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Reality Labs Chief Scientist Outlines a New Compute Architecture for True AR Glasses

May 2, 2022 From roadtovr

Speaking at the IEDM conference late last year, Meta Reality Labs’ Chief Scientist Michael Abrash laid out the company’s analysis of how contemporary compute architectures will need to evolve to make possible the AR glasses of our sci-fi conceptualizations.

While there’s some AR ‘glasses’ on the market today, none of them are truly the size of a normal pair of glasses (even a bulky pair). The best AR headsets available today—the likes of HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap 2—are still closer to goggles than glasses and are too heavy to be worn all day (not to mention the looks you’d get from the crowd).

If we’re going to build AR glasses that are truly glasses-sized, with all-day battery life and the features needed for compelling AR experiences, it’s going to take require a “range of radical improvements—and in some cases paradigm shifts—in both hardware […] and software,” says Michael Abrash, Chief Scientist at Reality Labs, Meta’s XR organization.

That is to say: Meta doesn’t believe that its current technology—or anyone’s for that matter—is capable of delivering those sci-fi glasses that every AR concept video envisions.

But, the company thinks it knows where things need to head in order for that to happen.

Abrash, speaking at the IEDM 2021 conference late last year, laid out the case for a new compute architecture that could meet the needs of truly glasses-sized AR devices.

Follow the Power

The core reason to rethink how computing should be handled on these devices comes from a need to drastically reduce power consumption to meet battery life and heat requirements.

“How can we improve the power efficiency [of mobile computing devices] radically by a factor of 100 or even 1,000?” he asks. “That will require a deep system-level rethinking of the full stack, with end-to-end co-design of hardware and software. And the place to start that rethinking is by looking at where power is going today.”

To that end, Abrash laid out a graph comparing the power consumption of low-level computing operations.

Image courtesy Meta

As the chart highlights, the most energy intensive computing operations are in data transfer. And that doesn’t mean just wireless data transfer, but even transferring data from one chip inside the device to another. What’s more, the chart uses a logarithmic scale; according to the chart, transferring data to RAM uses 12,000 times the power of the base unit (which in this case is adding two numbers together).

Bringing it all together, the circular graphs on the right show that techniques essential to AR—SLAM and hand-tracking—use most of their power simply moving data to and from RAM.

“Clearly, for low power applications [such as in lightweight AR glasses], it is critical to reduce the amount of data transfer as much as possible,” says Abrash.

To make that happen, he says a new compute architecture will be required which—rather than shuffling large quantities of data between centralized computing hubs—more broadly distributes the computing operations across the system in order to minimize wasteful data transfer.

Compute Where You Least Expect It

A starting point for a distributed computing architecture, Abrash says, could begin with the many cameras that AR glasses need for sensing the world around the user. This would involve doing some preliminary computation on the camera sensor itself before sending only the most vital data across power hungry data transfer lanes.

Image courtesy Meta

To make that possible Abrash says it’ll take co-designed hardware and software, such that the hardware is designed with a specific algorithm in mind that is essentially hardwired into the camera sensor itself—allowing some operations to be taken care of before any data even leaves the sensor.

Image courtesy Meta

“The combination of requirements for lowest power, best requirements, and smallest possible form-factor, make XR sensors the new frontier in the image sensor industry,” Abrash says.

Continue on Page 2: Domain Specific Sensors »

Filed Under: AR glasses, AR Headset, ar industry, iedm 2021, Meta, michael abrash, News, Reality Labs, vr industry

Zuckerberg Warns Shareholders: Metaverse Investments May Not Flourish Until 2030s

April 28, 2022 From roadtovr

Today during Meta’s Q1 2022 earnings call CEO Mark Zuckerberg told shareholders that they should buckle up for the long haul because the company’s steep investments in XR and metaverse technologies aren’t expected to flourish until the next decade.

Today Meta gave its shareholders a quarterly update, in which the company overviewed its latest earnings and expenses.

For Reality Labs, the company’s XR and metaverse division, revenue was up 30% year-over-year, from $534 million in Q1 2021 to $695 million in Q1 2022.

