Come and experience the future of search engine with our sponsor Lighthouse! they are building the most extensive search engine of the spatial web to help onboard the next billion users to the open metaverse. #metaverse#web3#future
LightHouse: Connecting the open metaverse
Creators around the world are working day and night to build breathtaking experiences across the spatial web.
We are witnessing in real-time visionaries like The Sandbox, Decentraland, Somnium Space, Cryptovoxels, and many others lay the foundations upon which millions of users can unleash their creativity and rewrite the rules of what can be done online.
At Lighthouse, we define the open metaverse as the experience-centric web — a sharp contrast with the information-centric web we are all familiar with.
We see a near-term future where most social and commercial use cases of the web migrate to persistent, real-time, and interactive 3D digital spaces. In this future, the richness of experiences is unlike anything we’ve seen before, and navigating through it all is one of users’ biggest challenges.
This is where we come in.
OUR MISSION
We are building the most extensive search engine of the spatial web to help onboard the next billion users to the open metaverse
The pillars of navigation
Discovery
Lighthouse empowers users and creators to find one another. Our powerful navigation platform allows users to search for items across and within worlds – significantly facilitating discovery and unifying cross-world search capabilities.
We also understand that the metaverse is meant to be a profoundly social place. By enabling the creation of friend groups, we empower users to navigate the open metaverse in tribes and make exploration an intrinsically social experience.
Our real-time, rich and intuitive search capabilities are achieved through direct data integrations with the worlds we partner with. We aim to one day be the decentralized connecting layer unifying the dots across the entire Web3 ecosystem.
Mobility
We see a near future where landing places increasingly replace landing pages. In this future, navigating across spaces is as frictionless as using hyperlinks to navigate across web pages today.
Lighthouse intends on being the gateway for these bridges between worlds, regardless of the ecosystem on which they are built – opening up a new primitive for mobility in Web3.
Niantic, the technology company behind Pokemon Go, is partnering with UK-based digital technology authority Digital Catapult to develop a ‘real-world metaverse’.
The Niantic Lightship Augmented Reality Accelerator will provide UK entrepreneurs the opportunity to engage with Cartoon Network and globally renowned choreographer Wayne McGregor to create immersive experiences.
The program will look at how augmented reality technology might shape the real-world metaverse, transforming it into the next platform for social interactions, improving human experiences, and bringing people closer together. Moreover, Niantic just released the Lightship Augmented Developer Kit, which seeks to make creating AR experiences easier for developers.
Three startups are set to be awarded up to £100,000 each to develop a demonstrator of a socially engaging AR experience using the platform
“We’ve always been devoted at Studio Wayne McGregor to investigating the ever-inspiring interplay between new technology and human performance – propelled by physical intelligence,” Wayne McGregor CBE remarked.
“This one-of-a-kind cooperation with Niantic and Digital Catapult enables us to dream larger and go deeper into our expanding metaverse(s), envisioning a new sort of shared creative experience that frees the imagination.”
“We know that really connecting with movement allows us to have a deeper knowledge of what it is to be human and our role in the world. This initiative gives everyone the tools they need to tap into their inner creativity, engage with others in creative ways, and explore their bodies and the environments they occupy in new and unlimited ways.”
In addition, Digital Catapult has the most reach into the immersive ecosystem of any UK organization: its flagship immersive accelerator, CreativeXR, received 750 applications last year.
“The UK has unique strength in the large number of creative studios and businesses that have emerged from sectors such as games, TV, film, vfx, theatre, and music and are now leveraging AR & VR technology to explore the creation of entirely new kinds of immersive experience,” said Jeremy Silver, CEO of Digital Catapult.
“Digital Catapult is delighted to be collaborating with Niantic to drive early adopters and open up this new field of cultural and commercial opportunity as one of the world’s leading businesses at the forefront of enabling the growth of augmented reality as a platform for new products and services.”
🎙 Check out Metaverse Roadshow Chanel for interviews and panels with Metaverse builders, projects, experts, researchers.
Mojo Vision has raised $45 million to adapt its augmented reality contact lenses to work with sports and fitness applications.
Saratoga, California-based Mojo Vision bills itself as the Invisible Computing Company. It is announcing strategic partnerships with sports and fitness brands to collaborate on next-generation user experiences that combine augmented reality, wearable technology, and personal performance data.https://d-72462247293897998.ampproject.net/2111242025001/nameframe.html
The companies will work together using Mojo’s smart contact lens technology, Mojo Lens, to find unique ways to improve access to data and enhance athletes’ performance during sporting activities.
The additional funding includes investments from Amazon Alexa Fund, PTC, Edge Investments, HiJoJo Partners, and others. Existing investors NEA, Liberty Global Ventures, Advantech Capital, AME Cloud Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures, Motorola Solutions, and Open Field Capital have also participated.
Mojo Vision sees an opportunity in the wearables market to deliver performance data and real-time stats to data-conscious athletes like runners, cyclists, gym users, golfers, and more through Mojo Lens’ intuitive hands-free, eye-controlled user interface.
