming or 3D graphics expertise.     In the long run, everything will be fine. The problem with the tech industry is that we’re always washing our laundry in public; no one has time to develop well, so they ship alpha and beta versions for testing which fail fast and often. That’s good product design, but tough when you’re trying to convince the public.   Source: https://www.raconteur.net/technology/extended-reality-barriers-adoption Read the full article