However, costs associated with running the Reality Labs division rose even more, up by 62% year-over-year, from $1.83 billion in Q1 2021 to $2.96 billion in Q2 2022.

This growth in costs wasn’t unexpected. Meta told investors last year they should expect the company’s XR investments in 2021 to total $10 billion… and to grow even more from there.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been asking for investor patience in his vision for XR and metaverse technologies for years. Back in 2017 he was already prepping investors for a long haul, saying that in order to reach mainstream tracition, XR would need a 10 year trajectory from the year the company acquired Oculus—a timeline that pushed out to 2024.

But in Zuckerberg’s eyes that timeline may have slipped considerably.

Today during Meta’s Q1 2022 earnings call, during a lengthy, unscripted response to a shareholder question, Zuckerberg said that he didn’t expect the company’s metaverse and XR investments to really flourish until the 2030s.

So we have multiple teams in parallel that we’ve sort of now spun up [to build XR and metaverse tech]. This goes for VR as well as augmented reality and the other work that we’re doing and is sort of driven by the success that we feel like we’re seeing in the markets and the technology is starting to be ready to really ramp up.

So those [operating losses for Reality Labs], we’re experiencing today. I mean, having those teams operating is something that you see weigh on the results and is one of the reasons why I think the growth rates and expenses have been so high, and I think we’ll continue investing more over some period. But at some point, we will have all those product teams fully staffed for a few versions into the future and then the growth rates there will come down.

But it’s not going to be until those products really hit the market and scale in a meaningful way and this market ends up being big that this will be a big revenue or profit contributor to the business. So that’s why I’ve given the color on past calls that I expect [substantial revenue from Reality Labs] to be later this decade, right?

Maybe primarily, this is laying the groundwork for what I expect to be a very exciting 2030s when this is like—when this is sort of more established as the primary computing platform at that point. I think that there will be results along the way for that, too. But I do think that this is going to be a longer cycle.

To be fair, the company’s initial ’10 year trajectory’ included only a vague idea of the metaverse—something that, despite still being somewhat nebulous—has come into clearer focus in the eight years since Meta acquired Oculus and set out to build ‘the next computing platform’.

Meta arguably didn’t take its first stab at trying to figure out what the metaverse might look like until 2016 when it began seriously experimenting with social VR in what would ultimately become Facebook Spaces, the company’s first social VR app which launched in 2017.

Even so, progress has been slow. Facebook Spaces was shut down in 2019, to be superseded by Horizon. But Horizon—which was first announced in 2019—didn’t launch until the far end 2021… and it’s still only available to a limited audience.

For shareholders seeing Meta spend $2–$3 billion on Reality Labs per quarter… it makes sense why the company is being regularly questioned about its steep spending. Zuckerberg’s suggestion that the investments won’t really flourish until the 2030s surely isn’t going to help matters.

To that end, Zuckerberg said during the earnings call that the company’s plan is to use revenue from its non-XR businesses (Facebook, Instagram, and the like) to fund its aggressive and forward-looking spending. For investors to stick around for the long haul, Zuckerberg is going to need to continue to emphatically sell his belief that XR is the next computing platform and explain why shareholders should stick around for the ride.

Filed Under: mark zuckerberg, Meta, meta earnings call, meta q1 2022 earnings, News, vr industry

One of the Last Bastions of the Oculus Brand is No More

April 25, 2022 From roadtovr

Alongside the announcement of the company’s first retail store, Meta has begun redirecting visitors of the longstanding Oculus.com website to its new Meta Store.

Facebook announced back in late 2021 that it would rebrand itself to Meta and eventually dissolve the Oculus brand. In 2022 the company has steadily taken steps to make this a reality, including rebranding its flagship VR headset, Oculus Quest 2, as Meta Quest 2. The company has also pushed the Meta Quest brand elsewhere by replacing the Oculus logo in various places.

The Oculus logo and type under Facebook

But one steadfast holdout was Oculus.com, the URL of company’s front-facing VR division for many years, which housed the storefront for the company to sell headsets along with its VR app catalogue. Even after the site’s content had fully moved to Meta Quest branding, the URL still read Oculus.com.

