It’s that time of year again—IAAPA Expo Season. This will be my first time attending all three IAAPA shows in one year. I was in Bangkok in June and Amsterdam in September. I will soon board a ship from Barcelona for a two-week cruise to Fort Lauderdale in time for the short drive to Orlando—no jet lag for this world traveler.

I wish I could tell you there were lots of exciting new products at the Asian and European shows. However, most of what I saw was incremental improvements to existing products, a signal of a maturing market.

This year's biggest news came from the headset manufacturers, who were all rolling out their mixed reality features. Quest keeps pushing the prices down. Their new Quest 3S offers mixed reality in the old Quest 2 form factor for only $299. The Pico 4 Ultra holds onto its mid-price position while promising a suite of location-based services in an attempt to catch up to HTC.

HTC VIVE released a mid-cycle update to the Focus called Vision (not to be confused with that Apple headset – come on, HTC, really?) The Focus Vision shows HTC’s commitment to the LBE market. It addresses almost all the complaints operators and manufacturers have had while adding great features like auto IPD adjustment, hot-swappable batteries, and full-color stereo passthrough for mixed reality. The new headset has the same premium price as the Focus 3. You get what you pay for.

As you can tell, we abandoned the magazine format for the buyer’s guide. PDFs are hard to read on mobile and challenging to distribute as attachments (they are big and get caught in spam filters). Plus, the time and money spent on layout and design has been better spent on sangria and tapas.

This format provides easier access for readers and more value for advertisers, who can link directly to their websites for better lead generation. The filters make it simple to find the products you’re looking for, and in the rapidly evolving VR market, we can update product listings way faster online. I can also update this guide on the fly as we get closer to the show, offer the latest news during the show, and provide post-show wrap-ups in case you missed something (who can see everything at IAAPA?)

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Stay immersed,

Bob