During a presentation at the Augmented World Expo in Santa Clara, the CEO of Augmented Reality (AR) content creators Meta, Meron Gribetz demonstrated a new AR operating environment called Meta Workspace.
On stage at AWE 2017 Gribetz demonstrated some of the features of the Meta Workspace, included a ‘Reach out and grab’ feature titled Airgrab, a user interface that follows the design of an office environment, with ‘shelves’ to store and retrieve content and the ability to place virtual ‘monitors’ wherever the user chooses.
“Our customers want to do more than chase digital critters and monsters: 80 percent of them are coming from industry, only 5 percent entertainment,” Gribetz elaborated. “They want to take their work to new heights. Design products in life-sized 3D, view holographic multiple monitors to free their traders and engineers from their screens, visualize data in ways that are far more relatable. To enable all of this, we decided our top priority was going to be creating the most intuitive AR experience possible, and gear it toward getting real world work done in ways never achievable before.”
The development of the Meta Workspace came partially as a result of feedback received from developers who worked with the Meta 2 Development Kit. Meta 2 was designed to create an immersive AR experience while allowing users to use their hands to interact with AR ‘hologram’ objects in order to make it easier to create and share digital content using the Meta 2 platform.
Gribetz and Meta say that the aim of the Meta Workspace is to allow users to take a 2D workflow and spacialise it in a way that suits them and takes advantage f the pace around them to allow greater flexibility and a more intuitive form of interaction.
The Meta Workspace is still in fairly early development. VRFocus will bring you further news on its progress is it becomes available.