Welcome to episode 70 of Lost in Immersion, your weekly 45-minute stream about innovation. As VR and AR veterans, we will discuss the latest news of the immersive industry. Hi Fabien, Seb is not here. He's always on holidays. Maybe he will be back someday. And go back to holidays again. So we'll see. So what's up with this? We are trying to do one podcast every two weeks now. So we'll see if this rhythm fits better. Because they are less news than usual. And maybe we'll see. So this is the new format we are trying right now. So the mic is yours Fabien. Thanks. Episode 70 is amazing. It feels like it was only yesterday. Anyway. So today I want to talk about the final, I would say, rumors about the Quest 3S. So the cheaper version of the Quest 3 that is a replacement of the Quest 2. And actually maybe not a replacement. We can discuss that as well. And so it's supposed to come and to be announced and released in September. Maybe end of September. There is I think a beta conference around that time. So the latest news that we have, it seems like the original designs that were leaked months ago were quite close to the latest leaks. With all these lenses that are all together in very close positions to each other here. And actually a design that is more similar to the Quest 2 than the Quest 3. And the difference are of course the mixed reality. That is not very usable on the Quest 2. Not usable at all. And the upgrade on the CPU. So the Snapdragon. So you see here a bit more details about the actual specifications. So yeah, the latest Snapdragon has just stayed. The screens seem to be the same as the Quest 2 or very close to the Quest 2. And back to Fresnel lenses. So, you know, this basically the difference. Like, sorry, one of the biggest difference between the lenses is the size that they are taking, the space that they are taking in the actual headset. The controllers seem to be the same as the Quest 3 this time. And the adjustment of the space between the lenses seems to be also similar to the Quest 2, if I'm correct. We don't know much about the software side, but because it's the most up-to-date Snapdragon, the guess is that most of the features that are on the Quest 3 will be available. Yeah, so, oh, and the rumors about the price. So we don't know yet. Of course, it's only rumors and leaks, but I think it's a 300 USD, which is I think the release price of the Quest 2 back in the day. So to compare with the Quest 3, which is 500, I think. That's a difference, but not that big difference. You know, it's not super cheap either. So this is why I'm saying maybe it's not really a replacement for the Quest 2. Maybe there is still a space for a very, very cheap headset like the Quest 2. So, yeah, what do you think about all of this? Yeah, about the place of the Quest 2, I guess it will be simply finishing their stocks by like cutting the price of the Quest 2 for a few weeks or months and it will be the end of the Quest 2 at this time. So maybe at 150 USD for the last Quest 2 that are available. Yeah, I was thinking about what will be, what is their goal with this kind of headsets? I guess they want the current Quest 2 users. I'm included in this because I didn't buy the Quest 3 yet. And yes, the feature that is lacking the most is the mixed reality one. Apart from that, the headset works great and you can still play on the latest games. So I guess they just want to convert the Quest 2 users that are using the Quest 2 now. They want to convert them to mixed reality. Maybe getting some new users, as you mentioned, if the Quest 2 is cheaper. I'm not sure that the Quest 3S will get some new members to the community of VR because the price is quite the same as the Quest 2. So it's not that, yeah, that part is not changing anything. And I don't think that the mixed reality argument will make them change their mind about, yeah, yeah, mixed reality is now available for 350, so I get a headset that I've never thought about. Yeah, so is it worth the cost? I'm not sure. Of course, I'm very happy because I would get the mixed reality soon, obviously. Yeah, the guys that are using the Quest 3 won't be changing their headsets. So yeah, very little movement, I guess, in the number of users in VR. It's not quite a revolution. And my biggest question about these technical choices is that, is resolution and lenses that important right now? Does it justify it's nearly double the price for the Quest 3? Or maybe they will be lowering the price of the Quest 3 as well? So I don't know, but yeah, this argument of you can get better, just slightly better resolution and better lenses, you have to pay double for this. I'm not sure about this setting argument. Yeah, well, so I have to say like on the Quest 3, I really like the field of view, how large the field of view is. I think it's, of course, with mixed reality, but apart from mixed reality, I think it's really, really one of the selling point of the Quest 3 is, when you put it, it's like, wow, yeah, the field of view is really big. So I can understand that selling point because it worked for me. But indeed, I think the most important point that you raised is, will the Quest 3 bring new users to VR and to mixed reality? And I really like what you say, it's like a random person who wants to buy something. Maybe they don't really understand yet what mixed reality is. So they see, oh, this one is doing mixed reality and this one is not. What does this really mean for them as a user? Is it too technical? It's difficult for someone to really understand what the implications of, yeah, you can do mixed reality are, I'm not sure. What would be the argument for you to try mixed reality? I don't think there is an app that everybody wants to try at this point in mixed reality. We talked about the