Facebook Connect 2021

Meta’s Latest Avatar System is Finally Rolling Out to All Unity Developers

December 13, 2021 From roadtovr

Following an initial announcement eight months ago, Meta has released its latest avatar system for all Unity VR developers, including support for App Lab titles and limited support for non-Oculus platforms like SteamVR.

Update (December 13th, 2021): Meta today announced that its latest avatar system is finally available to all Unity developers. Formerly called Oculus Avatars 2.0—and now called Meta Avatars—the system brings a huge upgrade to avatar style and expressiveness compared to the company’s prior avatar systems.

The Meta Avatars SDK offers support for Unity-based VR applications on Quest and Rift, with limited support for non-Oculus platforms, like Unity VR apps built for SteamVR. Meta says that Quest apps on App Lab can make full use of the Meta Avatar SDK, just like those on the official store.

Meta Avatars aren’t yet supported in Unreal Engine, but support is expected eventually.

The company says it has built the Meta Avatar SDK “with developer needs in mind.” Developers can override the system’s positioning of avatar bodies and facial expressions if necessary to fine-tune avatar behavior for their given application.

The company also says the Meta Avatar SDK uses an interesting distributed architecture for performance. Instead of having all headsets redundantly calculate all of the positions and expressions of all avatars in a given scene, each headset performs the calculations for its own avatar and then streams that information to other participants. Developers are also free to use the system with whichever networking stack they’d like, which increases flexibility over a proprietary solution.

Oculus-based applications using the Meta Avatar SDK will use the avatar that player’s have customized through their headset’s avatar creator. SteamVR applications can use the Meta Avatar SDK, but because those apps aren’t tied to the Oculus platform players are restricted to choosing from one of 32 pre-configured avatars. In cross-play scenarios, Meta says that although non-Oculus players can’t fully configure their own avatar, they will see the fully customized avatars of Oculus players.

Documentation from the Meta Avatar SDK also includes a ‘Best Practices’ guide for developers to consider how they handle avatars within their apps.

As far as we know, the Meta Avatar system currently doesn’t support multiple avatar outfits or app-specific outfits, which means you can only have one ‘look’ at any given time. Similarly, it doesn’t appear to be possible for applications to offer their own unique outfits, accessories, or styles for players to use with their avatars within a specific app.

The original article, which overviews the preliminary release of Meta Avatars to select developers earlier this year, continues below.

Original Article (October 28th, 2021): Facebook began rolling out its latest avatars in the Oculus Avatars 2.0 update in April, which creates new default avatars for the company’s first-party social VR platform, Facebook Horizon.

In addition to being more lifelike and visually appealing than its prior releases, Avatars 2.0 is also positioned to unify the Oculus and Facebook ecosystems somewhat by bringing them to the full swath of Facebook properties including the Facebook app, Messenger, Instagram, and more.

Over the past year a number of third-party applications have worked with Facebook to adopt the system. You can already see the new avatars in Epic Roller Coasters, PokerStars VR, and Topgolf with Pro Putt, Synth Riders and ForeVR Bowling. This SDK release will allow all Quest developers to do the same thing.

In comparison to previous avatar systems created for the Oculus platform, Avatars 2.0 offers up more possibilities for customization, including customizable skin tone, hair style, face shape/markings/lines, eye shape, eyebrows, eye makeup, and more. You can also choose clothing, glasses, and body types—something Facebook says makes for one quintillion possible combinations.

The company hasn’t said exactly when to expect the Oculus Avatar 2.0 SDK, although we’ll be glued to the company’s developer blog then to give you the heads up.

Disney Wants To Create Its Own Metaverse

November 16, 2021 From vrscout

The company’s massive collection of original IPs could make for the ultimate metaverse experience.

To the metaverse and beyond! The Walt Disney Company has announced that they will be joining Mark Zuckerberg in creating their own branded metaverse by connecting the physical and digital worlds using Disney’s collection of IPs universe. This includes iconic characters like Buzz Lightyear and Princess Elsa to big franchises like Star Wars, Marvel, The Muppets, Disney Animation Studios, and so much more.

