CES 2023 Roundup - Tech Insiders News, January 2023

Here it is! Our wrap-up of CES, co-written with my business partner, head of innovation @GimbalCube, Sébastien Spas. Stick with us for a funny bonus at the end.

CES is full of super cool, very buzzy, and fancy tech, but most of them are show-offs with no real near-term use. This is why we’ve been focusing on the tech that we think will either soon be in your daily lives or in our daily projects!

Headsets / AR Glasses

• You can’t miss it; the announcement of the HTC Vive XR Elite. HTC's goal is to compete with the Meta Quest Pro,
  Cheaper than expected at $1,099 USD, lighter than the Meta,
  The Mixed-reality quality seems to be lower than Meta, but more comfortable and hopefully more flexible for developers, We need to try it before making a definitive recommendation, but it may be a good alternative.
• The Lynx XR-1 has started shipping and won one CES Innovation Award.
  Look forward to our tests in a few weeks when we receive it!
  Testers at CES report better video quality and better hand tracking than the Meta.
• Magic Leap continues its focus on B2B and industry use.
  It’s the first headset to be certified for usage during surgery.
• The AR Glasses of Vuzix also won a CES Innovation Award.
  No complex app or game; the goal is to display timely information.
  Is the market finally ready for AR Glasses? We believe so: the industry field is already using them, and as Apple is rumored to release its glasses in the next couple of years, the public will adopt them soon.
  The goal is to replace the smartphone; will simplicity win?
• Somnium, a blockchain company, was supposed to showcase the Somnium VR1
  It’s an open-source, high-end device,
  We didn’t see any test reports. Was it actually there?

Retail

• LG’s transparent screen was one of the coolest demos at CES.
  Why we’re watching: we see many applications in retail (on a store window, for example) and at events; it opens a lot of innovative usages!

Experiences

• Nikon’s BoltX and Unreal Ride: a small-scale XR studio!
  XR studios are used in movie productions since a few years,
  This demo shows what could be an evolution of the theme park classic photo: a complete, production-like movie where you are the hero!
• I mentioned it last November; at CES, Holoride had a few upgrades:
  It now works in any car thanks to the Holoride Retrofit,
  And, as expected, it has motion-sickness challenges.

Sustainability

• Cnet says that sustainability was on everyone’s lips, Mainly with John Deere and its precise fertilizer that reduces usage by 60%.k
  But still, we see wireless TV and cars covered with eInk panels; And we’re thinking: do we really need this?

Smart Home

• Matter was everywhere:
  It’s a standard for smart-home devices that is backed by Amazon, Apple, Google, and many others.
  It will allow many services to inter-operate and new devices and appliances to exist,
  Again, we’d like to see more applications for energy-saving, and sustainability, rather than for pure convenience…

Bonus

Ok, this newsletter was heavy this week, so you earned a funny time: it’s not new, but this video is a perfect example of why suddenly changing our perceptions messes up all our location senses… The concept is simple: in the headset, the players can only see the feed from the top-view camera…

So, to be trendy, I asked ChatGPT to summarize this newsletter, and fed the result to Midjourney. The prompt was: «CES showcased various advancements in virtual and augmented reality technology, including the HTC Vive XR Elite headset, French Lynx XR-1, Magic Leap, and Vuzix AR glasses, with an emphasis on sustainability and the smart-home industry.»

And for fun, I asked to convert it to a haiku, and fed it to Midjourney too. The prompt was: «CES tech showcase, AR, VR, and retail trends, Sustainability hope.». Nice style!