Does virtual reality make us better people?
Meta Quest: Mixed reality pet game Stay Forever Home delayed to end of April
The VR pet simulator Stay: Forever Home didn't make its planned April 3 release date. The developers announced they're pushing the launch back to April 24, 2025, saying they need additional time to polish the experience. The game, which lets players raise a virtual pet named Ember using mixed reality features on Meta Quest headsets, will be available for Quest 3, Quest 3S, and Quest 2. What makes Stay unique is how it integrates your actual living space — Ember will interact with your real-world environment through the Quest's passthrough capabilities. The more time players spend bonding with Ember, the more their pet's distinct personality emerges and develops. If you're eager to see more of the game in action, mark your calendar — the new launch trailer will debut during the Ruff Talk VR Gaming Showcase on April 4 at 1 PM ET/11 AM PT.
138 billion dollars for AR glasses: Xreal plans mega investment
Chinese AR company Xreal Technology is making an ambitious play in Shanghai, aiming to build out an industrial ecosystem that they claim will be worth one trillion yuan (about $138 billion). Their CEO Xu Chi dropped this bombshell at the recent Pudong Investment Promotion Conference. The company is projecting sales between 300,000 and 500,000 headsets by 2025, and expects their total deliveries since 2022 to crack the one million unit mark by the end of this year. Xreal has already lined up partnerships with local players like Shanghai Shiya Information Technology and ShanghaiTech University. Plus, they've inked an AI/AR industry agreement with several Chinese tech companies, though the details remain unclear. The timing makes sense — Xreal just launched their next generation of AR devices in late 2024, alongside their first homegrown chip, the X1.
Report: Samsung plans to launch smart glasses in 2025
South Korean news portal ETNews, citing industry sources, reports that Samsung plans to launch a smart glasses product, codenamed Haean, later this year alongside the Project Moohan mixed reality headset. Features and specifications are said to be being finalized. According to the report, Samsung is focusing on comfort and will include cameras and sensors to track movements.
Like the headset, the smart glasses will likely be based on Google's Android XR operating system. Last September, Qualcomm CEO Christiano Amon hinted that Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm were working on AI glasses, and in October, The Information reported that Google and Samsung were developing a competitor to the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses based on the Gemini AI assistant.
The image comes from a leaked 2021 Samsung AR glasses concept video.
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