Mark Zuckerberg presents Orion, prototype that can project digital renderings of media, games and more onto real world
The Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, presented new augmented reality glasses at the company’s annual developer conference on Wednesday, debuting a prototype of the next phase in its expansion into smart eyewear. Zuckerberg also announced that Meta AI will be able to talk in the voice of Dame Judi Dench.
The glasses, named Orion, have the ability to project digital representations of media, people, games and communications on to the real world. Meta and Zuckerberg have framed the product as a step away from desktop computers and smartphone into eyewear that can perform similar tasks.
LG announced a collaboration with Meta focused on strengthening the XR business of both companies.
Following the release of Vision Pro, it has become apparent that Apple has a serious game plan for its XR line of devices. Now that their product and focus is out in the open, the market is beginning to respond.
According to the announcement, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met at LG’s Seoul headquarters with top executives, including William Cho, CEO and Park Hyoung-sei, President of the company’s Home Entertainment division. The two-hour conversation apparently saw LG executives trying Meta’s latest XR hardware, Quest 3 and Ray Ban smart glasses.
As for the conclusion of the meeting and newly announced partnership, “LG envisions that by bringing together Meta’s platform with its own content/service capabilities from its TV business, a distinctive ecosystem can be forged in the XR domain, which is one of the company’s new business areas,” the announcement reads. “Moreover, the fusion of Meta’s diverse core technological elements with LG’s cutting-edge product and quality capabilities promises significant synergies in next-gen XR device development.”
While it isn’t clear exactly what the two companies plan to build together, rumors suggest that a next-gen Quest Pro 2—to compete more directly with Vision Pro—could be on the docket.
As a maker of a huge array of consumer electronics, it’s expected that LG would do the heavy lifting on the manufacturing side, while Meta handles the headset’s hardware design. LG also has content and services from its significant TV business, which it could leverage to get more media content officially onto Quest headsets.
LG isn’t a stranger to the XR space, but hasn’t been particularly committed to it as a product category. Early on the company launched the LG 360 VR, a smartphone-tethered headset made for immersive media viewing. After finding little traction with customers, the product never saw a second generation.
In 2017 LG was on the cusp of launching a PC VR headset for SteamVR. It even went as far as publicly showcasing prototypes and announcing specs. But for some reason the headset never actually launched, and was left to fade into the history books without any official confirmation about what happened to the project.
According to LG, the company newly established a dedicated XR business unit within its Home Entertainment Company “to accelerate the pursuit of new ventures in the virtual space arena.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg got a chance to try out Apple Vision Pro, which although seven times more expensive than the company’s Quest 3 mixed reality headset, is arguably its biggest competitor right now—at least in terms of mental real estate it’s taking up. Here’s what the Meta chief himself thought about Apple’s first XR headset.
In a video released on Instagram, Zuckerberg explains his recent experience with the $3,500 Vision Pro. To him, it was already a forgone conclusion that $500 Quest 3 would be the better deal, but the Meta CEO goes on to explain why he thinks it’s simply a better product overall.
“I have to say that before [trying Vision Pro], I expected that Quest [3] would be the better value for most people, since it’s really good and it’s seven times less expensive. But after using it, I don’t just think Quest is the better value, I think Quest is the better product period.” Continuing, Zuckerberg calls Quest “better for the vast majority of things that people used mixed reality for.”
To illustrate, he reveals the video (embedded below) was captured using Quest 3’s passthrough cameras, which Zuckerberg compares to the high-resolution mixed reality passthrough and “big screens, just like Vision Pro.”
Image courtesy Meta
Zuckerberg highlights Quest’s strength when it comes to playing room-scale games, social VR applications, and fitness apps, but also mentions the headset’s overall comfort, which despite custom in-store fittings, has been a sticking point for some Vision Pro users.
“Quest [3], I think, is just a lot more comfortable. We designed it to weigh 120g less [than Quest Pro], which makes a really big difference on your face. There’s no wires that get in the way when you move around,” Zuckerberg says.
The Meta CEO also points to Quest 3’s wider field-of-view (FOV), brighter screen, and lower motion blur as he perceives it. While he mentions Vision Pro’s higher resolution displays, which he calls “nice,” he was surprised at “how many tradeoffs [Apple] had to make to the quality of the device, comfort, and ergonomics, and other aspects of the display and artifacts in order to get to that.”
