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Facebook Technology

Meta Scales Back Ambitions for AR Glasses 19

Posted by msmash from the tough-luck dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: In March 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to transform the world, the company then known as Facebook struck a deal to buy all the augmented reality displays made by British firm Plessey. At the time, the deal appeared to be a savvy way of squeezing out Apple in the competition to develop AR glasses, as Plessey was one of the few makers of AR displays. Three years on, however, the deal has turned into a bust for Meta. Development of Plessey's technology has stalled, say people with direct knowledge of the effort. Facebook, now called Meta Platforms, has struggled to make Plessey's displays bright enough for use in its AR glasses under development and to reduce defects that crop up in the manufacturing process. Earlier this year, Meta decided to abandon Plessey's microLED tech in favor of an older display technology, liquid crystal on silicon or LCoS. The decision is one of several Meta has made, for either technological or cost-saving reasons, that will reduce the edge that the AR glasses have over existing AR headsets like Microsoft's HoloLens.

The episode highlights the twists and turns Meta is navigating as it tries to stay ahead of Apple and other rivals in the still-developing market for AR and virtual reality. Meta was early to the VR market with its Quest headsets and has been working on developing AR glasses to get ahead of rivals like Snap which are trying to develop similar products. Now it faces competition from Apple, which last month unveiled its mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, which will be available early next year. At the same time, Meta is under pressure from investors to curb the more than $10 billion it is spending annually at the Reality Labs division developing its AR and VR products. Technical setbacks have forced Meta to delay the timeline for releasing AR glasses multiple times, and it isn't anticipating releasing a pair of AR glasses to the public until at least 2027.
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Meta Scales Back Ambitions for AR Glasses More

Meta Scales Back Ambitions for AR Glasses

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  • SHOCKED! (Score:2, Troll)

    by Arethan ( 223197 )

    I'm shocked!
    This was 10,000% "The Way Forward".
    Never saw this coming in a million years - no way!
    Zuck, please, don't cuck us on your Meta-Beer-Goggles!

  • VR is something uncomfortable you'll wear to immerse yourself in realistic worlds.

    AR is something uncomfortable some people will be forced to wear for work and some creepy nerds will wear in public.

    I want VR.

  • Meta should think like Microsoft: wait for somebody else to create a killer app, then quickly clone it and subsidize it until you overwhelm the competition, which then folds or sells. Thus, let somebody else stumble onto the VR kickstarter, Zuck doesn't have the people skills to get it right.

    Until then, Meta should buy Second Life and use its IP to make web-based 2D VR more common. If and when it catches on, then go 3D. Customers are hesitant to buy hardware for a short-lived fad.

  • It's been a race between "projecting computer display onto a transparent lense" versus "good enough cameras and processing to mix real world into the computer display".

    The former provides obviously the best "passthrough" experience, but the computer output suffers greatly. You simply cannot make opaque output, and the field of view is more limited as you can't go as crazy with lense systems.

    The latter means the pass-through is somewhat de-prioritized, but perhaps with good enough cameras, you can pull it of

    • The latter means the pass-through is somewhat de-prioritized

      I would argue pass-through is actually worse in the case of transparent screens, since you can always tell a screen is there.

      With a screen that accurately shows the world in front of you and tracks fast enough via real-time camera feeds, it's more like you are looking through nothing than if you were looking through a screen! That's where Apple went, with everything aiming at super-low latency to get camera feed to the user.

      In a way it could be ev

      • Have you seen it? Because people hard up for future access to pre-release products aren't exactly trustworthy.

        I'm going to suspect the FoV is shit, same as most VR glasses. Then there's vergence/focus mismatch for anything up close (proper AR glasses can't do shit up close of course, everything is a compromise).

        • Have you seen it? Because people hard up for future access to pre-release products aren't exactly trustworthy.

          Have you watched many of the review videos? Because every single one, including people who are in no way ever "hard up for access" and usually very honest (like Marqis Brown, and also a guy from Adam Savage Tested) thought it was amazing and basically just like looking through nothing.

          I'm trying to develop something for it currently and at some point will hopefully make it to California for a test

          • thought it was amazing

            The Pagani Zonda is an amazing car as per every reviewer. Yet you don't see many on the road do you. For $3500 I don't want amazing. For $3500 it better give me a damn reach around at the push of a button.

            I'll accept "amazing" at $1500.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Junta ( 36770 )

            No-one knows the specs for sure but it seems to be around 120 degrees, maybe a bit higher. A few people said there were black bars at the very edges of vision. That's totally fine to me, that is much better than say HoloLens.

            Well, higher than HoloLens display, lower than HoloLens passthrough (which is by definition as big as your eyes can normally see). I too am fine with 100 degrees or so, but it is a fair point that you will undoubtedly lose peripheral vision with even the Apple headset. At 120 degrees it would be expansive, but I think the 'very edges of vision' is likely being awfully generous to the device.

            I suspect with enough cameras and application of the eye tracking, maybe even some adaptive optics that can be overcome. That's an aspect that still needs evaluation though for sure, I 'm not making any guesses there. People were able to use phones while wearing the device without issue though, and see their own hands really well... Apple has also said you can use a normal computer keyboard and mouse so it seems like it's pretty good as anything much closer is not generally something that matters as much.

            I wouldn't doubt that things can be clear, but they may be clear when they "shouldn't" be. Your depth of field is l

            • you'll probably be "focusing" at 3 meters or so away, no matter how far the actual thing is. I've never had a problem with this myself, but some folks swear by it being a critical problem.

              note the correct use of quotes around "focus". The resting position if eyes is "focus to distance", it's "focusing onto close objects" which is the active/requires efforts.

              So if the focal point is set "in distance", it won't theoretically require efforts. At most, some people find it a bit weird in the beginning because they need to "cross their eye" to look closer, but don't need to focus. (Much more light than looking at "magic eye" stereograms; dissipates fast).

              but that's in theory. In practice a sizeabl

          • I'll bet zero dollars on closer to 100 FoV.

    • If you don't mind a bit of halo, you could black out the part of the glasses where you're mixing CGI.

  • They have the best concept and most "ready player one"-like headset.

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