VR the champions of the world?

[Rockstar]

Don’t think I’ll be purchasing a PICO VR headset


TikTok, Hospitals And Tutoring Apps: The Many Tentacles Of Chinese Tech Giant ByteDance

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexand...h=434330446d23

Alexandra S. Levine
Forbes Staff
I'm a senior writer covering social media and online culture.
Emily Baker-White
Forbes Staff
Aug 24, 2022,06:30am EDT

The TikTok parent company owns a diverse set of companies across sectors including news, video gaming, and education, in addition to its short-form video apps.

Earlier this month, ByteDance acquired Amcare Healthcare, one of China’s biggest private hospital chains, for a reported $1.5 billion. That might sound strange, given that the Beijing-based company has become a household name as the parent of TikTok, the fastest-growing social media platform in the world. But ByteDance’s foray into hospitals is just the latest example of how the tech giant’s ambitions extend far beyond the wildly popular video app.

ByteDance lists just seven products, including TikTok and its Chinese counterpart, Douyin, on its website. But ByteDance is pushing into at least half a dozen other industries at a shocking scale, snapping up everything from video game startups to medical websites and payment processors, even dabbling at one point in education apps and real estate listing businesses. Data analytics firm Sensor Tower told Forbes it has identified 70 different active apps from ByteDance. And let’s not forget that Manner Coffee, a Shanghai-based cafe chain, and Ning Ji, a Chinese lemon tea brand, both count ByteDance as a significant investor.

Some experts say ByteDance’s ballooning beyond social media is concerning because of the Chinese government’s investments in ByteDance and Beijing’s sweeping laws requiring companies there to turn over information for national security and intelligence reasons. ByteDance is “the mothership of aggregation of data,” the former head of counterintelligence for the U.S. government, William Evanina, told Forbes.

The key difference between ByteDance and Amazon, which is similarly expanding into healthcare with its acquisition of OneMedical, is that “Amazon does not partner with nor get money from the U.S. government, and they are not beholden [with] the data,” Evanina added. “With ByteDance, they've got to provide all that to the Communist Party.” (ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment about this assertion.)

Other experts think ByteDance’s data collection isn’t so different from American tech giants. “I don’t see ByteDance or TikTok’s data having more national security implications than data held by Facebook or Google,” said Xiaomeng Lu, director of the geo-technology practice at the Eurasia Group.

Though ByteDance’s value has dropped below $300 billion as the broader tech market tumbles, the decade-old startup has quickly grown to rival Chinese tech titans Alibaba and Tencent, which have been around for twice as long.

“ByteDance becoming large enough to receive attention and potentially investment and the kind of golden-share deal that the Chinese state has with Tencent is [cause for concern],” said Will Duffield, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute focused on internet governance. “The larger a Chinese company gets, the more important it is to the Chinese economy, and therefore the Chinese Communist Party and the state — because the Chinese economy is essentially an extension of the state.”

Here’s how ByteDance has grown since it was hatched in a four-bedroom apartment in 2012.

NEWS

Years before ByteDance would launch Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) and TikTok itself outside mainland China, one of its first products was news service Toutiao. By 2017, Toutiao had amassed some 700 million users in China — and ByteDance also rolled out an international version of it, TopBuzz, aimed at audiences in the United States. TopBuzz cultivated more than 40 million U.S. users by 2018 but was shut down in 2020. Former employees of the app say ByteDance used it to push pro-Chinese messages to American users and censored content critical of the Chinese government. (ByteDance denied the former employees’ claims about content promotion, but did not comment on the censorship allegations.)

In late 2017, ByteDance also acquired French news aggregator app News Republic. That, too, was shut down shortly after TopBuzz over concerns about the company’s censoring of content critical of the Chinese government.

In 2018, ByteDance also acquired Baca Berita, or BaBe, a news app in Indonesia. (BaBe also reportedly censored content critical of the Chinese government; a representative for BaBe told Reuters that the company “disagreed with the [reported] claims.”)