Disney has been experimenting with VR/AR development for some time now. In 2018, the Disney Imagineers created PoseVR, an animation tool that let Disney animators create in VR. They also developed an AR puppeteering tool called MotionStick, a “force jacket” capable of generating physical feedback in VR, and even launched an AR app that layers Star Destroyers over famous landmarks around the world.

Disney has also created some pretty stellar VR experiences with their awesome Vader Immortal series and Star Wars: Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge, both made for the Oculus (Meta) Quest.

Just recently, ILMxLAB and Facebook teamed up to bring a preview of Star Wars: Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge to the Downtown Disney District at the Disneyland Resort.

During a Disney corporate results call, Disney CEO Bob Chapek said, “The Walt Disney Company has a long track record as an early adopter in the use of technology to enhance the entertainment experience,” adding, “Our efforts to date are merely a prologue to a time when we’ll be able to connect the physical and digital world even more closely, allowing for storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney metaverse, and we look forward to creating unparalleled opportunities for consumers to experience everything Disney has to offer across our products and platforms, wherever the consumer may be.”

At the moment there are no specific details regarding Disney’s metaverse or even the types of technology they plan on using, but you can bet your Mickey Mouse hat that legacy characters such as Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Cinderella, as well as popular Disney Plus characters such as The Mandalorian and Loki, will make an appearance.

Disney Plus currently has around 118 million subscribers. Disney views the metaverse as a potential way to increase its subscription numbers while, simultaneously, marking their stake in the growing VR/AR industry.

Image Credit: Disney

When Zuckerberg discussed his vision of the metaverse during Facebook’s Connect event, he did say that Facebook’s vision of the metaverse will not be built by one single company: “It will be built by creators and developers making new experiences and digital items that are interoperable and unlock a massively larger creative economy than the one constrained by today’s platforms and their policies.”

Much like how Walt Disney envisioned his innovative theme park immersing visitors in a place of joy and imagination, Chapek sees the metaverse stretching beyond what Walt Disney could ever imagine; a world filled with unlimited possibilities and potential.

Feature Image Credit: Disney

Unpacking Connect 2021 – What it Means for the Metaverse of the Future

November 4, 2021 From roadtovr

We’re just one week past the Connect 2021 event where Meta (formerly Facebook) laid out its grand vision for both XR and the metaverse, including rebranding its entire company around the concept. The event was heavy on vision with a lot of the near-term news being more disparate. I sat down with host Kent Bye on the Voices of VR Podcast to unpack what it all means for the future.

Voices of VR is a prolific podcast hosted by creator Kent Bye who has been cataloging the happenings in the XR space for years; the show recently published its 1,000th episode!

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Bye for a candid discussion on the Connect 2021 announcements, where we mulled over what it all means for the metaverse of the future. You can listen to the episode embedded below, or find Voices of VR on your favorite podcasting app.

Zuckerberg: Meta Will Continue To Subsidize Headset Cost

November 2, 2021 From uploadvr

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave insight into the company’s current and future hardware business model at Connect 2021, indicating that the plan is to continue to sell devices at cost or with subsidies to help build a larger ecosystem with as many users as possible.

The Quest 2 starts at just $299 despite having a higher resolution, more features, and less weight than its predecessor. That entry level price, however, may just be the start for Meta’s long-term ambitions.

Back in March, Zuckerberg confirmed that the company’s business model for headsets was focused on offering a low price above everything else.

Last week at Connect 2021, Zuckerberg gave further details about Meta’s commitment to this model, now and going forward. You can read a transcription below or watch from the 43:15 mark on the video embedded above.

Most of all, I’ve come to believe that the lack of choice and high fees are stifling innovation, stopping people from building new things and holding back the entire internet economy. We’ve tried to take a different approach. We want to serve as many people as possible, which means working to make our services cost less. not more.

