AWE US has come to an end. It was very tiring, but in the end, I enjoyed going there. It has been a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with many friends, meet new people and make useful business meetings. I also met Palmer Luckey for the first time there! I’m super tired but I’m very happy, it’s been a good event for me and I’ve also accomplished all the goals I set before the event. I’ve also tried a lot of things that I’ll be writing about in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
Today I have selected three highlights from the event for you: Logitech MX Ink, Petaray and Spacebar Arcade. Have fun reading about them…
Practical Logitech MX Ink stylus
Logitech did not have a booth on the AWE show floorbut the new MX Ink pen designed for drawing in VR was hidden inside the Meta booth and the demos were not done by Meta but by Shapes XR. We were all very confused as to why there was no stress on this very cool gadget, but that’s none of my business. In theory, I should have reserved a seat for an MX Ink demo, but I kindly asked the guys at ShapesXR to let me try out the device anyway by making the same facial expression as Shrek’s Puss In Boots, and in the end, they let me they gave a few minutes with a pen. Big thanks to the folks at ShapesXR and also to Keiichi Matsuda who was testing the pen before me and interrupted his test to let me have mine (Keiichi I love you).
The Logitech MX Ink stylus looks like… a stylus. it’s like a large black plastic pen with a tip containing a pressure sensor. Near the top, you can see three buttons you can use to interact with the app (button functions depend on the app itself) on one side, while on the other side you can see the small electrical contacts used to charge the device in the dock. Not visible to the eye, but there are also many tracking LEDs on the device that are tracked by the Quest’s cameras. This is the first third-party accessory to be tracked with headphone tracking cameras.
When I put on the headphones and picked up the pen, the first thing I noticed is that it was represented within Shapes XR as a perfect virtual representation of oneself. I mean, it had its virtual counterpart that exactly matched the look of the physical device, like the official controllers, and that shows even more how this gadget is deeply integrated into the Quest ecosystem.
The second thing I noticed is that it didn’t seem entirely up to me. I didn’t have time to fully test the device (I only had a few minutes), but in the time I had, I couldn’t find a way to get it to fit properly in my hand. It always seemed a little uncomfortable, maybe because it’s a little big (it’s thicker than a pen).
The guy from Shapes XR gave me a crash course on how to use the pen inside their app: I could use “top button” (the one farthest from the top) to select the tool I wanted (eg brush vs eraser), the large center button to use the current tool and the bottom button to grab items. The center button is also the one that functions as the main trigger of the device and is actually bigger than the others. I think if you want to use the pen as a controller, you just move it around in space and then use the center button to activate the various menu items.
I started drawing and immediately understood how drawing with a stylus is much more comfortable than using a controller. It’s more accurate and more similar to the tools we as humans have always used to draw: pens, pencils, brushes, etc… The first thought I had was to draw a dick as usual, but then I realized that maybe the ShapesXR people wouldn’t have been so happy with it (even if it’s technically a “shape” in XR too), so I moved on to another love symbol, which is the heart. The drawing was so smooth and precise to do.
I didn’t have time to do a lot of tracking quality testing (like verifying the tracking FOV), but for the usage I did, tracking was very accurate. It was like using a Quest controller. That means at least for standard use, it’s pretty good.
I really enjoyed drawing with a pen, but I had a big problem with it and it was over button positioning. The three buttons are very small and very close together, so when I wanted to press the center button to draw, Inevitably I ended up also pressing the top button to change the current tool. This happened not just once, but many times: I wanted to draw and ended up changing the tool and then activating whatever tool I randomly chose. This was very frustrating. Again, take this negative feedback with a grain of salt because I didn’t have time to study the ideal position to get it in hand, but still, I have to report that I had this problem. Other people I’ve talked to haven’t had the same problem, so it probably depends on the size of your hand.
I spent a few minutes drawing with the tool and it was fun. I also used the bottom button to grab elements from the ShapesXR menu and drag them onto the stage or grab some previously drawn strokes and move them around. Everything was very natural and accurate.
