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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: The list of places banning smart glasses grows longer (thoughts below).
Other stories: AIG Hospitals performed a first-for-the-region skull-to-spine tumour surgery using AR/MR headsets and a robotic exoscope for real-time 3D imaging.
Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag made me re-remember why I enjoyed the games so much, mixed with some very fun pirate lore.
Top story
The list of places banning smart glasses grows longer.
In just the UK alone, smart glasses are now banned in HMCTS (the courts, basically), Wetherspoons, ATG Theatres, Monopoly Events, Soho House, and Jeremy King's restaurants.
This is interesting to me because, as a growing technology, it’s got privacy teething issues which are latching on more strongly than expected.
There is also precedent for this; swimming pools, leisure centres, and gyms had all banned mobile phone cameras because of privacy concerns too. So perhaps an equilibrium will be met over the next few years?
This week’s stories
AIG Hospitals performed a first-for-the-region skull-to-spine tumour surgery using AR/MR headsets and a robotic exoscope for real-time 3D imaging.
Apple will stream four Friday Night Baseball games live in Apple Immersive on Vision Pro this season, starting with Red Sox at Yankees on 28 August.
BetterVR mod for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild nearing its 1.0 release and teased a Mario Kart 8 VR mod in development.
IFeL, an IBC Accelerator project with the BBC, ITV, Shure and MIT Reality Hack among others, will demo VR/AR remote-audience technology for live music festivals at IBC2026.
Meta cut the price of Beat Saber from $30 to $20 across Quest, SteamVR, and PSVR 2, its first price change since the game's 2019 launch.
FarBridge launched a Kickstarter for Job Simulator: Human Relations, an officially licensed flatscreen co-op sequel developed with Owlchemy Labs.
Immersive Wire’s Support
To support the running of the Immersive Wire, I have accepted assistance from Wispr Flow. This is an app I use nearly every day on WhatsApp as well as my personal computer because it's genuinely a very good way of getting thoughts on paper relatively quickly (the thoughts themselves might be dubious, but that’s neither here nor there).
I really recommend it as it has actually sped up my typing; so consider having a peek if you're interested as well:
Speak naturally. Send without fixing.
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Speak the way you think. Go on tangents. Change your mind mid-sentence. Flow strips the filler, fixes the grammar, and gives you text that reads like you spent five minutes writing it.
89% of messages sent with zero edits. Millions of professionals use Flow daily, including teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. Works on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.
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.
