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Meta’s Reality Labs prototype hardware
- erulabs 3y ago> As with Butterscotch Varifocal, the goal of Flamera isn’t to show something that’s viable for a consumer product—at least, not yet. A bit surprising that these seem so far away from production. I think Apple is playing it properly here: Announce a product people really want, even if its very far into the future and may possibly not actually come onto the market for years. Use the feedback from the public to fine tune the product as it's developed. Facebook seems now to be something like the company whose former HQ it inhabits: Xerox PARC. Potentially vital R/D happening in such a way as to have almost zero chance of actually becoming a product. I can't be excited for Butterscotch or Flamera, because they're not products I can buy, and they explicitly never will be. If I managed to get a demo, I'm sure I'd be NDAed to hell and back. I am excited for Vision Pro because it's something I will actually be allowed to purchase in the future.
- ojbyrne 3y agoMeta occupies Sun's former HQ. Xerox PARC (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is in a completely different place in Silicon Valley. Also Meta has something Xerox PARC never had, copious amounts of revenue.
- throw2291 3y ago[dead]
- nomel 3y ago> Potentially vital R/D happening in such a way as to have almost zero chance of actually becoming a product. My assumption, of this early work, is to scoop up important patents. Related to important patents, varifocal is almost certainly the future of HMDs. Having fixed focus, as all HMDs do now, is fatiguing and strange. A really interesting example of this is, in VR, hold something close to your eyes. You'll see that it gets blurry. Now close one eye. You'll see that it's clear. It's not that it's actually blurry, it's that your eyes are refusing to put up with the physical nonsense of a fixed focus 3d world.
- zmmmmm 3y ago> to scoop up important patents Or perhaps to refine that, to scoop important patents Apple is aggressively out there patenting obvious things that have been basic public knowledge / in use for years to try and lock up the field (eg: [0]). You can try and get your own patents but if you aren't strategically dependent on the IP for your own needs it is much easier and quicker to just nuke the field by putting as many things in public as possible so it's much harder for Apple (or others) to retro-patent broad classes of obvious features. [0] https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloadPdf/11715301 https://image-ppubs.uspto.gov/dirsearch-public/print/downloa...
- idrios 3y agoWait am I reading this right? Is this saying that 2 days ago, Apple got approved of a patent on all of AR? Like, what Pokemon Go has been doing since 2016?
- charcircuit 3y agoIt is talking about showing nonvisible features as visible. Like this quest app for visualizing wifi strength in mixed reality. https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/4793438284066128/ https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/4793438284066128/
- cududa 3y agoSure but the Vision Pro uses eye tracking and foveated rendering to simulate planes of view
- nomel 3y agoLooking at a far object relaxes the muscles, while looking close tenses them. Any deviation from this is somewhat uncomfortable. Fixed focus displays mean that, when you look far, your eyes relax, expecting the physics to be correct, but then have iterate to focus at 3m (or whatever the fixed distance is). Same with near objects. The eyes tense, things go wrong, then they drift back to 3m. Blurring can be applied, but that doesn't change the physics that your eyes expects, which causes the disconnect and discomfort, which varifocal displays solve.
- w-ll 3y agoThe Apple Vision is way more akin to the Meta Quest and you can buy that today for $300, not Apples $3,000 price tag.
- Kilenaitor 3y agoI'm confused on your phrasing of "they explicitly never will be." Those prototypes, of course, aren't going to themselves be shipping. But they are for R&D and to provide example of a nascent technology that one day should end up in a consumer product. You absolutely can disagree with the approach of showing this too early or not trying hard enough to incorporate this into an (albeit expensive) consumer product today/soon. But my read is Meta wants this stuff to one day be in consumer headsets. Just not there yet.
- erulabs 3y agoI don't disagree with them showing this off, just them avoiding making an actual product. Always be embarrassed by v1 and all that. I understand Meta has the cash to bankroll a decade of R/D (like XEROX used to), but iterating actual products actual people use is a far safer bet, and as a result the world actually gets products. "Explicitly never will be" only because of the bit I quoted and that these are two quite different products. One would imagine the final product would combine these two experimental headset's technologies. It's not like Facebook, as a product, was some hidden away R/D project. It was iterated on in public. Anyways, I didn't mean to poopoo the awesome work done here. I just want to actually use some of this stuff.