But the thing I liked most about the Logitech MX Ink on ShapesXR was drawing on a surface. The MX ink tip has a pressure sensor, so you can press it on a surface to draw. When drawing on a surface, since you’re already activating a sensor, you don’t need to press a button as well, so the problem I had with buttons couldn’t happen in this case. The feeling I got while drawing on the booth table was amazing: it was like drawing with a real pen. It was natural, I didn’t need an explanation, without thinking… I was just drawing with my physical pen on a physical surface! It was great, it was my favorite part of the demo.
In the end, I can say that my experience with the Logitech MX Ink pen inside ShapesXR was generally positive. It represented a much more natural way of drawing and positioning objects on stage. The device is also well-made and well-tracked, and the only problem for me was finding the best way to grip it to avoid problems with its buttons.
Petaray
Petray makes light pitches for augmented reality. What’s special about Petaray is that since it offers light fields, it goes beyond the classic stereoscopy of current AR glasses. To show what it means, Petaray had a demonstration at their booth: they had like a castle made of cardboard, and in the AR you could see a dragon flying around it. At first you could see the dragon with traditional AR, so classic stereoscopy: you could see the dragon in 3D, but you couldn’t see it in the same focus as the castle. Then there was the demo with Petaray’s system, and you could clearly focus on the flying dragon at the depth it was, and you could focus on both the dragon and physical objects at the same time if they were at the same depth. This is the magic of light fields, which will be the future of augmented reality.
There was no Vergence-Accommodation conflict, but the additions suffered from all the usual problems that AR has today: the resolution wasn’t super sharp, the FOV was limited, and the virtual elements were semi-transparent. But still, it was an interesting demo, because being able to naturally focus on virtual objects with your eyes is awesome.
I asked the Petaray spokesperson what the differences are between them and CREAL and he told me this are two different approaches. In his opinion, Petaray’s strength is that their light motor consumes no electricity to create the light fields. I don’t know how that’s possible, so I’ll just report this statement.
Petaray does not manufacture glasses but optical engines and is looking for OEMs interested in integrating its technology. There was in the booth a “reference design” of glasses that could be built using the PetaRay engine, and you can see it in the image below.
If you are interested in this company, you can find more information on the PetaRay website: https://www.petaray.com/
Spacebar Arcade
My friend Sam Mateosian had one of the coolest booths at AWE: it looked like a huge arcade machine located in the Playground Showfloor area. Last day, at the last minute, I managed to try his demo. I tried two things in his arcade. The first was a VR pinball game played with a physical pinball controller. It was nice to play 3D pinball in VR using physical buttons that I could press with my hands like on a real physical machine. I’ve been told that the plan with Pinball is to make it multiplayer, with one person playing the pinball machine the standard way and another playing standing “inside the pinball”. This sounds interesting, but unfortunately it was not possible for me to test this in AWE.
While I was playing pinball, I looked around in VR and saw other things, but I didn’t know exactly what they were until Sam put another Quest headset on me that was on the booth table. With this other Quest headset, I wasn’t tied to a pinball, but I could move around a place that had minimalistic retro-fluo graphics, where I could play different mini-games in multiplayer with other people who were around me. So for example, I could start a game of Pong with another player: we both stood in front of the car, one on each side, grabbed the paddles and started playing. I also played a game of darts by myself, launching arrows at a target. The idea is to let people play fun mini-games together like we all did (and sometimes still do) inside an arcade room.
It’s a nice concept, but I might try the Spacebar Arcade version in AWE it was still a prototype that required a lot of processing. Sam is working on it and the plan is to release it to VR stores when it’s ready. For people interested in knowing more about it, there is also a Discord server.
You can find more information about it on this website: https://spacebar.games/
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#AWE #Logitechs #handson #stylus #Quest #Petaray #lightfield #Spacebar #Arcade
Image Source : skarredghost.com