Meta's AR/VR Hardware Roadmap For the Next Four Years (theverge.com) 29
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge's Alex Heath: Meta plans to release its first pair of smart glasses with a display in 2025 alongside a neural interface smartwatch designed to control them, The Verge has learned. Meanwhile, its first pair of full-fledged AR glasses, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg has predicted will eventually be as widely used as mobile phones, is planned for 2027. The details were shared with thousands of employees in Meta's Reality Labs division on Tuesday during a roadmap presentation of its AR and VR efforts that was shared with The Verge. Altogether, they show how Meta is planning to keep investing in consumer hardware after a series of setbacks and broader cost cutting across the company.
With regards to the VR roadmap, employees were told that Meta's flagship Quest 3 headset coming later this year will be two times thinner, at least twice as powerful, and cost slightly more than the $400 Quest 2. Like the recently announced Quest Pro, it will prominently feature mixed reality experiences that don't fully immerse the wearer, thanks to front-facing cameras that pass through video of the real world. [...] There will be 41 new apps and games shipping for the Quest 3, including new mixed reality experiences to take advantage of the updated hardware, Rabkin said. In 2024, he said that Meta plans to ship a more "accessible" headset codenamed Ventura. "The goal for this headset is very simple: pack the biggest punch we can at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market."
During Tuesday's roadmap presentation, Alex Himel, the company's vice president for AR, laid out the plan for a bevy of devices through 2027. The first launch will come this fall with the second generation of Meta's camera-equipped smart glasses it released in 2021 with Luxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban. In 2025, Himel said the third generation of the smart glasses will ship with a display that he called a "viewfinder" for viewing incoming text messages, scanning QR codes, and translating text from another language in real time. The glasses will come with a "neural interface" band that allows the wearer to control the glasses through hand movements, such as swiping fingers on an imaginary D-pad. Eventually, he said the band will let the wearer use a virtual keyboard and type at the same words per minute as what mobile phones allow. While Meta halted development of its smartwatch with dual cameras,Himel said that the company is still working on another smartwatch to accompany its 2025 glasses. "We don't want people to have to choose between an input device on their wrist and smartwatch functionality that they've come to love," he said. "So we are building a neural interfaces watch. Number one, this device will do input: input to control your glasses, input to control the functionality on your wrist, and input to control the world around you."
The Verge's Alex Heath adds: "Meta's first true pair of AR glasses, which the company has been internally developing for 8 years under the codename Orion, are more technically advanced, expensive, and designed to project high-quality holograms of avatars onto the real world." These glasses will "won't be released to the public until 2027," but an "internal launch" for employees will begin in 2024.
As for advertising, Meta is planning to utilize its existing business model for these future devices. "We should be able to run a very good ads business," he said. "I think it's easy to imagine how ads would show up in space when you have AR glasses on. Our ability to track conversions, which is where there has been a lot of focus as a company, should also be close to 100 percent."
"If we're hitting anything near projections, it will be a tremendous business," he said. "A business unlike anything we've seen on mobile phones before."
With regards to the VR roadmap, employees were told that Meta's flagship Quest 3 headset coming later this year will be two times thinner, at least twice as powerful, and cost slightly more than the $400 Quest 2. Like the recently announced Quest Pro, it will prominently feature mixed reality experiences that don't fully immerse the wearer, thanks to front-facing cameras that pass through video of the real world. [...] There will be 41 new apps and games shipping for the Quest 3, including new mixed reality experiences to take advantage of the updated hardware, Rabkin said. In 2024, he said that Meta plans to ship a more "accessible" headset codenamed Ventura. "The goal for this headset is very simple: pack the biggest punch we can at the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market."
During Tuesday's roadmap presentation, Alex Himel, the company's vice president for AR, laid out the plan for a bevy of devices through 2027. The first launch will come this fall with the second generation of Meta's camera-equipped smart glasses it released in 2021 with Luxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban. In 2025, Himel said the third generation of the smart glasses will ship with a display that he called a "viewfinder" for viewing incoming text messages, scanning QR codes, and translating text from another language in real time. The glasses will come with a "neural interface" band that allows the wearer to control the glasses through hand movements, such as swiping fingers on an imaginary D-pad. Eventually, he said the band will let the wearer use a virtual keyboard and type at the same words per minute as what mobile phones allow. While Meta halted development of its smartwatch with dual cameras,Himel said that the company is still working on another smartwatch to accompany its 2025 glasses. "We don't want people to have to choose between an input device on their wrist and smartwatch functionality that they've come to love," he said. "So we are building a neural interfaces watch. Number one, this device will do input: input to control your glasses, input to control the functionality on your wrist, and input to control the world around you."
The Verge's Alex Heath adds: "Meta's first true pair of AR glasses, which the company has been internally developing for 8 years under the codename Orion, are more technically advanced, expensive, and designed to project high-quality holograms of avatars onto the real world." These glasses will "won't be released to the public until 2027," but an "internal launch" for employees will begin in 2024.
As for advertising, Meta is planning to utilize its existing business model for these future devices. "We should be able to run a very good ads business," he said. "I think it's easy to imagine how ads would show up in space when you have AR glasses on. Our ability to track conversions, which is where there has been a lot of focus as a company, should also be close to 100 percent."
"If we're hitting anything near projections, it will be a tremendous business," he said. "A business unlike anything we've seen on mobile phones before."
Why is display on your face so hard? (Score:3)
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Why is display on your face so hard?
Depth of field. Anything less than ~2.3m away from the eye is a problem. They're going to need a holographic lens element to fix this. Some companies are working on it now of course. Keeping eyes and ears in sync is also a problem, but one that can more or less be solved. On the other hand, nobody has even tried to sell a product which addresses the depth problem.
