Andrew Bosworth – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

June 19, 2024

Meta Restructures Reality Labs to Better Focus on Ray-Ban Smartglasses and Other Wearables

Reality Labs, Meta’s XR division formed in 2020, is now being reorganized into two distinct groups, ‘Wearables’ and ‘Metaverse’, which reportedly comes along a “relatively small” number of layoffs.

As reported by The Verge’s Alex Heath, Meta CTO and head of Reality Labs Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth announced the reorg in an internal memo to employees, stating that all teams in Reality Labs are being merged into either a central ‘Metaverse’ organization, responsible for Quest, and a new ‘Wearables’ organization to dedicated to other hardware, including its Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses.

In the memo, which is available via Heath’s Command Line newsletter, Bosworth says the company’s smartglasses were “a much bigger success than we expected,” spurring the XR division to put more focus on the product.

“We have the leading AI device on the market right now, and we are doubling down on finding a strong product market fit for wearable Meta AI, building a business around it, and expanding the audience,” Bosworth’s memo reads. “Our north star to overlay digital content seamlessly onto the physical world remains the same, but the steps on that path just got a lot more exciting.”

Notably, Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses don’t include displays of any type, AR or otherwise, instead offering input through voice assistant and touch on the glasses’ struts for things like taking pictures, videos, and listening to music. In late 2023, Meta also added AI-powered object recognition.

As for its Quest-related efforts, Bosworth says the company is still “deeply committed to investing in Horizon as the core foundation of our social, spatial Horizon OS, and high-quality experiences for both mixed reality and mobile.”

Meta announced in April it will soon license its Horizon OS (ex-Quest OS) to third parties for the first time, including ASUS, Lenovo and Xbox. This comes part and parcel with it Horizon Store (ex-Quest Store) content library—seen as a bid to become a more prolific alternative to Apple’s Vision Pro.

“The org chart doesn’t primarily determine whether we succeed or fail, our execution does,” Bosworth said in the memo. “But by setting it up this way I hope we reduce overhead and allow people across teams to come together and execute with a more unified view of who our customers are and how we can best serve them.”

Meta declined to comment on the exact number of Reality Labs layoffs, however Heath maintains “it’s a relatively small number and focused on teams in Reality Labs where leadership roles are now redundant thanks to this new structure.”

The post Meta Restructures Reality Labs to Better Focus on Ray-Ban Smartglasses and Other Wearables appeared first on Road to VR.

March 4, 2024

Meta CTO: Android XR Rejected Due to Google’s “restrictive” Terms & Plans to Fragment XR

A report from The Information last week alleged Meta and Google held talks in effort to bring Android XR to Quest. Meta CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth has now confirmed this report, stating further that not only were Google’s terms too restrictive, but Google is actively planning to fragment the ecosystem with its Android-based XR operating system.

Here’s the full statement from Bosworth via a Threads post from last Friday:

After years of not focusing on VR or doing anything to support our work in the space, Google has been pitching AndroidXR to partners and suggesting, incredibly, that WE are the ones threatening to fragment the ecosystem when they are the ones who plan to do exactly that.

We would love to partner with them. They could bring their apps to Quest today! They could bring the Play store (with its current economics for 2d apps) and add value to all their developers immediately, which is exactly the kind of open app ecosystem we want to see. We would be thrilled to have them. It would be a win for their developers and all consumers and we’ll keep pushing for it.

Instead, they want us to agree to restrictive terms that require us to give up our freedom to innovate and build better experiences for people and developers—we’ve seen this play out before and we think we can do better this time around.

Shortly afterwards, Bosworth re-posted on X (formerly Twitter) a comment made by UploadVR’s David Heaney which seems to sum up Meta’s thought process:

“Meta and Google both launched standalone VR platforms in 2018. Google abandoned Daydream after less than 2 years, while Meta grew Oculus (now Quest) to tens of millions scale,” explains Heaney. “Now years later, after the market is already proven, Google wants Meta to kowtow to its attempt #2?”