- megaman821 3y agoThere is virtually no market for a $3,500 headset made by Meta. These demos don't seem like things that can't do at all, just things they can't do affordably. What can be done in a $500 consumer device will only increase each year. It is probably smart for Meta to keep slow and steady.
- steveBK123 3y agoRight that's also a big problem for Meta - they can't capture the market at this price point. Who is paying that dollar level for hardware from the likes of Meta? Apple, sure. Sony, Microsoft, could be. But Meta, Google, Amazon.. lol. No.
- baby 3y agoPeople buy devices that do what they want, not brands.
- steveBK123 3y agoPeople do not buy multi-thousand dollar hardware&software combos from companies with unknown histories of software patches, product line commitment, warranty coverage, etc. That's why there's so few operating at those price ranges.
- fomine3 3y agoIf Meta continue investing for this, I believe it can be like a Microsoft Gaming.
- MBCook 3y agoThe price of that $3500 headset will also drop each year. Let’s say it takes five years for Apple or Meta to be able to release this kind of hardware at $500. Would you rather bet on the company with 5 years experience selling that class of hardware and software and finding real use cases? Or the one who is leaving the lab with it for the first time? Ignoring Apple is a supply chain MONSTER that can get things cheaper and better than Meta can thanks to their volumes so the products might not be comparable at $500.
- capableweb 3y ago> I think Apple is playing it properly here: Announce a product people really want, even if its very far into the future and may possibly not actually come onto the market for years. Use the feedback from the public to fine tune the product as it's developed. Do note that doing it like that is not what Apple commonly does. Usually work happens in silence and secrecy, then the product is available within like 6 months to purchase (in the US, not necessarily all over the world)
- lancesells 3y agoIsn't that what they are doing with the Vision Pro but more like 12 months to purchase? Then they annually iterate on their products with differing success?
- MBCook 3y agoIn this case I expect it’s because they wanted outside developers to work on software for it before launch so it’s ready day one. Otherwise I agree it’s very likely they wouldn’t have said anything yet.
- throw2291 3y ago[dead]
- n4te 3y agoIf you need the public to help you develop something, it's an indicator you don't have the wisdom to build the right thing. Anyway I don't think that's what Apple is doing. The are just being expensive, exclusive ass clowns, like usual.
- reaperducer 3y agoIf you need the public to help you develop something, it's an indicator you don't have the wisdom to build the right thing. I guess you missed the last 20 years of crowdsourcing fueling half the tech economy.
- throw2291 3y ago[dead]
- throwuwu 3y agoThey’re shipping pancake lenses, color pass through, and depth sensors on the Quest Pro and Quest 3. Those were features on the last batch of prototypes a few years ago. Some features from prototypes haven’t shipped yet like their ultra high brightness display or varifocal lenses but I doubt they’ve canned them. I’m glad they’re being so open about this research, along with the release cadence they’re building up for new headsets it inspires a lot of confidence.
- erulabs 3y agoI was actually really curious about the r/d to product pipeline after I posted my comment. I appreciate your reply! If the turnaround is within a year or two, that’s excellent and totally counters my comment!
- shrewduser 3y ago> Facebook seems now to be something like the company whose former HQ it inhabits: Xerox PARC. did you mean sun microsystems?
- flatline 3y ago> There are two types of people: Those who think VR will change the world—and those who haven’t tried it yet. > While there are few things as magical as your first VR “a-ha”moment That first moment for me was Cardboard. I have since used Vive and Oculus and they are cool, but I’m not left wanting to come back for more. Maybe the Cardboard experience conveyed the wrong thing to me, that this is a fun one-off type experience and not something that fits into my life in a bigger way. I’m sure some of the tools have, or could have, real world practical applications, and I would use them if needed, but I just don’t want to strap on a headset and be forced to tune out the rest of the world for longer than necessary.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoCardboard is nothing like a quest2 let alone this next generation.
