Odyssey Raises $18 Million To Scan The World, Meta’s Ray Bans May Be Gift Of The Year

Ray-Ban Meta Audio Smart Glasses May Be the Christmas Gift of the Year. Meta is expanding its Ray-Ban Meta line, and promoting it with pop-up stores in Los Angeles and Phoenix, offering experiential retail events to enhance the product’s fashion appeal. I’m happy to report, having used them for over a week now, the new Meta Ray-Bans are good. Really good. They look great. They feel great. And now that Meta AI has been integrated they represent something truly new. Say “hey Meta” and ask whatever you want. Using computer vision and the outward facing camera, Meta will translate a sign, or a menu, or history – anything you would otherwise type into a chatbot. Meta’s success has spurred all the major tech companies to explore smart glasses. Apple is reportedly developing its own AI-powered smart glasses, aiming for a 2027 release. Samsung and Google are also entering the smart glasses market. Baidu is expected to unveil its smart glasses at the Baidu World event in Shanghai, featuring cameras and voice interactions powered by its Ernie AI model. The only thing missing is a display, but since it’s tethered to my smartphone via bluetooth, I wonder if I even need another one.

Odyssey has secured an $18 million Series A to Create Digital Twin of the Physical World. EQT Ventures led the funding round, bringing Odyssey’s total haul to $27 million since its inception just a year ago. The company is developing high-fidelity 3D datasets of real-world environments using custom hardware equipped with six cameras and two lidars, capturing 13.5K resolution imagery with precise depth data. Teams carrying sensor-laden backpacks through various terrains, including urban areas, parks, and natural landscapes, conduct this data collection. Odyssey will use the collected data to train generative models capable of creating realistic virtual worlds for high-end film and gaming applications. The funding will accelerate the development of a novel 3D representation that integrates graphics, machine learning, real-world data, and editability.

REPLIKANT Debuts AI-Powered Chat Platform on Steam. REPLIKANT Chat was released on Steam Early Access today. The new platform enables real-time interactions with AI-driven avatars. Blending advanced AI with 3D graphics, the system offers immersive experiences across education, storytelling, and gaming. Users can interact with multiple AI characters in dynamic virtual environments, featuring persistent memory and natural language communication. The platform will soon integrate REPLIKANT Editor, a no-code tool allowing users to design personalized AI companions and environments.

Meta’s Horizon Worlds Has Been Hijacked by Pre-teens. Someone just told Wired what every Meta user knows: kids as young as seven or eight have been polluting Horizon Worlds (and VR Chat) for years. The influx of young users accelerated following the lowering of age restrictions to 10 years old in August 2024. This demographic shift has transformed the platform into a lively environment dominated by preteens playing games and socializing, attracting predators and chasing adults away. Either this is going to end very badly for Meta, or they will transform Horizon Worlds into the VR version or Roblox.

Google Maps Introduces AR For Paris Landmarks With Rock Paper Reality. The new augmented reality feature in Google Maps allows users worldwide to explore Paris’s most iconic landmarks interactively. The project, developed in partnership with Rock Paper R eality, Google Arts & Culture, and Google AR/VR, provides immersive 3D experiences of sites such as the Eiffel Tower and the Invalides Bridge, now enhanced with historical overlays and real-time navigation.

‘Wall Town Wonders’ is a Mixed Reality City Builder with Tons of Charm, Coming to Quest 3. Supporting hand-tracking, the mixed reality game lets you interact with tiny characters as you help them rebuild and customize their world across your real-world walls.

All I can sus out about the creator of this video is that the filmmakers are commercial and music video directors in Japan. They’re using Kling AI to animate their images.

Machine Mythos made this extraordinary short film inspired by the Hellraiser movies. Created using AI tools with HailuoAI Image to video , Udio, Midjourney, Elevenlabs

This column, formerly called “This Week in XR,” is also a podcast hosted by the author of this column, Charlie Fink, Ted Schilowitz, former studio executive and co-founder of Red Camera, and Rony Abovitz, founder of Magic Leap. We’re off this week. This is the first episode we’ve missed in 218 weeks. We can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and YouTube.

What We’re Reading

Infographic: The Rapid Rise and Fall of the Metaverse (Adweek)

Rethinking the Retail Experience with AR (Rolling Stone)