Meta is working with Anduril on immersive tech for the US military

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: Meta is working with Anduril on immersive tech for the US military (analysis below).

• Design Jam: City, University of London is hosting a Design Jam on the weekend of 27 June. Come along!

• Book: My book, Your Book of Inspiration, might inspire you ahead of the Summer months. Consider a purchase here.

• Other stories: UCL are using VR to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s by assessing spatial awareness, aiming to diagnose the disease years before symptoms appear (more below).

Top story

Meta is working with Anduril on immersive tech for the US military.

• What happened? After Palmer Luckey left Meta a few years ago, Meta and Anduril are now working together to help the US with a lucrative military contract.

• Why now? Silicon Valley has been historically rooted in supporting the US military, and this is an evolution of Meta’s relationship with the former Oculus founder. But the deeper point lies in where the money is; my contacts have stated that the consumer side is drying up and they are looking into other verticals, so this is a clear evolution of this from another company (in my view).

Other stories

• DreamPark has raised $1.1m in seed funding to expand its downloadable mixed reality theme park.

• Dynamic Earth is hosting Scotland’s first Wallace & Gromit: All Systems Go AR trail this summer, combining interactive storytelling with augmented reality to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

• HyperVR Games has released the Dreads DLC for Shave & Stuff, adding over 30 new hair-cutting scenarios to the VR salon SIM now available on SteamVR and PSVR 2.

• UCL are using VR to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s by assessing spatial awareness, aiming to diagnose the disease years before symptoms appear.

• VITURE has partnered with 8BitDo to launch the VITURE x 8BitDo Ultimate Mobile Gaming Controller, the first controller designed specifically for use with XR glasses.

• Vrgineers has joined the Czech Republic’s Industrial Cooperation Agreement tied to its F-35 acquisition, furthering its collaboration with Lockheed Martin to support military tech development through VR and MR simulation tools.

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.