meta vr

Report: Meta to Release First AR Glasses to Developers Only & Not Consumers

June 14, 2022 From roadtovr

Meta has been working on what it calls a “fully-fledged AR device” for some time now, however a recent report from The Information maintains the first in Meta’s line of AR glasses will be reserved for developers only and not for enthusiasts as previously thought.

The report alleges that the company won’t be commercially releasing what is now codenamed Project Nazare, which was teased back at Connect 2021 when the company changed its name from Facebook to Meta.

Back then, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said the “ultimate goal” with Project Nazare was to develop “true augmented reality glasses.”

Here’s a mockup of the sort of augmented reality interactions Meta hopes to provide with its AR glasses:

The Information maintains Nazare was scheduled to launch commercially in 2024, however now Meta has allegedly changed course and scrapped those plans to position its first AR glasses as a sort of demonstration product, or hardware developer kit as such. It’s said that a follow-up device, codenamed Artemis, will be the first on offer to consumers.

It’s said that the move to reposition Nazare as a developer-only device comes alongside a wider push to downsize Reality Labs, Meta’s AR/VR and emerging tech division responsible for a host of devices. Reality Labs is known for everything from the standalone VR headset Quest 2 to devices such as Project Aria, a sensor-rich pair of glasses which Meta is using to train its AR perception systems and asses public perception of the technology.

A previous report from The Verge in April held that Meta was already internally expecting tepid sales expectations in the low tens of thousands for Nazare. It was also said Nazare would likely test Zuckerberg’s appetite for further hardware subsidies that may have stretched well beyond that of Meta’s $300 Quest 2.

To boot, the company is also reportedly shelving plans to release a smartwatch with a detachable display and two cameras in favor of a design better suited to control a later version of the glasses.

Meta’s Wrist-worn XR controller | Image courtesy Meta, Mark Zuckerberg

Last month, Zuckerberg traveled to Italy to show off Meta’s wrist-worn XR controller prototype to EssilorLuxottica, the Italian parent company behind the Ray-Ban Stories camera glasses and a host of other conventional luxury eyewear brands. Critically, the controller prototype uses electromyography (EMG) sensors to detect electrical signals which control the muscles in your hands, and doesn’t incorporate camera sensors.

All of this may be years out, however Meta is looking forward to the upcoming release of Project Cambria, a VR headset capable of AR interactions thanks to color passthrough camera sensors, aka ‘mixed reality’. That headset, which doesn’t have an official name yet, is undoubtedly meant to serve as a precursor to the company’s AR glasses, as apps developed for Cambria could one day inform a Meta-driven AR app ecosystem.

Whatever the case, Project Cambria is set to be “significantly higher” than $800, the company confirmed in May, which also puts it squarely in the developers/prosumers realm of accessibility.

Report: Apple Hires Meta’s XR Head of Public Relations

December 27, 2021 From roadtovr

Apple may be nearing launch of its long-awaited XR headsets, as the company has reportedly hired Meta’s head of communications for its consumer XR products.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports in his weekly ‘Power On’ newsletter that Apple has hired Andrea Schubert, Communications Director at Meta’s consumer hardware division for XR, including Portal, AR and VR devices.

Schubert has yet to comment on the report or change her employment status on LinkedIn. We’ve reached out and will update this piece when/if we receive reply.

Schubert joined Meta (then Facebook) in March 2016 for the launch of the company’s first consumer VR headset, Oculus Rift. Over the years Schubert has overseen public relations for the company spanning VR devices including Oculus Rift S, Oculus Go, Quest, and Quest 2. She’s also handled comms for all of Meta’s biggest XR events, including CES, Connect, F8, Sundance, and GDC.

Hiring Schubert, arguably the most connected and experienced XR comms director in the field, could signal that Apple is setting up the last bits of infrastructure ahead of an XR product launch.

At this point it’s fairly clear Apple is preparing its own immersive headsets. Reports have suggested in the past that an Apple VR headset with limited AR capabilities will arrive sometime in 2022, priced at around $3,000 and sporting dual 8K displays. There’s also been talk of Apple ordering high-PPI microdisplays, suggesting the headset will have a less bulky form factor than ones that use conventional VR displays, such as Quest 2.

Apple’s alleged VR headset is said to come as a precursor to a full-fledged AR device. It’s an open secret that the company has been working on AR optics, and releasing AR headset codenames, display dimensions, and fields of view in successive versions of iOS.

In typical Apple fashion the company still hasn’t acknowledged any such claims or supposed information leaks though. We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled on Apple’s event website in 2022 for what may be the big ‘one more thing’ moment we’ve all been waiting for.

