6 ms·

Meta's big vision for face computers might be better than Apple's

27 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

crooked-v 3y ago
What 'big vision'? There are no indications that Meta has given serious thought to actually using the Quest as a computer rather than just a game console. (I'm counting full immersion meeting apps and Horizon World under 'games', since they're still basically just toy functionality.)
- flax 3y ago
  Article was mostly about the Ray Ban Meta smart glasses as AR people can actually adopt and use now, vs Apple's AR you will be able to do at some point, but right now requires completely impractical and doofy hardware. Personally, I'm hoping Brilliant comes from behind and laps everyone. The tech is not particularly ambitious (more HUD than AR), but the open source philosophy is by far the best way to go.
  - partiallypro 3y ago
    If the Ray Ban Meta get a small little screen in the next generation, even if it's $50-$100 more, I'll buy them. I still might buy the current generation once summer rolls around and I actually need sunglasses.
  - ribosometronome 3y ago
    >Ray Ban Meta smart glasses as AR They've got the same AR as every other pair of sunglasses, tinted lenses, plus a camera and a speaker, no? The comparison to the Vision Pro, right now, makes about as much sense as comparing the glasses to AirPods.
- dougmwne 3y ago
  This is not true. Meta has done a significant amount of work on a range of productivity and general computing use cases. They are clearly exploring VR/AR as a full platform, not just a game console. They have almost feature by feature parity with the Vision Pro, plus a game console on top of that. A few examples: Their past 2 headsets have had high quality passthrough cameras for MR. Quest Pro was specifically focused on productivity in a very similar way to the Vision Pro. 2d apps are supported and quite a few are available including MS Office apps, social media and messaging apps. I don’t know what you mean by calling desktop mirroring apps a toy since the MacBook screen mirroring is exactly one of the hallmark Vision Pro features and apps like Immersed, Virtual Desktop and Horizon workrooms do the same thing in MR or VR. There’s keyboard and mouse support for 2d productivity and screen sharing just like Vision Pro. They have a a corporate sales program that includes remote device management specifically for corporate and industrial use cases. And there been quite a lot of research work on codec avatars in virtual meetings that are extremely similar to Vision Pro. This is one thing that Apple seems to be ahead of Meta on.
laserlight 3y ago
> Meta decided to build cheaper gadgets that people want to use now. Let's not deceive ourselves. We all know that Meta is capable of neither designing nor manufacturing Apple Vision Pro. That's not a bad thing. Every company plays its own strengths. There's no point pretending that it was a deliberate decision.
- _gabe_ 3y ago
  > We all know that Meta is capable of neither designing nor manufacturing Apple Vision Pro According to what? What limitation is there that stops Meta engineers from being able to do this?
  - zerohp 3y ago
    John Carmack had some things to say about it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/12/17/john-carmack-quits-meta-has-traditionally-harsh-words-on-the-way-out/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/12/17/john-carma... EDIT: direct link https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPixEvPJQGzNa6t2x6HUL5TYqfmKGqSgfkBg6QaTyHF5frXQi7eLGxC7uPQv5U5jl&id=100006735798590 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPix...
    - sgift 3y ago
      Having read it at the time and now again I'd be surprised if Apple would do any better in his performance metrics. Big companies are, almost by definition, slow. The breakneck speed he wants to see will never happen in a company with thousands of people, thousands of opinions and many layers of management. So, while that is a sad reminder that things could be far better in theory, I don't see how it supports that Meta couldn't produce a Vision Pro if they wanted to.
  - thisarticle 3y ago
    Silicon for one. The M2 is miles ahead in terms of performance (and heat) than anything Qualcomm has to offer.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> Face computers are the future, but the world as we know it isn’t quite ready. That’s the conclusion both Apple and Meta have arrived at. Says the tech columnist at Verge, pushed by our tech overlords at Apple and Meta. Call me a Luddite, call me and old man, but this is one trend I'll fight to my last breath. I mean, is the public at large really thinking "You know what, I really don't think I spend enough of my life looking at a screen. What would be great would be if I spent every waking moment enveloped by the screen!"? I wish Nickelodeon would rebroadcast their prescient 30-year-old PSA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTYTtafjNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTYTtafjNo It's clear large tech companies (or, really, any company) aren't satisfied until they've occupied 100% of your available time/budget/appetite, etc. (Coke famously talked about something like "drink share", i.e. the worldwide consumption of total fluids that Coke provided. One of their biggest "competitors" was water.) Don't get me wrong, my friend has a Quest 3, and I think it's really fun to play games on - for 20-30 mins or so, and then do something else. Similarly, I could imagining donning a headset for a meeting if it really provided an "in the same room" quality - and then taking it off to do something else. But this excitement that the humans in Wall-E apparently had too much of their peripheral vision not occupied by a device is not an excitement I, or hopefully most other people, share.
