Wireless for ALL PC VR is HERE! Best CES 2022 VR & AR Highlights

Every January we get CES, one of the most influential tech events in the world, and I always look forward to it because so many VR and AR companies keep quiet until the show. I’ve covered the VR and AR news from CES every year since 2016, and as the industry grows, it keeps getting more exciting. These are my CES 2022 VR and AR highlights, with prices and dates as they were announced in January 2022.

Fabulous, a habit and well-being coaching app, sponsored this video. That paid for our time, not for any of the opinions below.

Unlink VR: wireless for any PC VR headset

This one came out of nowhere. Unlink VR says it can make any cabled PC VR headset wireless, so a Valve Index or even an HP Reverb G2. The company claims lossless quality, full 4K, with no compression and no latency.

It uses laser beam transmission, which Unlink VR says is 40 times faster than Wi-Fi and ready for the bandwidth next-gen VR will need. How it works:

• A transmitter connects to your PC over DisplayPort and USB-C and sends high-speed lasers carrying the VR data.
• A laser steering system aims those at receiver sensors on the headset or your body. You can place several sensors so the data flow doesn’t get interrupted.
• A receiver hub on your belt turns the optical signals back into DisplayPort and has a battery that powers the headset over USB.

It looks a bit like HTC’s VIVE wireless solution, but that one uses WiGig. Unlink VR says its light-based tech is more persistent and reliable, with a longer range, and that WiGig has no room to grow for next-gen VR. That’s true of the VIVE Wireless Adapter, which can’t use the full resolution of the newest VIVE Pro 2.

This kind of tech is hard to make, which is why so few companies try. As far as I could tell, people at CES couldn’t test it and only saw it working in a video. So take it with a grain of salt until there are real tests. I’m skeptical until I see it, but there’s nothing wrong with hoping, and I’ll ask them for a review unit.

bHaptics TactGlove: haptic gloves for consumers

bHaptics makes the VR haptic suits that support most major headsets and work with over 100 games and apps. Now they’re making gloves: the TactGlove, the first consumer-friendly haptic gloves, designed for camera-based hand tracking like Meta Quest and Ultraleap’s Leap Motion.

• Little motors give, in their words, “delicate and sophisticated feedback”.
• About 4 hours on a full battery.
• Stretch fabric, with inner gloves you can wash between uses.
• Three sizes at launch: medium, large and extra large.
• 299 dollars a pair, which really isn’t a bad price for haptic gloves.
• Developer kits ship in Q2 2022, with the consumer launch after that.

They work with the bHaptics SDK, like the suits. Developers who already support bHaptics should have an easier time adding the gloves, so we’ll actually have games to play with them, unlike the enterprise haptic gloves we’ve seen. I’ll definitely review these this year.

Shiftall MeganeX: a lightweight micro-OLED PC VR headset

Remember the steampunk-looking Panasonic VR glasses from my CES 2020 highlights? Back then they were a concept with no release date. Two years later they’re actually coming out, from Shiftall, Panasonic’s subsidiary. Shiftall also makes a SteamVR-compatible tracking system, so it knows the VR space.

The headset is called the MeganeX:

• SteamVR compatible, with 6DoF camera-based inside-out tracking.
• OLED microdisplays at 2560 x 2560 per eye and 120Hz.
• Pancake optics.
• Connects with DisplayPort Alt Mode over USB-C, or DisplayPort plus USB 2.
• A foldable frame you wear like glasses, with built-in speakers.
• 250 grams (8.8 ounces) without the cable.
• A Qualcomm Snapdragon XR1 chipset, although Shiftall says it’s focused on SteamVR.
• Expected in spring 2022 at an estimated 900 US dollars.

The specs are interesting, but what excites me more is that we seem to be moving into an era of tiny, comfortable, compact VR glasses that actually look good.

HTC VIVE Wrist Tracker

HTC has a wrist tracker for advanced hand tracking on the VIVE Focus 3. You wear it on your wrist, and the Focus 3’s inside-out tracking follows it, much like the controllers. HTC says your hands stay tracked even when the tracker is out of the cameras’ view, thanks to high-frequency IMU data and an advanced kinematic model.

That means hand tracking still works while you hold things like gun controllers. HTC showed it with a NERF gun, and it does look more accurate than other hand tracking out there. But the Focus 3 is an expensive enterprise headset at 1,300 dollars, so this is mostly for businesses like location-based entertainment venues. The tracker comes out in early 2022 for 129 dollars in the US, and later in Europe and the UK.

AR at CES 2022

Qualcomm and Microsoft team up

At Qualcomm’s press conference, it announced a partnership with Microsoft to develop custom AR chips for a new wave of power-efficient, lightweight AR glasses. On the software side, Microsoft Mesh, Microsoft’s foundation for multi-user XR apps, will be integrated with Qualcomm’s XR development tools, Snapdragon Spaces. Two major tech giants building for XR together is exciting. Fingers crossed for consumer products too.

ThirdEye Razor MR glasses

AR glasses used to be enterprise only, but more consumer glasses are popping up and they’re getting affordable, like the Nreal Light I reviewed recently. ThirdEye has been successful in enterprise AR, and the Razor MR glasses are its first consumer product.

• An all-day wearable design that looks like regular glasses, and lightweight.
• Birdbath optics, 70Hz, and a 43-degree field of view. That sounds small, but on MR glasses it can look like a 120-inch screen at a distance.
• Diopters, so nearsighted users don’t need their own glasses.
• Two noise-cancelling microphones for voice control and built-in stereo speakers.
• Connects to Android or iOS devices with DisplayPort output, laptops and tablets with USB-C, and game consoles through HDMI adapters.
• 8 hours of battery life.
• Runs its own OS, Android 9, so it may work standalone, though I can’t confirm that.
• Over 100 apps promised, from mixed reality games to workouts with personal trainers, social media and movies.

ThirdEye also wants to bring its enterprise software to consumers. RemoteEye could get you real-time help from a maintenance crew to fix things at home, or help you take an inventory of your home for insurance. RespondEye lets you talk to caregivers remotely, so a doctor could see a patient in real time with AR annotations. I think that’s a good future, because it could make professional help much more accessible. The glasses are in production and ship later this year. There’s no price yet, but I have a feeling they may be expensive.

Bad news from Nvidia, great news from Sony

Nvidia announced the RTX 3090 Ti, which should be 11 percent faster than the RTX 3090. No price or firm date yet, but it’s expected in June. Why is that bad news? Because probably no one will be able to buy it.

For me personally, one of the most exciting CES announcements was Sony’s official PSVR 2 headset and controller specs. I covered those in a separate video with a full overview.

My favourite CES 2022 VR and AR highlights

The VR and AR news at CES gets better and more exciting every year, and that’s awesome. If Unlink VR really works, wireless for every PC VR headset would be huge, but I’ll believe it when I test it. The ones I’m most looking forward to trying are the bHaptics TactGlove, because it should actually have games to play, and the MeganeX, because it points at small VR glasses that look good. And then there’s PSVR 2.