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Meta Connect 2022 Mega Roundup: ALL you need to know in one single article!

(Image by Meta)

Meta Connect has been the big event of the week, and as it is a tradition of this blog, I’m going to write today for you a super article where you can find inside ALL the news announced during the event! This way, by reading this article, you are sure you have not missed any one of the announcements made there. I truly hope this can be useful for all of you in the XR community…

How to read this post

Just a quick notice before starting. Some years ago, I was used to writing in the Connect roundup article every detail I could find online about the news announced. This year I’m still writing a very long and comprehensive post, but I’m going to skip some details, that anyway you can read in the other articles I’m linking to let you can go deeper on the topics. I’ll do this for two reasons: first of all, there have been so many pieces of news, that if I had to write every detail of all of them, you would need 4 hours to read this post (and ain’t no one got time fo that); and then, I’m currently too busy with my dev work that I don’t have two full-time days to write a post of that kind anymore. I’m sure you will appreciate my choice.

Ok, enough with this boring premise, let’s dig into the Connect!

Meta Quest Pro

Meta Quest Pro announcement video

Meta Quest Pro was what everyone was expecting from this event, and Zuck has not disappointed us with this point. It has especially not disappointed the analyst Brad Lynch, because basically, the device is exactly as it was leaked by him. In fact, for all of us in the XR ecosystem, the announcement was not a surprise at all, because it was exactly how we were expecting it to be.

Specifications

Let me list here the full specs of the Quest Pro, courtesy of Road To VR:

Quest Pro Specs
Resolution1800 × 1920 (3.5MP) per-eye, LCD (2x)
Refresh Rate72Hz, 90Hz
LensesPancake non-Fresnel
Field-of-view (claimed)106ºH × 96ºV
Optical AdjustmentsContinuous IPD, contiguous eye-relief
IPD Adjustment Range55–75mm
ProcessorSnapdragon XR2+
RAM12GB
Storage256GB
ConnectorsUSB-C
Weight722g
Battery Life1–2 hours
Headset TrackingInside-out (no external beacons)
Controller TrackingInside-out (headset line-of-sight not needed)
Expression TrackingYes (eyes, face)
On-board cameras5x external, 5x internal
InputTouch Pro controllers (rechargeable), hand-tracking, voice
AudioIn-headstrap speakers, dual 3.5mm aux output
MicrophoneYes
Pass-through viewYes (color)
MSRP$1,500

The specifications are more or less as it was leaked, with two exceptions:

  • The displays were rumored to be 2K*2K, but it has not been the case
  • The device was supposed to have a depth sensor, which would have helped a lot in implementing on this device advanced environment scanning and understanding features. Meta has not explained why it was removed: some people suspect it was because it could have been used “to see through some clothes”, but I don’t know if the truth is actually some software/hardware incompatibility.
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Features

Meta Quest Pro and controllers (Image by Meta)

The Quest Pro is not a huge bump over the Quest 2. It’s a step forward, but not a big one, if not in terms of ergonomics and installed sensors. If you look at the specs above, it even looks quite underwhelming: the resolution and battery duration are for instance inferior to the one of Pico 4, which costs one-third of the price of the Pro. Headsets anyway have not to be just evaluated on paper: Quest Pro introduces a lot of innovations and polishes, which all together create a headset that is for sure not revolutionary, but a noticeable step forward from the Quest 2.

Talking about visuals, the display resolution is 1800 × 1920 per eye, which is even less than the one of the Quest 2, but here there are two displays, one per each eye, so there are fewer “wasted pixels”. Plus the lenses are not Fresnel ones, but pancake lenses studied to give you a bigger eye box. This means that on the Quest Pro you can actually move your eyes and read a text in a normal way, by just scrolling the text with your eyes without having to rotate your head. The clarity is much more on this device, with “more pixels” concentrated into the center of vision, that is exactly where your eyes perceive better. This has been reported by all the reviewers. According to Meta, Pro has a 25% improvement in sharpness at the center of the field-of-view, and a 50% improvement across the periphery. The field of view is just a bit wider than the one of Quest 2, but enough so that it is noticeable. Meta also claims Quest Pro includes a 500-element (Mini-LEDs) local dimming backlight which enables improved contrast up to 75% compared to Quest 2, while also allowing for a 1.3 times larger range of color. This means that blacks are “more black” than in a standard LCD display, but still not as black as in a OLED one. Refresh rate tops at 90hz, and it is unlikely it will go at 120 after launch.

The chipset is the new Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+, which moves slightly the RAM on the chip: XR2 has the RAM stacked on top of the chip, whereas XR2+ has the RAM to the side to enable better thermal dissipation and thus higher sustained performance. It offers 50% more performance than its predecessor… but most of this performance boost is used by the additional sensors this device mounts, so very little arrives to the final application. So, don’t expect a huge bump of performance of your application on this device.

Quest Pro is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+

As for the comfort, the device is lightweight (722g), compact, and comfortable, with the battery on the back which guarantees a good balancing of the weight . Pancake lenses help in making it smaller and lighter than Quest 2. The only disadvantage of the Pro reported by the reviewers is that it uses a halo design for the headband for which is usually difficult to find a perfect fit on the head. It’s good news by the way that there is continuous IPD adjustment (and with a wider range than before) and that thanks to eye tracking sensors, the headset can tell you if you have positioned it well on your head. There is also an eye-relief dial, so you can put the lenses very close to your eyes, for added field of view.

Talking about eye tracking, there is another feature that it brings to the table: dynamic foveated rendering, so that the headset can render in full resolution only the part of the screen you are looking at. I was pretty excited about this, but John Carmack clarified that it doesn’t bring a massive performance boost with regard to the fixed foveated rendering of Quest 2 (less than 2x, which is anyway good, but not impressive). Anyway, at least it makes the presence of foveated rendering less visible: with FFR, you can see the visuals at the border of the lenses becoming jagged, while here, wherever you look at, you see that part of the scren in full resolution.