spatial computing. People are more and more aware of this, but are they willing to pay that much just to try it? And there are no games. Seb spoke about the escape game in mixed reality that seems to be really good. But I don't think it justifies the price or the will of getting one of those headsets yet. It's just a fashion now. Everybody is talking about mixed reality, but despite from us working with professionals, everyday users are not using mixed reality that much. Lots of questions about this, I guess. We know that the main goal of Meta is to get more users. Still, I'm not sure this is the right way of doing so. They are still adding new headsets to their lines of hardware. The Quest Pro 2 should be announced as well in 2025. So they'll have three headsets and a half if we count the Quest 2 that is still available in stores. I guess it's a lot of headsets for people to choose from. Maybe too much at this point. I wanted to ask you this. Do you think this kind of headset, the Quest 3S, could be a very good selling product for professionals as the Oculus Go did back in the day? Because it was cheap, it was easy to set up, and a lot of professionals used them for trade shows and demonstrations. Do you think that the Quest 3S could be this kind of product for them to buy cheaper headsets, present the mixed reality features, and then buy the Quest 3 because they found out it's quite interesting and they want this resolution and this kind of lenses? Yeah, I think that's a very good point. The entry level just for testing and then move to the biggest quality. Actually, that also raises a very important point. The most difficult technical element in mixed reality, and this is where the big difference between the Quest 3 and the Vision Pro is, is the distortion on the mixed reality. And seeing where the cameras are placed on the Quest 3, seeing where they will be on the Quest 3S, will the mixed reality quality be good enough? How good will the distortion be? That can be a really important element as well in this kind of adoption of the Quest 3S. This point about distortion is good because we've seen... Do you think they will get experience from what they've done with the Quest 3? Meaning that we've seen in the V64 to the 67 now, they are just improving more and more their distortion management. Could we get a Quest 3S with great distortion management out of the box and not waiting a year to have something that is becoming enjoyable in mixed reality? We can hope so. But it would be a shame for them to go back to case one because they are changing the position of the lenses, as you mentioned. If I were them, I would have kept the exact same positioning of this and try to get all the work that you've done on the Quest 3 and put this in the 3S directly. Yeah, that's a very good point. Technically, is all the good work... Because it's really improved on the Quest 3. Is the good work that they did on the Quest 3 transferable to the Quest 3S? I don't know. As you said, the cameras are not placed at the same position. And the lenses as well. And the lenses, yeah. It could be some kind of, maybe not bad buzz, but meaning that people now know that Meta is able to correct those distortions. Imagine the headset coming on market and then you discovering that the distortion is the same or worse than what the Quest 3 did when it was launched. I guess it could be a very, very bad move here. Yeah. Especially from the community that is expecting a lot from these devices. Okay. I guess we covered this. Okay. Next is a quick topic. I saw these glasses today and I just wanted to share that this exists and maybe we can discuss a bit about their usefulness. These are standard glasses. And as you can see, this is for people who have issues with hearing. Issues with hearing or deaf. You see it's like a real-time speech to text that is displayed in the glasses. And so it seems to be pretty good. You can see some transcription mistakes in the samples that they are showcasing. It's shaking a bit, but I'm not sure if it's from the recording or if the visuals are actually shaking in the glasses. And it seems to be pretty lightweight. So I think this is really nice to help people visually, like for subtitles in real-time for life, for real life. And so it seems to be pretty bright. So I don't know if it's an actual recording from the video or it's a fake recording. So yeah, I found that pretty interesting. And the other thing is it seems pretty expensive for me. It's over $1,000 for this type of glasses. So I'm curious to maybe dig a bit more into that and see why it's so expensive. Because it seems really expensive for that type of device. Especially it's a unique usage type of device. But anyway, it's really nice to see that technology is also helping people with disabilities. We already showed multiple examples of that. So yeah, very quick news on that. Yeah, I guess the price is justified by the target they are trying to reach, which is not that large. They could have taken a brighter strategy by making it a universal translator. And that way it would get way more potential buyers from this and maybe cut the price in half. The weird thing we are seeing right now is that usually we have some great hardware proposition from startup under the company. And their main issue after that is that especially if they are using AI or some kind of latest technologies in speech, text-to-speech and so on. And as startup, they don't have access to the main player in those fields. And so what they are showcasing seems like not as efficient as what we are used to right now. Just because they don't have access to some SDK or they don't have licenses or they don't have the budget to do so. And this is horrible for them because they are selling the hardware as is