Cato’s Duffield said lesser-known news apps and media properties owned by ByteDance — those that haven’t received the same level of scrutiny as TikTok — could be the greatest “vectors for foreign propaganda” because they’re “not going to have those safeguards that we've demanded for TikTok.”

ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE

ByteDance came out with its first enterprise product, Lark (known as Feishu in China), in 2019 — a workplace collaboration tool that has grown to look more and more like ByteDance’s version of Google or Microsoft’s products.

The Chinese have “tried for a decade-plus to create their own Windows,” Evanina said. “Lark seems to be that.”

ByteDance and TikTok employees conduct all their day-to-day business on Lark, as do a long list of customers across Asia, but Forbes has also identified at least one company operating in the U.S. that is using Lark.

Separately, in 2021, ByteDance launched BytePlus, an effort to take ByteDance’s successful recommendation algorithm developed on TikTok, Douyin and Toutiao and to market it as a business-to-business product. It has had clients in the U.S., Singapore, Indonesia and India.

HEALTHCARE

ByteDance started moving into medicine well before it bought the Amcare hospital chain earlier this month.

That was preceded by its acquisition of the online medical encyclopedia Baikemy in 2020 and the subsequent launch of a suite of healthcare tools, under the name Xiaohe, that patients could use to find medical information and schedule virtual health consultations.

Evanina said the Amcare deal, and the related moves that came before it, reflect the Chinese government’s mandate for the country to be a global leader in artificial intelligence and global health by 2030.

“China wants to lead the world in precision medicine by the end of the decade,” he said. “Part of that is a strategic plan to purchase and have access to as much data as physically and electronically possible.”

“If you're going to build a society and you want to create data repositories,” he added, “you need companies like ByteDance to do your work.”

Lu, the director at the Eurasia Group, said that ByteDance's diversification into healthcare could help it gain an edge on its US rivals: Supplementing what ByteDance already knows about its users with detailed medical information could make its data "way more comprehensive and way more sophisticated," she said.

VR

ByteDance’s first big move into virtual reality came when it bought Pico, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of VR headsets, in 2021. (The sale price was not disclosed.)

In March 2022, ByteDance started aggressively promoting its VR offerings: Users of Douyin, China’s TikTok equivalent, began seeing prominent ads for Pico headsets every time they opened the app. In June 2022, Pico rolled out a new headset in European markets, and in July, FCC filings revealed the company’s plans to launch the headset in the US as well.

Bytedance most recently snapped up PoliQ, a Chinese VR startup that had previously developed a platform used to make avatars. It is also testing out apps like avatar-based hangout app Party Island in China and avatar creation app Pixsoul in Southeast Asia.

SOCIAL NETWORKING AND SHORT-FORM VIDEO

This is the sector ByteDance is best known for. It rolled out its first short-form video app, Douyin, in China in 2016. It then acquired two US-based companies, Flipagram and Musical.ly. Both were short video apps that mostly catered to lip-syncing teens.

After briefly pitting Flipagram and Musical.ly against each other, ByteDance renamed Flipagram as Vigo Video, and rebranded Musical.ly as TikTok. Today, the architecture of TikTok’s and Douyin’s algorithms are largely the same, but the data running through them is different — as one former TikTok employee described it, they are the same bottles, but filled with different juice. Douyin also has various e-commerce features and a payment processor built into it. (ByteDance also acquired payment processor UIPay in 2020.)

ByteDance also has other social video apps, including Xigua (“Watermelon”) Video, a video-sharing app that was initially called Toutiao Video. (It has since expanded beyond user-generated videos to studio production, including 2020 partnerships with BBC Studios and Discovery.)

In addition to its video offerings, ByteDance has also dabbled in text- and photo-based social platforms similar to Facebook and Instagram. Helo, a Facebook rival popular in India that ByteDance launched in 2018, was the biggest of these offerings — but it suffered when India banned a suite of China-based apps, including Helo and TikTok.

ByteDance has also developed music-streaming service Resso and video editor CapCut.