Quest 3 (left) and Apple Vision Pro (right) | Based on images courtesy Meta, Apple

Still, having Android XR on Quest would instantly make Meta’s hardware more competitive with Apple Vision Pro, which boasts 1.5 million apps built for iPhone in addition to 1,000+ visionOS native apps. The price of admission may simply be too high though.

While Bosworth says bringing Google Play with “its current economics for 2d apps” isn’t a sticking point, Meta’s rejection may very likely involve how software revenue would be split in the long-term. Bringing Google Play to Quest in its entirety isn’t such an issue sow since there are only just a few older VR apps built for Cardboard, although that’s probably about to change as companies like Samsung release their own Vision Pro competitors using Android XR as their chosen operating system.

On Quest, this may eventually allow Play store apps to out-compete some of the content created specifically for the standalone XR headset, which would give Google a slice of the pie that (at least in Meta’s eyes) it didn’t rightfully earn. And controlling that revenue stream is likely be one of Meta’s most important XR ambitions moving forward, provided it wants to continue subsidizing Quest hardware and recouping on software sales like it does today.

Meta’s only real hope is to make the Quest platform so big and attractive to developers in the future that it becomes a target platform alongside Android and iOS—not just to XR developers making games and immersive apps, but to every app from your humble calculator, to everyday things like banking apps, productivity software, video chatting apps—all of the things it needs to break out of console territory to become a general computing platform.

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July 22, 2023

Meta CTO Rebukes Report Claiming Cancellation of Quest Pro Line

According to a recent report from The Information, Meta is allegedly spinning down Quest Pro alongside a broader move to cancel the future ‘Pro’ line of XR hardware altogether. Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth says however, “don’t believe everything you read.”

Meta has reportedly stopped ordering new components for the Quest Pro from its suppliers, The Information maintains. While it’s thought Meta will continue selling its $1,000 Pro-branded mixed reality headset as long as there is enough stock, the report alleges the entire Pro line was has been suspended, putting a second-generation Quest Pro distinctly out of the question.

Speaking in an Instagram Stories post yesterday, Bosworth rebukes the claim that a potential Quest Pro 2 has officially been cancelled for good, saying that his team is developing multiple prototypes in parallel for all of its projects. Notably, he doesn’t address whether it’s spinning down the current version of Quest Pro, however he implies that the report of Quest Pro 2’s demise was the result of a disgruntled employee whose project was cut.

Here’s Bosworth’s statement in full:

“I have to explain this every year. There is no Quest Pro 2 headset until we decide there is. What I mean by that is there are lots of prototype headsets—lots of them—all in development in parallel. Some of them, we say, “that’s not the right one,” and we shut it down. Some of them, we say, “that’s the right one,” and we spin it up. What you need to understand is, until it goes out the door, it doesn’t get the name. So, there might be a Quest Pro 2, there might not be. I’m not really telling you, but I will say don’t believe everything you read about what’s been stopped or started. A lot of times it comes from someone who’s unhappy their particular project got cut when there are other projects that did not get cut.”

Still, it’s clear there’s been some turbulence in how Quest Pro was handled from the get-go. Originally launched for $1,500 in October 2022, Meta decided only a few months later it would slash Quest Pro by $500, putting at its $1,000 price tag today. Meanwhile, Quest 2 has seen multiple price changes, ranging from $300 to $400 for the same 128GB variant.

Fluctuating prices aside, Quest Pro’s raison d’être has never really been clearly defined, as the company has nebulously pitched it to professionals as a would-be workstation. In practice, Quest Pro has been more of a developer kit for studios hoping to build consumer apps for the cheaper Quest 3, coming in Fall 2023 at $500. Meanwhile, Quest Pro users have reported a host of usability issues since launch, decidedly making it feel a little less ready for prime time than the company probably hoped.

Whatever the case, Quest Pro 2 would need a much clearer value proposition—provided whatever prototypes Meta has waiting in the wings also don’t also get cut.

July 11, 2023

Meta CTO Says Quest 3 Announcement Timing Had ‘Nothing to do with Vision Pro’

Meta CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth said this week that the announcement of Quest 3, which came just days ahead of Vision Pro reveal, had nothing to do with the timing of Apple’s first public foray into XR.