Strategic partnerships
Above: Mojo Vision is making augmented reality contact lenses.Image Credit: Mojo Vision
Mojo Vision is engaging in several strategic partnerships with fitness brands to address the unmet performance data needs of athletes and sports enthusiasts. The company’s initial partnerships include Adidas Running (running/training), Trailforks (cycling, hiking/outdoors), Wearable X (yoga), Slopes (snow sports), and 18Birdies (golf).
Through these strategic partnerships and the market expertise the companies provide, Mojo Vision will explore additional smart contact lens interfaces and experiences to understand and improve the delivery of data for athletes of varying skill levels and abilities.
“We are making important progress in developing our smart contact lens technology, and we continue to research and identify new market potential for this groundbreaking platform,” said Steve Sinclair, senior vice president of product and marketing of Mojo Vision, in a statement. “Our partnerships with these leading brands will give us valuable insights into user behavior in the sports and fitness market. The goal is for these collaborations to deliver athletes an entirely new form factor with performance data that is more accessible and useful [at] the moment.”
Recent research from the International Data Corporation (IDC) shows global wearables shipments grew 32.3% year-over-year from 2020 to 2021. This significant and sustained growth in the wearable tech market is led by companies that continue to refine and release fitness trackers, smartwatches, smartphone apps, and other wearable devices aimed largely at bettering the user experience for sports and fitness enthusiasts. Yet, new data shows there may be a gap in the type of data and the accessibility of that data that athletes and fitness enthusiasts want.
In a new survey of over 1,300 athletes, Mojo Vision found that athletes very much rely on wearable data and are expressing a need for different ways for data to be delivered. The study showed that almost three out of four (74%) people usually or always use a wearable to track performance data during their workout or activity.
However, even though today’s athletes rely on wearable tech, there is a substantial appetite for devices that can better deliver access to real-time data about their performance — 83% of respondents said they would benefit from data in real-time or in the moment.
Additionally, half of the respondents said that of the three times (before, during, and after their workout) they receive performance data from their devices, in-the-moment or “during data,” was the most valuable type.
Mojo Lens, backed by years of scientific research and numerous technology patents, overlays images, symbols, and text on users’ natural field of vision without obstructing their view, restricting mobility, or hindering social interactions. Mojo calls this experience Invisible Computing.
In addition to the sports and wearable tech market, Mojo is planning an early application of its product to help people struggling with vision impairment by using enhanced image overlays.
Mojo Vision is actively working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) through its Breakthrough Devices Program, a voluntary program designed to provide safe and timely access to medical devices that can help treat irreversibly debilitating diseases or conditions.
These new investments bring Mojo Vision’s total funding to date to $205 million.
It is my great pleasure to start off 2022 with news on our next generation virtual reality system for the PS5 console, starting with the official name: PlayStation VR2, and our new VR controller, PlayStation VR2 Sense controller.
PlayStation VR2 takes VR gaming to a whole new level, enabling a greater sense of presence and allowing players to escape into game worlds like never before. With the headset on and controllers in hand, players will feel a heightened range of sensations unlike any other – thanks to the creativity of the game worlds being built by our world class developers, and the latest technology incorporated into the hardware.
Building upon our innovations from PS5, PlayStation VR2 adds a true next-gen experience with high-fidelity visuals, new sensory features, and enhanced tracking – along with a simplified single-cord setup.
Visual Fidelity: For a high-fidelity visual experience, PS VR2 offers 4K HDR, 110-degree field of view, and foveated rendering. With an OLED display, players can expect a display resolution of 2000×2040 per eye and smooth frame rates of 90/120Hz.
Headset-based Controller Tracking: With inside-out tracking, PS VR2 tracks you and your controller through integrated cameras embedded in the VR headset. Your movements and the direction you look at are reflected in-game without the need for an external camera.
New Sensory Features: PS VR2 Sense Technology combines eye tracking, headset feedback, 3D Audio, and the innovative PS VR2 Sense controller to create an incredibly deep feeling of immersion. Headset feedback is a new sensory feature that amplifies the sensations of in-game actions from the player. It’s created by a single built-in motor with vibrations that add an intelligent tactile element, bringing players closer to the gameplay experience. For example, gamers can feel a character’s elevated pulse during tense moments, the rush of objects passing close to the character’s head, or the thrust of a vehicle as the character speeds forward. Additionally, PS5’s Tempest 3D AudioTech makes sounds in the player’s surroundings come alive, adding to this new level of immersion.
Eye Tracking: With eye tracking, PS VR2 detects the motion of your eyes, so a simple look in a specific direction can create an additional input for the game character. This allows players to interact more intuitively in new and lifelike ways, allowing for a heightened emotional response and enhanced expression that provide a new level of realism in gaming.
All of these advancements in PlayStation VR2, combined with the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers from the PS VR2 Sense controllers, enable players to feel and interact with games in a much more visceral way. PS VR2 will also have a simple setup process — with a single cable connected directly to PS5, you can immediately jump into the VR experience.
Today we are also pleased to reveal that one of the biggest exclusive franchises on PlayStation will be coming to PS VR2 – Horizon Call of the Mountain from Guerrilla and Firesprite. This original game is being built specifically for PS VR2 and will open the doors for players to go deeper into the world of Horizon.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s exciting updates. Just remember, this is only a taste of things to come, and I can’t wait to share more details with you about PS VR2. In the meantime, below is the list of official specifications.