And up next? ByteDance is reportedly readying to launch Kesong, a youth-focused social media app centered on lifestyle and hobbies that is expected to take on Xiaohongshu, a Chinese platform similar to Instagram. And Douyin recently began testing a food delivery feature.

GAMING

ByteDance bought Shanghai-based video-gaming startup Mokun Technology in 2019, followed by gaming studio Levelup.ai, to fuel its gaming arm called Nuverse. It made one of its biggest plays yet in the market just last year, when it spent $4 billion to acquire the major Chinese video game maker Moonton and an undisclosed amount to buy Chinese gaming studio C4games. According to a 2021 developer handbook, the company plans to use targeted recommendations to drive growth in the sector.

This expansion hasn’t been without hiccups; the company recently shuttered its 101 Studio in Shanghai, laying off over 100 employees.

Still, in the last year, the giant’s mobile gaming portfolio has raked in more than $1 billion from players around the world, according to Sensor Tower — and its push into this space is only expected to intensify as it seeks to keep pace with rivals like Tencent.

Its foray into smartphones, however, under the brand Smartisan, was less successful. ByteDance released a phone on the Chinese market in 2019, after acquiring some patents and employees from Smartisan. But just a few months after the phone’s release, ByteDance shifted its smartphone team over to work on education hardware.

EDUCATION

In 2016, ByteDance began investing in education-based companies and building out education products of its own, subsequently launching its edtech brand Dali for consumers in China in 2020. At the time of the announcement, the company said the brand already had 10,000 employees, and it was warmly received as demand was soaring for digital learning products due to the Covid-19 lockdowns. ByteDance leaned even harder into education the following year, announcing it would hire another 13,000 employees to work on its online learning products, like English tutoring app GoGoKid, and Qingbei, a streaming app for online classes.

But in late 2021, the Chinese government banned most for-profit tutoring services and imposed harsh crackdowns on what could be taught to students, further strengthening those regulations this year. The regulations, as Lu put it, were a response to fears by the government that capital had “distorted the [education] market,” causing public school teachers to moonlight after school, and charge students who wanted or needed extra help. The crackdowns, which Lu characterized as “practically a wipeout” of the tutoring industry, were devastating for ByteDance, which had mass layoffs as it shut down some products and retooled others to come into compliance with the new rules.

[Skybird]

Didnt know that, good to learn that.

[Skybird]

Coming later this year. And I am wondering - is this really my kind of humour?


You bet!

[Skybird]

Quest 3 is coming. Interesting, but I have unanswered questions (battery life, Google-Earth cvapable, quality of hand tracking). I have no needs and cravings currently, so I can wait and see how customers review it once it is out. I would like to play Eleven Table Tennis and First Person Tennis again, however, so I pin a note to myself about this on my mental blackboard.




2064 × 2208 pixels per eye, OLED display at 120 Hz - thats very good! My G2 Reverb has 2160x2160.


Meta Oculus Quest 3 specifications leak

SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2
Resolution (Per-eye) 2064 × 2208
Display type LCD
Refresh rate120Hz
Field of view Unknown
Lenses Pancake
Features Hand tracking, PC compatibility, voice commands, wireless, Mixed reality
Controllers Unknown
Weight Unknown
Price $499

[Skybird]

This explains how to run Google Earth/Streetview VR on Quest 2 (which out of the box will not run it).



https://vrlowdown.com/google-earth-vr-on-quest-2/

[Skybird]

After several years of having been withdrawn from the shop, SKYBOX VR is available again in the Steam shop.

Its a video file player, it plays practically every sort of video store don the HD, also seems to allo9w strwemaing of youtube and such channels, and iof you use a Quest, you can even strema to severla units simultaneously.

I know it form my time wiht the Rift, and liked it very much, due to the very beauitiful movie room and the complication-free operation. You can seat near the screen, in the kiddle of the hall, or far back, also cna alter the lights. Really, its a pleasure to watch something on screen in this cinema hall. I may not have fully understood it, by possibly different VR headsets vary in the functionality, namely the onöine web streaming.

This is no Bluray or DVD player, however. For that and in VR, you need Power DVD or Leovo and operate them via Virtual Desktop and its many beautiful moviehalls.

