John Carmack

Quest 2 Will Have ‘Long Life’, Project Cambria Still Due In 2022 – Meta

December 24, 2021 From uploadvr

Meta figureheads have reiterated that the Meta Quest 2 will have a “long life”, and will not be replaced by the upcoming Project Cambria.

Consulting CTO John Carmack made that much clear in response to a new blog post from Meta’s VR/AR head, Andrew Bosworth. “An important point here is that the “project Cambria” product will *NOT* replace Quest 2, it will be sold alongside it,” Carmack said. “Quest 2 will have a long life.”

The note comes amongst concerns that Cambria, which is a new high-end standalone headset, will eventually take front and center for Meta, much in the same way that Quest 2 has slowly replaced Quest 1 over the past 14 months. Indeed, a number of apps that have released for Quest 2 this holiday season can’t even be played on Quest 1, including Resident Evil 4 and Medal of Honor.

But Cambria, which was announced at Connect a few months back, isn’t going to be a part of the Quest line of products, and new features like color passthrough and eye and face-tracking suggest the headset will be significantly more expensive than Quest 2’s $299 starting point. The project’s aim is less about widespread adoption and more concerned with implementing features that Meta believes will advance its vision of the metaverse among other uses.

Bosworth’s blog, meanwhile, reconfirmed that Cambria is planned for release sometime in 2022, though there’s still no specific window for that launch. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the headset as we move into the new year and will bring you all the latest.

John Carmack Wants The Next Connect To Be In VR Via Horizon

October 28, 2021 From uploadvr

John Carmack wants the next iteration of Meta’s Connect event to happen in VR via the new Horizon apps.

Carmack said as much in his keynote speech during this year’s event. During the session, he recalled past in-person events in which attendees would come and ask him questions in hallways, or even when he did the same inside VR last year.

“Really what we want to have is something like that session that’s like the real Connect where thousands of people are milling around, some of them cluster around me outside and we all crowd into a room for the big keynotes,” Carmack said. “And you get all of that ability without having to have people fly across the country or across the world to get there. That’s what we’ve always been pitching as the value of VR.”

“So I really do want us to pitch Connect as the north star event of what we’re doing. We’ve got an event that we do every year here, we’ve got a user base for this. We should be doing this in the metaverse. If we can’t hande this, we can’t handle the vision. And we could do this by next year. I thought we could have done it by this year if we really made this a frontline focus. But we didn’t have that focus like we do now a year ago.”

Carmack continued saying he’d be “really disappointed” if this wasn’t a reality in time for next year’s Connect. “I want to be walking around the halls or walking around the stage as my avatar in front of thousands of people getting in the feed across multiple platforms,” he said. “I’m laying that guantlet down right now, we should be able to do that. This should be exactly in line with what our stated mission is.”

The problem, as Carmack goes on to mention, is that the current Quest hardware struggles to handle even Horizon’s current 16-person limit, with character fidelity degrading in crowds. “The magic being reached for by many people is that, well, cloud rendering would let us use much more powerful systems than the current headset systems and we could add a bunch more on there.”

Carmack said he was supportive of the idea, but noted that would be a lot of cost in terms of people not having the internet connection to attend, and that Meta could also explore ideas like hybrid applications.

We’d definitely love to see Connect in VR next year – would you want to attend that way?

Facebook Connect 2021 Schedule: Zuckerberg Keynote, Carmack Unscripted & More

October 17, 2021 From uploadvr

The full line-up and schedule for this year’s Facebook Connect is now available, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote speech and John Carmack’s unscripted talk.

This year, it looks like events and sessions will “unlock” across the Connect schedule– some sessions unlock at specific times, while others simply become available “after the keynote.”

The keynote speech itself unlocks at 10am Pacific on October 28, which will see Mark Zuckerberg and “other Facebook executives” deliver the annual keynote address and “share the vision for the metaverse — a place of new immersive experiences and the next evolution of social technology, built by people like you.” There’s also a Facebook event and Oculus Venues event for the keynote, both of which reveal the keynote title to be “Infinite Horizons” — a nod to the Horizon branding that’s now being used as the moniker for the different branches of Facebook’s social VR platform.

