NEWS
►Born has published a new white paper. ‘Eye Tracking in VR: A Case Study’ shares what is learnt about eye tracking while creating the VR experience ‘Missing’, and best practices for design, art and technical approaches. Missing is a thriller with a mental health message at its core. Using cutting-edge eye-tracking technology, you'll search Eleanor Parker’s home for clues about what happened to her. As you explore the surroundings, the environment responds to your gaze, and you begin to piece together a thought-provoking picture.
►Devin: AI Software Engineer that codes entire projects from single prompt. An AI startup has launched what it claims to be the world’s first AI software engineer. Cognition AI has unveiled Devin, an autonomous agent that can plan and execute complex software engineering tasks from a single prompt. Devin can solve tasks using its own code editor and web browser. It can even recall relevant context, learn over time and fix mistakes.
►Figure 01 powered by OpenAI is a robot that can chat, see, plan, and perform tasks. In collaboration with OpenAI, robotics company Figure has developed a robot that can hold full conversations and plan and execute its actions. This is achieved by connecting the robot to a multimodal model trained by OpenAI that understands images and text. By connecting to the model, Figure's robot, called "Figure 01" can describe its environment, interpret everyday situations, and perform actions based on highly ambiguous, context-dependent requests.
►Ray-Ban's Meta sunglasses can now identify and describe landmarks. AI-powered visual search features have been added to Ray-Ban's Meta sunglasses last year with some impressive (and worrying) capabilities — but a new one in the latest beta looks quite useful. It identifies landmarks in various locations and tells you more about them, acting as a sort of tour guide for travellers, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth wrote in a Threads post.
►Quest 3 will also get the lying down feature, here's why it was delayed. System update v63 has been rolling out to Quest headsets since March 5. It includes an experimental lying mode down that allows you to use media playback and stationary VR apps while lying down - a great accessibility feature. Surprisingly, it was only announced for Quest 2 and Quest Pro, not the new Quest 3. In his latest AMA on Instagram, Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth says that the lying down mode will also be coming to Quest 3 and explains why it's coming later. ‘We are planning to bring it to Quest 3 as I've said previously. It's a little bit different because the Guardian system is a little bit different, safety still matters a lot. We had to kind of redo the Guardian system with Smart Guardian.’
►VR headsets can be hacked with an Inception-style attack. Researchers at the University of Chicago exploited a security vulnerability in Meta’s Quest VR system that allows hackers to hijack users’ headsets, steal sensitive information, and—with the help of generative AI—manipulate social interactions. The attack hasn’t been used in the wild yet, and the bar to executing it is high, because it requires a hacker to gain access to the VR headset user’s Wi-Fi network. However, it is highly sophisticated and leaves those targeted vulnerable to phishing, scams, and grooming, among other risks.
►Covariant is building ChatGPT for robots. Covariant this week announced the launch of RFM-1 (Robotics Foundation Model 1). Peter Chen, the co-founder and CEO of the UC Berkeley artificial intelligence spinout tells that the platform, “is basically a large language model (LLM), but for robot language.”
►Apple wants you to be able to touch and feel things in AR or VR. It's not enough to be able to see digital elements in the real world through the Apple Vision Pro, Apple wants a complete sensory experience, including feel. A newly-granted patent appears to be yet another one revealing that Apple has been researching Smart Rings such as a so-called "Apple Ring".
►Virtuix Omni One VR Treadmill Nabs Support for Some Big VR Games. Virtuix, the creator of the Omni One VR treadmill, announced it now has a lineup of 35 games ready for the device’s broader launch later this year, including some big ones.
PERSPECTIVE
►World Wide Web inventor predicts VR and spatial computing will transform the internet. The man credited with creating the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, recently gave three predictions for the future of the internet as part of an interview discussing the Web’s 35th birthday. According to the tech pioneer, the next chapter of internet history will be defined by artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and a Big Tech reshuffle.