Front closup of the device (Image by Meta)

Audio still works via integrated speakers. It is a bit better than on Quest 2: it should provide slightly better basses (half-octave deeper bass tones) and improved mid-tones. Since the speakers are more directional, they reduce sound leakage by 10 decibels and people outside you hear less what you are hearing in VR. Quest Pro has a 3 microphone array, 1 more than other standalone headsets. Meta claims this enables 20% better noise canceling and “advanced beamforming” compared to Quest 2.

The Pro will use the same store of the standard Quest. Air Link and tethered Link will still be provided on it, so that you can also enjoy PCVR content. Since Quest Pro has 2x higher Wi-fi bandwidth, Air Link should have much better performances.

The real bummer is that the battery lasts just 1-2 hours, which is a quite ridiculous time, especially if you aim this headset at the enterprise market.

As you can read, until now we are talking about a device that is slightly better than Quest 2 in all areas. But there are some features in which the The Quest Pro makes a true jump forward:

  • Mixed reality: Quest Pro is the first commercial headset truly built with mixed reality in mind. It is not just a VR headset with an accessory black-white passthrough, but a headset built to be hybrid, and that offers a good RGB passthrough. Don’t expect the passthrough to be like your normal vision, though… it is a bit like seeing reality through a video (washed-out colors, a bit of blurred resolution, etc…). We’re pretty far from being able to read normal sized font using the passthrough view. The headset doesn’t fully enclose your face on the sides so that when you are in mixed reality you can have the real reality in the periphery of your vision, for added realism in MR. When you are in VR, so you don’t want to see the real world, you can apply a magnetic blinder on the headset. The weird thing is that the blinder contained in the box is just partial and you have to pay to have a full one. The partial blinder lets you see below you and I guess that it has been thought so that you can see your keyboard even when you are in VR and you are using Horizon Workrooms.
Drawing with the back of the Touch Pro controller in mixed reality (Image by Meta)
  • Facial sensors: Thanks to the 2 eye tracking and 3 face tracking sensors, the Quest Pro can track the expressions of your face. This is great for various fields, but the one that interests more Meta is the possibility of making avatars that can represent your emotions. There is a tech demo (that you can see in the GIF here below) where you have in front of you a fantasy face that makes your same expressions, and it is quite cool for those who have tried it. These sensors won’t be available for PCVR applications.
https://gfycat.com/ellipticaleachimago
Relistic facial expressions added to a humanoid character
  • Controllers: Quest Pro has very innovative controllers. Dubbed Touch Pro, they can track their position themselves via integrated cameras, so they can keep tracking what you do even when you have them behind your head. For this reason, they don’t have the tracking ring, so you can put them close to each other without risking them clashing. The thumb rest is a little skewed down and has a pressure sensor, so you can perform the “pinch gesture” by pressing the thumb and the index together, and this can enable new interactions. They have a hole on the bottom where you can put a small stylus to use them as a virtual marker in Horizon Workrooms.
https://gfycat.com/insidiousshadowyballpython
  • […] They have an internal battery and can be charged using the charging dock of the Quest Pro, so you don’t have to mess with batteries anymore. And especially, they have much better finger sensing (they can now detect how your index finger is bending with great precision) and have very advanced haptics, which can give high-definition haptic feedback in different portions of the hand. Controllers are for sure one of the biggest features of this device.
Notice how the pose of the index, including the exact position of the finger tip, is detected by Quest Pro controllers (Image by Upload VR)
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Privacy

Face and eye tracking introduce obvious privacy concerns. Meta has clarified that the images of the tracking cameras never leave the device and that the user is free to enable and disable these sensors whenever he wants, so it should be safe privacy-wise. BUT if you read the privacy policies of these two services, you can discover that Meta can send some of your eye tracking data to Meta servers, and while this may just be to guarantee the correct visualization of expressions on your avatar face in multiplayer experiences, it opens a backdoor to Meta to get some precious data about our eyes. I think we need better clarifications on this side.

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Battery

Meta Quest Pro and controllers on the charging dock provided in the full kit (Image by Meta)

The battery is the true real concern of Quest Pro: while the battery of the controllers has a decent duration (around 4-5 hours, with a maximum of 8), the headset lasts for just 1-2 hours. John Carmack has said that if you use the Quest Pro without using all its new features (i.e. the new sensors) it can last even more than the Quest 2, but since if you bought a Pro, it is to use its special features, it is most probable that you will have less than 2 hours of usage.

This is ridiculous, not only because the Pro costs a lot of money, but also because it is sold as a “work device”. I don’t know how things work where Zuck lives, but here in Italy, a typical workday is 8 hours, not 2. If at Meta they just work 2 hours, I want to be hired there immediately. Now I understand why they take so long to review applications on App Lab…

Jokes apart, the duration is a bit small, so I envision that 3rd-parties power banks are going to be announced soon for this device. 

In the meantime, the company advises recharging the device often by leaving it on the dedicated charging dock which is provided together with the whole Quest Pro set.

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Hands-on reviews

The hands-on reviews have highlighted more or less what we could imagine. The device is very good, but not a huge jump forward if compared with Quest 2. Reviewers were usually impressed by the wide eye box and the clarity of the visuals even at resolution parity with Quest 2. Even the peripheral part of the screen has increased clarity if compared to similar headsets. Anyway, Ben Lang said that the text on the device is readable but still not perfectly readable.

Also, the controllers were reported to be great. Ben Lang said that the handles feel comfortable like the ones of the Rift CV1 controllers (which are the most ergonomic controllers I have ever tried), and David Heaney of Upload VR reported the haptics to be so well defined that they were be even better than the ones on PSVR 2!

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Price and release date

Quest Pro costs $1500/€1800 (we have VAT in Europe). It can be pre-ordered on the Meta website and will ship from October, 25th in all the 22 countries where Quest 2 is already shipping (sorry, still no Germany, then). After that date, it will be possible also to buy it in dedicated physical stores in some countries. 

Content of the box of the Quest Pro full kit (Image by Meta)

Meta is also offering demos of the device in physical stores to let people try the headset before buying it.

