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- Meta will replace your Quest 3 Elite strap for free
Meta will replace your Quest 3 Elite strap for free
INSIDE: The Vision Pro gets native games, Pico VR rumored to launch a new headset
Mathew Abraham
March 30, 2024
Greetings, AR enthusiasts.
Issues with the Quest 3’s Elite Strap has become so bad that Meta has promised to replace all affected units for free.
Pico, earlier rumored to scale back on new headsets, are rumored to be coming out with a new one soon.
In today’s Phantom Thread, we will look at:
The Quest 3 Elite Strap is still in trouble
Pico could be unveiling their PICO 4S headset soon, suggest leaked designs and trademarks
The Vision Pro gets its first native games
Meta dipping their toes in Godot development
Setting up Vivecraft on your headset
3 New AR Tools
WEEKLY THREADS
The weave: After temporarily pausing sales of the Elite strap in November, Meta has now taken the decision to outright replace any Elite strap units after it couldn’t even be recognized by the headset.
The strands:
The troubled launch of the Quest 3’s Elite Strap with battery is still haunting it as people have received emails from Meta telling them they will replace the straps.
You might also have received this email if you owned an Elite strap even if you haven’t had any issues because Meta has decided to replace all of them.
New units won’t be having this issue since Meta has already fixed it, so if you haven’t gotten it yet, this is the right time.
The fabric: The Elite Strap is a chapter that Meta would rather forget, but their plan of replacing every unit before it was fixed is a massive step in the right direction to sort out the issues with the strap.
The weave: ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, have their own VR subsidiary called Pico, and they have registered trademarks for their new standalone VR headset.
The strands:
A user on X also found out how the controller would look through data mining the Pico Connect PC app.
This news comes right after reports that suggested Pico wouldn’t be making a VR headset and were instead trying to compete with the Vision Pro instead.
Pico were in rough waters last year with a bunch of layoffs, but it seems they have recovered enough to go forward with plans for new hardware.
The fabric: Pico headsets are more reasonably priced than Meta Quest headsets, so it is important that they stay in market so that people have a choice of what headset to get. This news of new hardware is a good sign that Pico is here to stay.
AdriaVidal / depositphotos.com
The weave: Popular iOS games Crossy Road Castle and Solitaire Stories are coming to Vision Pro as native apps and you can get them if you have Apple Arcade on April 25th.
The strands:
These games were ported over from their iOS and iPadOS versions and now run natively on the Vision Pro.
The games being native means they can use hand tracking, and the game scales automatically based on how large the screen you’re playing it on is.
There aren’t any games exclusive to the Vision Pro as of now, but that might change as Apple starts to encourage developers to make games for the headset.
The fabric: Vision Pro isn’t really made for gaming, but Apple is still exploring that aspect of spatial computing that has never really been done to this scale before. There are games on the Vision Pro, but other than the native games that we just talked about, there is not much choice.
The weave: Godot is an open source game engine that Meta thinks could fit better with OpenXR and other Quest features. So much so that they have started investing in W4 Games, a veteran Godot dev team.
The strands:
A statement from W4 Games said that the grant from Meta Reality Labs can help bring OpenXR features into Godot which can help developers make VR projects using the engine.
Now that support is official, Godot can be more optimized and gain access to more feature extensions that devs can use.
W4 Games is one of the bigger contributors to the Godot open source project, so these features could start rolling out pretty soon.
The fabric: Unity was one of the more popular engines for VR in general, but their controversial decision to charge devs for user installs have made devs look elsewhere. Godot is the natural alternative, and it seems that they are taking the right steps in adding VR to Godot’s list of capabilities
Yuriy_Vlasenko / depositphotos.com
The weave: Minecraft is not a game that is native to VR, and if you want to play it immersively with your headset, some setup is required.
Here’s our step-by-step guide:
Make sure you have Minecraft Java Edition and SteamVR installed on your computer.
Get Vivecraft here. The Forge mod version is the best since you can switch between 2D and VR at will.
You will need to have ran Minecraft at least once. If you have, skip this step, otherwise run Minecraft for the first time and quit out.
Run the Vivecraft installer and go through the install process.
Run the Minecraft launcher and make sure Vivecraft is selected and modded profile is ticked.
WEEKLY AR TOOL ROUNDUP
Featured AR tools:
Polycam - An iOS and Android LiDAR scanning app that lets you scan the world around you and create accurate 3D models.
Adobe Aero - A AR scene app that can translate any 2D image or 3D models into AR scenes which you can deploy in other projects.
HistoryView VR - A VR museum tour app that lets you visit national and international historic sites, all completely free.
FLASH FRAMES
The US Military has contracted Microsoft to procure 3,000 units of their augmented reality heads-up-display systems for infantry units.
Virtuix’s new VR treadmill will be getting 35 games at launch. The full body VR experience is set to launch in late Q2 this year.
Surgeons in the UK did the first surgery in the world while using a Vision Pro as a surgical logistics and organizational tool.
MIT is working with a Brazilian startup to create VR/AR training simulators for surgeons to practice and demonstrate procedures.