This week, enterprise XR frontrunner PICO announced a strategic partnership with the Blender Foundation, establishing PICO as an official contributor to Blender’s OpenXR development plan.
The PICO/Blender developmental partnership aims to optimise and accelerate possibilities for worldwide XR artists and developers by surpassing traditional content creation interfaces and streamlining production pipelines, while ensuring OpenXR cross-platform compatibility.
Jessie Zhang, Head of Partnerships, PICO XR, added:
At PICO, we are committed to supporting the Blender Global Open Source Community and fostering the flourishing 3D creation ecosystem. This partnership allows us to not only enhance 3D creation tools, but to foster a community where every artist and developer can bring their unique immersive vision to life and connect with a global audience through OpenXR.
PICO XR Enterprise OS 5.13
Before its 10th anniversary, PICO XR announced Enterprise OS 5.13, which optimises Location-Based Entertainment (LBE) features and large-scale business XR deployments. This celebratory period follows the deployment of PICO XR’s VR and MR headset solutions portfolio.
The anniversary coincides with PICO’s update to Enterprise OS, which introduces a wealth of optimised features. This update follows Meta’s recent third-party MDM integrations for enterprise clients. More vendors appear to be focusing on the value of device management and deployment solutions, indicating a market response to the growing demand for improved fleet management tools.
Enterprise OS 5.13 includes several updates for VR and MR users, such as:
- Enhanced support for manually switching to the V2 tracking algorithm, improving LBE mapping and positioning.
- New tools for drawing and exporting obstacles and establishing play boundaries.
- A quick reset feature for application testing and quality assurance.
- A tracking node that enables simultaneous tracking of controllers and gestures in third-party applications.
- An optimised VST (Video See-Through) algorithm, resulting in better video quality in low-light conditions and a more natural distribution of lighting brightness.
- Improved hand-tracking features, including reduced latency, fewer false touches, better gesture accuracy, support for prolonged sitting or lying down, and smoother full-body animation.
Additionally, this update will arrive shortly after PICO XR releases enhancements to Business Device Manager 1.6.0. This version now supports OBB and ROM file type deployment while optimising tools for controlling a fleet of VR/MR devices.
As enterprise XR solution providers mature in the second half of the 2020s, the market continues to show steady support for the AR/VR/MR sectors, with clients increasingly experimenting with and investing in XR technologies.