A brief history of VR/AR/MR devices and why hardware challenges have limited mainstream adoption, which could likely slow the metaverse’s emergence and growth (Matthew Ball/MatthewBall.vc)

Aaron Tilley / Wall Street Journal:
A look at HoloLens’ development, as Microsoft spurned an early lead in AR to cede ground to Meta and others; one executive blames a lack of money and people  —  Problems plagued development of its HoloLens augmented reality headset; ‘we had the opportunity to own this market’

As students head back into classrooms this fall, some schools are already using the metaverse for teaching and learning. Yet, according to Jaime Donally, engagement director at Identity Automation and a former EdTech K–12 influencer, the metaverse doesn’t exist — at least, not to its full potential.
“There are elements of the metaverse that are happening, but the metaverse itself is not open-ended like the metaverse will need to be,” Donally says. “Immersive experiences layering augmented reality information have been increasing, but it doesn’t mean that the metaverse exists today.”
As school…

Andy Chalk / PC Gamer:
Blizzard will require Overwatch 2 and Modern Warfare 2 players to use SMS Protect, a 2FA system, to combat toxicity, but won’t accept prepaid and VOIP numbers  —  Just like Overwatch 2, you’ll need to attach a phone number to your Battle.net account to play Modern Warfare 2—and prepaid phones aren’t allowed.

Steve Haske / Ars Technica:
A history of consumer VR since 2012, from the first Oculus developer kit and the 2016 hype cycle to Quest 2, and what mainstream success for VR could look like  —  VR hasn’t taken over the world, but that doesn’t mean it has failed.  —  Six years ago, consumer virtual reality seemed set to be the next major tech breakthrough.

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch:
Stockholm-based Mavenoid, which offers human- and AI-enabled product support and troubleshooting tools for hardware companies, has raised a $30M Series B  —  Mavenoid, a Swedish company that provides both human- and AI-enabled support and troubleshooting tools for hardware companies …

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Nvidia unveils its first SaaS and IaaS offering, Omniverse Cloud, a services suite for artists, developers, and enterprise teams to build and run metaverse apps  —  Nvidia today announced its first software- and infrastructure-as-a-service offering — Nvidia Omniverse Cloud …