by tyler | Apr 2, 2024 | Tech
During the congressional online safety hearing in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued that mobile app store providers like Apple and Google should be the ones to implement parental controls for social media. Now, it appears Meta is using its Quest VR store to demonstrate how it thinks devices with app stores should approach online age verification.
Meta announced today that it’s prompting Quest 2 and 3 users to confirm their age by reentering their birthdays so it can provide the “right experience, settings, and protections for teens and preteens,” the company explained. For instance, teenagers aged 13 to 17 will have their profile automatically set to private, and guardians can use parental supervision tools to tailor their teens’ experiences. Meanwhile, parents are required to set up an account for preteens aged 10 to 12. In that case, parents can control which apps the preteen can download.
Image Credits: Meta
Image Credits: Meta
Users have a 30-day window to confirm their age. If they fail to do so within this period, their account will be temporarily blocked until they provide their birthdate. Since it’s easy to lie about someone’s age when entering only a birthdate, Meta says it’ll require people who accidentally enter a wrong birthdate to verify with an ID or credit card.
Meta has previously told developers that, starting in March 2024, it will require them to identify their app’s intended age group (preteens, teens or adults). It also announced the launch of its user age group APIs, which officially launched last month. The APIs allow developers to report to Meta if a user is too young to use their app.
Meta first added parental supervision tools to its VR headset in 2022. The company released parent-managed accounts for preteens last year.
Meta says it’s totally fine for 10-year-olds to wear its VR headset, probably
by tyler | Apr 2, 2024 | Tech
During the congressional online safety hearing in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued that mobile app store providers like Apple and Google should be the ones to implement parental controls for social media. Now, it appears Meta is using its Quest VR store to demonstrate how it thinks devices with app stores should approach online age verification.
Meta announced today that it’s prompting Quest 2 and 3 users to confirm their age by reentering their birthdays so it can provide the “right experience, settings, and protections for teens and preteens,” the company explained. For instance, teenagers aged 13 to 17 will have their profile automatically set to private, and guardians can use parental supervision tools to tailor their teens’ experiences. Meanwhile, parents are required to set up an account for preteens aged 10 to 12. In that case, parents can control which apps the preteen can download.
Image Credits: Meta
Image Credits: Meta
Users have a 30-day window to confirm their age. If they fail to do so within this period, their account will be temporarily blocked until they provide their birthdate. Since it’s easy to lie about someone’s age when entering only a birthdate, Meta says it’ll require people who accidentally enter a wrong birthdate to verify with an ID or credit card.
Meta has previously told developers that, starting in March 2024, it will require them to identify their app’s intended age group (preteens, teens or adults). It also announced the launch of its user age group APIs, which officially launched last month. The APIs allow developers to report to Meta if a user is too young to use their app.
Meta first added parental supervision tools to its VR headset in 2022. The company released parent-managed accounts for preteens last year.
Meta says it’s totally fine for 10-year-olds to wear its VR headset, probably
by tyler | Mar 1, 2024 | Tech
In May 2019, Ultrahaptics and Leap Motion became Ultraleap (not to be confused with Magic Leap, which operates in the same space). It’s a name change representing the marriage of two different, yet related, tech startups. Ultrahaptics naturally got top billing, as it was the one doing the acquiring – paying around $30 million for the hand-tracking firm.
After failing to meet up at CES (thanks, COVID), I met up with co-founder and CEO Tom Carter at a coffee shop away from the maddening crowds of MWC 2024 to discuss life after acquisition. Carter became the CTO of the new company after serving the same role at Ultrahaptics for six years.
At the acquisition’s center is a push to merge both companies’ existing technologies. The emerging world of extended reality (XR) is the first target. “I think it’s a long-term vision for XR,” Carter said of the deal. “It’s not really a vertical. It’s a lot of different things, and a long-term vision is interacting with 3D content.”
Leap Motion is the older of the two. Founded in 2010, the Bay Area–based startup was best known for the Leap Motion Controller, a small peripheral that sports a pair of IR cameras and infrared LEDs, which are used for hand tracking. The company settled on VR as a primary use case not long after Oculus shipped its first headset to Kickstarter backers.
The initial product wasn’t particularly elegant, as it was designed to be mounted on the front of a VR visor. Ultimately, Leap Motion’s initial hype didn’t translate into lasting success, due in part to many companies’ decision to go in-house for hand-tracking solutions.
Founded by a pair of University of Bristol students three years after Leap Motion, Ultrahaptics harnesses ultrasound waves to create tactile feedback. The technology is being focused on two initial verticals. The first is automotive, using a console-based speaker that fires upward to deliver a sense of tactility to in-car heads-up displays. This will be accomplished through direct partnerships with carmakers.
The second is XR. This, naturally, is where Leap Motion’s technology comes into play. The joint company is working to integrate the two into a device that gives you tactile feedback as it tracks your hands. The resulting product would be one that would bring a sense of weight to the virtual landscape. The lack of sensory feedback has long been an issue in the space.
