[Meta Connect edition] Meta's first MR headset ๐ฅฝ, Microsoft Office ๐, Windows ๐ฅ and Xbox in VR ๐ฎ, avatars displaying your emotions in the Metaverse ๐, and SO MUCH MORE! ๐ฅณ
Welcome back to another week of Augmented Rarity ๐
Yes yes, this is the Meta Connect Edition! I had to update my Meta Quest 2 ๐ฅฝ headset and make sure Horizon Worlds was updated too, plus being one hour and a half in VR looking at a screen resulted in neck pain ๐ค, buuuuut I was so excited to be immersed in the keynote rather than just watching it ๐๐๐.
Having said that, today's curation will focus 80% on Meta Connect and 20% on two pretty intriguing AI stories. Letโs begin! ๐
Extended Reality
Told you, 80% event coverage ๐ค
Meta Connect highlights:
New headset: Meta finally released project Cambria, now known as the Meta Quest Pro! A $1499 MR headset, still enterprise focused but waaaaay more affordable than HoloLens and MagicLeap. Cool things about it:
The headset is a mixed reality headset that can convert to a VR headset with an accessory. The MR one would be for when you want to extend your physical world, the VR one would be for when you want to get immersed in the digital one. Will I buy it? YES! But I need to save money first ๐
As it has inward-facing cameras, it will track your mouth and eyes to mimic your facial expressions! Their newest addition to Presence Platform, Movement SDK.
As part of their collab with Qualcomm, it features the new Snapdragon XR2 Plus VR chip, plus it comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage (no downgrade possible this time). More on these features in this article.
Microsoft collab: Yes, Microsoft owns HoloLens so this is a very strange partnership since they are competitors??? I guess Microsoft knows that in order to compete against Google Meet and Google Workspace they need to go one step forward, so they got the right collaboration. This means:
Teams meetings in VR ๐: so if you donโt feel like getting dressed for your meetings you can just show up using your new expressive avatar.
Office in VR ๐: Not as a 3D immersive spreadsheet experience, but more like a Web App version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and so on to be used in VR.
Windows 365 in VR ๐ฅ: โWith Windows 365 coming to Quest, youโll have a new way to securely stream the entire Windows experience, including all the personalized apps, content, and settings to your VR device with the full power of Windows and Windows applicationsโ
Xbox in VR ๐ฎ : youโll be able to use your headset as an alternative screen to play your 2D Xbox games, so basically youโll be able to stream it there if you are an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber. For a second I thought that they made all the games in VR and I was like when did this happened ๐คฏ, thatโs so expensive and time consuming, but no, we are not there yet, itโs only streaming.
An open Metaverse: Part of the promo speech of that collaboration was that for the Metaverse to be a Metaverse, it needs to be open, so those big corps should be collaborating together to make that possible. Nothing new, Zuck has been saying this all over to get rid of the hate of him becoming a meta Villain.
Extended partnership with EssilorLuxotica: aka the brand that made the Ray-ban stories possible. LOL EssilorLuxotica reminds me of a Harry Potter spell. Essilor Luxoticรก! Itโs Luxotica, no Luxocitรก. Please donโt cancel me. While I'm sure I'll want whatever new AR glasses they're developing right now, this first version doesn't offer so many exciting featuresโฆ I mean $299 for taking medium quality pics/videos, listening to music and making calls is just not right yet.
Avatar upgrades: Or Meta trying really hard so you actually get excited about them.
Legs!!!!!!! ๐ฆต Yes you read this right, Iโm excited that our Meta avatars are getting legs because this will make us feel so much present in the VR world. I was tired of being an emotionless floating head.
Codec avatars will be released soon-ish ๐ฒ! Meaning that we will be getting HYPE REALISTIC AVATARS just by scanning our face with our phone. You can read more about this here. This milestone is essential to achieving authentic social presence thatโs accessible, practical, and future-ready. But donโt get too excited just yet because atm they still need a powerful multi camera structure to get to those perfect results and the mobile phone version still takes HOURS to render.
Meanwhile if you own the Meta Quest Pro youโll be part of a new high meta society with facial expressions ๐, the rest of us will just be emotionless low class meta avatars ๐งโโ๏ธ. Like, comment and share this newsletter to help me grow Augmented Rarity so one day I can buy the Meta Quest Pro lol ๐๐
Super random but weโll be able to make Reels with our Meta Avatars soon. This seems like a desperate attempt to save Instagram from dying due to TikTok. They will also bring the avatars to Messenger and Whatsapp so you can โexpress yourselfโ everywhere. Is this the end for emojis? ๐ญ
VR Gaming updates Iโm excited about ๐ฎ:
The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners โ Chapter 2 coming on December. Trailer here! I guess Iโll have to overcome my fears and finish chapter 1 lol. I know, they are just zombie pixels, but it gets scary hah
Among us VR coming on November 10, hereโs the trailer!
But itโs not all ๐ฆ unicorns and glitter โจ, hereโs a more realistic point of view of Meta these days:
Nobody likes to spend time in Horizon Worlds ๐ซฅ, not even Meta's employees. Meta's new internal mission is for their employees to love Horizon Worlds, so they will be in "quality lockdown" until they love it and fix it (LOL). I mean, if the team that built the app doesn't spend more time on it, why should we? As a result, it's so buggy because yes, it being buggy means they're not willing to spend time on it, but if you don't spend time on it, you can't iterate and improve it! But hey, it being so buggy actually inspired nice UX! When something doesnโt work, what do you do? SMASH ALL THE BUTTONS. Meta is adding this โsmashingโ interaction so we can report bugs ๐, and I love it ๐ณ. Hate behind, I do like Horizon Worlds, but itโs more like an unconditional love for Meta and VR itselfโฆ because the user experience is quite lame.
Artificial Intelligence ๐ค
Weโll keep this section short today because we got too many updates in the XR industry, but still pretty important updates in this one!
Just a few hours after we discussed Meta's Make-a-Video AI last week, Google released their own version! The future holds endless possibilities for creating footage in any style ๐ค Yes, Imagen now also supports high quality AI generated videos ๐น. Take a look at what is able to produce here. For now we can only get short clips but this is the beginning of something big. Because of deepfake prevention, both Meta and Google keep this technology in a small private research facility, so we can't use it yet.
โWe won't weaponize our robots and neither should our customersโ ๐ โโ๏ธ said Boston Dynamics. Good to know since this adaptation of their robot dog with a gun is terrifying, same as this one. As BD states in this blogpost, they see robots as incredible tools that can keep people safe and enrich our lives. Yes, robots with guns can be so dangerous, I donโt want to walk into one at night, but so are knives ๐ช and itโs the use we make of them that makes them dangerous or just tools to ease our daily tasks.
While Tesla is busy finishing the final touches on Pepsi's first electric semi truck ๐ฅค (expected delivery date: December 1st), United Airlines is working on electrical planes for short flights โ๏ธ, and they predict they will get approval by 2028 ๐. Before you come to me telling me this would be even more polluting, all those myths about electric vehicles being worse than petrol vehicles are addressed in this article.
OMG weโve reached the end. And since weโve been here for almost half a year, I want to make sure you are comfortable! ๐
And thatโs it. Thank you so much for being here, remember to like, comment and share so I can buy that Meta Quest Pro headset ๐
Have a lovely week, see you next Wednesday!
Best,
Martina