🌀 DTech 🟣 SC
Prices will start from 1,899 yuan ($268.25) for the headset that will be powered by Alibaba's Qwen AI model and app. Unlike other headsets made by the likes of Meta, the Quark glasses look like regular eyewear, with a black plastic frame. Alibaba said the glasses would be deeply integrated with its apps, including Alipay and its shopping site Taobao, with wearers able to use them for tasks such as on-the-go translation and instant price recognition.
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Today, we ’re introducing WorldGen: a state-of-the-art end-to-end system for generating interactive and navigable 3D worlds from a single text prompt. WorldGen is built on a combination of procedural reasoning, diffusion-based 3D generation, and object-aware scene decomposition. The result is geometrically consistent, visually rich, and render-efficient 3D worlds for gaming, simulation, and immersive social environments.
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You don’t have to look far to find reports of people who have used VR headsets and then felt ‘off’ after removing them. While motion sickness is surely the most well-known post-VR symptom, a subset of people say they have experienced feelings of being ‘stuck in VR’ after taking off their headsets. It’s tempting to brush off such reports as someone having seen The Matrix (1999) one too many times, but it turns out there is a clear scientific basis for the sensation.
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DeepMind, Google’s AI research lab, announced the release of Genie 3, a new AI system capable of generating interactive virtual environments in real-time—and bringing us one step closer to the Holodeck.
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Researchers at Meta Reality Labs and Stanford University have unveiled a new holographic display that could deliver virtual and mixed reality experiences in a form factor the size of standard glasses.
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So what the hell is embodiment and why am I boring you talking about it rather than just talking about all the cool shooting, and explosions, and smart design in the game? Well, it’s going to help us understand why certain design decisions in Synapse are so effective. So stick with me here for just a minute.
Embodiment is a term I use to describe the feeling of being physically present within a VR experience. Like you’re actually standing there in the world that’s around you.
And now your reasonable response is, “but don’t we already use the word immersion for that?”
Well colloquially people certainly do, but I want to make an important distinction between ‘immersion’ and ‘embodiment’.
‘Immersion’, for the purposes of our discussion, is when something has your complete attention. We all agree that a movie can be immersive, right? When the story or action is so engrossing it’s almost like nothing outside of the theater even exists at that moment. But has even the most immersive movie you’ve ever seen made you think you were physically inside the movie? Certainly not.
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Let me double down on that statement a little bit. I have always looked at the technologies evolving out of AR as a solution for VR locomotion and discomfort. When consumers are finally living with ‘all-day XR glasses,’ which can map their living or working spaces in real-time and allow them to dip in and out of VR and MR modally, users will begin to actively reskin their real-world environments (spaces, objects, people, etc.) to look and behave however they want. It won’t be enough to look at anchored apps against the backdrop of a dirty laundry bin or a sink full of dishes; consumers will customize their living rooms to be castles, resorts, Minecraft landscapes, etc. They will dine in the halls of gods and have meetings at the bottom of the ocean. Some may think it dystopian, but I believe the true Metaverse levels the playing field between the haves and have nots, allowing for a landscape of human activities in fantastic environments custom tailored to the user, or a consensual experience tailored to a group. It will eventually be done completely on the fly, and will likely be the true ‘killer app’ of future XR devices.
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It’s called Generative Agent Simulations of 1,000 People. Not a catchy title. But I believe this research will eventually change the world. That’s why I’ve chosen it as the subject of this first in my new series of weekly postcards.
The researcher in question is Joon Sung Park; he’s a PhD student at Stanford University.
He and his team interviewed 1,052 people. They asked them to speak for two hours about themselves and their everyday lives, beliefs and values.
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The collaboration, titled ‘Re:Imagine London’, is a video game experience within the game where players can explore and build within a virtual London. The partnership’s goal was to encourage players to start exploring urban development and engagement by gamifying a sandbox development.
According to Zaha Hadid Architects, players will be invited to create buildings and walkable areas within a sustainable and mixed-used planning environment.
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XR is in the initial part of a new cycle where mixed reality, spatial mapping and computing, and AI are starting to become always more relevant. But the devices are still bulky, expensive, and full of friction, and this creates an innovation dilemma for people wanting to make a business in immersive realities. Let me explain to you what I mean.
...Talking about the everyday use of XR, a few weeks ago it became viral on social media an experience developed during a hackathon where people could have an AI-powered cooking assistant on the Quest. I found it amazing, it’s absolutely cool that you can have an assistant who can analyze the content of your fridge and suggest to you what to cook and how to do it.
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