Unity iOS SDK now available!
11 months ago – Mon, Jun 05, 2023 at 12:47:26 PM

Hi Zapboxers!

It’s been a few months since we sent out a Kickstarter update so there’s quite a lot to cover.

If you want more regular updates, then please do join our Discord Server to chat with the Zapbox team and the wider Zapbox community.

Unity iOS SDK

The big news this time out is that we have just released the first version of the Zapbox XR Provider plugin for Unity. This initial build is for iOS only and works best on iPhones that have an in-built ultrawide camera (iPhone 11 and later, excluding the SE models).

You can find the provider plugin here: https://github.com/zappar-xr/zapbox-xr-sdk

Simply add this to your Unity project via Unity’s Package Manager window. Then you can enable the Zapbox provider for iOS in the XR Plug-in Management panel of your Project Settings.

See the README.md in the provider plugin repository for release notes.

We’ll be pushing updates to the plugin to improve the user experience and tracking quality over the coming weeks as there is a big list of improvements that we’re working on. We think this is a great start though and we’re excited to see what experiences you can create!

A note for Developer Bundle backers: your rewards were intended to include “early access” to the SDK, but as it has taken much longer than we wanted to get the build released we have decided to do the public release straight away. We’re working on a plan to make it up to you guys – stay tuned!

First iOS apps coming soon

Now that we’ve got a working build of the Unity plugin, we have also been hard at work getting the first “Zapbox Originals” content ready to release.

Zapbox House Party Pool is looking good for a full release this month, and we’ve got some other content in the works that we’re excited to share after that.

We’re also thrilled to have started working with the team at Open Brush (an open-source project originally based on Google’s Tilt Brush) to bring this awesome app to Zapbox.

Finally we’re looking to get some of our internal tech demos available for you to try as soon as possible (hopefully the first one this week). We think the quickest way will be to submit to Apple for “public beta” review and then share a TestFlight install link for the app. We’ll post an announcement on the Discord as soon as we have apps available for you to try out.

Add-ons shipping update

We’re still working through the logistics for shipping all the add-on items (the grip protectors and extra head strap) to international backers. Right now we have some still to post for EU and US backers. The UK and other international backers have all now been sent.

We’re using the International Mail service for these as any other route from the UK is prohibitively expensive, but it does mean they may be subject to customs fees. The items are declared as “gifts” and with their at-cost value ($2 or so total) so hopefully they will arrive without any additional demand for payment – we have had some reports of backers in our EU and US test batches receiving these successfully without needing to pay any fees.

If you are asked to pay a fee to release the items, we are happy to reimburse it for you – just reach out to us at [email protected].

Updates from AWE 2023

A fair few of the Zappar team were out in Santa Clara last week for this year’s Augmented World Expo conference. Zappar sponsored the Welcome Party and we did some live Zapbox demos there. On Thursday, Kirk and Simon had a Zapbox talk on the main stage featuring a live demo of the Unity SDK in action.

With the Unity SDK now available, AWE felt like a great place to press the button on the next phase of our launch. So we’re thrilled to say Zapbox is now available to purchase directly through our website! We’ve got some stock with the add-ons already applied back in the Amazon fulfilment network in the US, UK, and EU.

Hopefully in the coming weeks (when the new headset news cycle settles down a bit!) you’ll see some of our PR efforts bearing fruit as we work to convince more developers to jump in and join the Zapbox community.

Roadmap Update

The Unity SDK and the general availability of Zapbox are two big milestones, but we know there’s still a lot to do to fully deliver on the promise of Zapbox. As mentioned above, our first apps are already well underway and should see releases in the coming weeks.

From a more “platform-level” perspective we will be working on general SDK and runtime improvements. In parallel we will work towards two additional features that will enhance the Zapbox value proposition – a web browser app that will support WebXR content, and a PC VR streaming solution.