You can also buy various (overpriced) accessories for it. Let me copy paste what they are:

  • Meta Quest Pro Compact Charging Dock ($79.99 USD / £89.99 GBP / €99.99 EUR – Available on 10/11 for pre-order, ships on 10/25): Power to go. This 2-in-1 dock chargesyour Meta Quest Pro controllers and any Meta Quest headset with a USB-C connection. 45W universal power adapter included.
  • Meta Quest Pro VR Earphones ($49.99 USD / £49.99 GBP / €49.99 EUR – Available on 10/11 for pre-order, ships on 10/25):Tune out background noise and step into a hi-fidelity audio experience with a customized fit. Works with Meta Quest Pro light blocking accessories in place. Separate right and left earphones connect to either side of the headset.
  • Meta Quest Pro Full Light Blocker ($49.99 USD / £49.99 GBP / €49.99 EUR – Available for pre-order on 10/11, ships on 11/22): A full light blocking facial interface that easily attaches to Meta Quest Pro for a more immersive experience.
  • Meta Quest Pro Carry Case from Incase ($119.95 USD/ £109.95 GBP / €119.95 EUR -Available on 10/11 for pre-order, ships on 10/25): A custom-fit inner shell with interior pockets securely stores your Meta Quest Pro headset and accessories. A lightweight outer shell provides on-the-go protection.

A thing that made everyone get crazy is that the Quest ships with a partial blinder, and to buy the full one, that covers all your field of view, you need to spend $50.

The Touch Pro controllers can also be bought separately: they are compatible with the Quest 2, and you can buy them for $300 (so it is more or less like buying a new Quest 2). Prices of everything related to this device are very high: like all prosumers/enterprise gadgets, everything is sold at a premium. Do you remember when everyone was mocking HTC for its super-high prices and people were praising Meta for its cheap costs? How are the turntables… now the Focus 3 is cheaper than the Quest Pro!

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Commentary: Should you buy it?

Meta Quest Pro packaging box (Image by Meta)

Zuck has launched the Pro as a secondary line of business. If the Quest is the device for consumers, the Quest Pro is the device for prosumers and companies. The Quest Pro is not sold at loss, even if Zuck clarified that if you consider all the R&D that there is behind it, it is sold at loss too, even if it costs so much (remember that Meta spends $10B/year for its metaverse efforts…)

This is not a device for gamers. It is not a device for consumers. So if you just want to play VR games, you had better buy a Quest 2 or a Pico 4. This is a device for those who work with VR, a device for tech enthusiasts that wants the latest gadget, or a device for those who have a company to which the Quest Pro can make spare money. In all the other cases, you should not buy it: it has no sense spending $1500 to then play Gorilla Tag (also, playing Gorilla Tag, you would destroy the expensive controllers in a second).

If you need it for work, I think it is worth a shot. Not only the device is very well designed and polished, but Meta is building around it a very complete ecosystem (as you will see in the next paragraphs). It is the same that Meta did on the consumers’ side with Quest 1. The first Quest was not that superior to the Vive Focus Plus, but the ecosystem it built around it over time (e.g. all the games, the integration with an external keyboard, the passthrough, the runtime updates, etc…), and the level of polish it offered, was much superior. And I’m sure Meta is going to do the same with Quest Pro: I bet that one year from now, the Quest Pro will be much more valuable than it is now because there will be more features and a richer ecosystem. 

Unless Apple kills it, of course…

Productivity ecosystem

Quest Pro is meant for work (Image by Meta)

Meta has worked hard behind the curtains to create a valuable ecosystem for the Quest Pro. In particular, the company has identified “productivity” as the third vertical where to push virtual reality, after gaming and fitness. The Quest Pro fits very well this strategy since it is a headset made for professionals. Productivity for Meta means in particular making the job done, that is giving the tools to professionals to do work on the headset. In the long run, this means substituting your computer with the VR headset or integrating your computer with a VR headset (like it happens in Horizon Workrooms).

Meta has prepared a lot of announcements in this sense, and some of them have been incredibly relevant.

Horizon Workrooms

Horizon Workrooms is the enterprise social VR space created by Meta, which de facto aims to emulate in VR the life of a real office. At Meta Connect many pieces of news have been announced about it.

Let me copy-paste the press release about them:

  • More expressive avatars: By utilizing Quest Pro’s inward-facing sensors that power eye tracking and Natural Facial Expressions features, we can now generate more authentic, lifelike avatars in real-time. And because avatars can now show non-verbal cues like eye contact and facial expressions, meetings in Workrooms will give you a much greater sense of “being there” than traditional video calls.
  • Breakout groups: We’ve introduced the ability for teams to shift from a big group presentation into smaller discussions in the same room for more active brainstorming. With spatial audio, this means you can hear your breakout group clearly and the ambient discussions in the rest of the room, with less distraction.
You will be able to split a room in many submeetings around the tables. This is a very useful feature (Image by Meta)
  • Sticky notes for whiteboard: Right now you can turn any free space in your physical environment into a virtual whiteboard. We’re introducing the ability to add sticky notes to the whiteboard for brainstorming and collaborating. And because it’s persistent, it will all still be there the next time anyone on your team logs in to that Workroom.
  • Multiple screens in a new personal office: The solo Workrooms experience is also getting a major update. We’re shipping the ability to spawn three massive virtual screens on your desk, as well as four types of personal environments. These changes, combined with color passthrough, will turn your headset into a portable office.
The personal office with the 3 big screens around you (Image by Meta)
  • Zoom integration: We’re continuing to improve the Workrooms experience. Early in 2023, you’ll be able to join Workrooms via Zoom, enabling more options on how you choose to show up 
  • 3D models: Next year we’ll launch an option to view 3D models in Workrooms, which we believe will be game-changing for designers, architects, and creatives
  • Magic Room: At Connect, we showed a sneak peek of a mixed reality experience we’re building that lets any mix of people, some together in a physical room and some remote, collaborate together. Workrooms is already a great solution for fully remote teams, but Magic Room will make collaboration easier and more productive for any team, including hybrid teams. We’re already experimenting with Magic Rooms at Meta, and we hope to make the experience widely available next year.
Meta Magic Room, a new space where to meet and be productive in XR (Image by Meta)

What I’m most excited about is the solo room with three virtual screens. It means that you will be able to enter Horizon Workrooms alone, connect your headset to your computer, and then start working with three big virtual headsets in front of you. Think about it: maybe like me you like to work in mobility, so you just have a laptop with a small screen. But now, connecting it to the Quest Pro, you can have your laptop with three huge virtual screens to use, to do your work better. I would love that because sometimes I truly feel the need to have more screen space. So this will be for sure one of the first things I will test with my Quest Pro. Unluckily the battery time is a true bummer, but if it can give me three big displays and it is actually comfortable in my head, I could think completing some tasks in mixed reality every day. I’m a bit skeptical, but let’s see…

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Adobe and Autodesk

Adobe Substance 3D Modeler is coming to Quest Pro (Image by Meta)

Meta has partnered with other two tech giants: Adobe and Autodesk, to bring their professional tools to Quest Pro.