So, its not really a must-have, but I wanted to mention it since I always liked it, and since it does well what it does and looks really good.





CLICK ON PICTURE (TWICE)




I do not watch TV that much anymore, and not many movies at all, but when I do watch a DVD or Bluray, I exclusively watch it in one of my half a dozen private movie halls I now "own". Its fantastic once one understood how to set it up.

[Skybird]

I am considering to get the Quest 3 later this autumn when it gets released. Twice as fast as the 2, 30% more resolution, slimmer design, and the option to see your room on screen (in colour, it seems) and the gameworld projected in/on it.

I am still happy with my G2. But I want to get VR for my parents. Google Earth is not available for Quest 2, but maybe they bring it for the 3 since it is has so much more processing power, however with "Wanderer" you have access to the Streetview part of the Google title, and it seems to run as smooth as in Earth. I also want to allow my parents to watch nature and citytour movies on the big screen like I do, and 360° videos and such, And who knows, maybe I can turn them into Table Tennis Cracks, at mid-70s there is still time to improve, eh? LOL

The idea is that it is maybe no total failure if they cannot get along with it, turn into vomitting zombies or fall out of the window when they see its a door. Because I am interested in it, too, since players say already for the Quest 2 that some of the sports titles I dearly miss - Eleven Table Tennis and First Person Tennis topping the list, but also The Thrill of the Fight which is a fantastic shadow boxing simulator - seem to play very well on the Quest 2. The problem with the G2 is that the hand tracking is not too good, so the precision when stroking/hitting the ball is not high enough, especially in table tennis that is a killer problem. Thats why I dont play them on the G2. I also would not mind to watch a longer youtube movie not wired to my PC and sitting at the desk, but on the balcony or laying on the bed. And playing tennis must be a joy without the cables interfering with your wide arm movements (I use to really fully swing out the strike like I did in real tennis, not just whipping a shot with a short flip of my hand: its like with any sim there ever were: you get back what you put into it). So, the money wouldn't be lost if my parents dont use it, I could make good use of it myself.



Heck, I even did a few online maqtches in FPT Tennis when I still used the Rift 1. And heck, how nice that was! I was lucky to meet polite players.


So far its just my guess that maybe Google Earth will come to Quest 3, finally, since the processor doubles the power over the Quest 2. But Google has formally ended development of Google Earth already years ago, and "killed" the team, so... On the othert hand there were a few small maintenance updates, so maybe they still can opt for directing team ressoruces to it where they see a need. Having Streetview in Wander already is great, getting the rest of Earth along with it would be fantastic. Earth alone justifies to get a VR headset, its a true killer app. Connecting the Quest 3 via wire to the small laptop of my parents wich runs under Linux is no option: wrong OS, and too low calculation power.


But now you know that even a Quest 2 owener can get to enjoy Earth - he only has to connect his set to the PC via wire.


-----------------


Neal, I know you got yourself a Quest 2 recently, I would like to hear if you have anything worth to mention, any cautioning words or enthusiastic outbursts? And how does Yioutube work on it, good enough? My parents are old, but my Mom is still fit in her head, still things must be really easy in handling if its too complicated, then its all in vein. Also, is there the option to use sort of a webbrower by which you can access a TV broadcaster's public media library, for exmaple?

[Skybird]

For those who are still in wait on VR, this might be the one headset you have been waiting for to let yourself getting convinced.



No wonder that HP, who made the G2, dropped otu of the VR business, its hard to develepe and commercially compete if you are up against a company so dedicated to developing VR.



The video expresses some sort of doubts on thje controllers, which will not be bad in themselves,k but that of the Pro mighgt be better. I red somewhere the Pro Controllers can be bought separately and work with the 3. I cannot tell you whether this was just rumour, or fact.


In Germany, the price will be around 550 coins at launch.

