Ludenso announced availability of an augmented reality headset for Android and iOS smartphones. MagiMask works with full-screen apps for AR titles, movies and games and is said to have resolution four times higher than split-screen VR headsets. Its single-lens approach lets users view the full size of a smartphone screen, compensating for stereoscopic effect and convergence and delivering better resolution than stereoscopic head-mounted displays. It comes with a universal phone mount. The crowd-funded MagiMask has begun shipping to backers and is available to others for $99.
Pico Interactive plans to use CES to showcase its new 4K all-in-one virtual-reality headset, said a spokesperson. Pico also will demo "unconventional use cases" for VR, including as a reading aid for vision-impaired consumers and a tool to ease anxieties for people with a fear of flying or visiting the dentist, he said.
The consumer virtual reality hardware market will be a $5 billion global business opportunity by 2023, said ABI Research Thursday. It views 2018 as a “significant year” for augmented reality, with “with new entrants in the market, new smart glasses launched, new and improved platforms and portfolios, and generally more enthusiasm and curiosity from the public to explore the technology." Heavy market “fragmentation and scarcity of content” is plaguing consumer VR hardware growth, but it’s confident “this is decreasing over time.”
The virtual reality market has reached a “mobile fork in the road,” said ABI Research. Though 2018 tethered and stand-alone VR shipments are expected to exceed those of previous years, “mobile VR has taken a distant back seat,” it said Wednesday. The consumer space “has entered a malaise and some within the content and video workflow space have tempered expectations,” it said. Mobile gaming “is a massive market due to its significant user base that VR has not yet tapped into in a significant way,” said ABI. “Without a large mobile VR user base, consumer-centric developers will focus on the premium side of the spectrum, where users are less price sensitive and generate more revenue per user.”
OLED microdisplay supplier eMagin is working to perfect “direct-patterning” technology for the high resolution and brightness that will be required when the mass market for consumer augmented- and virtual-reality devices develops, said CEO Andrew Sculley on a Thursday earnings call. EMagin recently achieved an OLED microdisplay capable of 7,500 nits of peak brightness in full color and is on track to improve that to 10,000 nits by the end of 2019, said Sculley. The “final goal” is to boost that to 15,000 nits, and Sculley thinks that will be attainable by the end of 2020, he said. EMagin thinks the first consumer AR/VR prototypes using its direct-patterning technology will be available early in 2019, he said. The company continues having discussions with several potential manufacturing and licensing partners, but the talks “are complex and take time,” he said. EMagin still thinks the consumer AV/VR market will be a “substantial growth opportunity,” but there no longer exists the “urgency” there was a year ago to chase it, he said. “It’s our assumption that many of the companies pursuing this market recognize that widespread consumer adoption will take more time and development work than originally contemplated.”
Innovation is ahead for a “stuttering” virtual reality market, said a Thursday Futuresource report, citing lack of brick-and-mortar retail support and a “turbulent hype cycle.” Though the market has been slow to build on early momentum, demand is rising for VR gaming and head-mounted displays, Futuresource said, predicting 220 percent growth this year for game content to $1.3 billion. “Mass market uptake is going to be gradual, but it is going to happen” as content evolves, the user experience improves and price threshold to entry drops, said Futuresource analyst Michael Boreham. Full game sales and downloads are expected to dominate the VR games market, led by Steam and Oculus, first in the “PC VR space” and then “building out a presence in mobile VR,” which the analyst sees as the best hope for establishing a market foothold. Boreham predicts mobile VR will divide into two segments: Google’s Cardboard platform at the entry level and second-generation all-in-one HMDs from Lenovo, HTC and Oculus that bring more immersive VR capability to the mobile sector with each device offering six degrees of freedom. In the console space, PlayStation VR is expected to remain the only choice available, with Microsoft reversing a decision to bring VR to Xbox One and Nintendo having no plans for it, despite patents for Nintendo Switch with provision for VR. Augmented reality, where virtual elements are viewed through a mobile device and layered over the real world, has grown this year with the launch of ARKit and ARCore, which has created a development platform for AR applications for Android and iOS. Futuresource credited a “resurgent” Pokemon Go and other AR gaming experiences based on Harry Potter, Jurassic World and Ghostbusters with returning the market to growth and projected sales of $600 million this year.
New in-ear headphones from Sennheiser were certified by spatial computing platform company Magic Leap to give users control over their sound world, said the audio company Tuesday. Sennheiser’s Ambeo AR headphones, expected to be available next month for $250 through Magic Leap, will let developers and creators build experiences where real-world sounds blend with virtual audio, Sennheiser said. They can choose how much of outside sound, captured by the headphones’ built-in mics, blends into the spatial audio experience, it said, so "developers can create truly immersive and social experiences.”
That global shipments of virtual-reality headsets took a huge nosedive in Q2 doesn’t dissuade IDC from its “positive outlook for the quarters ahead” for VR, though commercial-grade headsets will take increasing share at the expense of consumer models, reported the company Wednesday. IDC estimates Q2 shipments declined 33.7 percent year over year but “expects this to be a temporary setback as the VR market finds its legs,” it said. “Screenless viewers brought a lot of attention to VR in the early days,” as brands like Alcatel, Google and Samsung “artificially propped up” the market by bundling headsets with smartphones, said IDC. Demand for screenless viewers since has declined exponentially, “shrinking” to 409,000 units in Q2 from a million in the same year-earlier quarter, it said: “This category was the largest contributor to the decline in shipments for the overall VR headset market.” A major market impediment is that consumers “still find it difficult to try a VR headset," said IDC. "This is where the commercial market has an opportunity to shine.” With mainstream VR content “still lacking,” more headset vendors “are looking to commercial as a way to build their business while they wait for the consumers to catch up," it said.
Author B.V. Larson granted exclusive rights to Cemtrex for a licensing agreement to develop and publish video games based on the author's Star Force book series, with a priority on virtual reality games, Cemtrex said. The agreement also covers games for consoles, PC and handheld devices, it said. The first game release is slated for 2019.
The market for augmented- and virtual-reality consumer headsets using eMagin’s OLED microdisplay technology won’t develop “as soon as we had hoped,” said CEO Andrew Sculley on a Thursday earnings call. Negotiations to land a big “mass-production partner” are also going “slower than we had hoped,” he said. The company is in licensing talks with “a number of parties,” he said. Those discussions “are complex and take time,” he said. Though eMagin still thinks the consumer AR/VR market will be a “substantial growth opportunity for us,” it’s not viewing it with the same “urgency” as it did last year, he said. “It is our assumption that many of the companies pursuing this market recognize that widespread consumer adoption will take more time and development work than originally contemplated,” he said. EMagin recently completed the “final design review” for its next-generation AR/VR microdisplay, and expects the first prototypes using its direct-pattern OLED technology will be available in early 2019, he said. The company’s ultimate goal is to fashion an OLED AR/VR microdisplay capable of 15,000 nits of peak brightness in full color, having “recently achieved” peak brightness at about half that level, he said.