Today Meta continued its move to erase the Oculus brand; if you visit Oculus.com you’ll now be redirected to store.facebook.com/quest. The new site is a unified storefront for all of Meta’s hardware products, which right now is just Quest, Portal, and Ray-Ban Stories.

The move came at the same time the company announced it will be opening its first retail store which will also feature all of its hardware products.

Meta must have been in a rush to make the switch, as it oddly dropped Oculus.com URL in favor of a Facebook.com URL (instead of a Meta.com, which the company appears to control).

A large portion of the VR community were blindsided by Meta’s decision to dissolve the Oculus brand which has held very positive sentiment despite the growing unpopularity of the Facebook brand which owned it (prior to the change to Meta). The brand was so iconic that it’s still common to see people refer to any of the company’s headsets as ‘the Oculus’.

Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, who was booted from the company back in 2017, suggested that Meta should have embraced the Oculus name even more deeply, rather than dissolve it.

“If anything, they should have renamed the whole company Oculus [instead of Meta]. It isn’t just the best brand in their stable, it is one of the most positively associated brands in existence,” Luckey said recently on Twitter. “Not even Quest branding will survive in the long run. It will all be replaced by Meta.”

For execs at Meta, however, the move makes sense. The company has made a big pivot toward focusing on the metaverse and wanted to point its hardware and software in that direction in a unified way. Instead of Oculus Quest, Facebook Horizon, and Facebook Portal, now it’s Meta Quest, Meta Horizon, and Meta Portal.

Only time will tell if the branding move was the right choice—or even if it really matters at all—but the general sentiment among XR industry & enthusiast folks is that the Oculus brand was liked and will be missed.

But Oculus.com isn’t completely dead. Not yet, anyway. Although Oculus.com now redirects to a Facebook.com URL, the Oculus.com domain still houses the company’s entire VR app catalogue and its VR developer resources; meanwhile, the Quest companion smartphone app, which is required to use the headset, is still called ‘Oculus’. Though it seems likely these too will be retired in favor of Meta branding before the year is out.

Filed Under: Meta, meta brand, meta quest, meta rebrand, News, oculus, oculus brand, vr industry

Apple Says Steep ‘Horizon Worlds’ Creator Fees Show Meta’s “Hypocrisy”

April 14, 2022 From roadtovr

Earlier this week Meta announced that it would begin testing tools to let creators sell things for real money in Horizon Worlds and would charge a fee of 47.5% of their earnings. The fee structure seemed at odds with prior comments from Meta which have criticized app store fees from the likes of Apple and Google. Now Apple is accusing the company of hypocrisy.

Following the news this week that Meta planned to take nearly half of a creator’s earnings in Horizon Worlds, Apple didn’t miss the chance to point out that this was coming from a company which has on multiple occasions criticized Apple’s app store fee of 30% (after 15% for the first $1 million in annual revenue).

Speaking to MarketWatch, Apple spokesman Fred Sainz had this to say:

Meta has repeatedly taken aim at Apple for charging developers a 30% commission for in-app purchases in the App Store—and have used small businesses and creators as a scapegoat at every turn. Now, Meta seeks to charge those same creators significantly more than any other platform. [Meta’s] announcement lays bare Meta’s hypocrisy. It goes to show that while they seek to use Apple’s platform for free, they happily take from the creators and small businesses that use their own.

And, well… he isn’t wrong. Just last year Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg not-so-subtly said in a very widely viewed keynote that being subject to the app store fees of Apple and Google had changed the way he viewed the industry, going on to say that he wants his company to take “a different approach” when it comes to its creator platforms.

The last few years have been humbling for me and our company in a lot of ways. One of the main lessons that I’ve learned is that building products isn’t enough. We also need to help build ecosystems so that millions of people can have a stake in the future, can be rewarded for their work, and benefit as the tide rises, not just as consumers but as creators and developers.

But this period has also been humbling because as big of a company as we are, we’ve also learned what it is like to build for other platforms. And living under their rules has profoundly shaped my views on the tech industry. 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.