Autodesk is updating its collaborative design review app to take advantage of the new possibilities unlocked by Meta Quest Pro. This should give architects and designers a new way of reviewing 3D models immersively.

For what concerns Adobe instead, next year, Adobe’s Substance 3D apps for professional 3D creators, designers, and artists are coming to Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 2, so anyone can model 3D objects and join collaborative reviews inside VR. And Adobe will bring Adobe Acrobat to the Meta Quest Store.

I guess that Meta knows that most creatives (e.g. video editors) use Apple computers, and for sure Apple will launch its device with a lot of functionalities for prosumers and professionals… so it has established partnerships to announce a similar type of content before Apple itself, to beat it in time.

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Other productivity applications

There are many other productivity applications on Quest, and according to Zuck, even big companies are already using them. For instance, Logitech is using ShapeXR to evaluate its designs; Puma used GravitySketch; Novartis is using Nanome to better visualize the molecules of its products.

Many of these applications are coming to Quest Pro: for instance, my friends of ShapeXR already prepared an update with a bunch of features that are ideal for the Quest Pro. Also Arkio has released an update for the Pro.

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B2B ecosystem

Productivity with 3 big screens on Meta Quest Pro (Image by Meta)

Meta has announced some very relevant initiatives to make it tackle better the B2B ecosystem.

Partnership with Microsoft

The biggest surprise of the day has been seeing Satya Nadella and Mark Zuckerberg on the same stage together to announce a partnership. This was totally unexpected, and in my opinion was huge, because they are the heads of two of the biggest tech companies in the world, and together they can make a lot of things.

Highlights of the partnership between Meta and Microsoft

Meta and Microsoft worked together to integrate Quest Pro into the Microsoft ecosystem. This means they will release:

  • Microsoft Teams immersive meeting experiences for Meta Quest: Connect, share, and collaborate in Teams immersive experiences
  • Microsoft Windows 365 for Meta Quest: Stream the Windows experience on Quest Pro and Quest 2 devices, and access your personalized apps, content, and settings in VR
  • Microsoft 365 app experiences for Meta Quest: Interact with 2D content from Sharepoint or productivity apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook directly from Quest Pro and Quest 2
  • Microsoft Teams/Workrooms integration: Join a Teams meeting from inside Workrooms
  • Meta Avatars in Microsoft Teams: Use your Meta Avatar in Teams for whiteboarding, brainstorming, and meetups
  • Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory support for Meta Quest: Enable enterprise security and management on Quest Pro and Quest 2 devices
You can join Teams meeting in Workrooms (Image by Meta)

The result of all of this is great both for companies and individuals. For company is great that the Quest Pro is integrated in the frameworks they already use: for instance, they can manage the Quest Pro of their employees with the Mobile Device Management solution they were already using. As an individual, you can be happy that you will be able to do on Quest Pro some useful work, like editing a presentation in Powerpoint, maybe on a big virtual screen. Even more relevant, you will be able to stream Windows 11 via cloud rendering, and so use your Quest as a PC for real!

It’s funny that when talking about the “killer app of VR” many people said that for VR to become mainstream, we needed “the Word of VR” and “the Powerpoint of VR” and now Meta is bringing Word and Powerpoint to VR. This is surely great, but honestly, this is not what we were looking for: we were (and are) looking for useful tools that are made from the ground up for VR. Honestly, I feel much better using Word on my laptop without something on my head than on whatever Quest. But I appreciate the willingness on enriching the productivity ecosystem.

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Partnership with Microsoft and Accenture

Mark Zuckerberg and Julie Sweet together at Meta Connect (Image by Meta)

Even more relevant than the actual software brought by Microsoft, I think that it is important to understand what is the true value of this partnership. Microsoft is very strong in the enterprise world, and in fact, many companies (mine included) use Microsoft Teams and Microsoft solutions in general. Meta partnering with Microsoft means that Microsoft can open many doors for Meta to enter into the enterprise world with a credible partner.

And actually… the credible partners are two. On the virtual stage of the event, we have also been able to see Julie Sweet, the CEO of Accenture. She announced that Accenture will be working alongside Meta and Microsoft in the coming years to help companies use VR to transform the way they engage employees, interact with customers, or create products and services in the metaverse. Long story short, the three companies will work together to bring bespoke solutions to big corporates that need XR integrations. Most probably Meta is bringing the hardware, Microsoft the platform (e.g. Azure), and Accenture the development workforce for the customizations. Together they can offer a lot to corporates.

This strategic partnership is very important and I‘m sure it will make Meta perform huge steps forward in the enterprise world, where until now companies like Pico and HTC seemed to have the leadership. At least, this will happen for what concerns collaborating with huge enterprises.

Accenture in its keynote also said an interesting thing: it has already onboarded 150,000 employees with virtual reality, and it has noticed that its employees retain +33% of the information when they are in virtual reality. You can use this stat in your next Powerpoint presentation about the “metaverse”.

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Quest For Business

Using Quest Pro for prototyping (Image by Meta)

One of my predictions for Meta Connect was that Meta was going to define better its enterprise strategy. And this is exactly what happened: contextually to the definition of these important partnerships, it has announced the revival of a business program for its hardware.

So next year, Meta will launch Meta Quest for Business, a subscription bundle for Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 2 that includes essential admin features like device and application management, premium support, and more. This is the ideal solution for big corporates that want to integrate Quest devices in their production processes and need dedicated services to relate to that (e.g. dedicated service if one of the products breaks).

Quest 3

Leaked CAD models of Quest 3 (Image by Brad Lynch)

Quest 3 was the great absent of the show. I was expecting a mention to it, so that to entice people not to buy the Pico 4, but Zuckerberg didn’t even hinted at it. I guess that it was made on purpose so that to focus the keynote on the launch of Quest Pro.

Anyway, soon after the keynote, in an interview, Zuck officially spoke about the Quest 3, hinting to the fact that it won’t be released this year and that its price range will be in the $300-500 interval. This means that Meta is still very interested in tackling the consumer sector… a good news for everyone.

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Store

Zuck and Boz have talked about the Quest 2, defining it as the first headset to become mainstream. After that, they mentioned the Quest Store and released a few interesting statistics about it.

Money on the store

Resident Evil 4 was one of the most profitable games on the Quest Store (Image by Armature)

Meta revealed that of the over 400 apps in the Quest Store, roughly 1 in 3 are making revenue in the millions. Even more, 55 games made more than $5 million in gross revenues, and 33 titles made over $10 million.

Some highlights are:

  • Zenith: The Last City made its first $1 million in 24 hours
  • Blade & Sorcery: Nomad, made its first $1 million in just two days
  • Resident Evil 4 made $2M in 24 hours
  • Even better, BoneLab made $1M in less than one hour! Meta says it’s the fastest-selling app in Quest history
  • The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners has also now surpassed $50 million in revenue on Quest alone

These are all great numbers, and kudos to Meta for having created such a profitable ecosystem. BUT never forget the risk of falling for survivorship bias: these titles are making millions, but what about the ones we are not talking about? If 1 out of 3 on the official store makes $1M, it means that 2 out of 3 are not making $1M. If making a VR application costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, it means that 66% of applications are probably not making enough money to make their studio scale. And we are talking about the official Quest Store. Now imagine how the situation is even worse on the B-league store App Lab! 

This is not to say that the Quest Store isn’t good (it is VERY good), but to show you that being an indie VR developer, and trying to survive by just making VR games, is still terribly hard.

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The power of social… and Carmack’s misunderstanding

Zuck has said that social platforms are the ones that are most successful in the store, and that data analysis shows that the majority of time is spent in general by people in multiplayer experiences. This is totally in line with Meta’s philosophy of “defying distance” and making people meet together thanks to the power of XR.

This is for sure good, but it has also a downside: John Carmack has stated that one of the reasons why Meta had to rise the price of the Quest 2 from $299 to $399 is that there were too many people using the Quest 2 just to use free social VR apps like VRChat or Rec Room. The Quest 2 is sold under cost, and Meta expects to gain back part of the money via software sales… but if people just use free software this system doesn’t work. So Meta had to raise the price of the Quest to make the financials work again. As JustDaven made me notice, Rec Room replied to this saying that actually, RecRoom pays a 30% cut on all the In-App Purchases to Meta, so it actually brings a lot revenues, and Carmack replied that it is true, but his argument is still true for the other free apps.

Social

Horizon Home

Boz announcing better integration of Youtube VR with Horizon Home (Image by Meta)

Slowly, Horizon Home is truly becoming the personal social hub that Meta has envisioned for a long time. After giving you the possibility of meeting your friends in your home and watching 360 videos with them, Meta is now unlocking the possibility for a group of friends to watch together videos that are on Youtube VR. Youtube VR has proven to be the place to go to find interesting 2D and 360 videos to enjoy on a headset, and Meta has recognized this, so it is partnering with Google to bring it inside Horizon Home in a social way.

I still think it’s getting confusing to have a personal social home space both on Horizon Worlds and Horizon Home… but I guess Meta is trying different strategies to see what sticks better.

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Horizon Worlds

Meta has announced very important updates for Horizon Worlds, its main social hub.

First of all, Horizon Worlds is coming to the web. Entering it won’t require a mandatory VR headset anymore, and it will be possible to enter a room by just opening a link. This is going to reduce a lot of the friction in its usage.

Horizon Worlds is coming to the web, with easy links sharing (Image by Meta)

Then, next year, the creation tools will be revolutionized. Until now, you could create something for Horizon by just using the in-world creation tools, which were nice, but very limited. The result was a cartoonish world with limited interactivity. You know that with Vrroom I create virtual events, and when I evaluated Horizon Worlds, I expressed the opinion that it was not ready to create high-quality virtual content yet. But soon, Meta will let you shape your world in Horizon by using 3D models created with Maya, Blender, Adobe Substance, ZBrush, and all the other professional 3D creation tools. Meta is also working on easy integration with Sketchfab and similar asset libraries to let creators use already existing 3D models. But there is even more: for the development of the logic, it will be possible to use Typescript, which is basically a Javascript dialect. These improvements will take a while before being released, though.

This scene, built with Houdini, Substance, and Zbrush, may be part of Horizon Worlds in the future (Image by Meta)

The result of all of this is that when these updates will roll out, it will be possible to create visually stunning worlds with quite complex logic in Horizon Worlds. It may switch from a toy tool to something where it is possible to create valuable content. I’ll re-evaluate it for the virtual concerts that we do at Vrroom in a few months from now for sure.

If Horizon will let us create this type of content, it could truly become useful (Image by Meta)

The fourth and final thing that is relevant is that it will be possible to share videos shot in Horizon Worlds as reels on Instagram. Meta says that there will be always more connections between the social VR worlds and the traditional social, and this is just the start. And Meta is not even the first company in doing this: when I interviewed Nikk Mitchell, he told me that it is possible to share content from Pico Video directly to TikTok in China. I think this communication between the digital and the virtual world will be one of the trends of the upcoming months, that will mark the transition between the Internet and the M-word.

https://gfycat.com/perfumedshortbuckeyebutterfly
Direct shaaring from Pico Video to Douyin (the Chinese TikTok). I guess Meta will do something similar
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Meta Avatars

Meta has announced that new customizations are coming to its avatars so that to make them even more inclusive (e.g. there will be wheelchairs and cochlear implants, plus various shapes of the body). Then it announced even more uses for the avatars, like that you will be able to do video calls using your avatar instead of your camera feed (if you want other people to think you are cringe).

More and more people will be able to represent themselves as Meta avatars (Image by Meta)

Then Zuck told that he wanted to tease us with something special, and so he entered a virtual world where he became his avatar and with him there was another Meta person. His avatar had new graphics, it was not the usual Meta avatar: it was more realistic, having better materials and texture. I found it super cringy, but many people online told me that they actually liked that.

Don’t you find these avatars a bit cringe too?

And… surprise surprise, the avatars had legs! Zuck and his colleague started doing things like jumping and touching knees with their hands, and I was genuinely astonished by the full body tracking achieved with such high quality by just using a standalone headset and its controllers. Then, a few days after the event, Meta clarified that that section of the event had been recorded with a standard mocap tool and was just made “to convey the idea”. I was incredibly disappointed to discover that, to be honest. It turns out that yes, there will be some sort of body tracking, but it is the same as shown in an old video, which infers some sort of “believable pose” for your body and let only the other people see that, while you don’t see your own legs. Lies, deception.

This is the full body “reconstruction” the system will use. The detected pose is similar but never equal to the real one

Anyway, an Avatar SDK will be released next year, so that you can integrate the full body feature in your applications. In the meantime, Meta will integrate legs first of all in Horizon Worlds, and then in other apps next year.

On the plus side, Meta is going to open up an official Store for Meta Avatars, so that to trigger the creators’ economy about them. And many special avatars made in partnership with Netflix and other brands will be released to promote these brands and their products. I can’t wait to see the avatar customizations taht will be created by the community.

https://gfycat.com/quarrelsomelankyballoonfish
Avatars Store
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Entertainment

Gaming

Quest 2 is still prominently a gaming device, so every one of us was expecting great news on the gaming side. We had quite a few announcements:

  • Ironman VR, previously a PSVR exclusive title, will launch on November 3, 2022, for Quest 2. It’s interesting that “Sony Interactive Entertainment” (the company behind PSVR) has been mentioned as a “partner” for this to happen
  • Population One is going to launch a Sandbox mode that will let players create their own maps
  • Among US VR is coming on November, 10th, with preorders opening the day of the Connect
Among Us VR launch video
  • The Walking Dead: Saint And Sinners – Chapter 2 Retribution is launching on December 1, 2022
  • We also had a sneak peek of a new upcoming title from Skydance Interactive and which is called Behemoth
  • Gym Class VR has been promoted from App Lab to the Official Store.
Gym Class VR is coming to Quest Store! I am always happy when an indie title gets promoted from App Lab (Image by Meta)

I think that more than what is being announced, it is relevant to what has NOT been announced. We had no info about GTA VR or Assassin’s Creed VR, and not even a sneak peek of a new upcoming great game. The gaming part of the conference was very underwhelming. Probably this has been done on purpose: being the great day of the Quest Pro and the productivity sector, entertainment has been put a bit in the background.

Studios acquisition

Meta has bought the studio behind Iron Man VR (Image by Meta)

Meta has announced it has acquired three gaming studios:

  • Camouflaj (Marvel’s Iron Man VR)
  • Twisted Pixel (Wilson’s Heart, Path of the Warrior)
  • Armature Studio (Resident Evil 4 VR port for Quest 2).

These companies will join Oculus Studio and will work on still-unannounced projects. On one side it is good seeing some startups acquired in the field (it gives Venture Capitalists faith in VR), but on the other side, if all the best developers get acquired by the major hardware manufacturers, this ecosystem risks becoming too fragmented. I’m not a big fan of exclusive titles, you know.

I’m also wondering if the FTC will be happy about this…

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Xbox games on Quest

The partnership with Microsoft resulted also in a new feature for the consumer: soon, it will be possible to use Xbox Cloud Gaming on Quest and Quest Pro. Users will so be able to play their favorite Xbox games with their Xbox controller on a big screen in virtual reality!

Xbox Cloud Gaming menu inside the Quest 2 (Image by Meta)

This is a piece of great news for the Quest ecosystem (which becomes even richer), but I know some indie VR developers are not happy because they think that now their games on Quest have not only to compete with the high-budget VR games (like Resident Evil 4 VR) but also with 2D Xbox Games.

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Mixed reality games

Of course, Zuck is expecting many upcoming games to exploit the high-quality mixed reality of the Pro. There are already some interesting projects in the work:

  • Schell Games is going to release a free demo called “I Expect You To Die: Home Sweet Home” which is going to provide you a very short escape room in mixed reality
  • Demeo will soon be available in mixed reality
  • Resolution Games has also showcased a prototype it is making of a multiplayer local shooter game that works in color passthrough. It is called Spatial Ops.
  • During the keynote, Zuck has also shown a prototype of Beat Saber in mixed reality.

I think that it will be important for game studios to understand if mixed reality is relevant to their game or not. Beat Saber is cool in VR because you have all those effects around you, while the video of the mixed-reality mode looked a bit lame. Demeo, instead, since it is a tabletop game, fits very well with the AR mode, where you can play the game on your real table. Mixed reality doesn’t fit all games: it is not just that you remove the environment and put the passthrough in its place and you have made a mixed reality game. MR requires a special design. I think that over time studios will understand how to use it properly.

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Partnership with NBC Universal

Meta has just started a multi-year partnership with NBC Universal. As a result of that, the video streaming app Peacock is coming to Quest 2 and Quest Pro.

And starting next year, Meta and NBCU will co-create experiences around The Office, Universal Monsters, DreamWorks, Blumhouse, Halloween Horror Nights, and other iconic IPs. 

I’m very intrigued by this, but I also wonder how it will be implemented: I mean, it’s the dream of every one of us to enter into “The Office”, but only if it is made in the right way and it doesn’t result just into a cash grab.

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Fitness

Fitness remains a sector where Meta wants to keep investing money. Meta has announced that it is going to release a fitness pack for Quest 2 (with elastic handles for the controllers and a waterproof facemask) on October, 25th. It is also going to partner with other companies to let them produce dedicated accessories for VR fitness.

Meta Quest Active fitness pack (Image by Meta)

Meta is also going to open soon its fitness APIs, at first to dedicated partners, and then to all developers, so it will be possible to create applications that share real-time data, compute custom stats, and share your fitness data with your friends so that to motivate each other thanks to the power of gamification. This is good for teams that are making fitness games like us of HitMotion: Reloaded (play our game, by the way 😛 )

On the software side, Supernatural is going to release a new incredible feature: knee tracking, which you can see in the GIF here below.

https://gfycat.com/victorioussnoopygrison
Full body workout!

Considering that it is using the plain Quest, I have no idea how this is possible, but I’m very intrigued…

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Developer interest

Meta also announced a few interesting features for us developers:

  • Automatic plane detection is coming for mixed reality, but it won’t be present at launch. Thanks to this, we developers will be able to identify walls and tables in a room, and put objects on them
  • Shared Spatial Anchors will bring local shared space in mixed reality: it will be possible for multiple devices in the same room to identify some common points in space where to attach objects. This is important for creating local multiplayer games, and can also be relevant for VR arcades. Imagine for instance a shooter game where all the players see the enemy appear exactly in the same physical point…
  • Movement SDK. Let me tell you more about this by quoting Meta: “Today, we introduced Movement SDK, our newest addition to Presence Platform. Movement SDK is composed of our eye, face, and three-point body tracking capabilities—all of which help unlock a new dimension of presence in VR. Movement SDK lets avatars mimic facial movements in real time using Meta Quest Pro’s inward-facing sensors. Now, developers can bring characters to life with eye and face tracking. With more expressivity, characters can look and feel more like you. This is the same underlying technology that drives our avatars in Meta Horizon Worlds and Meta Horizon Workrooms. Movement SDK also includes our Body Tracking API, which uses three-point tracking based on the position of the controllers or hands relative to the headset”
https://gfycat.com/blondadorableflounder
Applying facial sensor data to an avatar
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AR glasses

Ray-Ban Stories WayFarer blue with polarized lenses (Image by Ray-Ban)

We expected some news on Project Nazare, but we have been all disappointed. Zuck has just said that AR glasses are the final goal and the company is working on all the technology stack to make them happen.

He also dedicated a brief part of his video to the Rayban Stories smartglasses made in partnership with Exilor-Luxottica. Meta and Luxottica announced that they are working on the next version of the smartglasses, and confirmed that their partnership is going to last for many years.

The current version of Rayban Stories is going to get more customization options. On the software side, soon will come the possibility of making phone calls, writing text messages, and also using Spotify Tap, which is Spotify with a special interface that relies on the tap on the glasses frames.

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R&D

Zuck & Abrash (Image by Meta)

Like last year, Zuck has had a brief visit to Michael Abrash, to talk about the R&D that is happening at Meta.

BCI (Brain-Computer Interface)

Zuck talking about the EMG wristband his company is working on

The first topic has been the EMG (Electromyography) wristband that Meta is building as the next-generation input for mixed reality. Abrash reiterated some concepts already expressed in the past. The EMG bracelet reads the input that your brain is sending to your hands and learns what happens on your nerves when you want to send an impulse to your hand (e.g. to do the pinch gesture). After this learning phase, it is able to detect your willing of doing that gesture even if you just think about doing it, but you are not performing it with your fingers. This magic is possible because your brain sends anyway some signals to the hand even before sending the actual order of moving the hand, and the bracelet can detect this “preorder”. You can see this in action in this video below from CTRL+Labs, the startup acquired by Meta to create this magical wristband.

It seems magic, but it is just science

Abrash said that it is important that this wristband can adapt to the wearer because every one of us does the gestures in a different way: my thumbs-up gesture is for sure different from yours, for instance. He called this feature of adapting the particular gestures of every user “coadaptation”.

Then they showcased the video of a prototype of the system in action on some prototype AR glasses, and you can see it here below:

https://gfycat.com/achingidioticdove
Interacting with small gestures with AR glasses thanks to the BCI bracelet

Upload VR has been able to visit Meta R&D labs and have even better insights on this bracelet. It seems that Meta sees this as the next-generation input for XR (something like the mouse of XR), and it is working on two sides related to it. One, the most immediate, is to use it for “activation”. That is, the AR glasses thanks to AI can learn your behavior, and then analyze what you have around you, and so can predict what you want to do, and show you just that option, to which you just have to “click” yes with the thought of moving your hand. The goal here is not to have many complicated menus, but just one single option that is already the correct one. So, Zuck wants to remove the friction that you have now, when for instance if you receive a message, you have to take out your phone from the pocket, unlock it, then answer the message, and then put it again in the pocket. He hopes that in the future, an AI system can directly put the message on the AR glasses in front of your eyes, with a suggestion to answer something, and you have just to tap to accept the suggested answer.

The second feature is “bandwidth”, which is using this bracelet to convey more complex data than just yes/no. Here the clear use case is a virtual keyboard: you just think about what you want to write and can write it. Considering how it is difficult to write in VR, that would simply be amazing. But typing is just one of the use cases, there are many others.

Zuck believes that in the next 5 years, these wristbands could surpass a standard keyboard in terms of throughput. It seems that some technicians inside Meta already can write well using them.

An example of the bracelets in use to play a game
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Project Aria

There have not been huge updates on Project Aria, but Meta showed that they created a mobile app that is able to do environment understanding and tracking in a good enough way, that they can help visually impaired people in navigating inside indoor environments. The reconstruction of the map of the Pittsburgh airport where the application is usable has been performed by people wearing Project Aria smartglasses. This proves that with Project Aria, Meta can reconstruct the full mesh of whole environments (hence can build its AR Cloud).
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3D reconstruction

Since there is a lot of talking about Apple and its use of Neural Radiant Fields (NeRF), Meta wanted absolutely to show it can do them itself, too.

Zuck and Abrash showcased the technology they have internally to scan 3D objects and bring them to virtual and mixed reality. They talked about two methods:

  1. NeRF, which can bring into AR/VR a very detailed version of a real object, which looks exactly like in real life
  2. Inverse Rendering, which instead brings into VR a digitized version of the asset. The asset looks like it was 3D modeled, so it is less detailed, but more coherent with the rest of the virtual environment (it looks more toonish), and can also be lit, receive shadows, etc… 
Mark Zuckerberg scanning 3D objects

Photorealistic Avatars

Meta gave us an update on the status of the realistic avatars it is working on, both in the conference and by letting journalists (like the ones of Upload) enter its R&D lab.

Meta has currently three interesting technologies related to realistic avatars:

  • Codec Avatars 2.0. They are an almost perfect reconstruction of the face of the user. They are impressive because they are not only almost identical to the user, but they are also dynamic, so can replicate your facial expressions, and the 3D model can be lit in a realistic way in realtime by a light in the scene. You can see Zuck’s face here to understand how much they are realistic. Ian Hamilton from Upload has been able to do a “phone call” in VR with codec avatars and was impressed by how the other person in VR looked like a real one. Codec avatars are amazing, but they are computationally heavy and require a room full of cameras with many hours of capturing to be created.
https://gfycat.com/welcomeobesebandicoot
Realistic avatar of Zuck. The avatar is more human than himself. By the way, you can see how the avatar is realistic and reacts well to all the lighting conditions
  • Fast creation of realistic avatars. Since Codec Avatars 2.0 are so complicated to create, Meta has found a way to create the face of a Codec Avatar by just using a Lidar-equipped phone and some minutes of scanning of your face. The result is very good but less “perfect” than the one of a true Codec Avatar (and also slightly uncanny)
  • Full body Codec Avatars. Meta can also create full-body codec avatars, which can also jump and move following the full-body movements of the user. It is impressive how thanks to the power of Machine Learning, you can even change in real time the clothes on the avatar. So, for instance, if I made my scanning for the codec avatar with a T-shirt, I could change it in real-time with a sweater, and you would see me wearing a sweater, and that sweater would move realistically following the laws of physics, as if it was my real clothing.

Now Meta has two challenges in front of it: first of all, try to unify all these three types of avatars to obtain ultra-realistic full-body avatars that can be obtained with commercial hardware. And then optimize them so that they can be enjoyed on an off-the-shelf headset. It’s not easy, but I truly hope they can deliver because the result would be having true telepresence, the ability to feel that a person that is very distant away from us is actually very close to us.

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Future directions

We all know that Meta, like many other tech giants, is undergoing a spending review because of the adverse economical conditions. For this reason, the management has identified four main research areas where to put effort for defining the future of XR: the work on this areas will go full steam ahead, while on the other ones, the budget will be cut considerably, or they will be removed altogether.

The four main areas will be:

  • Social XR (Horizon) and avatars
  • VR headsets
  • AR headsets
  • Neural Interfaces like the upcoming watch/wristband
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John Carmack

John Carmack has given his usual very honest unscripted talk… and as usual he has made some statements that for sure have not made Meta executives happy. For instance he said that he usually keeps eye tracking disabled, he is not a big advocate for mixed reality, and that he is not “much a Horizon guy”. So basically he doesn’t care about everything it has been announced lol.

He also said that the open casing of Quest Pro is not disturbing much his experience with the device. He said a lot of other interesting info which I already added to the reminder of the article.

Here below you can find the video of the whole Carmack’s unscripted talk:

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Other Info

You can read a very long and interesting interview with Mark Zuckberg performed by Alex Heath of The Verge at this link: https://www.theverge.com/23397187/mark-zuckerberg-quest-pro-metaverse-interview-decoder

You can watch the full integral keynote of Meta Connect 2022 here:

Some fun

A stupid meme I made

Of course, there have been some memes made about this Connect, so let me share a few of them with you:

I made some memes myself, and was even appreciated by Meta CTO!

The conclusion

Zuck closed the event by talking about the two foundational values of Meta.

The first one is that “people are at center” of Meta’s business. Meta’s purpose is to connect people, and with XR technology there is an immense potential for taking people’s connections to the next level. Zuck always mentioned that making people meet in virtual worlds has been a dream of his since when he was very young, and this may explain his “obsession” with the metaverse.

Then he added that the second foundational value of Meta is “openness” and that Meta is doing everything to promote an open metaverse. He clearly opposed this to “other closed approaches”: he said that the history of computing has always been about open vs closed ecosystems. At first, it was Windows vs Mac, and then Android vs iOS. He never said that explicitly, but he clearly hinted that the upcoming battle will be Meta vs Apple and that Meta is the white knight which will promote openness in the metaverse. The partnerships with Microsoft and other companies should be proof of that according to Zuck.

He even finished his speech by saying “Our role is that the open ecosystem wins out in the next generation of the internet”.

That is very inspiring. BUT I should remind you all that the Quest Store is a closed platform, that the Quest is not rootable, that sideloaded applications on Quest are treated as dangerous stuff, that until a few months ago you needed a Facebook account to use the Quest, that Meta makes both hardware and software of its headsets exactly like Apple, that Meta takes the best ideas of the apps on the store and implements them itself, that as a developer you can’t access all camera streams, etc… The Quest is NOT an open ecosystem. It is a “not closed” ecosystem, which is completely different. Apple will surely be worse, but it is not possible to compare the Quest Runtime to Android, which is completely open source, or even to the (Windows) PC ecosystem, which is totally open to every kind of customization. With much respect for what Meta has done for the development of the XR ecosystem… if Meta is our champion for promoting openness in the metaverse, then we are completely fucked.

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And that’s it for this huge post! I hope it has been useful for you. If you like these detailed articles of mine, subscribe to my newsletter not to miss any of the future ones! And please, since I spent a lot of time to write this post, would you mind helping me by sharing it around in the VR community? This way it can inform also all your VR peers! Thank you!

See you at the next Connect!

(Header image by Meta)

metameta quest
Skarredghost: AR/VR developer, startupper, zombie killer. Sometimes I pretend I can blog, but actually I've no idea what I'm doing. I tried to change the world with my startup Immotionar, offering super-awesome full body virtual reality, but now the dream is over. But I'm not giving up: I've started an AR/VR agency called New Technology Walkers with which help you in realizing your XR dreams with our consultancies (Contact us if you need a project done!)
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