- neogodless 3y ago
  I agree with you. But... I also know it's ridiculously (increasingly) common to see people walking around in public while looking at a phone with Airpods in their ears. So no - wearing a Vision Pro isn't in the future for most people, but smart glasses might be but only for those sorts of people. Not you or me. But for the masses? Maybe.
- brigadier132 3y ago
  > You know what, I really don't think I spend enough of my life looking at a screen. What would be great would be if I spent every waking moment enveloped by the screen This is a strawman. Let people do what they want to do. Since you don't like staring at screens, don't stare at screens.
- jimt1234 3y ago
  I find myself balancing two conflicting attitudes: "face computers are the future" and "face computers are a solution looking for a problem". I honestly can't decide. Often I look to young people to help me decide - what are young people doing (with a new technology)? Are they embracing it? Rejecting it? Honestly, I don't see young people really embracing "face computers" at all. A handful of youngs, playing a few games, but that's about it. Makes me think "face computers" are more of a solution looking for a problem to solve, and that problem just doesn't exist.
tantalor 3y ago
Facetop? Is that a thing
- jbverschoor 3y ago
  That’s called a hat or a cap
  - pavlov 3y ago
    Honestly a hat-top computer in a top hat sounds pretty awesome. You could wear it outside as a hipster accessory. The goggles would discreetly wiggle down from the hat onto your eyes when needed.
    - amarant 3y ago
      If you provide a Kickstarter link, I'll support your project!
    - jbverschoor 3y ago
      A flexible screen in a cowboy hat is pretty bad ass. Would def. work in Texas
karaterobot 3y ago
I hope we nip this 'face computers' term in the bud. Maybe I'd get used to it eventually, but wouldn't it be better to have a name that was so good that you didn't need to get used to it?
- creaturemachine 3y ago
  Nah, Face Computer describes these things much better than Spatial Vision Quest Pro or whatever the branding will have you believe.
- asadotzler 3y ago
  Dorkboxes? Nerd goggles? Geek masks?
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
jbverschoor 3y ago
But they just ditched the face name
ozten 3y ago
The Quest Pro could have used some of "this vision". $1500 work computer. They included eye tracking, but then removed the depth sensor, severely limiting AR and making the passthrough ML based and wobbly. Resolution wasn't there for monitor replacement. Floundered in the market, so price drop to $999. Very few active daily drive users (I've not heard of one). Big screen beyond and Apple Vision Pro had a much better vision and product execution, eating Quest Pro's lunch.
- jwells89 3y ago
  And of course with any of the Quest products privacy is a major consideration, and to opt out of account requirement and data collection one needs to look to enterprise versions which are much more expensive.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
t_mann 3y ago
A lot of grand words that boil down to 'Meta makes 'em cheaper'. Let's not kid ourselves. Zuck's big vision was pretty similar to Apple's (except mainly derived from a dystopian Sci-Fi novel), it's just that their engineers didn't go as far (also because they were targeting a completely different price range, and had some baggage from starting off of a product that was meant to be something else).
- hbn 3y ago
  > Zuck's big vision was pretty similar to Apple's Not really? From what I've seen of Meta's keynote presentations, their big vision has been you block out reality to transport into some stupid Second Life world where everybody's a silly little avatar, and you play virtual sports and attend virtual concerts.
thomastjeffery 3y ago
It isn't difficult to get higher than a bar that has been nailed to the floor...
thimp 3y ago
Nah it’s materialistic garbage. It’s like winning a race no one is watching. Most of the people outside the tech community have no interest in this stuff. There is no buzz, no talk and no budget for it. People are barely even interested in their own phones these days. They are as functionally moot as each other. The only buzz I hear is people want less technology and more connection with each other in the real world.
- j2bax 3y ago
  Where in the world are you that people aren't glued to their phones like zombies?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - WheatMillington 3y ago
    OP isn't saying people aren't on their phones. OP is saying the general public don't care about which phone they or anyone is using, as they're all functionally identical.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ourguile 3y ago
I believe there are some use cases for this technology that are beneficial. For access, I think there is great value in spatial computing technology and AI for automatic translation and transcription. I'm autistic and where I've found so much benefit from noise cancelling headphones I think (at a future state) a light, unobtrusive device that could allow me to filter an otherwise sensory stimulating environment into one more tolerable AND allow me to work at the same time sounds like an ideal environment. I currently own an Apple Vision Pro and I can see its limitations but I don't think it's an altogether negative direction to focus attention either.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]