- circuit10 3y agoYes, it’s a completely different experience. Cardboard isn’t really enough to trick your brain into feeling like you’re in a physical space, it’s more like a proof of concept of the idea of VR
- MBCook 3y agoHaving used both, it almost seems like it shouldn’t exist. I kind of wonder if Cardboard did VR a disservice by giving people terrible initial impressions. A gimmick of a sort that backfired on real products.
- grumbel 3y agoThe only problem with Cardboard was that Google didn't it follow it up quickly with a real standalone VR headset, nor did anybody else for that matter. The Oculus Go only came out four years after Cardboard. And it wasn't until Quest1, a whole five years later, that we got 6DOF tracking in a standalone headset (Google's own Lenovo Mirage Solo can do it too, but that feature never made it out of Beta). The thing that shouldn't have existed was Google Daydream. It brought no real advantage over Cardboard, yet was a whole new completely incompatible VR platform from Google, incompatible in both direction no less. Why they couldn't just implement the additional features on top of Cardboard I'll never understand. Ironically, Cardboard is still alive and you can find some apps that still support it (e.g. Youtube). While Daydream is dead and can't even be used on modern phones. That aside, content was a huge problem for Cardboard and other 3DOF headsets. VR video still looks great on them, but it took years before there ever were any real consumer VR cameras. And a whole lot of time was wasted with VR360-2D content, which looks utterly mediocre in VR, while good looking VR180-3D got very little attention for some reason.
- jkaptur 3y ago> There are two types of people: Those who think VR will change the world—and those who haven’t tried it yet. > > It’s an old saying, sure, maybe even a little cliché. And yes, there are skeptics out there—but we’d argue they just haven’t found the right VR experience to make them a convert []-) Yep, I'm a skeptic. I tried it, and it was fine! Pretty fun, not that fun. Like going to Disney, I'm perfectly comfortable knowing that it's there, other people love it, and I'll go once every 20 years or so and have a decent time. Maybe I just haven't had the right experience yet (I went to Epcot, not Star Wars World), but you could argue that about literally anything.
- OnlineGladiator 3y agoI'm actually someone that believed in VR until I tried it, and then I lost interest because I found it so underwhelming. In my opinion it just kinda sucks and certainly isn't worth the awkward inconvenience of strapping something on to your face. I think it even has limited appeal for niche applications like simulations and personally I'd prefer a multiscreen setup. To each their own. I was someone that was excited to try VR for years and then said "that's it?" when I finally got a chance.
- asdfman123 3y agoI feel I'm very pro-technology and pro-innovation but most of what tech has been creating recently had been total crap, and I'm tired of the disconnect.
- dmarcos 3y agoI agree. Videos and vision are powerful but I think most still underestimate the cost of wearing something on your face for more than a few mins. I see the opposite phenomena after Apple Vision Pro announcement. Many seem to love VR / AR but never tried it. Retention numbers with current tech indicate that cost of wearing a headset exceeds the value proposition for most people and use cases. Maybe Apple Vision Pro will change that. Excited to see. edit: typos
- steveBK123 3y agoI think this and the parent comment are partially a driver of Apples response. The current state of the tech is kind of shrug worthy. Might seem like a neat gimmick, might make some games better, might make you motion sick. Essentially a niche product indefinitely. I think the current market targeting the $200-500 price point is a large part of the problem. If you think about what's needed to make this well vs say, the phone in your pocket, how is a good VR implementation going to come out cheaper than the phone? Apple is basically throwing the kitchen sink at the space in terms of compute, optics, sensors, and software.. with a price tag to match. If it's going to work, it's probably going to work at that price point first.
- zmmmmm 3y agoIt's such a fascinating difference in approach between Meta and Apple. Meta literally invites journalists in to walk around its lab, shows off their latest advances in academia (including all the limitations and problems). Meanwhile Apple works for 10 years in secrecy and even after they publicly announce are making anybody with access to the device use it in SCIF-like environment with a draconian NDA. And then, Meta has no real interesting in delivering anything other than a product they can ship to millions of people on day 1 at a low price point, while Apple is actively cultivating exclusivity of access as a marketing tactic.
