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  • Meta's new silicon play ⚙️, Microsoft Teams in 3D 🌐, Pika raises $55M 🌠

Meta's new silicon play ⚙️, Microsoft Teams in 3D 🌐, Pika raises $55M 🌠

Plus: Apple Vision Pro release date revealed

📈 Markets & Business

Meta, in collaboration with Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek, is developing a custom chip for its upcoming AR glasses. This exclusive partnership aims to create a chip that is powerful, efficient, and compact, essential qualities for AR technology. Meta's shift towards MediaTek reflects a strategy to reduce reliance on Qualcomm and to develop unique processors for its devices. Amidst these developments, Meta's head of AR software, Don Box, has stepped down, but the company assures this will not impact its product roadmap. Meta's first true AR glasses are anticipated to launch in 2027, marking a significant investment in AR technology research and development.

In January 2024, Microsoft Teams will integrate Microsoft Mesh for immersive 3D virtual meetings, accessible with or without a VR headset. This integration marks a shift in Microsoft's AR/VR strategy, following the closure of AltspaceVR and internal changes. The 3D Teams experience includes interactive virtual boardrooms and team bonding activities, aiming to enhance hybrid meetings and foster connections. Users can participate in 2D or more immersively in 3D. Microsoft's approach leverages spatial audio for natural interactions and explores innovative applications for various organizations. This initiative redefines virtual collaboration, combining existing Teams infrastructure with emerging AI technologies.

🕴️ Big Tech

Apple's Vision Pro, a mixed-reality headset, is expected to launch in March 2024, initially in the United States. Priced at $3,499 and aimed at enterprise buyers, this device features the visionOS, an M2 chip paired with a new R1 chip, micro-OLED technology, and an innovative EyeSight feature. Despite its high price, it suggests a future release of more affordable models.

Meta, in collaboration with Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek, is developing a custom chip for its upcoming AR glasses. This exclusive partnership aims to create a chip that is powerful, efficient, and compact, essential qualities for AR technology. Meta's shift towards MediaTek reflects a strategy to reduce reliance on Qualcomm and to develop unique processors for its devices. Amidst these developments, Meta's head of AR software, Don Box, has stepped down, but the company assures this will not impact its product roadmap. Meta's first true AR glasses are anticipated to launch in 2027, marking a significant investment in AR technology research and development.

📱 Tech Innovation

Sony Pictures is set to launch Wonderverse, a 45,000 square-foot immersive entertainment destination in Chicago next year. This unique venue will bring to life the worlds of Sony's popular films, series, and video games, including “Ghostbusters,” “Bad Boys,” “Zombieland,” “Jumanji,” and “Uncharted.” Wonderverse will feature a blend of physical and multimedia experiences, interactive installations, and themed dining options. Highlights include the “Ghostbusters” VR Academy, Bad Boys Racing Club simulator, Zombieland-themed bumper cars, and the Jumanji VR game. After 8 p.m., Wonderverse will transform into an adults-only venue. Located at Oakbrook Center, its soft launch is next month, with an official opening date in January. Entry is free, with individual pricing for attractions.

Veyond Metaverse, a leader in extended reality (XR) technology, recently achieved a groundbreaking feat by performing the world's first digital surgery. This was soon followed by the successful testing of an AI-powered real-time translation system. These innovations are part of a broader vision to democratize healthcare by overcoming geographic and linguistic barriers. Veyond Metaverse's upcoming launch of an XR operating room in Yangon exemplifies this commitment, enabling collaborative digital simulations and international medical cooperation​​​​.

🚀 Launches

Shemaroo Entertainment, a prominent name in Indian media, has partnered with The Sandbox to create BharatBox, a cultural hub in the metaverse showcasing Bollywood icons and brands. This venture marks Shemaroo's entry into the digital space, merging cinematic heritage with advanced technology. The Sandbox, a Web3 gaming project on the Ethereum network, allows users to build, own, and monetize virtual experiences. Shemaroo, known for classic films, aims to extend its reach with digital collectibles and NFTs, offering interactive activities like film launches, concerts, and themed games in the metaverse.

Gucci Cosmos Land, a new venture in The Sandbox metaverse, merges luxury fashion with digital innovation. This virtual space replicates Gucci's Cosmos exhibition, showcasing the brand's creative journey and iconic designs. The project, a collaboration with artists Es Devlin and curator Maria Luisa Frisa, reflects Gucci's commitment to blending tradition with technology. It offers an interactive experience where users explore Gucci's history through parkour and discover never-before-seen archival designs. This foray into the metaverse signifies Gucci's ongoing dedication to innovation and redefining customer engagement in the digital landscape.

Lucas Rizzotto's new app, Pillow, debuts on Quest VR with a unique concept: VR experiences designed for lying down. Following his acclaimed VR experience 'Where Thoughts Go,' Rizzotto introduces Pillow with four initial experiences: "Sky Fishing" for voice message interaction, "Bedtime Stories" for creating adventures, "Stargazing" to explore constellations, and "Meditations" for breath-tracking and world creation. Pillow, priced at $10, also offers a multiplayer mode for shared experiences, ideal for relaxation or long-distance connections. Its focus on daily engagement and the creation of a pre-sleep ritual aims to address retention challenges in the XR industry.

🦄 Startups & Fund Raises

 🥼 Research

Human-SGD: Single-Image 3D Human Digitization with Shape-Guided Diffusion

We present an approach to generate a 360-degree view of a person with a consistent, high-resolution appearance from a single input image.

NeRF and its variants typically require videos or images from different viewpoints. Most existing approaches taking monocular input either rely on ground-truth 3D scans for supervision or lack 3D consistency. While recent 3D generative models show promise of 3D consistent human digitization, these approaches do not generalize well to diverse clothing appearances, and the results lack photorealism.

Unlike existing work, we utilize high-capacity 2D diffusion models pretrained for general image synthesis tasks as an appearance prior of clothed humans. To achieve better 3D consistency while retaining the input identity, we progressively synthesize multiple views of the human in the input image by inpainting missing regions with shape-guided diffusion conditioned on silhouette and surface normal. We then fuse these synthesized multi-view images via inverse rendering to obtain a fully textured high-resolution 3D mesh of the given person. Experiments show that our approach outperforms prior methods and achieves photorealistic 360-degree synthesis of a wide range of clothed humans with complex textures from a single image.

⚡️ Quick Bytes

Digital dentistry reimagined with MetaQuest3:

Summon all your windows in Vision Pro using one gesture as you go with Spatial Mission Control:

Using Metahuman Animator to create a digital version of yourself is WILD:

Here's an industrial robot controlled by a Meta Quest 3 powered by Unity:

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