27 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

What 'big vision'? There are no indications that Meta has given serious thought to actually using the Quest as a computer rather than just a game console. (I'm counting full immersion meeting apps and Horizon World under 'games', since they're still basically just toy functionality.)

flax 3y ago
Article was mostly about the Ray Ban Meta smart glasses as AR people can actually adopt and use now, vs Apple's AR you will be able to do at some point, but right now requires completely impractical and doofy hardware. Personally, I'm hoping Brilliant comes from behind and laps everyone. The tech is not particularly ambitious (more HUD than AR), but the open source philosophy is by far the best way to go.
- partiallypro 3y ago
  If the Ray Ban Meta get a small little screen in the next generation, even if it's $50-$100 more, I'll buy them. I still might buy the current generation once summer rolls around and I actually need sunglasses.
- ribosometronome 3y ago
  >Ray Ban Meta smart glasses as AR They've got the same AR as every other pair of sunglasses, tinted lenses, plus a camera and a speaker, no? The comparison to the Vision Pro, right now, makes about as much sense as comparing the glasses to AirPods.
dougmwne 3y ago
This is not true. Meta has done a significant amount of work on a range of productivity and general computing use cases. They are clearly exploring VR/AR as a full platform, not just a game console. They have almost feature by feature parity with the Vision Pro, plus a game console on top of that. A few examples: Their past 2 headsets have had high quality passthrough cameras for MR. Quest Pro was specifically focused on productivity in a very similar way to the Vision Pro. 2d apps are supported and quite a few are available including MS Office apps, social media and messaging apps. I don’t know what you mean by calling desktop mirroring apps a toy since the MacBook screen mirroring is exactly one of the hallmark Vision Pro features and apps like Immersed, Virtual Desktop and Horizon workrooms do the same thing in MR or VR. There’s keyboard and mouse support for 2d productivity and screen sharing just like Vision Pro. They have a a corporate sales program that includes remote device management specifically for corporate and industrial use cases. And there been quite a lot of research work on codec avatars in virtual meetings that are extremely similar to Vision Pro. This is one thing that Apple seems to be ahead of Meta on.

laserlight 3y ago

> Meta decided to build cheaper gadgets that people want to use now. Let's not deceive ourselves. We all know that Meta is capable of neither designing nor manufacturing Apple Vision Pro. That's not a bad thing. Every company plays its own strengths. There's no point pretending that it was a deliberate decision.

_gabe_ 3y ago
> We all know that Meta is capable of neither designing nor manufacturing Apple Vision Pro According to what? What limitation is there that stops Meta engineers from being able to do this?
- zerohp 3y ago
  John Carmack had some things to say about it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/12/17/john-carmack-quits-meta-has-traditionally-harsh-words-on-the-way-out/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/12/17/john-carma... EDIT: direct link https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPixEvPJQGzNa6t2x6HUL5TYqfmKGqSgfkBg6QaTyHF5frXQi7eLGxC7uPQv5U5jl&id=100006735798590 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0iPix...
  - sgift 3y ago
    Having read it at the time and now again I'd be surprised if Apple would do any better in his performance metrics. Big companies are, almost by definition, slow. The breakneck speed he wants to see will never happen in a company with thousands of people, thousands of opinions and many layers of management. So, while that is a sad reminder that things could be far better in theory, I don't see how it supports that Meta couldn't produce a Vision Pro if they wanted to.
- thisarticle 3y ago
  Silicon for one. The M2 is miles ahead in terms of performance (and heat) than anything Qualcomm has to offer.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

> Face computers are the future, but the world as we know it isn’t quite ready. That’s the conclusion both Apple and Meta have arrived at. Says the tech columnist at Verge, pushed by our tech overlords at Apple and Meta. Call me a Luddite, call me and old man, but this is one trend I'll fight to my last breath. I mean, is the public at large really thinking "You know what, I really don't think I spend enough of my life looking at a screen. What would be great would be if I spent every waking moment enveloped by the screen!"? I wish Nickelodeon would rebroadcast their prescient 30-year-old PSA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTYTtafjNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObTYTtafjNo It's clear large tech companies (or, really, any company) aren't satisfied until they've occupied 100% of your available time/budget/appetite, etc. (Coke famously talked about something like "drink share", i.e. the worldwide consumption of total fluids that Coke provided. One of their biggest "competitors" was water.) Don't get me wrong, my friend has a Quest 3, and I think it's really fun to play games on - for 20-30 mins or so, and then do something else. Similarly, I could imagining donning a headset for a meeting if it really provided an "in the same room" quality - and then taking it off to do something else. But this excitement that the humans in Wall-E apparently had too much of their peripheral vision not occupied by a device is not an excitement I, or hopefully most other people, share.