Indeed, those words seemed to fly in the face of Meta’s announcement that it would change creators a fee of 47.5% of their earnings for anything sold through Horizon Worlds. Not to mention that the company has also levied a 30% fee (the same that Apple and others charge) against developers since the very beginning of its VR app store.

Meta’s strongest defense, perhaps, is that Horizon World creator fees aren’t entirely out of line with similar platforms available today, but one must ask why the company wouldn’t want to set a better precedent given its public statements criticizing others for similar behavior.

Filed Under: Apple, horizon worlds, horizon worlds creator fees, horizon worlds creator share, horizon worlds revenue split, Meta, News, vr industry

Monthly-connected VR Headsets on Steam Blast Through 3 Million Milestone

February 7, 2022 From roadtovr

According to the latest data from Valve, VR headsets on Steam reached 2.14% of the Steam audience in January 2022. While this proportion falls short of the 2.31% record reached in May 2021, the estimated count of actual VR headsets has reached a significant new milestone of 3.4 million in January 2022 (compared to 2.98 million in May 2021).

The count of VR headsets on Steam had flirted with the 3 million milestone on several occasions but hadn’t quite surpassed it last month when it saw a significant jump from 1.93% (2.95 million) in December 2021 to 2.14% (3.4 million) in January 2022.

Year-over-year, the count of monthly-connected VR headsets on Steam is up 29.46%.

It’s impressive to see the number of VR headsets on Steam reaching this new milestone, though perhaps even more interesting will be to watch and see how many players stick around for the long haul. Will this be a temporary spike or a lasting impact?

Share of VR Headsets on Steam

Quest 2 was far and away the most significant driver in the growth of monthly-connected VR headsets on Steam in January. Clearly spurred by the 2021 holiday season, Quest 2 reached a record high of 46.02% (+6.40%), its largest single month of growth ever.

Given Quest 2’s significant growth, most other headsets gave up some share of the pie. The Oculus Rift S and Valve’s Index headset saw the most significant losses in share, with falling to 13.10% (−1.67%) and 14.36% (−1.43%), respectively.

Less popular headsets like the original HTC Vive at 7.31% (−0.95%) and Windows VR headsets at 4.99% (−0.70%) lost less share. This suggests that the 2021 holiday season saw many Rift S and Valve Index owners trading up to a Quest 2 while other headsets were less likely to jump on board with the newer headset.

However, despite Rift S, Index, HTC Vive, and Windows VR losing share, all of these headsets actually gained in count. That’s because the size of the pie itself grew enough to more than cover the losses in share.

From a vendor standpoint, Meta’s steady gains accelerated in January thanks to Quest 2 (and despite losses in share from Quest 1 and Rift S), with the company’s headsets now making up 67.25% (+3.67%) of monthly-connected VR headsets on Steam.

Filed Under: active vr headsets, active vr users, active vr users steam, Data, monthly connected vr headsets, News, number of vr headsets, steam, vr headset sales, vr headsets on steam, vr industry

Meta: $1 Billion Spent In Quest Store, 8 Titles Surpass $20 Million In Revenue

February 3, 2022 From uploadvr

As part of its quarterly earnings call, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that users have spent more than $1 billion on Quest store content.

Zuckerberg announced the amount in connection with his prepared remarks, a transcript of which is available online. Here’s what Zuckerberg said specifically about Quest store content:

On the hardware front, we’re seeing real traction with Quest 2. People have spent more than $1B on Quest store content, helping virtual reality developers grow and sustain their business.

Meta’s Director of Content Ecosystem Chris Pruett shared further details on Twitter as well, noting that eight titles on the Quest store have made over $20 million in gross revenue (one of which we know to be Beat Saber), while 14 have made over $10 million and 17 over $5 million.

Additionally, over 120 titles have generated more than $1 million in revenue on the platform. Around a year ago in January 2021, that number was only 60 titles. In March 2020, it was only 20.

These new content statistics are just one facet of Meta’s quarterly earnings call announcements. For the first time ever, the company broke out its revenue from Reality Labs in this earnings call, revealing more specific revenue and spending numbers for the segment responsible for Meta’s VR/AR efforts.