[Skybird]

A very nice illustration why I want First Person Tennis back in my active game collection. Beside Eleven the best realistic sports simulation on VR. With a human opponent even better. When I played it until two year ago with my old Rift, I made the same mistakes (usually standing/positioning errors) and got the same consequences like I got in real tennis back then. Below the belt - leg work - obviously is not on the menu, but above belt - arms work and body work - it is very, very close to the real thing, if you out the effort into it. The way I played it, which was very very engaged, it had workout qulity for me: racing pulse, lots of sweat, comparable to what I have when jogging. Just do nto just stand and woith a lack of interest move your ahnd as if holding a pencil, but do the real swing deal, find the correct stand in relation to the ball and strike you plan to do - then its a fantastic experience.

The player in the video is not even a good one, but the video shows better than most others what it looks like from the players perspective.



Maybe I will need to buy TWO Quest 3s. One for my parents - and one for myself.


Edit: the developer says the dedicated version for the Quest works significantly better than the Steam version played with Link-cable on PC.

[Skybird]

I want my game back...! Eleven rules. Most realistic simulator in VR, period. And did I hear it right what he says near the end? "Cloning myself"...? Their is an upcomign feature where the game clones a copy of myself: my serves, my topspins, slices, saves, everything, and creates an AI opponent on grounds of my playing characteristics good and bad. How fantastic is that...? Skybird, thy new name is Molly...



Its decided, no matter why parent's intwerest, for myself I will get a Quest 3 anyway. I just need these two games again, before I become even fatter than I already got in the 36 months without them.
These two videos make me confident about the hand tracking. On the G2 that is what makes both games practically unplayable.


A club player's assessment:

[Skybird]

On the controllers for Quest 3. Seem to be very precise, and latency within limits.

https://mixed-news.com/en/quest-3-co...cking-quality/

Touch Pro Controllers from the - underwhelmingly received and overpriced - Quest Pro can be used.

The Mixed Reality - named Passthrough - of the Quest 3 will be in colour, and is sharp enough so that you can text on your smartphone or read your watch. Also, as far as I believe to have understood, it pictures your surrounding in stereoscopic 3D, too. Apps must apparently support this feature, though the Quest 2 allows manual activation for a certain time by doing some gesture trick with the hand near your headset. I strongly assume this is present in the Quest 3, too. Not just people with kids will like this feature.

And here are some gadgets I find to be very useful.

Warmth, lense fogging and sweat is a problem under the mask, especially if you run a sports or workout title. Although I read the Quest 3 is cooler than other masks: I beleiuve it when I see it. A ventilator pointing to your face is a must in VR anyway, but something like this also is good and is a must for me when I did my workouts with BoxVR (still the best of its kind imo even if they do not sell it anymore, the successor looks much inferior):


With Golf+ and Walkabout Minigolf there are at least two very popular Golf titles, and when you swing your irons, you may want to use one of these sticks, which come in many models from various brands, some of them exactly mimicking the weight of a real Golf bat. Stick. Racket. What were they called like?


The lock must of course match the form of the handcontroller. Not any controller may work on any such stick. Most are for the Quest 1+2. The new Quest 3 controllers have no tracking rings anymore, so one has to wait for producers to adapt.

And very interesting for me: table tennis grips. Because like in "big" tennis, you may want to change your hand's grip around the paddle's grip depending on your strikes. Thats not working too well with VR default controllers. If you are serious about table tennis, you NEED something like this. If you just pingpong a bit, you dont.


Needless to say, such grips also exist for pistols and rifles.

When I row with Mirage Kayak I use to additionally hold a bar in both hands, plus the controllers. It helps to make much more natural and realistic arm movements, this improves technique, this improves speed, stability, manouverability

It slike with any sim: what you put into it is what you get out from it. Approach it like an arcade game, and arcade is what the title gives you back. Approach it with an attitude of matching the real thing, and you get much more realism out of it. Its like that with flight sims. Racing sims. And realistic sports sims in VR as well.