Certainly Ultrahaptics isn’t the first attempt to address this. A common solution involves wearing a pair of gloves with more traditional haptic motors — like the kind found on phones — built in. Carter doesn’t believe that adding more wearable tech into the mix is the solution most XR users are looking for. Instead, the system would take the form of a small “puck” that sits on the floor, sending waves up to the hands.
This isn’t the only configuration the technology can work in. Much like the earlier Leap Motion product, it would be possible to mount a device to the front of the visor, but directionality is important. From below, the ultrasound waves create a sense of resistance. If they’re coming off the user, however, the force moves in the opposite direction.
Last month at CES, the company showed off Sensation Designer , an important step toward commercializing the joint technology. It’s a software package designed to give developers the ability to bring haptic experience to XR. A demo experience at the event involved a virtual bonsai tree. The Leap Motion tech determines your hands’ orientation in space, while haptics provide tactile feedback when you come into contact with the virtual object.
In its final form, it could provide an added sense of reality to the virtual experience, from gaming to enterprise applications.
by tyler | Jan 24, 2024 | Tech
Wizards of the Coast and Resolution Games have announced their collaboration to bring Dungeons & Dragons to virtual reality.
The decades-old tabletop roleplaying game has become increasingly popular over the last several years, in large part due to third-party content creators like Critical Role and Dimension 20, in which ensemble casts play D&D to create a compelling story for an audience. The franchise also made a splash this year with a Hollywood film and the hugely successful Baldur’s Gate III , a video game that licenses Dungeons & Dragons IP.
Resolution is known for its game Demeo, which recreates the tabletop gaming experience digitally, whether that’s on a VR headset like the Meta Quest or the Apple Vision Pro, or just on an iPad.
The details of the deal aren’t apparent — is Wizards just licensing the IP, or working with Resolution? — but it continues Wizards’ trend of bringing Dungeons & Dragons away from the table and into digital media. It’s also not clear whether this is a platform for players to connect with their friends to play D&D through VR, or if they’re telling a whole new story, like the “Honor Among Thieves” film. But in trailers for Demeo, it seems that players are quite literally using VR hand-tracking to play cards and paint virtual miniatures, so perhaps the collaboration will be more like a virtual tabletop than a single-player story game.
It’s common for people to use platforms like Foundry and Roll20 to play D&D with non-local friends, and Baldur’s Gate was a hit, but… are we really trying to eldritch blast our enemies in VR? D&D sessions usually extend for two to three hours (or longer, if you’re extra dedicated), and even when you’re having a great time with your pals, your attention can waver a little bit. Does anyone really want to wear a headset for a whole D&D session?
The news comes shortly after mass layoffs hit Hasbro, Wizards’ parent company. In the division of the company that runs Wizards and digital gaming, revenue is up 40% year over year to $423.6 million, netting a $203.4 million operating profit; but overall, Hasbro’s revenue is down 10%. Even though Wizards has been thriving, its department at Hasbro was not spared from layoffs.
Dungeons & Dragons content creators are fighting to protect their livelihoods
Hasbro to cut 1,100 jobs despite Dungeons & Dragons thriving
by tyler | Jan 23, 2024 | Tech
Vroom is shutting down its online used car marketplace and shifting all of its resources and capital into two business units focused on auto financing and AI-powered analytics. About 800 employees, or 90% of its workforce, will lose their jobs as a result, according to a regulatory filing .
The company said it is suspending all used car transactions through vroom.com and plans to sell off its used vehicle inventory to wholesalers. The company said it has not determined how much this wind-down will cost, partly because of uncertainty on what its used vehicle inventory will sell for, according to the regulatory filing.
Vroom, which went public in 2020 , said it now plans to concentrate on two other businesses its owns and operates: United Auto Credit Corporation (UACC) and CarStory. UACC, an automotive finance company, and CarStory, which developed an AI-powered analytics and digital services platform for automotive retailers, will continue to operate.
Vroom was part of a wave of U.S. startups that launched about a decade ago all aiming to disrupt used car sales and the traditional dealership model. Most of these startups — a batch that included Shift Technologies , Beepi and Fair.com — have shut down or were acquired. Vroom survived and emerged as competitor to Carvana, which went public in 2017.
The company had one of the more successful IPOs of 2020, its share price more than doubling on its first day of trading and raising $468 million, above earlier plans for $356 million. Its share price hit a high of $65.01 in August 2020, only to come tumbling down more than 60% over the following year. The drop in valuation continued into 2022, pushing Vroom shares to under $2. Vroom shares closed at $0.53 on Monday and then dropped to $0.25 after the company announced its plans to shutter the e-commerce business. Shares are now hovering at about $0.32.
It was during those high-flying stock days that Vroom acquired Vast Holdings, which included CarStory, for $120 million in cash and stock.
At the time, the acquisition was couched as complementary to Vroom’s e-commerce business . The Austin,Texas–based company used machine learning — a form of AI in which computer systems can analyze, process and learn from data — to analyze millions of vehicle listings a day. The software it developed could then be used to provide predictive data to Vroom’s e-commerce platform. Vroom has since sold those services to third parties as well.
In October 2021,Vroom acquired United Auto Credit Corporation for $300 million in cash.