Our general availability launch is focussed on iOS, as we can be confident in the quality of the Zapbox experience for hundreds of millions of iPhone users after testing on just a few different iPhone models. Although Android has a bigger total market share, there is much more variation in both hardware and software, which makes a smooth “consumer-ready” Android experience much harder to guarantee.

We remain committed to bringing support to Android later in the year, but right now we have decided to prioritise building out the full Zapbox proposition on iOS first. We realise this will be frustrating for backers who only have access to an Android device, but after much consideration we felt that this was the right order of priorities to set Zapbox up for success, and we hope that even if you are disappointed by this you can understand the reasoning behind it.

Wrapping up

That’s it for now.

It was great meeting some backers in person at AWE, and we hope you all enjoy playing with the SDK!

Until next time,

- Team Zappar

Grip fixes completed & other Zapbox updates
about 1 year ago – Sat, Mar 11, 2023 at 08:03:50 AM

Hi Zapboxers!

It’s been a little while since the last project update so let us bring you up to speed with all the latest happenings in the world of Zapbox.

For more regular updates and informal chat with fellow Zapboxers, you are very welcome to join us on our Discord Server.

Stand by your letterboxes - add-on packs posting out from next week

In the previous update we mentioned we were working to mitigate the issue of damage to screen protectors that had been reported by a few backers. We were eventually able to reproduce this ourselves with certain screen protector types, and identified the primary cause as the slightly pointy top section of the grips due to the slot for the foam insert.

Steven and his design team have quickly turned around an add-on solution that simply snaps onto the grip and covers these points, providing a much smoother insertion process. We’re confident that these add-ons will remove any risk of damage to screen protectors when inserting your device.

We have 3D printed enough of these add-ons to cover the Zapboxes we have shipped out, and they are all in our office ready for posting next week. We will be using the same address lists that we used for the main Zapbox shipping in December. If your address has changed then please let us know your new address as soon as possible - email us at [email protected] with your new address and the email address associated with your pledge so we update the right one in our lists.

We’re also going to be including one more free thing in the envelopes - an additional elastic head strap that easily attaches to the existing forehead pad. We have found this helps with comfort when using heavier devices and allows the ratchet at the back to be less tight whilst still preventing the headset slipping down your forehead.

As we had already committed to posting out the grip add-ons, it seemed a good opportunity to also sneak in this product improvement too. Big thanks to our manufacturing partner for turning around these custom straps in a matter of weeks.

See the video below for how to attach these new add-ons to your Zapbox. We’ll also be applying these same updates to the rest of our stock in the warehouses before the general Zapbox launch. We’re really grateful to our backers for the early feedback that has helped us to improve the product for everyone!

We filmed this to give the warehouse teams an idea of the job we’re asking them to do on the stock, but it is good enough to let you see the process you’ll need to go through when your add-ons arrive.

Thanks in advance to Vanessa, who has drawn the short straw on sorting out the logistics of getting these add-ons in envelopes and posting them out.

Runtime, Unity SDK and Content Updates

Work continues on getting the first demo app build available, which will then be followed by the initial Unity SDK release. Simon posted this update video on the state of things to the Discord last month, which gives a sense of how things are coming together.

Since that video, Jordan has continued to make good progress on improving the tracking quality for the D3 world markers. We expect to have the iOS build of this demo app ready to share in the next couple of weeks. iPhone 11 and later will provide the best experience using the built-in ultrawide camera, but other iPhone devices will be supported too with a smaller field-of-view for passthrough and controller tracking (until we add support for calibrating and using the wide-angle lens adapter in the box).

Most developers will use our Unity SDK for accessing all the Zapbox controller information, but some backers have asked for an explanation of the raw data so they can use the controller in other ways. We’ve now published the details of the controller protocol on GitHub for anyone interested, and we’re keen to see what wild and wonderful uses people find for their controllers!

Abdi’s also making great progress on the Zapbox Pool game, now renamed “Zapbox House Party Pool” which is now broadly complete. As soon as the Unity SDK is available we’ll work to release this for Zapbox as soon as possible.