Our mobile apps are free. Our ads’ business model is an auction, which guarantees every business the most competitive price possible. We offer our creator and commerce tools either at cost or with modest fees to enable as much creation and commerce as possible.

And it’s worked. Billions of people love our products. We have hundreds of millions of businesses on our platform, and we have a rapidly growing ecosystem and a thriving business.

That’s the approach that we want to take to help build the metaverse too. We plan to continue to either subsidize our devices or sell them at cost to make them available to more people. We’ll continue supporting sideloading and linking to PCs, so consumers and developers have choice rather than forcing them to use the Quest Store to find apps or reach customers. And we’ll aim to offer developer and creator services with low fees in as many cases as possible. So we can maximize the overall creator economy, while recognizing that to keep investing in this future we’ll need to keep some fees higher for some period to make sure that we don’t lose too much money on this program overall.

After all, while a growing number of developers are already profitable, we expect to invest many billions of dollars for years to come before the metaverse reaches scale. Our hope though is that if we all work at it then within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce and support jobs for millions of creators.

Facebook Rebrands as ‘Meta’, Oculus Branding to be Phased Out

October 29, 2021 From roadtovr

Facebook today announced that it’s changing its name to Meta. The rebrand comes as the the company shifts its primary focus toward building the metaverse and the XR products that will support it. The Oculus brand will be phased out, with the Quest product line becoming Meta Quest.

Facebook has been increasingly signaling the shift toward its forward-looking metaverse efforts, and today that shift has culminated in a complete rebrand of the company.

Henceforth, the company will go by the name Meta, while the name Facebook will be reserved for the company’s social VR platform specifically, alongside its other products like Instagram and WhatsApp.

The goal, the company says, is to realign its name with its primary objective of building out the metaverse—a sort of immersive internet that the company believes wholeheartedly is the future of human communication and interaction.

The Oculus brand, which has existed alongside the company’s other products, will be phased out in order to allow the company’s metaverse and XR efforts to be positioned under Meta as the parent brand.

Oculus was acquired by Meta back in 2014 and after a few years of relative independence it began steadily merging with the company. The decision to dissolve the Oculus name into Meta finally brings a symbolic end to the company which was partly responsible for reigniting the VR industry as we know it today.

Image courtesy Meta

Meta’s VP of XR, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, explained how the rebranding will trickle down to (former) Oculus products.

For one, the company’s leading VR product, Oculus Quest, will become Meta Quest starting in early 2022.

Other ‘Oculus’ branded properties like the Oculus smartphone app will become the Meta Quest app in due time.

“We all have a strong attachment to the Oculus brand, and this was a very difficult decision to make. While we’re changing the brand of the hardware, Oculus will continue to be a core part of our DNA and will live on in things like software and developer tools,” wrote Bosworth.

Additionally Meta is pulling its overall XR organization (formerly Facebook Reality Labs) under the Meta brand as well, which will be known going forward as Meta Reality Labs. Meanwhile, the company’s social VR apps have steadily shifted under the Meta Horizon brand, which now includes Horizon Worlds, Horizon Workroom, Horizon Venues, and the newly announced Horizon Home which will enhance the Quest home space with social features.

Zuckerberg Announces Facebook Company Rebrand To Meta

October 28, 2021 From uploadvr

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook’s company title will be renamed to Meta.

Facebook Becomes Meta

The social media platform Facebook will keep its name, as will other company services and apps, while Meta will become the official name for the umbrella company that oversees Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Reality Labs and all its other subsets.

The official announcement follows on from a report from The Verge last week that indicated the change might be incoming and announced officially at Connect.

As we remarked last week, the move is not dissimilar to Google’s 2015 decision to rebrand their company title from Google to Alphabet. This was done to distinguish Google from the search engine and provide a more encompassing name for the umbrella company managing all of its services and products.