“People won’t believe me, I don’t care—I’m telling the truth, you can believe me or not, that’s up to you […],” Bosworth began in a Q&A hosted on Instagram this week in response to a question about the curious timing of Quest 3’s announcement, which came just days ahead of the reveal of Apple Vision Pro. He continued:

What we found out… especially last year… is that when we announce a new headset in September/October, a lot of people—especially when you already have headsets out in market—a lot of people have already made buying decisions in the summertime, or they’re kind of committed to a path, so you’re not capturing the full holiday season.

So we sent a note to [Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg] long before we even knew about WWDC timing or substance, saying ‘hey for Quest 3 we want to announce it early, so that people know it’s coming, so they can plan well in advance of the holiday season what they want to do’.

So that was our plan from a long time ago, and the timing worked out unbelievably well [laughs]. I’m not mad about it… I’m not saying I’m mad about it, I’m just saying that was the plan that we developed in terms of go-to-market, and it had nothing to do with [Vision Pro].

The announcement of Quest 3—which came four days before Apple’s Vision Pro reveal—was certainly curious as far as the company’s prior patterns. Compared to the kind of formal announcement we’ve seen, the new headset was first teased and then revealed on social media through Mark Zuckerberg’s feeds. Even when more formal information was shared shortly thereafter, the company didn’t share the headset’s full specs, instead promising more details to come at the annual XR event, Meta Connect, which wouldn’t be held for nearly four more months.

Regardless, Bosworth maintains the Quest 3 announcement was decided well before the company knew what Apple would reveal or when.

Bosworth, who heads Meta’s XR division, Reality Labs, also answered some other questions about Apple Vision Pro during the Q&A.

Q: Thoughts on Apple’s decision to have attached battery pack rather than all-in-one headset?

A: At some point these headsets are a physics problem. You can spend your thermals and your weight one way, or another way, but at some point the equation has to square. [Apple’s] headset, I think, is roughly in the same ballpark of weight as our headsets, and they wanted to have this battery life, so they wanted to go external with [the battery]. It doesn’t matter who you are, what company you are, who you work for… physics is a uniform belligerent to this space. We’re making progress hand-over-fist as an industry; I think Apple’s entry is going to help with that a lot. But yeah, you have to square the circle somehow, and they had to do it with an external battery pack and a cord.

Q: How does the Vision Pro change Meta’s roadmap?

A: Andy Grove—famous Intel CEO and kind of godfather of Silicon Valley—always used to say “only the paranoid survive,” and we try to embody that. You try to approach your work with a lot of humility. Whenever a great competitor comes out, whether it be the Pico, whether it be Apple Vision Pro, certainly; you’re trying to look and see, what did they do differently, and why? What did we miss? Did we get it wrong, or did they figure something out? So you try to learn from it. And then be humble about it. At the same time, you can’t constantly be chasing every competitor because then you’re getting thrown off your own game. You’re getting thrown off what you can uniquely do and what you’ve done right, and that they need to learn from. In our case I think we’ve got a great ecosystem, we’ve got a great set of devices, we’ve got a great price point. So it’s a balance to try to learn from them and not over-rotate on that. Nothing that we hadn’t looked at before […] we were focusing on gaze and touch for AR as well—it’s a natural AR interaction—is that something that needs to get more priority in VR? Not sure yet. So we’re looking at it… we’re not sure yet.

May 25, 2022

Meta CTO Explains Why Quest Doesn’t Have Automatic Room Setup

Meta’s Andrew Bosworth explained why Quest headsets don’t yet have automatic room setup.

A new experimental feature appeared on some Quest 2 headsets this week enabling owners to manually mark out areas and objects in their home for a new class of mixed reality experience that’s responsive to the physical environment.

The feature leads to the obvious question: “Why isn’t VR play space setup fully automatic?”