Overall, Reality Labs revenue totaled almost $2.3 billion for Meta in 2021 and marked Reality Labs’ revenue roughly doubling year-on-year. This was bolstered by particularly strong revenue in Q4 2021, due to strong Quest 2 sales in the holiday season. You can read more here.

Filed Under: Facebook, facebook quest, mark zuckerberg, Meta, meta ar, meta company, meta earnings call, meta facebook, meta platforms, meta quest, meta quest 2, meta quest vr, meta revenue, meta technology, meta vr, meta vr company, meta zuckerberg, oculus, Oculus Quest, oculus quest 2, oculus store, Quest, quest 2, quest 2 headset, quest 2 revenue, quest 2 store, quest 2 vr, quest headset, quest revenue, quest store, quest store revenue, quest virtual reality, quest vr, top stories, virtual reality, virtual reality experience, virtual reality game, virtual reality industry, virtual reality market, virtual reality new, virtual reality news, VR, VR app, vr article, vr experience, VR game, vr game news, VR Headset, vr headset news, vr industry, vr industry news, VR Market, vr new, VR news, vr news market

Aero Likely the First in a Series of Enthusiast Headsets from Varjo

January 21, 2022 From roadtovr

Varjo’s Aero headset is the first from the company that’s meant to appeal to individual customers rather than large organizations… and it probably won’t be the last.

Since the company’s inception, Varjo has sold high-end enterprise headsets to the likes of Fortune 500 companies. That is until just last month when the company started shipping its new Aero headset which was not only substantially cheaper but was, for the first time, sold without any kind of annual upkeep fee which made the company’s other headsets a non-starter for individual buyers.

Varjo Aero | Image courtesy Varjo

And while it’s possible the company had formulated Aero as a sort of one-off experiment, it seems Varjo has been satisfied enough with the reception that it intends for Aero to become an ongoing series of headsets for the high-end enthusiast segment.

Speaking to Road to VR this week, Varjo Chief Technical Officer Urho Konttori touched on Aero’s recent launch, saying that the headset is still backordered but he expects things to start catching up in February. As of now the company’s website advises “3–4 months” from purchase to delivery.

As for what happens in the future, Konttori said that Aero would “probably” become an ongoing series of headsets from the company, rather than a one-off. Although the company still seems primarily dead set on serving the high-end enterprise space, the move means the company also expects to target high-end enthusiasts with more headsets in the future.

That could dovetail in an interesting way with some of the software the company has been building internally, especially its XR cloud streaming tech; though initially targeted toward enterprise customers, the company confirmed that the tech supports any OpenVR/SteamVR applications without modification, and plans to expand the feature to other headsets in the future. While the company says that multi-headset support is primarily aimed at making XR more scalable within large organizations, it’s not so far fetched to think that the company could offer it to individuals at some point in the future.

Filed Under: News, varjo, Varjo Aero, VR Headset, vr industry

Report: FTC Investigating Meta’s Competitive Practices

January 17, 2022 From uploadvr

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating Meta for potentially anti-competitive practices, Bloomberg reports.

The recent report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and Naomi Nix indicates the FTC is investigating Meta’s virtual reality units over potential anti-competitive practices.

Last month, a report from The Information indicated the FTC opened an antitrust probe into Meta’s acquisition of VR fitness platform Supernatural. The new report from Bloomberg indicates the FTC’s investigation is “scrutinizing how Meta, the world’s largest social media company, may be using its market power in the VR space to stifle competition,” including asking about Meta’s sales strategy for Quest 2 which sees it priced starting at just $299, far below the nearest competition.

Apps like Virtual Desktop and Bigscreen have faced situations where Meta (formerly Facebook) made it either difficult or unprofitable for certain aspects of those products to function on Quest. In the case of Virtual Desktop, for example, developer Guy Godin wasn’t allowed to release a PC VR streaming feature for his app through official channels for more than 20 months. When Facebook finally allowed the feature officially it was just a couple months before Facebook launched its own version of PC VR streaming called Air Link. The Bloomberg story reports the FTC “quizzed outside developers that make Oculus apps in recent months as part of the inquiry,” particularly in relation to how the company might discriminate against third-party services or apps that compete with solutions or apps offered by Meta directly.

