Facebook Voice Commands for Oculus Quest 2

Facebook announced Voice Commands for the Oculus Quest last year. The original version, however, proved to be inconvenient. In order to access voice commands, you had to manually select the tool from the Oculus menu each and every time you wished to use it. This new update streamlines the process, allowing you to activate voice commands by saying the phrase ‘Hey Facebook’, followed by a specific command.

Facebook knows that users are going to have concerns, which is why ‘Hey Facebook’ is strictly an opt-in experience. You’ll still be able to use Voice Commands without having to say the wake word. To do that, you just use your controller or hand tracking to navigate to the home menu and then to the Experimental Features panel. From there you can then turn off the ‘Hey Facebook’ feature, giving you a little peace of mind.

More information:

https://vrscout.com/news/hey-facebook-voice-commands-oculus-quest/

AR Smart Viewer by Qualcomm

Qualcomm, maker of chips and technologies for mobile devices, today announced a reference design for a tethered AR headset which is tethered to a phone or PC but also contains its own chips to handle some onboard processing. The company calls the split-processing approach an AR smart viewer headset. Qualcomm’s latest reference design is a tethered AR headset which the company calls an AR smart viewer. What differentiates an AR smart viewer from a basic tethered AR viewer is the inclusion of onboard processing which helps to offload some of the work from the tethered device onto the headset itself. Basic tethered AR viewers send all of their sensor data to the tethered host device, usually a smartphone, which handles all of the sensor processing while also rendering the AR environment and application. For devices not designed for sustained workloads, that can push a smartphone to its limits in both power and cooling capabilities.

AR smart viewers include their own onboard processor which can handle some of the sensor processing and display tasks, ultimately reducing the power consumption of the tethered device by some 30%. The downside is greater expense due to the added processing hardware. Qualcomm created ready made software which will allow the AR smart viewer to run standard Android apps in floating windows, in addition to immersive AR applications. AR smart viewer headsets can alternatively be tethered Windows PCs for more flexibility, including the ability to run standard Windows applications on virtual monitors. Although Microsoft has its own ambitions with Windows Mixed Reality on both PC VR and standalone with HoloLens, the company seems open to Qualcomm’s efforts to include PCs as host devices for AR smart viewers. Qualcomm hopes that AR smart viewers will eventually break free of their tether and focus instead on a wireless connection to the host device.

More information:

https://www.roadtovr.com/qualcomm-ar-smart-viewer-headset-announcement/

JVC 120-degree FOV XR Headset

JVCKenwood announced late last year that it was testing the XR waters with a new headset for enterprise users which boasts a wide field of view (FOV) and 2.5k per-eye resolution. Now the company says the device is headed to enterprise partners starting in late March. JVC’s prototype uses a proprietary mirror display to achieve a 120-degree FOV, serving up 2,560×1,440 pixels per eye via dual 5.5 inch LCD panels. Using SteamVR tracking, the PC-tethered headset can make use of any compatible controller, such as Vive wands or Valve Index controllers.

The project, which has been in development by JVC’s projector team since 2018, is mainly targeting the simulator market, however the company also sees it being used in the construction and medical fields. The idea is to allow users to retain a direct view (not passthrough) of instruments or gauges while large-format virtual imagery is projected where it needs to be, which in the case of a flight/driving simulator would be out the cockpit windows. The company also says it features a wide eye box, which will allow users a greater physical range of wearing positions.

More information:

https://www.roadtovr.com/jvc-enterprise-xr-120-fov-5k-resolution/