It’s an understatement to say that Meta’s Connect 2022 event is highly anticipated. And with it comes the launch of the Quest Pro virtual reality headset. While the widely leaked product is not surprising, Meta (ex-Facebook) focused on professional applications of the new hardware is disappointing, especially in terms of the hardware needed to get it. If the American giant delivers many announcements (including new partnerships with Microsoft, Adobe, Zoom and others), its most ambitious projects still promise prototypes.
Meta first introduced its Meta Quest Pro headset, designed from the ground up for businesses and professionals. If the improved visual clarity and auto tracking controls can only be used to improve your game Defeated SaberInstead, Meta hopes to attract more business customers to the metaverse for the first time.
Aside from Quest Pro, the longest part of the Meta Connect 2022 presentation focused on the company’s efforts to make the now-maligned Horizon Worlds a must-see offering for the network, cooperative and fun metaverse. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg promised updates during this event in one of the posts he made in response to negative feedback about Horizon Worlds’ simple graphics. And his company kept its promise.
Microsoft and Zoom feature
Not only do avatars in virtual worlds gain autonomy, but they also benefit from a new framework for collaboration in the form of Horizon Workrooms. These collaboration spaces are at the heart of the company’s business strategy, providing a place where VR headset wearers and people just sitting at a table, or even using their smartphone can be come together to chat, view 3D models, collaborate and work.
Partners in this particular announcement include Microsoft, which will support Breakout Rooms through Teams integrations, and Zoom, which will soon allow users to appear as their Meta Avatar in Zoom meetings.
In the longer term, Meta hopes that features such as Magic Rooms (mixed reality spaces where cross-platform collaboration enables larger meetings), virtual whiteboards (with support for Quest Pro’s pen controllers), and other features will convince the business world that The metaverse is indeed the best place to host their next meeting.
Besides the Microsoft and Zoom collaborations mentioned and seen above, Meta has also announced partnerships with several other tech brands. These include a partnership with Accenture, which will help expand the Meta Quest and Horizon Worlds ecosystems through the company’s ISV program; an agreement to bring Autodesk’s 3D modeling technology to Meta Quest Pro; and plans with Adobe to introduce its Substance 3D modeling software in Meta Quest Pro and Quest 2 next year.
Pro-oriented applications
To make it easier for businesses to manage all the hardware, applications and services needed in these deployments, Meta announced Meta Quest for Business, a “bundled subscription for Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 2 that includes administrative requirements such as device and app management, premium support and more.” The company hopes that this singular offer, which includes contributions from some of the third-party vendors mentioned above, will ease the path of customers to the metaverse.
As usual, Meta ended its activity with a segment showing upcoming projects. This year’s list of ambitions is focused on two important areas: augmented reality control and the introduction of things and people into the real world of the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg himself showed a new prototype augmented reality headset that he said will be a product that users can wear anywhere.
Combined with AI-based learning technologies, the result is a wrist-worn system that can adapt to any wearer to help them control augmented and virtual reality content with minimal that thought. During the presentation, the company showed impressive interaction with augmented reality apps and basic games controlled by wristbands.
Slower takeoff than expected for the Meta
Meta also shared some of the ways it hopes to bring its new metaverse closer to the real world. This includes Meta’s “Neural Radiance Field” 3D scanning technology, which uses something as simple as a smartphone camera (and significant AI processing in the background) to create compelling images. 3D representation of objects in the metaverse. The company also introduced a reverse rendering technique that achieves the same result, while applying real-world physics to the created object.
Finally, the social networking giant presented the latest version (2.0, to be precise) of its Avatars Codec. These ultra-realistic metaverse avatars are sometimes hard to distinguish from the live video of the subject used to create them, and should silence any naysayers when they start populating the metaverse.
That said, even the Meta knows that the next population boost in the metaverse may not happen for years. However, the company also introduced another swipe technology based on the phone, which already allows the creation of an avatar that is about to arrive in just a few hours. No timeline has been mentioned for when any of these technologies will be available to the public.
Source: ZDNet.com