For Meta, the new name signals a shift towards the metaverse, which has been a big focus of Facebook’s recent VR/AR efforts and today’s Connect keynote. Currently the company brands its own social VR applications on platforms like the Oculus Quest as ‘Horizon’, including Horizon Home, Horizon Workrooms and Horizon Worlds.

What do you make of the new Meta name? Let us know in the comments below!

Facebook Reveals Customizable ‘Horizon Workrooms’, Work Accounts

October 28, 2021 From vrscout

Facebook unveils new updates to its VR coworking platform as well as a new-and-improved Oculus for Business program.

Facebook Connect 2021 continues to deliver, with the company today announcing several exciting business-related features for the Oculus Quest 2. In addition to the new Horizon Home workplace environment, the company today announced that you’ll soon have the ability to customize your Horizon Workrooms.

Later this year, Facebook will introduce a variety of captivating environments to its VR co-working platform. Not only that, but you’ll also be able to change the color schemes and upload custom logos and images, whether they be informative reference material or simple motivational posters. In one of the promotional images provided, we can see a VR co-working environment customized specifically for Zoom. This includes a large Zoom logo accompanied by several company posters.

Image Credit: Facebook

Facebook also used the conference to unveil its new-and-improved Oculus for Business program. Previously, those involved in the program were required to use an Oculus Quest 2 headset different from that of the consumer model. Designed specifically for professional use, Oculus for Business headsets are unable to run many consumer-focused apps, such as Beat Saber.

The new-and-improved Oculus for Business program ditches these headsets altogether, allowing partners to access company assets and information by logging into a ‘Work Account’ via a standard consumer model headset. This account will operate independently of your personal account.

Facebook’s revamped Oculus for Business program will also feature useful tools such as Mobile Device Management, DP & SSO integration, and more. Oculus for Business is currently in closed beta. Additional participants will be invited in 2022 before its official launch in 2023.

In addition to customizable Workrooms and a revitalized Oculus for Business program, Facebook has also announced several improvements to multitasking functionality on Oculus Quest 2 as well as a new Horizon Home workspace environment.

Feature Image Credit: Facebook

Facebook’s Metaverse Takes a Baby Step with Customizable ‘Horizon Workrooms’ Environments

October 28, 2021 From roadtovr

Facebook launched Horizon Workrooms back in summer, bringing to Quest a new enterprise-focused virtual collaboration platform that connects both VR and video chat users in the same place. Soon the app will let you choose from different environments which will be customizable to some degree—a prescient step on the way to Facebook’s vision of its metaverse.

“Later this year we’ll introduce customizable rooms in Workrooms, giving you the ability to choose from a wide variety of different environments to get work done, and place your own company logos or team posters in your rooms,” the company said today during its annual Connect dev conference. “This will let people adapt their virtual workspaces to match individual company styles, cultures, and branding guidelines.”

So far Horizon Workrooms has only offered a few standard boardroom spaces. That isn’t changing terribly much with the ability to do things like modify colors, decorations, and import company logos and posters, however the ostensibly conservative update coming to the app later this year is definitely another bid to make Facebook and its VR hardware more attractive to companies looking to stay distanced and distributed. You know, the ‘new normal’.

Facebook surprise-launched Horizon Workrooms back in August, which lets VR and video chat users work and physically collaborate in the same virtual space. Since then it’s included support for things like Zoom Meeting and Zoom Whiteboard for better cross-platform collaboration, and also included more intuitive whiteboards, instant Remote Desktop connection, and AR keyboard labels in its v1.1 release.

And customizable Workrooms environments aren’t the only thing on the agenda this year either, as Facebook continues to refine its expansion into enterprise VR to make it cheaper and more attractive. It’s building towards the 2023 release of dedicated ‘Work Accounts’ which will essentially let companies adopt the consumer Quest hardware instead of having to buy the more expensive Quest for Business kit for $800.

This comes on the tails of a Facebook hiring spree that will see an additional 10,000 people added to its ranks in effort to build its version of the metaverse, or what you might define as a connect platform of virtual experiences and worlds that share some level of connectivity, interoperability, and identity.