and they are just lacking something to make this a great product. And people, when you are seeing this video, as you mentioned, you can see there are mistakes and maybe the transition time between the speech and the text is longer than what we are used to now. And it can feel like, yeah, it's old technology. I don't want to spend that kind of money to buy this kind of hardware as it is just a software upgrade at some point. So when they are releasing this kind of video, they should provide some kind of disclaimer saying that this is their own technology, it's not very evolved in that way and they will be doing partnership with other, I don't know, OpenAI or Google or whatever to improve this speech-to-text performances, for example. We've seen the same with Moshi, which is a conversational AI. They had some old AI model and when you are trying it, you're feeling this weird way of, yeah, it's some kind of old technologies, which is not positive for them. Yeah, and I wonder as well on the... So, of course, for completely deaf people, this can be very useful. But, you know, if for some people, maybe just a hearing aid as it exists right now is already enough and this is only text, but I guess with this hearing aid, they can hear, you know, all sounds, noises, everything. So, yeah, I wonder as well like the... As you were saying, like the amount of customers that they might reach might be pretty small, but still, I really like that they are trying to help and to facilitate the experience of these people, yeah. But, yeah, just imagine this kind of glasses with a direct translation of Japanese. Maybe you will try this or as a traveler to be able to understand everybody or any... You can even think about coupling it with a Google Translate or something like this. And when you are seeing a sign and it automatically gives you the translation, it won't be that much in hardware, you know, hardware effort to get this. It's just a simple camera and the correct license because they already have the text display at this point. So, yeah, we are... I don't know if it's a trend, but we know that this kind of company, unfortunately, because their clients is really niche, they don't last very, very long. We could make an update as well on the company that made an app ticket sets for blind people that gives them feedback about their surroundings. We know that they had some kind of money to do so, but are they really selling their product at this point? We don't really know. So maybe we'll check on them and see what they are doing because they presented their device at CES at the beginning of this year. They had the money during the first trimester. So maybe we'll see what kind of evolution they are making with these products. But yeah, usually it's very, very hard. It's the same with the medical field. The ideas are great, but it's really hard for them to make money with this kind of product because it's too expensive or the number of customers is too low. Okay. Okay. This is for you. Yeah. So I'll try to do a quick transition with your subject about glasses here. Sorry. Okay. So my quick transition is about Vuzix. When we are talking about smart glasses or AR glasses as well. Why? I don't really know. Maybe because they don't have much communication about their products. But yeah, in the history of AR, they have a lot of communication about their products. Maybe because they don't have much communication about their products. But yeah, in the history of AR, they were the main player in AR like 10, 15 years ago. If you wanted some AR glasses or smart glasses, they were the company that you were buying from. So they still have like different kind of products now. There are 100, 200 and you know, there are like millions of them. Okay. Yeah, they don't communicate much about their products because they are. And they were kind of, sorry, they were a lone market. It was quite easy to sell those glasses. But now that we have, it's very, I guess they are the only company now that are doing this kind of Dragon Ball Z AR or smart glasses that gives you information about, you know, the work you're doing. And it's basically the same that you just showcased Fabien with the help for deaf people. But they are really targeting the manufacturers and the industry. So yeah, very curious to see that they are still producing new products. And they are apparently making money with this because we don't have much communication about physics. So very, very interesting. So this is the news for, to make some communication about physics. I think that, you know, the company that is doing, announced the new one for the 15th of September. Why I would like to talk about that. I have some bad feeling, but, you know, I was one of the early backers, like maybe 10 years ago now. And, you know, I put like 350 or 400 USD back in the day for them to be able to release their product. And once they were able to do so, they just said, oh yeah, well, we will be only shipping to the US. So any other backers will give you the money back. Thank you for the loan. And that's it. So I'm, yeah. I'm not very in very good terms with Virtuix because of this. Because I've waited like several years to get my Omni back in the days. And I never got it because they never thought about the shipping part of the price. And yeah, I really feel like I've been used at this point. And I'm very, very, so I know that during their first years, they just sold this for companies and especially for a virtual center. You know, those warehouse where people are doing VR. They were a peak of this. And now it's, yeah, it's stable, I guess, at this point. You still have this kind of arcade. It's more or less, it's an arcade in VR. And you can try those treadmills. But now they are targeting directly the