Virtual Desktop creator Guy Godin asked that question on Twitter this week, asking “why do users have to outline doors, walls and furniture manually? The Quest has cameras (although low quality ones), in theory it should be able to do all this automatically through image recognition. Am I missing something?”

On Wednesday, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth responded, writing “Segmentation is getting better all the time but still has error. The risk of getting it wrong is a concern as it relates to how people can safely navigate a physical space.”

Starting in 2019, Oculus Quest (and now Meta Quest 2) enabled players to use their controllers like laser pointers to outline a safe space on the floor that’s clear to move around inside. The company improved its systems over the last couple years, moving to support hand tracking-only setups and the ability to save the location of a couch or desk. Late last year, Meta also added a “Space Sense” feature to alert people in VR if something enters their play space.

This week when I tested the new experimental room setup feature I walked into a physical table while immersed in VR because I had forgotten to mark it out. The collision occurred within the first few minutes of testing the feature, suggesting Quest 2 owners will need to take great care if they use it. Meta plans to launch an experience called The World Beyond on Quest 2 as a demonstration of what developers can build with mixed reality. It should launch with the release of v40 of Meta’s Oculus software development tools but, as of this writing, the latest SDK version is still v39.

December 24, 2021

Quest 2 Will Have ‘Long Life’, Project Cambria Still Due In 2022 – Meta

Meta figureheads have reiterated that the Meta Quest 2 will have a “long life”, and will not be replaced by the upcoming Project Cambria.

Consulting CTO John Carmack made that much clear in response to a new blog post from Meta’s VR/AR head, Andrew Bosworth. “An important point here is that the “project Cambria” product will *NOT* replace Quest 2, it will be sold alongside it,” Carmack said. “Quest 2 will have a long life.”

The note comes amongst concerns that Cambria, which is a new high-end standalone headset, will eventually take front and center for Meta, much in the same way that Quest 2 has slowly replaced Quest 1 over the past 14 months. Indeed, a number of apps that have released for Quest 2 this holiday season can’t even be played on Quest 1, including Resident Evil 4 and Medal of Honor.

But Cambria, which was announced at Connect a few months back, isn’t going to be a part of the Quest line of products, and new features like color passthrough and eye and face-tracking suggest the headset will be significantly more expensive than Quest 2’s $299 starting point. The project’s aim is less about widespread adoption and more concerned with implementing features that Meta believes will advance its vision of the metaverse among other uses.

Bosworth’s blog, meanwhile, reconfirmed that Cambria is planned for release sometime in 2022, though there’s still no specific window for that launch. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the headset as we move into the new year and will bring you all the latest.

October 29, 2021

Quest Users Unlinking Facebook Account Keep Their Purchases, Meta Confirms

Oculus Quest 2 owners forced to use a Facebook account with the headset and those that merged their Oculus account with the social network will be able to unlink and retain their software purchases in the future.

The confirmation comes from incoming Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth (head of the company’s Reality Labs future-building effort). We asked Bosworth directly if we could unlink and delete our Facebook accounts from Quest and still keep our software purchases, to which he simply replied: “Yup”. This follows the announcement of a rebranding that will see Facebook’s corporate name and identity go Meta.

Once unlinked, Quest owners should even be able to delete their Facebook account and retain their VR software purchases.“From now on, we will be metaverse-first, not Facebook-first. That means that over time you won’t need a Facebook account to use our other services. As our new brand starts showing up in our products, I hope people around the world come to know the Meta brand and the future we stand for,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Founder’s Letter.

Last year Facebook revealed that “all future unreleased Oculus devices” would require a Facebook account and then released Quest 2 with the requirement.

Now, though, Zuckerberg and Bosworth seem to be steering Meta’s VR work in a different direction. We previously reported Meta Quest 2 branding will replace Oculus Quest 2 as Zuckerberg sheds the most visible elements of the team he acquired in 2014 from Brendan Iribe, Palmer Luckey, and others for $3 billion. We also reported Meta would allow the use of an “account other than your personal Facebook account,” though the wording in yesterday’s keynote was vague.

There’s still more to learn about how this will work, but the changes come as Zuckerberg recently signaled the Reality Labs effort at Meta would require continually growing investment starting with $10 billion this year.