Meta Aims to Further Ratchet Down on Security with Bug Bounty for Quest 2, Portal & Ray-Ban Stories

December 10, 2021 From roadtovr

Meta today announced it’s updating a bug bounty program for its hardware products, something intended to reward anyone outside of the company who reports security vulnerabilities. With some new payout guidelines in place, Meta is ostensibly aiming to highlight its commitment to security following a total rebrand that’s put significant focus on its XR hardware and its vision of the metaverse.

Meta says the program, which over the past year has netted third-party security researchers over $2 million in bounties, will include its most recent XR products, such as Quest 2, Meta Portal, and Ray-Ban Stories.

With the updated bug bounty program, the company says it’s being more transparent with bounty payout amounts, and what system vulnerabilities it classifies as top priorities.

Meta lists a few concrete examples of what to expect in its new hardware-focused payout guidelines. A bug that might surreptitiously allow mic access on Quest could net a someone $5,000. A persistent, full secure boot bypass of Quest software would pay out up to $30,000.

“If a researcher demonstrates in a bug report that their finding could potentially result in physical health, safety, or privacy risks, we’ll also take these impacts into consideration when determining the overall bounty payout,” Meta says in a blogpost. “As we’ve done since establishing the bug bounty program more than 10 years ago, the final payout amount will be based on the maximum possible security impact of a bug submission.”

Ray-Ban Stories | Image courtesy Ray-Ban, Facebook

This follows the company’s announcement in October that it was rebranding away from Facebook and Oculus, and making a commitment to build out its vision of an interoperable and immersive social platform—i.e. ‘the metaverse’.

To boot, Meta has just launched an open beta for Horizon Worlds, the company’s proto-metaverse platform that puts an emphasis on user-generated content—the sort of the things we’ve seen from long-standing social VR platforms such as Rec Room and VRChat.

The new bug hunter guidelines seemingly come amidst a greater shift within Meta Reality Labs in how it develops hardware. In a leaked company memo from earlier this year, Reality Labs head Andrew Bosworth maintained the company would change its approach to product development and put greater focus on security and data privacy at the hardware level.

“Instead of imagining a product and trimming it down to fit modern standards of data privacy and security we are going to invert our process. We will start with the assumption that we can’t collect, use, or store any data,” Bosworth’s memo reads. “The burden is on us to demonstrate why certain data is truly required for the product to work. Even then I want us to scope it as aggressively as we can, holding a higher bar for sending data to the server than we do for processing it locally. I have no problem with us giving users options to share more if they choose (opt-in) but by default we shouldn’t expect it.”

All of this seems like Meta is turning over a new leaf, however trust is easier broken than it is granted. It’s something the company will have to actively battle if it hopes to deflect unwanted scrutiny around its future products, which will necessarily be geared towards gathering increasingly sophisticated biometric user data.

Report: Meta is Considering Physical Stores to Sell Its Vision of the Metaverse

November 10, 2021 From roadtovr

Meta (formerly Facebook) is not only building its next generation of AR and VR headsets, but it’s looking to jumpstart a sort of immersive internet the company believes will one day be the future of human interaction—that’s the ‘metaverse’ everyone’s talking about. And to sell that idea to the masses, the company has allegedly discussed rolling out physical stores.

A New York Times report maintains that Meta has been planning its own retail stores that aim to eventually span the world. The report cites people with knowledge of the project in addition to internal company documents shared with The New York Times.

Those documents allegedly revealed that Meta’s stores aim to let people try out its upcoming XR hardware in a “more open and connected” space which will make guests feel “curiosity, closeness,” and “welcomed”—all whilst on a “judgment free journey.”

We know marketing fluff when we hear it, however the report maintains that “serious work” was started last year, predating the Meta rebranding late last month. Whether it actually follows through with those plans is still an uncertainty. The company hasn’t substantiated any of the claims made in the report.

The company is no stranger to the challenges of getting VR headsets on neophyte noggins. It’s had pop-up events and in-store demos as far back as 2016 to prepare for the launch of the original Oculus Rift.

Opening physical stores though would be much larger step for Meta, putting it in the same retail class as Microsoft, Apple and Google; the latter just opening its first retail store this summer. It would not only need highly visible locations to broaden its push into the consumer market, it would need to be very confident in its products—emphasis on the plural.

Although the company only sells Oculus Quest 2 and has partnered to create the Ray-Ban Stories camera glasses, it has a few products in the works. Last month the company unveiled its Project Cambria mixed reality headset and teased an AR headset called Project Nazare. We aren’t sure when either will be productized, but you can bet Meta will be looking to offer in-person demos when they do, since both AR and MR headsets will be entirely new territory for most people.