The full report from Bloomberg, which may be behind a paywall, is available here. It’s been a busy start to the year — other recent reports indicate that Apple’s unannounced mixed reality headset might not ship this year, amid reports of lucrative hiring pushes between Meta, Apple and Microsoft.

Filed Under: Bloomberg, bloomberg report, Facebook, facebook ftc, ftc, Meta, meta anti-competitive, meta ftc, meta report, quest 2, quest 2 ftc, quest 2 meta, report, top stories, virtual reality, virtual reality experience, virtual reality game, virtual reality industry, virtual reality market, virtual reality new, virtual reality news, VR, VR app, vr article, vr experience, VR game, vr game news, VR Headset, vr headset news, vr industry, vr industry news, VR Market, vr new, VR news, vr news market

Editorial: With Apple Approaching, Meta Needs A More Intuitive VR User Experience

January 15, 2022 From uploadvr

As we head into 2022, the virtual and augmented reality industry is starting to look a little more competitive than it has in the last few years. But with Apple approaching the market, Meta needs to change its approach to user interface and experience in VR headsets.

Since its launch in 2019, Meta’s Quest platform has dominated the VR market. But with PSVR2 specs announced and Apple’s VR/AR headset potentially arriving as soon as this year, competition is on the rise. 

Recent reports indicate that Apple and Meta are in competition over talent, both enticing their existing employees to stay while also trying to lure the competition away.

Meta is building up its AR efforts after showcasing its prototype AR project, Nazare, while also moving towards release of its Project Cambria headset later this year. Cambria is expected to feature high-resolution color passthough, eye and face tracking and much more.

A reported rough depiction of Apple’s unannounced mixed reality headset, drawn by The Information.

Apple’s VR/AR headset is expected to focus on mixed reality using high resolution color cameras, along with a 300-400 gram weight range, dual 4K OLED microdisplays and “M1 MacBook level performance.”

While Meta has seen the most success with the Quest platform, the expected specs for Cambria and Apple’s headset would position them more in competition with each other than with the Quest.

Both companies are essentially building towards the next big leap in personal computing. As they take these next steps, it becomes increasingly important for both Meta and Apple to pair cutting-edge hardware with a seamless and intuitive user interface and experience.

Guiding the User

For Apple, this is an area of expertise. Apple is known for providing an unparalleled, seamless experience within its own ecosystem. This intuitive ‘walled garden’ approach is both chided and praised from a wider technological standpoint, but the benefit to the Apple user experience is undeniable. 

Apple pairs smartly-designed, intuitive user interfaces with a notorious “it just works” attitude to new software and features, capped off by unmatched integration across its own ecosystem of devices. For most users, Apple’s software is the easiest to instantly understand — the complicated technology gets out of the way. Apple’s interfaces are designed to be used with little instruction, from either the device or other people. 

Steve Jobs coining Apple’s now-infamous “it just works” mentality, on stage announcing iCloud at WWDC 2011.

On the other side of the coin, Meta offers a very different approach to user interface and experience. Despite being one of the largest social media platforms in history, Facebook is a cluttered and confusing mess of an interface. This is partly because the site’s design is constantly changed, re-designed and evolved to improve engagement. It’s a live experiment in progress, always. 

From a sales point of view, Quest 2 has been a phenomenal success and it’s now a fantastic content platform for some of VR’s biggest releases. However, the base user experience mimics the Facebook design principles of confusion, evolution and convolution.

Quest 2 runs a custom VR operating system, built around a modified version of Android. Meta has made significant improvements (both in terms of design and available features) to the OS since the original Quest launch in 2019. For dedicated users and those accustomed to advanced technology, the Quest UI does its job.

For a casual audience however, Quest 2’s interface and user experience is often clunky, unintuitive and confusing to navigate. Simple actions and features are frequently hard to find or hidden away.

The latest iteration of the Quest 2 UI.

This became apparent to me personally over the holiday period, while trying to help my Dad launch an app on his Quest 2. He only uses the headset once every few months, but is otherwise adept when it comes to phones, computers and other technology platforms. 