“Our mission remains the same — it’s still about bringing people together. Our apps and their brands aren’t changing either. We’re still the company that designs technology around people.”

Meta starts with a headcount of nearly 70,000 and the bulk of the revenue fueling the organization comes from its legacy “family of apps” like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp. So while “the metaverse encompasses both the social experiences and future technology”, future Reality Labs are planned to sell “at cost or subsidized to make them available to more people.

October 14, 2021

Facebook Reality Labs has Teased 3 Prototype VR Headsets

Not to be outdone with all the other hardware announcements going on at the moment, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and incoming CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth have teased three separate virtual reality (VR) prototypes the company is currently developing.

Bosworth – who is head of Facebook Reality Labs – started with quite a stylish looking standalone prototype (in comparison to the others) with a shiny, almost mirrored black front. In a tweet, he said: “Proud of the research Michael Abrash’s team is working on at FRL-R Redmond—excited to get an early look at some of the technologies that will underpin the metaverse (we work on several prototype headsets to prove out concepts, this is one of them. Kind of. It’s a long story.)”

He then followed that up with the headset seen below, what looks like a heavily modded Oculus Quest with a halo strap and a bunch of sensors underneath – could those be for facial tracking? No further details were provided at this stage, so you’ll just have to stare at the images and ponder what this new tech might do.

Over on Facebook, Zuckerberg posted the image seen above, revealing that this particular model has a retina display: “I spent the day with the Facebook Reality Labs research team in Redmond to demo our next-generation virtual reality, augmented reality and artifical intelligence tech. This one is an early retina resolution prototype. The future is going to be awesome.”

While it’s no surprise that FRL has several VR prototypes being worked on the timing is quite funny. HTC Vive has its special reveal event today, although it looks like that bubble has already been burst. Lynx-R1 launched a successful Kickstarter that easily hit its goal and enterprise-focused Varjo has its own unveiling event coming up. All of this before Facebook Connect on 28th October.

In the past, these sorts of prototypes would’ve been showcased at the annual conference but maybe with everything going on Facebook wanted in on the buzz. Plus, if the company is happily sharing these hardware snippets now, what else does FRL have up its sleeve? An Oculus Quest Pro maybe? There are exactly two weeks to wait to find out. For continued updates, keep reading VRFocus.

October 13, 2021October 14, 2021

Facebook Execs Tease “Next-generation” Headset Prototypes Following Vive Flow Leak

Seemingly in an effort to keep the spotlight during an increasingly hot month of VR announcements, Facebook teased a look at two new XR headset prototypes just a day after an apparent leak of HTC’s upcoming Vive Flow headset.

Update (October 14th, 2021): Facebook shared yet another teasing glimpse of a VR headset prototype; we’ve included it further below.

Although Facebook is expected to make major XR announcements at its upcoming Facebook Connect conference later this month, it seems the company couldn’t help but tease some of what its been working on.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today posted an image of himself looking into what he called an “early retina resolution prototype.”

‘Retina resolution’ refers to a display which has enough pixel density that it meets or exceeds the resolving power of the human eye. With no cameras apparently on the outside of the headset, this particular prototype is likely a VR headset. However, Zuckerberg said he was checking out a range of “next-generation” XR projects from his company’s VR division, Facebook Reality Labs.

“I spent the day with the Facebook Reality Labs research team in Redmond to demo our next-generation virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence tech. This one is an early retina resolution prototype. The future is going to be awesome,” he wrote.

Zuckerberg’s post was coordinated with another from Facebook’s VP of XR, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who tweeted an image at what he says is another prototype from the FRL Research team in Redmond. The device appears to be a compact XR headset that takes on a goggles form factor

“Proud of the research Michael Abrash’s team is working on at FRL-R Redmond—excited to get an early look at some of the technologies that will underpin the metaverse (we work on several prototype headsets to prove out concepts, this is one of them. Kind of. It’s a long story.),” he wrote.