main public with what they announced 10 years ago. And yeah, I'm very curious to see if they can get an audience with this. When you are doing some research on marketplace, you can see those kinds of devices that are available as very, very cheap because people bought them to try. And yeah, they are finding it to take a lot of space and not use it as often as they would like to because it's required. I guess it requires calibration or a small part of adjustment for you to be able to play. And when you are willing to do so, you know that you will be spending several hours, obviously. So, yeah, very curious to know if they can get it to the global market with this kind of devices. And another remark about this. Maybe that's a good demonstration. Any other headsets? And about Pyco, they are releasing their new headsets today. So, I'm not sure it's released yet. But apparently, it will be doing mixed reality, which is not a surprise. But I'm very curious to know. They're like teasing about some new kind of lenses. So, I'm very curious to know what kind of technology they'll be putting in their new headsets. So, about this topic, what are your feedbacks or insights about this? Yeah, I saw, it's funny because I saw a notification pop up on my phone talking about the latest Pyco as well. So, it's coming up as we speak. One thing I'm curious about. So, a few months back, Seb tried a similar device that had like a ring, if I'm correct. And here I see kind of a different setup. Yeah, a harness. And I might be wrong, but it's the first time that I see this kind of setup. And I wonder if, because, you know, the issue that Seb was talking about is like with the ring, you're kind of always bumping into the ring or pushing against the ring. And I'm wondering if like having a backpack makes things more natural to move around. So, yeah, I don't know if you have insights on that. Is it the first? No, it's not the first. The device? It's not the first? No, no. So, anyway, they had a great show. The Vertux one. Like this. In the port. So, it's like it's at the top. I could get some picture of this one. What I'm seeing here is the force that it creates. That you can see when you are moving forward. And depending on the size of the person that is using it, I guess it could be a bit weak or maybe squeak or move around. I don't know. So, I'm very, yeah, very, very curious to know what they can do and how the ring should be at this point. Because as you mentioned, the ring was there to provide some kind of security and for them to not be able to fall from the treadmill. And I'm not sure. I guess they tried it. They are releasing it. They tried it. But depending on the weight and the height of the person, I'm not sure. I'm very curious to know the feedback of the users, the final users with this. Yeah. Yeah. I don't see having this in my apartment yet. It's a whole room dedicated to VR. Like what we did with Vive. HTC Vive. HTC Vive you had to do your 10 feet by 10 feet space in your apartment house just for VR. Which is not the case anymore with the Quest because you just have to plug in and you can move around. And the Guardian is here for you to play in a smaller space if you want. Yeah. So, yeah. That's basically it. I have a small reflection about the place, what all the competitors are doing right now. I guess I tried to do a short about this as we talked. We're trying to do YouTube shorts for you to have maybe reflection or smaller news during the week. So, I'm keeping it for this week. I'll be doing this. But the main idea I would like to discuss with all of you is how all those manufacturers like Microsoft, Google, Meta, Samsung, what are the parts in the game right now and how these different alliances are working all together. It's really, really complicated the environment right now. It's really hard to understand the vision of each of these companies and how they will play their part in the VR or AR world in the upcoming months. It's really, really complicated. And we've already talked about the metacommunication, which is really hard to understand and their vision. And I guess the more we are talking about it and the more I'm thinking that they don't really know what they're doing either. And it's quite like with AI. Lots of companies just went all in in AI and now they are backing off a bit because they are seeing that it's not going as fast as they would like it to be. Or the use or the integration of this kind of technology in the business cases is slower than expected because the company are seeking for securities and the ethics part. And now we have the European AI Act as well. That is providing protection for users, especially on the data use. So, yeah. Maybe we'll see a comeback of the metaverse in 2025 because AI is not going fast enough in the integration part, not in the evolution one. So, we'll see. Cool. Yeah. I would be very interested to hear what your analysis is. And especially, I don't know if you will talk about it, but I saw that Microsoft is remote to have ordered more like OLED screen or something like that. Yeah, they are helping Samsung with their product. This is the news that sparked all this reflection. And I tried to write a text about this, but you have to create a diagram to see all the connection between all those companies because you can't understand what is really going on. And there were announcements that have been made and we don't know what is going on now. So, yeah. Lots of stuff to talk about. Cool. Okay. So, anything more to add? No. Okay. That's it for today. So, there won't be an episode next week. So, we talked about the shorts. We'll see if we can do some shorts during this period. And we'll see you in two weeks for episode 71 of Lost in Immersion. So, see you Fabien. Thanks. Bye.