Finally, this trailer, its the usual commercial picture stuff, but from 00:00:35 on you get an idea what Passthrough (mixed reality) with the Quest 3 is about, what the idea behind it is. The AI in the headset is described to be able by itself to identify reasonable spaces in the real world where to project VR content, and scaling it correctly. It is also to be used for the guardian system that projects a virtual cage or warnings into your field of vision when you approach the limit of the real world space that you defined in the setup to be your playing area, so now you have the pleasure to see the cupboard in real time that you are about to slam into. That allows for just panic screams just in time. LOL



The Quest 2 will be on sale for some time after release, it already is (~ 320 coins over here), but be aware that you get some less technology with it: 50% less processing power, 40% less resolution, black/white and pixelated 2D Passthrough , slightly thicker size. The official Quest shop holds over 500 games and apps, Quest 3 is said by Meta to be compatible with them.

The boss of the VR department at Meta says the Quest 3 starts the real phase 2.0 in VR, and by the printed stuff so far I wonder how it could not be so, this could become a market breakthrough. Something tells me that Apple can pack its thing and leave. Their price tag for their headset is ridiculous.

[Skybird]

On the controllers of the Quest Pro. Pricey, but sexy, self-tracking. If need be, one can buy these seperately for the Quest 1-3.


https://mixed-news.com/en/metas-new-...dded-features/


The controllers that come with the Quest 2. They seem to pass the test with flying colours.


https://mixed-news.com/en/quest-3-co...cking-quality/

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Neal, I know you got yourself a Quest 2 recently, I would like to hear if you have anything worth to mention, any cautioning words or enthusiastic outbursts? And how does Yioutube work on it, good enough? My parents are old, but my Mom is still fit in her head, still things must be really easy in handling if its too complicated, then its all in vein. Also, is there the option to use sort of a webbrower by which you can access a TV broadcaster's public media library, for exmaple?

Hey Sky, yes, you can watch youtube and video with the Quest 2, but unless the content is made for VR, I think it's better to watch on just a monitor. And there are a few games and visual series that are enjoyable--I have not been keeping up with what's available lately. I like the Quest 2 mainly because they made it where the headunit has all the location sensors built in, so you don't need to place a bunch of stuff in the room. The resolution is good but not fantastic. You can connect it with a wire to play Steam games (maybe play some without the wire). It's fun, but more of a novelty than an everyday appliance for me.

[Skybird]

Thanks, Neal.

So I would expect the Quest 3 to have noticably better image quality, due to better lenses than the G2 and higher resolution than the Quest 2 (comparable to the G2), it should in total be at least as good as the G2, if not very slighly better.

G2 versus Quest 2:


You may want to check a (free) software named BigScreen. It includes a huge collection of places with smaller or bigger screens on which the desktop is mirrored, and other guests can be invited into these rooms to chat or view content together: classrooms, living rooms, moviehalls. The social thing may be uninteresting, but think of this: mirroring the desktop on such a moviescreen, for example, starting youtube and then have the content maximised to full screen on the real monitor means you watch that content in moviescreen format in VR. Or this: I play Wreckfest in this way, which ahs no native VR support. Its still 2D, but I do not play on a small montior, but on a screen the soze of a squash field! Visually, that is a game changer, even if just 2D. I do that a very lot via another software, VirtualDesktop, and even watch movies via DVD and bluray that way - on screens the size of cinemas screens.

I think that is absolutely fantastic!

I take from your words that the handling and launching of software and of youtube in the Quest is not overly complicated. I ask from the perspective of my old parents.

And do yourself a favour. Get Eleven Table Tennis. Best and most realistic sports simulation you have ever played, promised. Its surreal how good it is.

[Skybird]

I played table tennis again today! In my living room...!

Got the Quest 3 today.

Installation went without a flaw, I had prepared the software on the tablet already yesterday, and on PC (for Airlink streaming, untested so far). Last time I had an Oculus was the Rift, and I now come form a G2 Reverb (discontinued by HP by now). I had to access the WLAN, and then to link to the tablet. Scanning the QR code form screen did not work for me, like for many others, but manualyl typing in the codes worked flawlessly.