Props to Stu for the great design work on the logo and the rest of the in-game assets 🙌

Planning for the future

As well as working to get everything out to backers as quickly as possible, we’ve also been juggling some tasks around future planning for the overall success of Zapbox as a product.

As a sign of our confidence in Zapbox and our ongoing commitment to the platform, we’ve already placed an order for the components required for the next batch - due to lead times we needed to place the orders now in order to have additional stock available for Q4 this year.

We needed to switch the IMU (accelerometer and gyroscope) chip we are using for the next batch due to component availability, which required some firmware updates that had to be completed before we could place the Bluetooth module order. We’re pleased to say that was finished last week and all of our software efforts are now once again focused on getting the runtime and Unity SDK completed.

We have also been showcasing Zapbox at a few events and preparing for making Zapbox generally available. If you’re in range of London then save the date of April 20th for an in-person “first look” Zapbox event - it would be great to chat to some backers IRL, and we'll have free beer and pizza! More info coming soon on that.

As always, thanks so much for your support and patience.

Until next time,

- Team Zappar

Important usage advice when inserting phones
over 1 year ago – Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 10:48:00 AM

Happy New Year Zapboxers!

We’ve loved seeing all of the positive energy and enthusiasm shared on social media, Kickstarter comments and our Discord server as backers have been receiving their products over the last few weeks.

We really appreciate all of the feedback and we’re excited to finish up and share the first builds of demo apps and the Unity SDK shortly, so you can experience proper Mixed Reality content with your Zapbox.

The main reason for today’s update post though is to share some specific feedback and let you know what steps we’re taking to address it.

We have recently had two backers report damage to their screen protectors (and in one case scratching the screen once the protector was removed) when inserting their device into the headset. Of course the last thing we want to do is to cause damage to anyone’s phones so we’re addressing this feedback as a priority.

We have reached out to the backers for more information on the circumstances so we can fully understand what went wrong. Whilst waiting to hear back we have also been considering the likely causes and exploring mitigation options, along with ordering various screen protectors so we can do further internal testing.

We will share more details on our mitigation plans when they are finalised, but for now we wanted to make you all aware of these reports and clarify our recommendations for inserting your phone:

• Remove any cases before trying to insert your device.
• Place the headset on a flat surface.
• Initially angle the phone slightly away from the headset at the top when aligning with the grips.
• When pushing down into the grips ensure the phone is still angled away from the top of the headset or is vertical. Don’t apply any significant force when the top of the phone is angled towards the headset - see the image below.

If your phone has a glass screen protector, we recommend not using your Zapbox for now until we are able to further investigate and mitigate the risk.

We have been inserting and removing various phones from our headsets multiple times per day for the last few months without any issues, and we have also not yet been able to reproduce any damage when consciously trying to do so with various screen protectors, so we’re confident these issues should not be widespread if you follow our recommendations above.

That said we take these reports extremely seriously and are committed to making the product improvements necessary to remove any risk of damage. It is our ambition to always provide the very highest level of comfort and safety with the headset, so that you can get the maximum enjoyment from using it.

Your feedback is therefore vital to us at all stages of the journey and we really appreciate your input to help us continually improve the product. As ever, we will keep you informed at every stage and thank you for your continued support.

We'll share more on the mitigation plan and timeline in the next update, and hopefully also have some more fun and exciting stuff to share on the software side.

Until next time,

- Team Zappar

Final shipping is underway!
over 1 year ago – Sun, Dec 18, 2022 at 02:21:47 PM

Hi Zapboxers,

After a slight delay due to the ongoing postal worker strike action in the UK, we’re thrilled to share that dispatch and delivery of Zapboxes is underway! Spiral Galaxy have started dispatching the orders for UK and International backers, and the shipping lists for US and EU backers have been uploaded to Amazon for fulfilment from their warehouse network.

So wherever you are you should soon see dispatch confirmation emails in your inbox and your Zapboxes arriving shortly afterwards.