neogodless 3y ago
I agree with you. But... I also know it's ridiculously (increasingly) common to see people walking around in public while looking at a phone with Airpods in their ears. So no - wearing a Vision Pro isn't in the future for most people, but smart glasses might be but only for those sorts of people. Not you or me. But for the masses? Maybe.
brigadier132 3y ago
> You know what, I really don't think I spend enough of my life looking at a screen. What would be great would be if I spent every waking moment enveloped by the screen This is a strawman. Let people do what they want to do. Since you don't like staring at screens, don't stare at screens.
jimt1234 3y ago
I find myself balancing two conflicting attitudes: "face computers are the future" and "face computers are a solution looking for a problem". I honestly can't decide. Often I look to young people to help me decide - what are young people doing (with a new technology)? Are they embracing it? Rejecting it? Honestly, I don't see young people really embracing "face computers" at all. A handful of youngs, playing a few games, but that's about it. Makes me think "face computers" are more of a solution looking for a problem to solve, and that problem just doesn't exist.

tantalor 3y ago

Facetop? Is that a thing

jbverschoor 3y ago
That’s called a hat or a cap
- pavlov 3y ago
  Honestly a hat-top computer in a top hat sounds pretty awesome. You could wear it outside as a hipster accessory. The goggles would discreetly wiggle down from the hat onto your eyes when needed.
  - amarant 3y ago
    If you provide a Kickstarter link, I'll support your project!
  - jbverschoor 3y ago
    A flexible screen in a cowboy hat is pretty bad ass. Would def. work in Texas

karaterobot 3y ago

I hope we nip this 'face computers' term in the bud. Maybe I'd get used to it eventually, but wouldn't it be better to have a name that was so good that you didn't need to get used to it?

creaturemachine 3y ago
Nah, Face Computer describes these things much better than Spatial Vision Quest Pro or whatever the branding will have you believe.
asadotzler 3y ago
Dorkboxes? Nerd goggles? Geek masks?

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

jbverschoor 3y ago

But they just ditched the face name

ozten 3y ago

The Quest Pro could have used some of "this vision". $1500 work computer. They included eye tracking, but then removed the depth sensor, severely limiting AR and making the passthrough ML based and wobbly. Resolution wasn't there for monitor replacement. Floundered in the market, so price drop to $999. Very few active daily drive users (I've not heard of one). Big screen beyond and Apple Vision Pro had a much better vision and product execution, eating Quest Pro's lunch.

jwells89 3y ago
And of course with any of the Quest products privacy is a major consideration, and to opt out of account requirement and data collection one needs to look to enterprise versions which are much more expensive.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

t_mann 3y ago

A lot of grand words that boil down to 'Meta makes 'em cheaper'. Let's not kid ourselves. Zuck's big vision was pretty similar to Apple's (except mainly derived from a dystopian Sci-Fi novel), it's just that their engineers didn't go as far (also because they were targeting a completely different price range, and had some baggage from starting off of a product that was meant to be something else).

hbn 3y ago
> Zuck's big vision was pretty similar to Apple's Not really? From what I've seen of Meta's keynote presentations, their big vision has been you block out reality to transport into some stupid Second Life world where everybody's a silly little avatar, and you play virtual sports and attend virtual concerts.

thomastjeffery 3y ago

It isn't difficult to get higher than a bar that has been nailed to the floor...

thimp 3y ago

Nah it’s materialistic garbage. It’s like winning a race no one is watching. Most of the people outside the tech community have no interest in this stuff. There is no buzz, no talk and no budget for it. People are barely even interested in their own phones these days. They are as functionally moot as each other. The only buzz I hear is people want less technology and more connection with each other in the real world.

j2bax 3y ago
Where in the world are you that people aren't glued to their phones like zombies?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- WheatMillington 3y ago
  OP isn't saying people aren't on their phones. OP is saying the general public don't care about which phone they or anyone is using, as they're all functionally identical.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ourguile 3y ago

I believe there are some use cases for this technology that are beneficial. For access, I think there is great value in spatial computing technology and AI for automatic translation and transcription. I'm autistic and where I've found so much benefit from noise cancelling headphones I think (at a future state) a light, unobtrusive device that could allow me to filter an otherwise sensory stimulating environment into one more tolerable AND allow me to work at the same time sounds like an ideal environment. I currently own an Apple Vision Pro and I can see its limitations but I don't think it's an altogether negative direction to focus attention either.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]