The next biggest event is Consulting CTO John Carmack’s notoriously-unscripted annual speech and Q&A session, which unlocks at 2pm Pacific on October 28, a few hours after the keynote. Last year, Carmack spoke for more than an hour, packing a huge swath of topics into a dense, unscripted talk about the keynote announcements and Facebook’s wider VR strategy.

Here’s a few, but not nearly all, of the other Connect events:

– Developer State of the Union with Chris Pruett, Tom Langan, Allison Lee, and Mari Kyle, available from 11:45pm Pacific, October 28.

– Best Practices and Tips for App Lab Success with Chris Lang, available after the keynote

– Introduction to Mixed Reality with Britta Hummel and more, available after the keynote

– Do You Really Know App Lab? Tales Of Success From Devs with Rita Turkowski, Daniel Sproll (Realities.io), Julien Pecenicic (Smash Drums), Tommy Maloteaux (Deisim), available after the keynote

– Building for the Future: Social and World AR Experiences with Matthew Roberts and more, available after the keynote

– Bringing Diversity To Your App with Daniel Kamerling, available after the keynote

– Build Mixed Reality Experiences with Wei Lyu and more, available after the keynote

– Building Diverse Communities in Horizon Worlds with Lisa Kotecki and more, available after the keynote

Facebook Connect begins on October 28 — you can view the full schedule of talks and register for the event here.

Andrew Bosworth To Take Over As Facebook CTO In 2022

September 23, 2021 From uploadvr

Facebook Vice President of AR/VR, Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, will take over the role of Facebook Chief Technology Officer (CTO) after current CTO Mike Schroepfer announced plans to step down from the role sometime next year.

Schroepfer has been with Facebook for 13 years and after stepping away from his CTO role, he will move to a Senior Fellow role within the company. Here’s a copy of his full Twitter thread announcing his departure:

After 13 years at FB, I’ve decided to step down as CTO and pass the baton to @boztank at some point in 2022. I will stay on as long as it takes to ensure a successful leadership transition.

My new role as Senior Fellow will enable me to stay deeply connected to the company, working on key initiatives including recruiting and developing technical talent and fostering our AI investments in critical technologies like @PyTorch

It has been a privilege to lead our technology teams during a time of incredible growth & advancement. I am proud of what the team has achieved, from unleashing the benefits of AI & bringing VR to life to connecting more people around the world through technology.

I am still incredibly optimistic about the potential for AI and AR/VR to improve the lives of people every day. I am honored to be able to continue to support Facebook’s exciting future in my role as Senior Fellow.

Facebook VP of AR/VR Andrew Bosworth has taken on an increasingly public facing role over the last year or two, becoming a prominent spokesperson for Facebook’s VR/AR efforts. Bosworth has hosted Instagram AMAs (‘ask me anything’) with user-submitted questions on Facebook’s VR/AR efforts (his responses to which often flirt between informative, teasing and promotional all at once), moderated talks with Mark Zuckerberg and John Carmack on various VR and VR-adjacent topics, and dropped public hints and winks towards new products like Quest Pro.

In a statement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that as CTO, Bosworth will continue to lead Facebook Reality Labs:

As our next CTO, Boz will continue leading Facebook Reality Labs and overseeing our work in augmented reality, virtual reality and more, and as part of this transition a few other groups will join Boz’s team as well. This is all foundational to our broader efforts helping to build the metaverse, and I’m excited about the future of this work under Boz’s leadership.

Responding to Schroepfer’s thread on Twitter, Bosworth said, “Congratulations Schrep on an epic 13 year run. Lots to do still and I’m glad you’re sticking around to help.”

Facebook released Quest 2 near the end of 2020 and, last month, doubled the storage of the base $299 model to 128GB. The company also recently partnered to make Ray-Ban brand sunglasses that start at $299 and connect to your phone to answer calls or play music, or capture square stabilized 30 second videos and wide angle photos. As of the end of June 2021, Facebook employed more than 63,000 people with a significant percentage working on VR and AR technologies.