- hyperthesis 3y agoMore than that, Apple is targetting specific usage, for specific professionals - i.e. niche marketing. Literally Pro. At the same time, they are keeping the door open for mass-market over the long-term.
- photonerd 3y agoIt’s more that Meta uses the showing of incomplete & currently not functional hardware/software as a marketing ploy. Apple has never really done that (at least in the post Jobs return era). They demonstrate what their intention is… then release the device. Zip, except maybe some WWDC stuff in-between. Which makes sense: Apple is Product Vision & UX focused, Meta (and most other companies) are Product Delivery & User Consumption focused. Neither is wrong, they’re just aiming at different goals.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago> Apple has never really done that (at least in the post Jobs return era). Apple Maps. I still remember the hilarity. https://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/607-ios-maps-fail.html https://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/607-ios-maps-fail....
- photonerd 3y agoWhen did they use an incomplete, pre release, version of Apple Maps for tech journalism marketing? They didn’t. So not a counter example.
- dougmwne 3y agoIs it a coincidence that the light field lens resembles the compound eye of an insect? Could a similar process be happening in the insect’s visual cortex to reproject multiple views? Insects can’t move their eyes like humans, but apparently fruit flies can move their retinas. That seems very similar to the single focal point they demonstrated in the video.
- intrasight 3y agoIt is not a coincidence. An insect's compound eye is really virtual lens-retina system. A good diagram of the evolution of eyes https://www.visualcapitalist.com/eye-evolution/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/eye-evolution/ Also of interest is this article on using metasurfaces to achieve the same. I'm sure that optical frequency meta-materials will play important roles in AR/VR. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15460-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15460-0
- lvl102 3y agoI feel Meta is proud of showing off these prototypes but I think it just shows how amateur they’re at developing hardwares.
- QuantumG 3y agoAlso, I've seen ALL these prototypes already. They didn't just do this. It's a slow drip of old research. If they were making these headsets available for purchase at a price normal people could afford I might give a shit.
- MBCook 3y agoSell ‘em for $3000 to early adopters. It would still be something. Instead it’s more “don’t forget us!” after years of nothing to show for the Metaverse after throwing away insane amounts of money and then having all the air sucked out of the room by Apple‘s announcement.
- charcircuit 3y ago>I've seen ALL these prototypes already. No, you haven't.
- nickstinemates 3y agoVarifocal sounds amazing. And if it has true retina quality, that might make it an actual great desktop replacement. I remain wanting to be convinced.
- easytiger 3y agoSurely, outside of niche applications, people don't think this is a viable mass product?
- gigatexal 3y agoMeta: hey look at us! We are doing cool things! We were doing metaverse VR stuff way before Apple! Lol.
- robinbdru 3y agoOnly reason I would wear VR is to watch some really good movies with the experience of watching it just like the Apple commercials or being able to « walk » inside the scenes besides the actors. Not even sure I would appreciate the movie as much as the makers wanted me to watch it. Make me walk on Pandora with VR, maybe I’ll like it. Anything else too close from reality, what’s the point?
- baby 3y agoThere's a million cool things to do with VR, but one thing I see nobody thinking about: attending a concert or sport event front row
- MBCook 3y agoApple had some demos of that for the lucky journalists who got a hands-on. Spatial video footage that was maybe only a few seconds. I’m pretty sure there was a concert and I know they also got to see a little bit of a Denver Nuggets game. John Gruber and Ben Thompson were both amazed at the basketball footage and one or both of them said they would happily buy a season pass for it.
- ianlevesque 3y agoThey’ll be happy to see https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/nba-games-in-vr-on-quest/ https://about.fb.com/news/2023/01/nba-games-in-vr-on-quest/ then!
