Executive summary
Welcome to your weekly briefing on the metaverse and spatial computing. Here are your snippets to sound smarter in meetings this week:
Top story: A slow news week, so here’s a personal update (more below)
Demo day: This week! We are hosting an XR demo day on 9 July, in London. Come participate, and submit your demo to show the audience.
Other stories: Active Care Group has partnered with charity WheelPower to develop a 52-bed private rehabilitation hospital at Stoke Mandeville, incorporating robotic gait training, VR balance systems, and AR therapy (more below)
Barcelona is fun and tasty, with a playful vibe if you can deal with the radiating sun.
Top story
It’s a slow news week, so I’ll provide some personal updates (so you know the author behind the newsletter etc)
Art: Ticking along nicely. I have the doodling skills of a toddler high on sugar, but I am finding that the dream-like qualities of watercolour works well for me. I will be raising money for a deaf charity this coming weekend in Ilford.
Books: My recommendation is Yesteryear, which blends cottagecore life with an intriguing story about influencer culture and (I would argue) narcissism. It’s the written equivalent of crack, so I recommend it.
Films: I know people have been bleating about this movie for ages, but The Sheep Detectives is genuinely excellent. You would think that Patrick Stewart as a CGI fluff-cloud would crash like an inept rally driver - but somehow it works.
Video games: Star Fox was ok, but the design of Fox McCloud tumbled into the Uncanny Valley into a broken heap at its bottom. So this has paused until Orbitals comes out, as I love couch co-op.
This week’s stories
Active Care Group has partnered with charity WheelPower to develop a 52-bed private rehabilitation hospital at Stoke Mandeville, incorporating robotic gait training, VR balance systems, and AR therapy.
Ciobanu Holdings is developing Another World VR Arena, a free-roam VR venue for 20 to 30 players inside Ipswich's Grade II* listed Great White Horse Hotel.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is expanding its use of virtual reality in primary care, offering guided VR sessions to help veterans manage stress, anxiety, and pain alongside traditional treatment.
Distance Technologies has launched Acuity, a visual intelligence platform for defense that integrates sensors, battle-management systems, and computational optics.
Meta has launched a native Discord app for Meta Quest headsets.
Valve confirmed that its Steam Machine will not fully support PC VR at launch.
VirtualGo has developed a mixed reality multiplayer system for Hauntify that lets a remote player join a host's scanned physical space as a VR avatar.
Note: The Immersive Wire is run by Tom Ffiske, who also works at Accenture. The contents of the newsletter should not be regarded as Accenture’s views.
All spelling mistakes are deliberate, actually.
