Mojo Adds $21 M To Series A, Hot Take On Quest 3, The Techno Optimist Manifesto

Hot Take on the New Quest 3. I’m impressed by the pass through and other upgrades like room scanning. The interface is much better, too. The first thing you see when you boot it up is the physical room you are in, enabled by the color pass-through cameras. Your spawn point is anywhere in the physical world, wherever you are. The digital display sits on top of reality just like it sat on top of the cartoon surroundings that were the spawn point for the Quest 2. The color pass through cameras are so good I could read email on my iPhone wearing the headset. This feels much more natural.

This YouTube video, created to show marked graphics improvement in the Quest 3. In the headset, it looks marginally better, but it also looks more fake, so pick your poison. Now the bad news. While it’s sleeker than the Quest 2, the new Quest 3 is heavier and hotter. I miss the open sides of Quest Pro, which dissipated heat. As a result, the Quest 3 may not be so great for fitness apps. XR needs its “Game of Thrones.” Maybe pass through MR will finally make it possible.

Mojo Vision Gets Its Mojo Back After Contact Lens Fail with $43M Series A. Mojo Vision, which dropped its ambitious contact lens project and pivoted to microdisplays, announced a new $22.4 M Series A, doubling the previous tranche, and making the total haul $43.5 M. The found was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Khosla Ventures. The company’s displays are remarkably more dense (14K PPI) than the micro-OLEDs in Apple’s Vision Pro (3,400 PPI).

Qualcomm Lays off over 1,258 people in Santa Clara and San Diego. The company has 51,000 employees in the Golden State. “Given the continued uncertainty in the macroeconomic and demand environment, we expect to take additional restructuring actions to enable continued investments in key growth and diversification opportunities,” said the company in a statement. Word is most of those axed were in sales, marcom, accounting and HR.

Marc Andreesen’s New Techno Optimist Manifesto. It’s rather pompous to write a manifesto, declaring one’s beliefs, but tech world leans into the billionaire’s missive because he’s an optimist in love with the future. “We believe the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward,” he writes. “Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential.” Love that, but not quite sure how I feel when Andreesen says things like “our enemy is corruption, regulatory capture, monopolies, cartels.” But it’s interesting. If you’re reading this you should be reading that.

Even Roblox has had it with remote work. In a letter to employees CEO David Baszucki told the company it’s time to give up that sweet airBnB in Portugal and come home to San Mateo. Ironically, this is a company that may be the closest thing to the Metaverse we’ve got. They recently introduced their own spin on video chat. Being virtual, it turns out, is great when we have to be apart, but not so great when we should be together.

Mythic Realms Turns Your Home Into A Mixed Reality Fantasy RPG On Quest App Lab. Speaking of games that leverage MR, Mystic Realms from Penticore Games arrives today on the Meta Quest platform via App Lab. The complete game is expected in 2024.

The 10th Augmented Enterprise Summit Opens in Houston, October 24-26. The Augmented Enterprise Summit is focused on the business and industrial applications of AR/VR/MR (XR) and other metaverse-related emerging technologies. Augmented Enterprise is the best opportunity to see how the world’s largest companies are driving meaningful digital transformation with XR and discover solutions ready to be deployed in today’s work environments.

This Week in XR is also a podcast hosted by the author of this column, Ted Schilowitz, Futurist, Paramount Global, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. This week our guest is Jake Zim, SVP Virtual Reality at Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is launching “Ghostbuster; Rise of the Ghost Lord” next week. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.

What We’re Reading

The Metaverse Died Because Silicon Valley Is No Fun (Fast Company)

Elon Musk’s Neuralink wants to merge humans with AI. How many brains will be damaged along the way? (Sigal Samuel/Vox)