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I think no matter how good it is, display on your face is a losing proposition, for the majority of people anyway. They would use it only for short periods of time, only rarely, and only for a big payoff. VR won't take off until they find some other way.
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If you're slapping a display on people's face and calling it VR your product will fail, and your pissed off viewers are going to throw up on their newly bought toy before returning it.
Display on your face is hard. Lenses, pixel densities, resolution, refresh rate, processing power. It literally stretches our engineering capabilities on all fronts.
Neural Interface? (Score:2)
What is this thing they are calling a neural interface? When I hear that term I think of some kind of brain to computer interface, but he seems to be using it to refer to cameras tracking hand movements. Am I missing something here?
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You're not missing anything. It's just another raping of the English language that marketroids are so very fond of.
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This is the same company that's developing Third Life and selling it as a cyberpunk "Metaverse". Why wouldn't they call their smartwatch-and-camera system a "neural interface"? I imagine it works like a Wiimote combined with that camera thing for the PlayStation 2 (forgot the name, it's been 20 years).
Investors are going to be very disappointed when this stuff finally drops, so I can see bookface pushing back the release repeatedly. Hopefully they spend enough money in the process that they run out of funds
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The neural interface is likely this thing [youtu.be]. They purchased a company called Ctrl-Labs a few years ago just when they started sending devkids out to developers. I believe Ctrl-Labs bought the tech from somebody else who already had a product on the market and they were mostly a AI/software company. I'm aware of at least one open source myo control project [github.com] that I believe used the original hardware before Ctrl-Labs acquired it.
The camera tracking of hand movements has been available on Quest headsets since Sep [meta.com]
Engagement (Score:4, Funny)
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Facebook's whole business model is based on monetizing engagement. Guess what the AR goggles have? Eye tracking cameras. That's right, Facebook will know exactly what you are looking at all times, meaning they can tell advertisers exactly what parts of ads catch the customers eye! (My prediction: 99% of the time, the eye tracking will reveal people are looking at bewbs.)
I think you are right on that. I have a hard time with the concept of wearing a weird looking headset that makes you look like a tool, and watching ads with it. Lizard King Zuck isn't in the business of selling software/hardware that actually does something, he's out of his element, so he's gotta sell people ads.
Road Map to.... (Score:1)
...what's this road supposed to be paved with again?
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Good inten... wait, nope. It's ads and profits, all the way down.
Fail. (Score:2)
The resolution of VR headsets sucks, the resulting blur/screen door is the biggest impediment to VR going mainstream. Meta seems to be ignoring trying to improve that. No mention of resolution increase in their 5 year roadmap Is a major fail.
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If resolution doesn't matter why do people with poor vision buy glasses? As long as VR "enthusiasts" ignore and excuse the resolution problem, VR headsets will never sell anywhere close to like a PS5. I hate to say it, but Apple is the only hope in this mess. *IF* they can get us to retina resolution, it opens up a lot of possibilities for things like work, virtual adventures/tourism, and entertainment beyond games like Beat Saber.
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GPP seems to be arguing that the resolution of VR headsets is already good enough for immersive stories. Your mileage apparently varies. But I don't think they're arguing that 1x1 pixel resolution would be good enough.
As for your question about glasses: I'm typing this while looking at a 1920x1080 monitor. Some people here will probably mock me for not having twice that resolution (especially now that I've invited it). But if I take my glasses off then I might as well try to find a driver that reduces the r
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People buy glasses to correct the focal length of their eyeball. It's got nothing to do with the DPI of a digital display.
Immersion has little to do with DPI either. It's not like you're getting photorealistic graphics anyway. Immersion is called "suspesion of disbelief" when you're watching a movie. You're always going to be aware you're sitting in a theater, or that you have a helmet strapped over your face. You're never going to hallucinate being somewhere else, short of jacking in by Neuralink.
I think y
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I love David Bowie and Brian Eno, 100% unironically.
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The resolution of VR headsets sucks, the resulting blur/screen door is the biggest impediment to VR going mainstream.
These are both non-issues in my opinion owning an ancient CV1 significantly inferior to current 4K HMDs. The display isn't blurry and resolution isn't bad.
Biggest problems in my view with VR is space and computing power.
By space I mean the ability to move around in a fake world without walking into shit in the real one ruins everything.
Either you are tethered to a powerful expensive computer that can still hardly manage to drive a modern 4k HMD... or HMD is driven by a portable wearable face heater sporti
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Well, there's your problem. First, don't use a VR headset while in the bathroom. Second, and that's really the most important step and the source of all your problems, don't go number two while wearing a VR headset.
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Well, there's your problem. First, don't use a VR headset while in the bathroom. Second, and that's really the most important step and the source of all your problems, don't go number two while wearing a VR headset.
I couldn't if I wanted to. The cord won't reach into the bathroom.
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The resolution of VR headsets sucks, the resulting blur/screen door is the biggest impediment to VR going mainstream.
Found the guy who last used a VR headset 5 years ago.
Use a modern headset and then come join the conversation with more relevant points (there are some, but I'm not doing your homework for you). The "screendoor effect" hasn't been something people generally have have complained about since the Rift S ... 3 generations back.
What prevents mainstream use is sticker-shock for a special purpose niche device with limited games. And given the choice between using a Quest 2 or even higher resolution headset, unteth
Distributing child 'pornography' (Score:2)
So, Meta wants us to pay for a machine that tracks where we are, what we say, where we look, and shows us adverts 24 hours/day: What could go wrong?
I suspect most people don't want their gut reactions pushed via neural-link into Meta's database: Next step is thought-crime and doxxing for staring at something 'unapproved', Eg. schoolgirls. Which highlights a privacy issue: Wearing these at home, (or someone else's home) where teen children/siblings/friends can be naked, means Meta will be distributing