I last wrote about XRSpace in May 2020, but I decided that it was time for an update on the ambitious project to create both a new standalone, wireless VR headset and a new social VR platform called Manova. (Yes, as far as I can tell, they are using the same name for both. The headset used to be called Mova, but is now called Manova, and I have seen the social VR platform referred to as “Manova World”, to differentiate it from the VR headset.)
XRSpace is working with Deutsche Telekom on Manova, and a German vlogger called VoodooDE had an opportunity to try out the new headset and the social VR platform, posting the following review video with in-world footage:
To put it mildly, he’s not a fan, citing problems with the visual display of the headset and calling the internal cooling fan a “disaster”, comparing it to someone turning on a hairdryer nearby. He played a clip of the sound and yes, it’s horrible! I can’t imagine wearing this headset for any length of time for that reason alone.
While the app store includes games such as Angry Birds and Bait!, it’s still rather limited. There’s also a selection of 360-degree videos you can watch. The various locations in social VR look pretty good, including a traditional German Christmas market, a dance club, a beach with an underwater world to explore, and a spa.
VoodooDE saved his harshest criticisms for the clumsy gesture system. In its current incarnation, you can’t just wave at somebody using your hands. Other people do not see you waving at them! You literally have to open the gesture menu, select Wave, and only then does the other avatar see you waving at them! Mindboggling.
In short, Manova seems to be a hot mess. But it’s still very early days, and we can hope that they make some improvements to both the headset and the social VR platform in future. It would be nice if XRSpace Manova could give Facebook some competition in the wireless headset market, but the hardware and software problems are pretty serious, and definitely need to be addressed.
German vlogger MRTV also reviewed the Manova (but unfortunately, he can’t really share his opinions because of an non-disclosure agreement with Deutsche Telekom).
Other than that, there is still frustratingly little information out there about this product. But I’ll continue to monitor the situation and keep you posted!
It’s also one of the only headsets to feature built-in hand tracking (not to mention outside-in tracking, generally), but its execution is a bit patchy. It regularly lost track of where my hands were floating, and the pinch-to-select menu gesture worked – but would often select the wrong item as my VR hands inadvertently veered over an unwanted menu option. This led to a humorously-brief excursion during my demo session with Manova World’s creators where I was whisked away and accidentally became lost in some sort of circus land after arranging a rendezvous at Manova’s beach environment instead. Thankfully, I was not met by any creepy virtual clowns.
Interestingly, I learned from Gerald’s article that XRSpace has plans to make the Manova social VR platform available for other headsets:
But XRSpace is pragmatic about Manova World’s future. It’s aware of its own hardware’s limitations (understandable, given the blueprints were drawn up around four years ago, a time when all-in-one hand tracking VR solutions weren’t commercially available), and sees the long-term future of Manova extending to other hardware and VR platforms. XRSpace is expecting to bring Manova World to other VR platforms later this year, and is aiming to have 50,000 users in the next 12 months as a result.
So, I anticipate future announcements! Stay tuned.
A look at the social VR platform Manova (sometimes called Manova World)
At a special event in Taipei, Taiwan, HTC cofounder and former CEO Peter Chou today revealed the first products from the new startup XRSPACE. It’s serving up both its own 5G-enabled standalone VR headset as well as a new social VR platform which appears to compete with Facebook Horizon.
Chou sees XRSpace serving the upcoming era of widespread 5G; much like smartphones first arrived on the back of the 2.5G network in the early 2000s, the former HTC CEO sees the company’s headset, Mova, and its social VR platform, Manova, taking human interaction “to a new level” and offering more connectivity on a person-to-person level. And XRSpace planning to bring it to the mass market.
XRSpace Announces the Social VR Platform Manova and the Wireless VR Headset Mova
Mova is a wireless VR headset like the Oculus Quest, which uses optical hand tracking instead of physical hand controllers. Engadget reports:
The Mova will ship with a single controller for gaming purposes, but it’s designed to be used with hand tracking as the primary control method. This, in theory, would lower the learning barrier for most people, and they would probably use the headset more often because of its less fiddly nature. But the company wants hand gestures to be a core interaction in its virtual world, Manova. And this is where things get different from VR headsets that we’ve seen already.
Once you’re inside one of the Manova spaces…you can toggle most common social gestures with natural movements: you can shake hands with other avatars, give high fives, do fist bumps or toast with a glass. You can even grab and throw objects, meaning you can shoot hoops or throw darts with your buddies who are actually miles away in real life. There’s also a gesture for teleportation: tap in the air with your index finger to toggle an arrow, then point at your desired spot and tap again to teleport.
The two-minute promotional video focuses on the social VR platform, called XRSPace Manova.
This video mentions something called MagicLOHAS, which describes itself on its separate website as:
Employing matured XR technology, computer vision, 5G, 3D real-time interactive, and visualization of full-body avatar, MagicLOHAS achieves a healthy life that is not limited by time and place. We offer a variety of applications from meditation, body training, brain training, and more, to bring new lifestyles of health and sustainability to the mass market through virtual reality.
Here are some first pictures of the Manova social VR platform and avatars (source). I’ll tell you one thing, the Manotva avatars sure look one hell of a lot better than what Facebook Horizon is planning to offer:
Manova is a combination of private and public spaces, and during my demo, I see both. When I put on the headset, I’m in the private sphere, a minimalist home. I can sit on the couch in my living room and watch a movie by myself or invite friends to join me. The next moment, I follow my XRSpace guide to zap myself to a T-Mobile-branded sports arena to watch a basketball game from the center court line. The game is real, with real players, and I have the best seat.
