Bigscreen’s New Little Screen in VR
Our eye on the charts, Bigscreen’s new little screen, updates from Frame and Spatial, the long goodbye to AltspaceVR and slow welcome to PSVR2, and news briefs from Snapchat, Instagram, the XRA, and ZapWorks.
An Eye on the Charts
Major cryptocurrencies were lined up for a humdrum week of gradually drifting downward. Then, late in the week, they rallied. Big green candles on Friday sent Bitcoin up over 10% on the week to knock on the door of $25k, while Ethereum increased 5% on the week over $1.7k.
The green wave washed over other projects as well with Cardano, Solana, Litecoin and Tron up over 5%, Polygon and wrapped Bitcoin up over 10%, and Hedera up almost 25%.
Big Screens Come in Small Packages
Bigscreen VR announced Bigscreen Beyond — which they claim to be the smallest, lightest weight headset ever released. The headset is sarcastically small, but it made a lot of concessions. The PC tethered headset doesn’t have its own audio, its own battery, or its own tracking.
As a result, the headset — which is already pretty expensive on its own — is completely dependent on having a suitable gaming PC as well as external trackers and controllers.
‘The Spatial Web is Here‘
Browser-based virtual meeting platform Frame teased a slew of major updates over Twitter this week. The platform now offers full-body avatars, Frames that can be embedded in 2D websites, improved analytics, an impressive lighting update, and a partner program that rewards users for referring others.
A lot of these developments have already been available on other platforms (Croquet for embeddable spaces, Spatial for full-body avatars, etc.), but being possibly the first platform that brings them all together could be huge for the company.
The Spatial Creator Toolkit
Speaking of Spatial, the company recently released a beta version of a creator toolkit that it hopes will help creators build more immersive spaces on the web-based virtual world platform.
While Spatial is largely in the NFT space at the moment, the user-friendly platform is one of the contendors that might pick up some virtual refugees from the impending AltspaceVR closure. They were among the first to invite AltspaceVR event organizers to move their content.
The Long Goodbye to AltspaceVR
BRCvr, the organization that has been bringing Burning Man to VR via AltspaceVR for the last few years, is one of the most vocal in wishing goodbye to the platform — which parent company Microsoft said that they will sunset next month.
The organization has compiled a guide for users to move their avatars and users to other platforms. It is also planning its final two events, one the night before its shutdown and one scheduled to end when AltspaceVR does.
Hype Builds for PSVR 2
Walkabout Minigolf announced that it is joining the growing list of games coming to the PlayStation VR 2. After months of speculation (and a good seven years of waiting since the first PlayStation VR), the console-tethered headset is set to release next week.
The headset alone costs more than most stand-alone headsets and only works with the PlayStation 5, which is also no small investment for many would-be users. Further, because the headset can’t stream from a PC like other more expensive tethered headsets, it needs a quality game lineup to be competitive in its awkward place in the market — somewhere between stand-alone and PC setups.