What followed was a series of endless troubleshooting questions for very basic actions. “Have you found the app menu? It’s the icon with a grid of squares. It’s on the dashboard, at the bottom, can you see the dashboard? You bring it up by pressing the Oculus button. No, not that one. It’s the one that has no indentation, it’s flat, at the bottom of the face on the right controller. Can you see the dash now? Okay, can you find the app? It’s in the app menu…”

For a device that can fabricate an entire world around you, with limitless design options, it feels less natural and more confusing to navigate than almost any other platform. Meta’s UI on Quest obfuscates simple actions, over-complicates the basics and seemingly fails at guiding the user around the headset. 

A Tale of Two Operating Systems

The reasons for this are somewhat clear – Meta does not have Apple’s breadth of experience in the computer platform realm. Apple have been doing this for decades, Meta just over one. 

Perhaps some of the answers to these UI design problems will be solved with Meta’s proprietary VR/AR operating system, which is being developed internally and was, until recently, led by Mark Lucovsky (formerly of Microsoft, now developing an AR OS for Google). 

Project Cambria
Meta’s upcoming Project Cambria headset.

But with Cambria releasing this year, it seems unlikely it would run Meta’s proprietary OS — a continuation of the modified Android build pioneered for Quest seems like the safer bet.

Apple’s headset will probably feature much of the same design language, features and experience that has propelled Apple to become one of the most esteemed technology companies on the planet. So if Apple’s headset releases later this year, will Cambria’s competing user experience hold up to Apple’s standard?

Apple has spent more than a decade perfecting, streaming-lining and synergizing the design of its three big operating systems: iOS, MacOS and iPad OS. The upcoming headset is rumored to run its own operating system, rOS, and job openings describe engineers working on VR/AR problems alongside Apple’s existing UI frameworks and system software teams.

Meta may have a lead in the VR/AR content war and now seems laser-focused on building its own metaverse, but Apple could easily outplay them on a system software level. How? Let’s speculate on the hypothetical user experience offered by Apple’s upcoming headset, based off the company’s existing products and ecosystem-spanning features.

The (Hypothetical) Apple Headset Experience

Like most Apple devices, the headset will probably pair automatically with your account when placed in proximity to another Apple device you own, eliminating the need for almost any user setup. This would automatically connect the headset to your existing Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth and Apple devices, and your iCloud account.

In terms of user interface, the headset will likely borrow a lot of visual and interface cues from iOS/iPad OS, adapted for mixed reality. With an Apple chip inside, native support for existing 2D iOS and MacOS apps might be possible, if not expected. If so, automatic pairing would likely sync your existing app data and files across instantly using iCloud, syncing everything inside and outside of VR perfectly.

Apple Export
Apple’s heavily-integrated product ecosystem. 

Likewise, the headset would instantly connect to your accessories, like AirPods, right out of the box. Screenshots or video recordings taken in VR or mixed reality will probably upload automatically to iCloud, ensuring easy access from other non-VR devices. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see other Apple services, like AirDrop or AirPlay, to be integrated at launch as well.

While all of the above is hypothetical, it’s not necessarily unlikely — new Apple devices tend to fit into the ecosystem perfectly. Ecosystem features like AirDrop and automatic pairing are standard fare on every new Apple device.

Many of these features are already available on Quest, some in a different or much less convenient manner. However, the way that Apple melds intuitive design with convenient features is what counts. The average consumer doesn’t have to search very far to AirDrop a photo from one device to another — it’s just a button press or two away at all times.  On Quest 2, moving a screenshot from the headset to a phone or computer is unclear and cumbersome every step of the way. For ease of use and intuitive design, it’s still apples and oranges — even when counting recent improvements on Meta’s end.

If Cambria launches with such a low standard of user experience, then Apple’s headset shipping with AirDrop and other ecosystem staples would set it up to outclass Meta in several areas almost overnight.

A Fruitful Opportunity

Meta has arguably bought and developed its way to an impressive content library and feature set, but it lacks the experience to leverage that as part of an effective, integrated platform. At launch, the opposite might be true for Apple’s headset.

Both headsets are aiming higher than a gaming market — they are the next generation of personal computing. If Meta wants to compete with Apple on that level, then it will need to adapt and make some serious changes — and soon.