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The private spaces include not only your home but also classrooms and meeting rooms for those water cooler conversations or hour-long meetings that used to take place in person in real offices. The public Manova realm has a central city center hub to play games or watch big entertainment events.
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For the initial launch, XRSpace has signed on six education companies that do things like teach English; game developers like Futuretown and Rovio’s Angry Birds; live-streaming companies like Insta360’s travel video; GQ and Vogue with fashion content; YC House for virtual Taiwanese real-estate tours; Bank SinoPac for corporate training; and the Taiwanese record label Wind Music.
The wireless Mova headset is expected to ship sometime in the third quarter of 2020, at a price of US$599. Apparently, only Mova headset users will be able to access the Manova social VR platform, which sounds a bit like a jazzed-up version of Oculus Home for Oculus Quest and Rift users. And it’s an intriguing approach: bundling the social VR platform with the VR headset (which, of course, is exactly what Facebook wants to do with its Oculus line of headsets and Facebook Horizon).
Mova and Manova are a package deal: XRSpace’s world is only available through its headset, and the headset won’t support other VR storefronts. XRSpace is also supposed to have its own accessory ecosystem, including optional hand controllers and tracking sensors, which are described as much smaller versions of HTC’s Vive Tracker.
I haven’t seen either product in action, so it’s possible XRSpace will deliver on its promises. That said, this seems like a significant risk for the company and anybody who buys the headset, even making the huge assumption that its hardware is on par with existing devices like the Quest.
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Meanwhile, many companies have failed to launch Manova-like virtual worlds, including Second Life operator Linden Lab with Sansar and Linden Lab founder Philip Rosedale with the largely shuttered High Fidelity. Chou believes Manova can succeed where Sansar and High Fidelity failed because of its “fine-tuned” nature.
“I think the difference is they designed those things based on the PC first and then they tried to put it on VR,” he says. “They don’t have a good digital avatar and they don’t have a holistic consideration of the mass-market consumer using it.” But that’s still an iffy bet, especially for a device that costs far more than the highly capable $399 Oculus Quest.
And I have to say that Chou (XRSpace CEO and former HTC head Peter Chou) is wrong; both Sansar and High Fidelity were designed from the beginning to support the first generation of consumer VR headsets (notably the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift). The problem happened when both Linden Lab and High Fidelity bet the farm that there would be massive consumer uptake of virtual reality by now, which so far has failed to happen. This is what led to the essential shuttering of High Fidelity and the sale of Sansar by Linden Lab to Wookey (a company which specializes in buying up distressed companies and trying to turn them around).
I wonder if Peter Chou has ever actually sat down and talked with Ebbe Altberg or Philip Rosedale…judging by his quote above, and his lack of knowledge about Sansar and High Fidelity, probably not. Both Ebbe and Philip would be the first to tell him that “fine tuning” a platform is absolutely no guarantee of its popularity and success, based on their own bitter experience.
Exclusively bundling a full-blown, high-end social VR platform with a particular, as-yet-untested brand of VR headset is a huge gamble, though. If a battle for marketshare erupts between XRSpace and Facebook, Facebook is by far the stronger opponent here. (For example, while XRSpace has the rights to offer the Angry Birds game, Facebook already owns the phenomenally successful and popular juggernaut of Beat Saber! You can bet that Beat Saber will not be appearing in Manova anytime soon.)
UPDATE Nov. 6th, 2020: I find myself thinking about the XRSpace project from time to time, and to be honest, the longer I ponder it (especially in light of the new, cheaper Oculus Quest 2 wireless headset from Facebook), the more skeptical I feel about the chances for success of the Manova headset (formerly called Mova, and now available for preorder, with no pricing details) and the associated Manova social VR platform.
I also forgot to include this YouTube video of the XRSpace announcement, which you might find of interest, as I did:
I wish XRSpace luck; going up against the Facebook Oculus 2 and Facebook Horizon, they’re going to sorely need it.
There’s a very interesting article over on the CNET website by Shara Tibken about a company called XRSpace, titled My peek inside a secret VR headset shows a more social virtual reality. The writer got a chance to experience a new VR headset at a trade show, but unfortunately, she can’t tell you anything about it:
I pick up a virtual reality headset and place it over my eyes. Before I can even blink, it transports me to a world far away from the bustling IFA electronics show. I know that I’m in the bowels of the dismal Berlin Messe convention center, but my brain thinks I’ve managed to escape. I wish I could tell you more about it. I wish I could describe the experience, what the hardware felt like, what the software showed me, what I felt. But I can’t.
That’s because XRSpace, the new mixed reality company from Peter Chou, co-founder and former CEO of HTC, won’t let me tell you. Chou, in partnership with German wireless giant Deutsche Telekom, plans to launch something in 2020, but the companies don’t want me to detail it until then. At IFA, I became one of the first people on the planet to use the technology, not that I can say much about it.
All I can tell you is that I wasn’t alone in that virtual world.
It sounds as if XRSpace wants to get in on both the hardware and software aspects of social VR, working with partners like Deutsche Telekom (no small partner!) and seeking to enable social VR experience developers:
The primary aim for XRSpace is creating a place for people to virtually interact and communicate with each other. The company isn’t making its virtual social environment on its own but instead is working with developers to get them to build experiences for users.
“We want to make social very good,” Chou said. “We want to develop really good digital avatars that can be everywhere, not just one little social app [where] you can only go chat.”
