BobbyVoicu.com

All Articles

Meta offers up Quest’s Horizon OS to other companies

By Bobby Voicu

This is as big as it can be. While a duopoly between Meta and Apple on headsets wouldn’t be the best in the world, this still opens up the industry. Hopefully Google will come on board as well.

First, the company said that it will make the operating system behind the Meta Quest headsets, Meta Horizon OS, available to other companies to create third-party hardware.

It already has a handful of partners on board to make headsets, with ASUS Republic of Gamers creating “an all-new performance gaming headset,” while Lenovo designs one optimized for productivity and entertainment.

Meta also said it will create a limited-edition Meta Quest headset “inspired by Xbox,” and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested in an Instagram post that one could make a VR headset bundled with an Xbox controller and Game Pass so players could play on a virtual big screen TV wherever they happened to be.

From here.

Redirect 301 with Cloudflare

By Bobby Voicu

I recently found out that if you use Cloudflare, you can do a domain redirect with them, rather than needing to create a blank website with a 301 rule in Apache or something similar.

So here it is (as much for anyone that needs as for me when I surely will forget about it):

The documentation is here with more examples.

Here’s the rule I used to redirect the old “.ro” domain to this one:

Discovery and Monetization on MR platforms

By Bobby Voicu

I feel that crossplay mobile/MR will be the way to monetize free-to-play games and increase distribution on the Mixed Reality platforms.

Niantic and Meta partnered to fund three multiplayer mixed reality demo games that run in the browser and support both Quest 3 and mobile.

The demos were built over a ten week period using Niantic’s 8th Wall web-based AR engine, which has a fully in-browser editor and offers cloud hosting for built projects. Niantic is the company behind smartphone AR games like Pokémon GO, Pikmin Bloom, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.

The condition of the funding for the three teams was that their projects use 8th Wall’s multiplayer module, which can enable cross-play between headsets and traditional mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

More here.

How is Mobile Gaming Gonna Die?

By Bobby Voicu

In 2012 I started a gaming company called MavenHut. It was making Facebook canvas games. About 2 years after we started we needed to change platforms to mobile because Facebook games were dying.

Well, there’s a chance mobile gaming will similarly die as well:

I believe that mobile games could be facing the same deliberate death-by-a-platform as games Facebook suffered a decade ago. We’re like frogs being slowly boiled alive. The temperature is gradually increasing due to all the privacy changes. But the changes are happening relatively slowly. So, we’re not jumping out of the water to save ourselves from impending death.

This is a really good article at Deconstructor of Fun.

Mark Zuckerberg reviews the Apple Vision Pro

By Bobby Voicu

I find it interesting that the CEO of Meta/Facebook is reviewing the device of the competition in a public way. I mean, would you ever see Tim Cook reviewing the Meta Quest 3?

And the video is quite good.

The final conclusion is that Meta Quest 3 is on par with the Vision Pro if you take the price and intended purpose into consideration. I didn’t yet test the Apple Vision Pro, but I can imagine based on the reviews I’ve seen that Zuck is not that far off course.

Anyway, here it is, on Instagram:

The Martian has a New, “Lost” Chapter

By Bobby Voicu

If you loved Andy Weir’s The Martian, let me tell you it’s 10 years since publication.

Even better, Andy Weir wrote a “lost chapter” for the book that you can read here.

Via Kottke

What Games to Play in VR/MR/AR?

By Bobby Voicu

I’ve recently got into Mixed Reality gaming, when I bought a Meta Quest 3. Once I did that, I noticed there aren’t any good newsletters for the people that play these kind of games, so I made one! :D

If you want to subscribe, the newsletter’s name is XR Gamer Digest and you can find it here. Where you can find the previous (5 by now) editions.

We publish it every Friday, so hop on!

24 Hours with Apple Vision Pro

By Bobby Voicu

Not me, unfortunately. I would’ve loved to test it and buy it, but, you know… 6 weeks of wait time.

Anyway, Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal spent (almost) 24 hours testing it. I would’ve loved to see some games in there, as well, but nevertheless, the video is worth watching.

Apple Vision Pro Sold Out

By Bobby Voicu

I wanted to order an Apple Vision Pro today. And it was sold out! I mean, I can still order it, but it will come in 5-6 weeks, at least.

Yeah, I know, first world problems, but still. I expected the device to sell at the most 100,000 devices this year, see how expensive it is. What do you know, though, 180,000 Vision Pros might have been pre-ordered!

This is really good news for the Mixed Reality/Augmented Reality space, after Meta Quest 3 selling more than 1 million devices for the holiday season of 2023.