Clear and intuitive user experience is becoming increasingly crucial as VR reaches a wider audience. Apple joining the fray should present the industry with some well-needed competition in this department – let’s hope Meta bites back. 

Filed Under: Apple, apple ar, apple headset, apple mr, apple vr, apple vr headset, cambria, cambria vr, editorial, Editorials, Meta, meta cambria, project cambria, project cambria vr, top stories, ui, user experience, user interface, virtual reality, virtual reality experience, virtual reality game, virtual reality industry, virtual reality market, virtual reality new, virtual reality news, VR, vr 2022, VR app, vr article, vr experience, VR game, vr game news, VR Headset, vr headset news, vr industry, vr industry news, VR Market, vr new, VR news, vr news market, vr ui, vr user experience, vr user interface

Report: Lucrative Hiring Push Sees Microsoft, Apple Employees Defect To Meta

January 11, 2022 From uploadvr

Reports from Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal indicate Microsoft and Apple employees are leaving to join Meta Platforms, as part of the latter company’s increased push into AR. To counter, Apple are offering some employees lucrative and unusual stock options as bonuses if they stay.

Meta, formerly Facebook, has consistently shown interest in expanding its VR/AR team for the last several years, including studio acquisitions and head-hunting competitors’ employees. However, the company’s recent emphasis on the metaverse and its latest product and prototype announcements seem to be resulting in an increased hiring push.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft’s AR team (reportedly around 1500 people) has lost around 100 employees in the last year.

Of those staff, 70 were from the HoloLens team (headset pictured above), 40 of which went on to join Meta Platforms. This includes Charlie Han, former head of customer feedback for HoloLens, and Josh Miller, formerly part of the HoloLens display team and now display director at Meta.

Given their experience shipping an AR headset, former HoloLens staff would be enticing hires for Meta as part of the increased push towards consumer AR devices. In September, Meta shared a look at its prototype AR glasses project, subtitled Nazare, pictured below.

Project Nazare AR Meta

Microsoft also reportedly failed to hire ample new staff to manage the $20+ billion contract it signed with the US Army in April 2021. This army contract would see Microsoft supply ruggedized AR headsets, based on the HoloLens program, to frontline soldiers.

However, The Wall Street Journal reports that the program faced technical difficulties, particularly involving bringing high-quality night vision to the HoloLens. These strains reportedly enticed some members of the team to consider competitor offers. Despite this, Microsoft told the Wall Street Journal that it has a “strong team and is making progress on the project.” In October, the US Army announced it would move further testing of the project into 2022.

However, Microsoft is not the only one facing stiff competition in the VR/AR space. According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple is facing similar defections to Meta from within its AR/VR team.

More specifically, Bloomberg reports around 100 employees left Apple to join Meta in the last few months. That being said, Apple also reportedly managed to entice some key Meta employees across in the same period.

The Information Apple VR

Apple is working toward release of a VR/AR mixed reality headset in the near future, potentially as early as this year, with high resolution color cameras for mixed reality. The embedded image above is a concept drawn by The Information, reportedly depicting an impression of the headset.

To counter Meta’s recent interest in its employees, Apple is reportedly offering some of its engineers lucrative and unusual stock bonuses to entice them to stay. These options, which would be vested over four years, are being offered to only some engineers in “silicon design, hardware, and select software and operations groups.” The bonus amounts range from $50,000 to $180,000, with “as much as $120,000 in shares.”

You can read the full reports at The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg.

Filed Under: Apple, apple ar, apple ar vr, apple vr, Bloomberg, Business VR, Facebook Meta, HoloLens, Meta, meta company, meta facebook, meta quest, meta virtual reality, meta vr, meta vr company, Microsoft, microsoft ar, Microsoft HoloLens, top stories, virtual reality, virtual reality experience, virtual reality game, virtual reality industry, virtual reality market, virtual reality new, virtual reality news, VR, VR app, vr article, vr experience, VR game, vr game news, VR Headset, vr headset news, vr industry, vr industry news, VR Market, vr new, VR news, vr news market, wall street journal

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