{"id":50420,"date":"2025-04-25T21:39:14","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T21:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/50420\/"},"modified":"2025-04-25T21:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T21:39:14","slug":"the-xr-week-peek-2025-04-21-apple-vision-pro-2-battery-cable-leaked-nvidia-launched-rtx-5060-graphics-cards-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/50420\/","title":{"rendered":"The XR Week Peek (2025.04.21): Apple Vision Pro 2 battery cable leaked, NVIDIA launched RTX 5060 graphics cards, and more!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday it was Easter here in Italy, and I had a good time with my family eating delicious food. You can read my greetings to the community and see some pictures of the cake I\u2019ve eaten on Twitter\/X<\/a> if you want.
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\u00a0Today is also a Holiday in Italy (I guess to leave people the time to digest before getting to work, lol), but the XR business never rests, so I\u2019m writing anyway for you this roundup of the best news of the week! And be sure to read it until the end, because today I have a giveaway of keys for BEATABLE, the innovative rhythm game by XR Games!
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\u00a0Ah, and before I forget: in the next couple of days, I\u2019m going to publish a very interesting interview on this blog! Stay tuned!<\/p>\n

Top news of the\u00a0week<\/p>\n

\"\"\/(Image by Kosutami)<\/p>\n

Apple Vision Pro 2 battery cable leaked\u00a0online<\/p>\n

Leaker Kosutami shared on X what looks like the new battery cable of the next Apple Vision Pro headset. <\/strong>The connector is slightly larger than a Lightning one, and the cable has a dark blue color that they referred to as \u201cgraphite dark blue\u201d.<\/strong>
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\u00a0The headset is allegedly dark so as to clearly distinguish it from the current Apple Vision Pro.<\/strong> Apple wants it to appear different because it wants to highlight that it is a different model that features various improvements to its internal structures: Kosutami claims that the upcoming headset features titanium in \u201ca few\u201d of the internal structures, and they say it\u2019s noticeably thinner and lighter<\/strong>. They also say that the headset may not be called Apple Vision Pro 2 but something like Apple Vision Pro Air, but it is just a speculation.
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\u00a0We have to take all the leaks with a grain of salt, but the existence of a battery cable would confirm what other rumors are already saying, that is, that Apple is close to releasing a refresh of the Vision Pro, probably already this year.<\/strong> And if the headset is lighter and thinner, it means that Apple is addressing some of the concerns many users complained about. Various rumors also talk about an improved processor, the upcoming M5, which would give the Vision Pro impressive computational power that no other standalone headset can compete with.<\/strong> If Apple manages to make it also slightly cheaper, that would be bingo.
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\u00a0Honestly, I wasn\u2019t expecting a Vision Pro headset until next year, but Apple is probably launching a new device to take measures against the upcoming release of Google\u2019s Project Moohan. <\/strong>Competition is proving again to be very good for us XR users.<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Other relevant\u00a0news<\/p>\n

\"\"(Image by NVIDIA)<\/p>\n

NVIDIA RTX 5060 gives you a VR-ready PC for a small\u00a0budget<\/p>\n

NVIDIA is close to launching its RTX 5060 graphics cards, the low-end tier of the RTX 50 series.<\/strong> These graphics cards can make your PC VR-ready for a very small budget.
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\u00a0RTX 5060 will be $300, and has 8GB of VRAM. RTX 5060 Ti is offered in two variants: $380 with 8GB of VRAM or $430 with 16GB of VRAM<\/strong>. Both of these models are based on NVIDIA\u2019s new Blackwell architecture<\/strong>, and both of them feature GDDR7 VRAM. They are more performant than the low tier of the RTX 40 series, but of course, they can\u2019t compete at all with the RTX 5080 or RTX 5090. According to Upload VR, the performances of the RTX 5060 are comparable with the RTX 2080,<\/strong> which was a top-tier graphics card 7 years ago. This may not seem much, but the RTX 2080 was able to run <\/strong>Half-Life: Alyx<\/a>, which is a PC VR game with very solid graphics. This means that for a very small budget, you can upgrade your computer to run pretty cool VR games.<\/strong>
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\u00a0If you are interested in these graphics cards, which will surely help the democratization of PCVR, you can already grab the RTX 5060 Ti now, while for the RTX 5060, you have to wait until May.<\/strong><\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

News worth a\u00a0mention<\/p>\n

\"\"\/(Image by Meta)<\/p>\n

Meta Horizon Desktop Editor now has AI\u00a0features<\/p>\n

The desktop editor for Meta Horizon Worlds now features AI generation of meshes and textures.<\/strong> The application already featured AI generation of code and audio, and this means that now there is a full pipeline for world creation that is powered by AI. <\/strong>Meta claims these generative AI tools can \u201cdramatically\u201d reduce the time needed to build virtual worlds \u201cfrom weeks to as little as hours\u201d. But especially, these tools let people that have no technical skills build the worlds of their dreams.<\/strong>
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\u00a0I am not gonna lie, this is great for the current target of people that appreciate Horizon Worlds, which are mostly kids. I\u2019m not a big fan of \u201cvibe coding\u201d for professional products, but it can be great to let kids unleash their creativity<\/strong> and create worlds where to hang out with friends.<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