Horizon Home Replaces Quest Home, Adding Social Integration & Parties

October 28, 2021 From uploadvr

Announced today at Facebook’s annual Connect conference, Horizon Home will replace Oculus Home on the Oculus Quest platform, bringing new social integration with multiple users.

“Launching soon as an update to the existing Home experience, this is our early vision for your Home in the metaverse,” Facebook explains on the Oculus Blog Connect recap. “A social space where you can bring friends to hang out, watch videos together, or jump into POPULATION: ONE with your squad.”

The ability to build and customize your home environment, akin to the tools available on Oculus Home for Rift on PC, will arrive “in the future” according to Facebook. Customization is on the way, but is “a little further out” than the new social integration features launching soon.

Speaking on a call earlier this week, Facebook’s VP of VR/AR (and 2022’s incoming CTO) Andrew Bosworth discussed how Horizon Home will be the new landing point for any Quest headset, replacing and building on the current Oculus Home system with more features.

“Horizon Home is the first thing you’re gonna see when you put on your Oculus Quest,” he said. “Previously there was Oculus Home when you put it on, but our goal is to actually make it Horizon Home [and] make it more social so you can invite your friends to join you as avatars.”

Facebook did not specify what video services would be supported to “watch a video” with friends in Horizon Home. The promotional video, embedded above, showed support for “Oculus Originals” 360 video experiences and a tab with “Your Media”, which might indicate support for local media files stored on the headset.

Other existing first-party services, like Oculus TV and Facebook Watch, are likely bets as well. However, it remains to be seen whether existing media streaming options (such as using web streaming services through Oculus Browser) will support multiple users in Horizon Home.

Likewise, there was no word on any new partnerships with major third-party content providers, such as Netflix, Disney+ and more, which could provide better and/or native social viewing integration with Horizon Home.

Facebook also announced that, starting later this year, Quest will support Messenger audio calls in VR, allowing you to call your Facebook friends from within your headset.

Facebook Boosts AR Developers Tools for Forthcoming AR Glasses

October 28, 2021 From roadtovr

Today Facebook announced that it plans to expand the capabilities of its Spark AR platform to give developers more tools to build experiences that leverage existing smartphone-based AR and the company’s upcoming AR glasses.

Facebook has made no secret that its Ray-Ban Stories camera glasses are just its first step toward building full blown AR glasses. But just as the hardware continues to be refined, the software must evolve too.

Facebook’s Spark AR Studio toolset was initially built largely around AR face filters but has been steadily expanding with more features. The latest updates improve the platform’s understanding of things beyond the user’s face, like their entire body and the world around them. The company says it’s “working toward fully-featured AR glasses” and hopes the new capabilities of Spark AR will “illuminate the path to AR glasses.”

The updated toolset will soon support geo-mapped experiences for public spaces which will allow for location-based AR experiences that will be accessible from specific locations. This could enable experiences like a scavenger hunt, guided tour around a city, or even a murder mystery where you have to go find clues in the real world.

Facebook says it’s testing this geo-locked AR capability with select partners, but will open it up to everyone in 2022.

Beyond geo-awareness, the company says it’s adding body and hand-tracking to Spark AR Studio which will allow developers to easily anchor AR effects to a person’s body. The capability will support “20 different 2D key points” which can be applied to a single person or multiple people.

Hands can be tracked specifically as well, and Facebook says a hand bounding-box will be the first function of a “multi-phased capability rollout” which will ostensibly add additional hand-tracking features (like, perhaps, finger-tracking) in the future.

Facebook says that body and hand-tracking in Spark AR Studio will be available “soon.”

The company is also building out what it calls a “virtual objects pipeline” for AR, which will make it easy to place virtual 3D objects in the scene which can include text, characters, GIFs, stickers, and more, all of which will support an understanding of depth, occlusion, and plane tracking to convincingly existing in the space. This developer feature will come in 2022, according to Facebook.