The wording suggests that the device isn’t itself an upcoming product but simply a prototype to “prove out concepts,” though he also teases that there’s a “long story” behind the headset, without going into detail.

While it could be something as simple as a non-functional ergonomic prototype, Facebook Reality Labs researcher Douglas Lanman seems to have confirmed that the headset is a display prototype in his own tweet. “I’m excited to see this preview of another headset prototype from the Display Systems Research team at FRL-R Redmond,” he wrote.

Update (October 14th, 2021): Bosworth shared another photo of a prototype headset which looks like an original Quest attached to a Rift S head-strap and with some extra hardware around it and what appears to be a rudimentary antenna sticking out of the top.

Image courtesy Andrew Bosworth

He didn’t offer any detail other than teasing, “So. Many. Prototypes.”

It doesn’t seem like coincidence that the Facebook teases happened today. Just yesterday, HTC’s own upcoming compact VR headset, Vive Flow, appears to have leaked ahead of the company’s event on Thursday. With pre-orders for Vive Flow purportedly starting on October 15th, the unspoken sentiment of Zuckerberg & Bosworth’s posts feel akin to ‘wait until you see what we’ve got up our sleeve’.

HTC likely got the message; the company’s President of Vive China quickly tweeted back to Bosworth, “Hey Boz, Nice looking research project. Want to trade for a production quality device hot out of our factory? ,” insinuating that HTC is ahead of the game by already having its compact headset ready for production.

With all this new XR hardware in the works, it’s certainly turning out to be an exciting month. Facebook will surely save its major announcements at Facebook Connect later this month and high-end headset maker Varjo has been teasing its own big announcement.

The post Facebook Execs Tease “Next-generation” Headset Prototypes Following Vive Flow Leak appeared first on Road to VR.

September 28, 2021

Facebook Announces XR Programs And Research Fund, $50 Million Investment

Facebook announced a $50 million investment in a newly-established XR Programs and Research Fund with plans to support research and collaborative efforts aimed at ensuring VR and AR technologies are “developed responsibly.”

The blog post is authored by Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s VP of VR/AR and soon-to-be Facebook CTO, and Nick Clegg, VP of Global Affairs. The focus of the post is on building the metaverse — which Facebook describes as “a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you” — and how it can be done responsibly over the next 10-15 years.

Facebook aims to work with experts across industry, government and academia to think through the opportunities and problems that the concept presents.

“The metaverse isn’t a single product one company can build alone. Just like the internet, the metaverse exists whether Facebook is there or not. And it won’t be built overnight. Many of these products will only be fully realized in the next 10-15 years. While that’s frustrating for those of us eager to dive right in, it gives us time to ask the difficult questions about how they should be built,” the blog post reads. “Success depends on building robust interoperability across services, so different companies’ experiences can work together. We also need to involve the human rights and civil rights communities from the start to ensure these technologies are built in a way that’s inclusive and empowering.”

It’s a two-year, $50 million investment and there are already a few partners lined up. The Organization of American States will work on “job training and skills development for students, creators and small business owners.” Africa No Filter, Electric South and Imisi3D will “support creators who have been pushing the boundaries of digital storytelling using immersive technology” across Africa. In Europe, Women In Immersive Tech are “supporting women and underrepresented groups driving Europe’s virtual, augmented and mixed reality sectors.”

Facebook also says it is “facilitating independent external research” with academic institutions across the world, as part of the fund. This includes research into safety and ethics at universities in Seoul and Hong Kong, along with research into privacy and data use at institutions in Singapore and research into diversity in IT at Howard University in Washington D.C..

The last few months have seen an increase in Facebook’s use of the ‘metaverse’ term — back in July, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg even proclaimed that the company will be ‘a metaverse company’ in 5 years time. But while the term is being used more and more, it’s not exactly clear what Facebook’s metaverse will look like. The XR Programs and Research Fund doesn’t clarify too much in that regard, but it does give us some insight into how Facebook is bringing external influences into the fold. You can read more details over on the Facebook blog post and expect to hear more about Facebook’s metaverse plans at at Facebook Connect next month.