Our weekly recap: Meta raises the price of Quest 2, Sony talks about Playstation VR 2 for once, and a marketplace deals with DALL-E 2 and GPT-3 prompts.
Inflation, investments, and so on
The Quest 2 has been on the market for about two years now - and has just become more expensive by about $100 anyway. Meta explains this unusual maneuver with high investments in the market and increased production costs. VR and gaming guru John Carmack, who was the head of technology at Oculus for a long time, finds these arguments strange. Is perhaps the renewed attack of the US antitrust authority FTC behind it, which stands in the way of Meta's VR fitness expansion?
Playstation VR 2 ... wasn't there something?
Oh, that's right, there will be a new VR headset from Sony one day. We still don't know when that day will be, but at least we know we'll know soon. And Sony has shown us some new features of PSVR 2 like room scanning that make us want more.
Video: Sony
Creativity in the AI age
The age of AI could transform human creativity because AI breaks the link between creative thinking and manual dexterity. With imaginative "prompts," simple text commands, we can get machines to output images, text, or in the future even 3D scenes the way we imagine them. Perhaps in this way, we will learn more about the interplay between thinking and doing.
In any case, a new marketplace senses a business model and wants to sell proven prompts for small money. This can save (even more) time and money than DALL-E 2 and Co. already do. If you prefer to be creative yourself, see our prompt guide for DALL-E 2.
Artful prompts are also needed for the DALL-E competitor Midjourney, which is now available in open beta.
Fewer metaverse professionals wanted
Concerns about a weakening economy are leading to lower investment, especially in the technology sector. This is particularly evident in metaverse job postings. One survey shows that job postings in the U.S. with "metaverse" in the title fell 81 percent between April and June. But this study only shows part of the story.
Malware films what you do in VR
A new malware can record the screen of a VR headset and send the footage back to the attacker. That's according to New York-based cybersecurity firm Reasonlabs, which identified the threat. Potentially affected are Android headsets such as the Quest 2, Pico Neo 3 and Vive Focus 3. How does the malware work with "Big Brother"? And how can you protect yourself?