- agar 3y agoApple bought NextVR (and shuttered or stealthed it), whose sports-broadcast-in-VR platform was fantastic even years ago when I watched NBA games in my original Rift. No one has really stepped into that space since. Concerts in VR are a real and big thing already. Examples: Fatboy Slim: https://youtu.be/u1ulTKJNj7Y?t=145 https://youtu.be/u1ulTKJNj7Y?t=145 (watch for at least 30 seconds) Notorious BIG: https://themusicuniverse.com/meta-announces-exclusive-notorious-big-vr-concert/ https://themusicuniverse.com/meta-announces-exclusive-notori... Megan Thee Stallion: https://www.livedesignonline.com/news/bring-thee-hottieverse-home-amazevr-launches-home-vr-concerts-meta-quest https://www.livedesignonline.com/news/bring-thee-hottieverse...
- uyhgr 3y agoWow, I have been waiting for light field technology to make its way into one of these stereoscopic headsets. But I am surprised and very impressed with how the researchers choose to use it, and that bug eye shaped lens array is pure scifi fun! The demo in the video, timestamped below, showing why they used such a design to create a single opening behind the array is amazing in its own right. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O15wUC5D7zE&t=85 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O15wUC5D7zE&t=85
- cobertos 3y agoWhatever happened to Reality Labs acquisition of CTRL labs? I was really excited with their prototype wrist keyboard but haven't seen much mention of it. Went as far as researching developing my own but it such a different field. I hope they didn't throw away that work/knowledge
- agar 3y agoThey talked about it at last year's Connect conference: https://mashable.com/article/meta-connect-wrist-controller-hand-gestures-electromyography https://mashable.com/article/meta-connect-wrist-controller-h...
- escapecharacter 3y ago(ex-Meta person who came in via the CTRL acquisition, and quit back in Dec 2022) It’s still going! CTRL labs has received a ton of internal resources, and scaled up significantly the 3.5 years I was there. Almost all of that effort is going towards stamping out edge failure cases on the path to making a reliable consumer product. Consider: What works well for an onstage demo or a store demo you store needs a lot of “last mile” work so that a naive consumer can take it out of a box at home and have it work flawlessly. This is especially true for a new product category. I doubt it will be in the wild until it’s rock solid. There was incredible improvements while I was there, but keep in mind it’s an entire new product category, and so it’s not worth the risk of shipping early and imperfect.
- cobertos 3y agoAh good to hear! Even if it wasn't consumer ready, I wanted to tinker/hack with it pretty bad! Of my VR and AR device experiences, ive found I just dont have the bodily endurance for long sessions over multiple days like I do with computer screens. I thought screens + an "anywhere, any position" keyboard would be more suited to what I wanted[1]. The TapStrap got me partially there. [1] WIP blog post about it, still have a lot of blanks to fill in, https://cobertos.com/blog/post/portable-computing-setup https://cobertos.com/blog/post/portable-computing-setup
- asimpleusecase 3y agoThis display is more about trying to justify the massive spend FB is doing in the metaverse. As cool as this tech is I don’t see the justification for what they have invested.
- asimpletune 3y agoIt boggles the mind that I would need cookies enabled to see video.
- bullen 3y agoHappened to me too, and no way to fix it easily without restarting the browser... the whole cookie thing is as bad as HTTPS only. The commercial web is dead.
- whywhywhywhy 3y agoHonestly can't figure out what it wants me to do, I click the button and then cant find anything on the page it sends me to that fixes it.
- poulpy123 3y ago> There are two types of people: Those who think VR will change the world—and those who haven’t tried it yet. As someone who was hooked to VR the moment I put on an helmet, I seriously doubt VR will substantially change the world. The point of VR is to immerse people in a virtual world, but there is nothing beyond that
- andreyk 3y agoPeople dunk on Meta for overhyping the metaverse and spending absurd amounts of money on it, but I don't think they get enough credit for the amount of useful R&D that absurd amount of money has enabled. Sure, from a business perspective it's probably silly, but from a tech-person perspective can't we celebrate truly impressive advancements in AI, optics, and hardware design for the VR space? As far as I know Quest 2 is STILL the best (and most affordable) option* for untethered VR hardware by far (and IMO it's legitimately very good). Quest 3 is coming out soon and I am super excited to see how it compares. * except maybe Pico 4, but that's hard to get in the US