Zorica Nastasic/Getty Images You don’t often expect a Tuesday night to offer you a big surprise, do you? Tuesday nights are barely a step up from Monday nights, and Monday nights aren’t usually pretty. But here we were, my wife and I, on a Tuesday night having dinner in a restaurant with one of my … Read more
The Apple Vision Pro is now officially on sale. Don’t worry if you were late to jump on the “spatial computing” hype train; there’s still plenty of time to get yourself one of the new $3,500 headsets if you’re really keen to see what the folks under CEO Tim Cook have cooked up. Top Takeaways … Read more
There are some things about VR that remain as true today as they have for nearly the past decade, despite how much some companies want to rebrand the whole shebang. Varjo’s latest VR/AR headset, the $3,990 XR4, wants to prove that solid displays, controls, and comfort remain the cornerstone of the VR space. The headset … Read more
Welcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. I would be lying if I said that mixed reality and generative AI were two of my favorite things. And yet, a Christmas Day … Read more
Ernest Cline, the bestselling author of Ready Player One, apparently never learned the lesson of his own book. The novelist—whose sci-fi hit depicts a dystopian world in which people forego societal engagement for the illusory pleasures of a Matrix-like video game world—has decided to launch his own “metaverse” platform that will be used to recycle … Read more
Herman Narula, co-founder and CEO of Improbable, speaks during a session at the Web Summit in Lisbon. Henrique Casinhas | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images Metaverse company Improbable has sold one of its key gaming ventures to London-listed video game developer Keywords Studios for £76.5 million ($97.1 million). The company closed the deal … Read more
zf L/Getty Images If a year is a long time in technology, then two years is practically a lifetime. At the back end of 2021, everyone was talking about the metaverse. Two years later and practically no one is talking about it (except, perhaps, Mark Zuckerberg). So, what went wrong? One of the big issues is hype. … Read more
I’ve tried them both, and the new Meta Quest 3 is no Apple Vision Pro. At least as far as presenting a hyper-realistic mixed reality experience that overlays virtual objects and experiences into the real world while preventing you from bumping into the furniture. And for $500, versus $3,500 for Apple’s still-unreleased headset, that’s perfectly … Read more
Watching the Meta Quest 3 being announced by Meta made me realize something – the hardware available for virtual, augmented and mixed reality is finally catching up with the big idea pitches everyone had about this concept called the “metaverse” a couple of years ago. What Will VR Solve, Anyway? Seeing this $500 headset, part … Read more
Undeterred by its many detractors, Meta is still trying to make the metaverse happen. This week, the company held its annual Connect developer conference at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage to announce a new mixed reality headset, the Meta Quest 3, as well as new smart … Read more