PresenZ generates volumetric videos from CGI\u00a0content<\/p>\n

PresenZ is a professional-grade tool for converting cinema-quality CGI content for 6DOF viewing in VR<\/strong>. It takes a very detailed CGI content, something that could never be run in VR, not even on a powerful PC, and converts it into a sort of spatial video you can move in.<\/strong> This way, you can have the original content, with the same astonishing quality, but played back as a special video, so with no need for runtime rendering. You can so watch it in VR. You can demo this technology with a PCVR headset<\/strong> through the Immersix application.<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

A developer made some steps toward PSVR 2\u2019s HDR usage on\u00a0PC<\/p>\n

The VR community continues to look for workarounds to unlock all the cool features of PSVR 2 that Sony is not allowing on PC. This week, a developer codenamed Hekky managed to enable \u201cwider color gamut\u201d, a fundamental feature for HDR, on the headset while connected to SteamVR.<\/strong> This is great, but to fully unlock HDR, there is another feature needed, PQ (perceptual quantizer), which is unluckily not supported by SteamVR at all.<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

REK wants to make real robots to\u00a0fight<\/p>\n

Cix Liv, the serial entrepreneur behind LIV and YUR, has launched a new business called REK<\/strong> (probably he likes startups with 3-letter names). The project is pretty cool: the VR game is about humanoid robots fighting between them,<\/strong> and the idea is to take the best players and make them fight using real robots they are controlling from within the VR headset. The game should work in the same way both if you are just playing as a virtual robot and if you are controlling a physical robot, <\/strong>so if you are good in the first scenario, you are also good in the second one. It is just that the second one, with the physical robots actually fighting, is incredibly cooler!<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Sliding in the real and the virtual\u00a0world<\/p>\n

A Redditor used Vive Trackers to track his full body while going down a slide,<\/strong> so that you can see him sliding at the same time, both in the real and the virtual world. Is it useful? Probably not. Is it cool? Surely yes.<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

You can now track both your hands and the Logitech MX Ink\u00a0pen<\/p>\n

Always more people are using the <\/strong>Logitech MX Ink pen<\/a> as a sort of \u201cVive tracker\u201d for the Meta Quest. <\/strong>This week, I\u2019ve discovered that the Quest can now track simultaneously both your bare hands and this pen.<\/strong> For sure, some interesting experiments are possible with it\u2026<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

An experiment investigates the user perceptions in passive experiences<\/p>\n

A very interesting experiment from the University of Glasgow discovers new ways users can be \u201ctricked\u201d inside VR passive experiences. The study proved that when playing passive virtual reality experiences, you can alter the physical rotation a lot when compared to the virtual one without the users noticing.<\/strong>
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\u00a0For instance, if the users rotate 90 degrees inside the virtual game, they can be rotated 360 degrees with the physical chair <\/strong>they are on, or 90 degrees in the opposite direction, and they wouldn\u2019t notice that the physical rotation doesn\u2019t match the virtual one.<\/strong> Most of the time, they will feel a coherent physical and virtual movement.
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\u00a0I underline that we are talking about passive experiences and not active ones (so it is not the user triggering the movement). But this trick can be very useful inside arcades or other out-of-home experiences to increase the sense of realism perceived by the user.<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

A new study reveals the importance of VR for education<\/p>\n

A new study by the Students at Arizona State University and Dreamscape highlights once more how Virtual Reality can make learning more interesting and more effective.<\/strong> I\u2019ve found it interesting that not only were the grades of the students using VR higher, but their retention in the course was also higher,<\/strong> showing that VR fostered in them the passion for the subject of study.
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\u00a0The article contains various interesting numbers that you can use in your PowerPoint presentations about XR, so I\u2019m linking it for you below.<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

XRCC is\u00a0back<\/p>\n

XRCC (XR Creator Con), the best-organized hackathon I\u2019ve ever been to, is back.<\/strong> It will be held again in Berlin from the 25th to the 29th of June.<\/strong> I will be there as a mentor: if you are looking for a cool hackathon to be part of, and hopefully win some nice prizes, I suggest you have a look at it!<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

There is a new trailer for \u201cStar Wars: Beyond\u00a0Victory\u201d<\/p>\n

We could finally discover more about \u201cStar Wars: Beyond Victory\u201d<\/strong>, the new upcoming Star Wars game developed by ILM. The game should feature a VR\/MR combination story mode following podracer \u2018Volo\u2019<\/strong>, an arcade mode that brings mini-podracing to a mixed reality holotable<\/strong>, and a \u2018playset\u2019 that lets you decorate a physical environment in mixed reality <\/strong>with a collection of unlockable virtual action figures and vehicles.
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\u00a0It seems cool, but there is a thing I\u2019m not a huge fan of. From the trailer, it seems that the podracing is happening in mixed reality, which makes little sense,<\/strong> because a race like that is ideal in virtual reality, so you really feel inside the game. I have the suspicion that MR has been abused because Meta paid ILM to have a game that gives value to the mixed reality of the Quest 3 series, and so MR has been used also where it is not a fit.<\/p>\n

More info (Star Wars: Beyond Victory\u200a\u2014\u200aRoad To VR)<\/strong><\/a>
More info (Star Wars: Beyond Victory\u200a\u2014\u200aUpload VR)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

A new sale is live on the Meta Horizon\u00a0Store<\/p>\n

Meta is running a new sale on the Meta Horizon Store, <\/strong>with -50% discounts on cool games like the latest one on Alien! It is a good time to buy VR games\u2026<\/p>\n

More info<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Some news about\u00a0content<\/p>\n