The hardware has a very good feel, the handles are heavy and like made for my hands, the feeling of the buttons and sticks is just - perfect. The headste is lighter thna the G2, the strap is to be repalced, but doe sits job meanwhile. The case again feels valuabvly, well-made. The box these three come in, is a luxury item almost, very heavy, build to last, idela to store the gadgets away when not in use. Very good first impressions, like I expected from MetaformerOculus. I liked the Rift back in its days, and its handles. This hardware even feels much better.

But when I first put the mask on (all conneciton and such is done form inside the mask), I was almost shocked, I did not saw this coming. The image quality is - well, it blows the G2 out of the water.. Absolutely stunning. No pixels. No Gorrays, no screendoor efect, not fresnel lense artifactsa - nothing, as smooth and clear the image is as if looking at a normal LCD screen. Next shock - it was not the usual VR darkness greeting me when putting the mask on, but there wa slight and colour - I saw my living room around me, surprisngly sharp where the tbalelmap lit it up, a bit granular in darker parts of the room (at time of sunset and overcast sky). And coloured. I could read book print, I could read my tablet, I could read the PC monitor. I could reliable grab things and even pince tiny things between pointing finger and thumb - the perception of depth works well enough. That thign even reocnginses my hands and fingers without holding a controller! I did not knew this and so I did not expect this. This was far more than what I expected to get: a secondary "junior" headset that is mobile and thus weak in power - in fact it almost outclasses the G2.

I launched the demo, the game witt that ufo in your room form the video above. I scnaned my room, that was already fun, sort of. An then the ufo landed, not on the floor, but on the bad, the elevated surface was correctly reocngised. Then the alien fuzzballs started to get all over the place, and they hid behind objects and furniture, I had scanned the kitchen as well and so I ended upo running aorudn in my flat, chasing little aliens, all the time I saw my surrounding and my furnitures and my apartment. Wowh! It dawned on my that this was somethign much bigger than I had anticipated.

And then I bliught Eleven Table Tennis, as you know by now, one of my favourites. The menu was reworked, and to my surprise I ther eis now an option for passtrough scneery, your room, that is. I picked that immediately, and really was blown awa ynext, there I was, with a tbasletennis table in the middle of my main room, and I coudl see my place and palyed table tennis in my place, and the feeling was perfect and the handtracking (the big archilles heel of the G2) was a dream, worked flawlessly, even in lower light conditions.

Its absolutely fantastic! I'm happy.

Also, being cableless now is a big, big liberation. PC not needed as long as you do not stream stuff from PC.

The German package comes with a free copy of the new Asgard's Wrath game, not already avalable, but I got my download copy reserved for free. Not my kind fo game nromally, but I will try it, the reviews are stellar.

There are some more games I will try with this new headset, and I will post updates on the experinces with them. Tomorrow I will try Airlink and how well PC-based VR titles work. I am very confident. Google Earth is on my mind of course, and stremaing from the Bluray playe ron PC and watching my movie in the big cienemy - but this time sitting anywhere I want in my place, feeling utmost comfortable.

So far, first contact with the Quest 3 leaves an utmost excellent impressions. I am all in. The o nyl disadvanatge is that the battery runs for 2 hours only, that will be helped with a better strip and additional battery, doubling this time to 4 hours then, but it is not yet available over here. I will not get the charger, its not needed, but an additional silicon frame for the mask's rims, and when availab le: a table tennis grip to give it a more natural feel.

Visually, the screens of these things now have left all the early beginning's probolems behind the,m , and the image quality really is excellent. The G2 has SLIGHTLY more pixels per ye, but it has a hotspot in the centre where oyu see sharp, and the image becomes blurry near the egdes. The Quest 3 is crytsal-sharp from centre to rim, all screen, and loosk as if it offered a higher resolution as well! Fresnel lenses versus pancake lenses - the last battle has been fought, the war is decided.

I'm happy and do not regret to have bought it. Not one bit. I am enthusiastic, to be more precise.

Some passthrough stuff:

Eleven (mind you, the room is real, no computer location):


Piano Vision (yes, I am still doing the piano!)



And the free game in the German combo, Asgard'S Wrath: