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Yesterday, at its annual AR/VR conference Connect, Facebook announced its vision for the metaverse, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg defined as “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” Oh, right—it also renamed itself Meta.
Some argue FB’s metaverse embrace is a PR-driven diversion from the multi-directional scrutiny it is facing at the moment. Be that as it may, nearly 20% of its workforce—or about 10,000 employees—actually works on AR/VR.
- It also says it’s hiring another 10,000 people over the next five years to work on the metaverse in Europe, and that it’ll spend $10 billion this year on related projects.
Connect was light on concrete AR/VR announcements, but here’s a quick roundup of the product-oriented updates. The company unveiled...
- Plans for a higher-end VR headset, for now dubbed Project Cambria and slated to roll out in 2022.
- A new AR/VR developer platform called the Presence Platform, which will make it easier for devs to build apps for the metaverse. It consists of three SDKs that will help with things like scale, hand-tracking, and voice.
- Horizon Home, a more social version of the current VR headset home screen, and Horizon Marketplace, to buy and sell digital goods. They’ll join Horizon Workrooms, its VR meetings app that went live earlier this year, and Horizon World, a world-building app that’s been in beta since last year.
- The Oculus brand will be sunset in 2022, and all headsets will have Meta branding (e.g. Meta Quest).
Bottom line: This year’s event was largely about selling the vision of Meta. Zuckerberg said on the call that the timeline for people to begin really using the metaverse is five to 10 years out—we’ll see between now and then if the company can deliver on that prediction.