The end of the beginning

Getting the physical products into your hands is a major milestone but the physical product is of course only one part of the full Zapbox vision.

There’s a “Quick Start” page linked in the box that we’ll keep updated to signpost the things you can do with your Zapbox straight away. The best thing to try for now is using the headset by itself to view Google Cardboard content such as 360-degree videos.

You can also try out the legacy Zapbox app with the new headset (but note you’ll need to use the old Cardboard controllers for that - there’s a print-at-home PDF available if you don’t have a Zapbox Cardboard kit already). The new runtime will be much better, especially in terms of camera latency, but the old app should give some sense of what’s to come.

Right now it’s probably not worth looking for AAA batteries to get the new controllers powered up until there’s more you can do with them. That said, if you do want to verify that they work we’ve shared a link to the Android QA app that we used during the production process to demonstrate the functionality.

We decided to go ahead with shipping the products out in this pre-release form as the headset alone is still useful for Google Cardboard content and offers advantages with the legacy Zapbox content too. It also allows us to get all the shipping admin out of the way so we can fully focus on the software, and means that as soon as apps are released you’ll be able to try them out immediately.

The downside of shipping at this pre-release stage is that we’re very aware that the overall experience doesn’t yet deliver the full product vision. You might want to keep your Zapbox “box fresh” until more of the software is in place, but we wanted backers to have the choice and get the physical products delivered.

We’re of course still working hard on the new Zapbox-specific content and the Unity SDK for developers, as we look towards a “general availability” launch for Zapbox in 2023. We anticipate being able to share a simple demo app showing the new runtime in action in early January, and having a beta of Zapbox Pool and a first version of the Unity SDK a couple of weeks after that.

Join us on Discord

We’ve just set up a Zapbox Discord Server for real-time chat and support from the Zapbox community and the core Zapbox team.

We’d love to hear your feedback and more details on what you’re looking to do with your Zapbox.

Roll on 2023

As we approach the end of the year most of the Zapbox team will be taking a few days off to recharge our batteries and celebrate Christmas with family and friends. We’ll still be checking in on email and Discord but might be a little slower to respond than usual.

All the best for the festive season, and roll on 2023 - we’re really excited for what we’ve got to come.

Thanks as ever for your support!

- Team Zappar

Controller Testing and Shipping Update
over 1 year ago – Sat, Nov 26, 2022 at 10:00:17 AM

Hi Zapboxers,

A quick update here to share some good news after a visit to our UK warehouse.

We mentioned in the previous update that we’d seen a fault in one of the controllers in one of the Zapbox kits we were using for software development. Steven (Zapbox product designer) and Simon spent a day last week testing lots of controllers at our UK fulfilment partner, Spiral Galaxy Games - big thanks to the team at Spiral Galaxy for helping us to arrange the visit at such short notice.

We were able to get through a full set of functional tests on over 300 controllers during our day there. We’re very relieved to report that we didn’t come across any other controllers that exhibited the same fault! 🎉 

That gives us sufficient confidence in the manufacturing and QA processes to proceed with our original shipping plan - dispatching UK and International orders from Spiral Galaxy Games, and using stock in Amazon’s fulfilment network for the US and EU backers.

We’ve already shared the shipping lists for the UK and International orders with SGG so we can get the orders into their shipping queue. The current goal is for the Zapbox orders to be dispatched in the week starting December 5th, and we’ll aim to sync that up with when the Amazon-fulfilled orders go out for US and EU backers too.

We’ll be continuing our work on the software side of things until then so that you’ll be able to experience some Zapbox-specific content when your kits arrive. We’re looking forward to sharing more details of our progress over the coming weeks. Talking of sharing updates - the AR Pioneers talk mentioned last time out is now available directly on our website without any registration required if you haven't had chance to watch it yet.

Not long to wait now - as ever thanks so much for your support and patience!

Until next time,

- Team Zappar