More shots fired: Zuckerberg underlines the lack of motion controllers on Vision Pro and what he considers ‘less accurate’ hand-tracking than that on Quest 3. What’s more, he says Vision Pro’s eye-tracking is just “nice,” essentially comparing it to Quest Pro.
If it wasn’t clear by now, Zuckerberg isn’t exactly mincing words. Although Meta may not be in direct competition price-wise with Apple right now, he isn’t shy about drawing battle lines.
“Now, look. I know that some fanboys get upset whenever anyone dares to question if Apple is going to be the leader in a new category. But the reality is that every generation of computing has an ‘open’ and a ‘closed’ model. And yeah, in mobile, Apple’s closed model won. But it’s not always that way. If you go back to the PC era, Microsoft’s open model was the winner. And in this next generation, Meta is going to be the open model, and I really want to make sure the open model wins out again.”
You can catch the full three-minute video below, reupload courtesy ‘Matt – BMFVR’.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t been shy about addressing the elephant in the room: with Apple Vision Pro, the Cupertino tech giant is officially entering a market that, up until now, Meta has basically owned. In a meeting with Meta employees, Zuckerberg thinks that while Apple Vision Pro “could be the vision of the future of computing […] it’s not the one that I want”
As reported by The Verge, Zuckerberg seems very confident in the company’s XR offerings, and is less impressed with Apple’s design tradeoffs. During a companywide meeting, Zuckerberg said that with Vision Pro, Appe has “no kind of magical solutions” and that they haven’t bypassed “any of the constraints on laws of physics that our teams haven’t already explored and thought of.” He calls that “the good news.”
Largely, Zuckerberg says Apple is making some telling design tradeoffs, as its higher resolution displays, advanced software, and external battery comes alongside a $3,500 price tag—or seven times more than Meta’s upcoming Quest 3 mixed reality standalone.
Photo by Road to VR
But it’s also about ethos. Zuckerberg says the companies’ respective headsets represent a divide in company philosophy, as Apple products are typically developed to appeal to high income consumers. “We innovate to make sure that our products are as accessible and affordable to everyone as possible, and that is a core part of what we do. And we have sold tens of millions of Quests,” he said.
“More importantly, our vision for the metaverse and presence is fundamentally social. It’s about people interacting in new ways and feeling closer in new ways,” Zuckerberg continued. “Our device is also about being active and doing things. By contrast, every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself. I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not the one that I want.”
The Meta chief echoed some of these statements on the Lex Fridman podcast where he spoke about his opinions on Apple Vision Pro, noting that Apple’s mixed reality headset offers a “certain level of validation for the category.” Because Vision Pro will cost so much though, Zuckerberg maintains Quest 3 will overall benefit as people inevitably gravitate to towards the cheaper, more consumer-friendly option.
Here’s Zuckerberg’s full statement, sourced from the companywide address:
Apple finally announced their headset, so I want to talk about that for a second. I was really curious to see what they were gonna ship. And obviously I haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll learn more as we get to play with it and see what happens and how people use it.
From what I’ve seen initially, I’d say the good news is that there’s no kind of magical solutions that they have to any of the constraints on laws of physics that our teams haven’t already explored and thought of. They went with a higher resolution display, and between that and all the technology they put in there to power it, it costs seven times more and now requires so much energy that now you need a battery and a wire attached to it to use it. They made that design trade-off and it might make sense for the cases that they’re going for.
But look, I think that their announcement really showcases the difference in the values and the vision that our companies bring to this in a way that I think is really important. We innovate to make sure that our products are as accessible and affordable to everyone as possible, and that is a core part of what we do. And we have sold tens of millions of Quests.
More importantly, our vision for the metaverse and presence is fundamentally social. It’s about people interacting in new ways and feeling closer in new ways. Our device is also about being active and doing things. By contrast, every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself. I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not the one that I want. There’s a real philosophical difference in terms of how we’re approaching this. And seeing what they put out there and how they’re going to compete just made me even more excited and in a lot of ways optimistic that what we’re doing matters and is going to succeed. But it’s going to be a fun journey.
$3,500 headset allows users to ‘browse the system simply by looking’ and tapping their fingers to select, says Apple
Apple has lifted the lid on the worst kept secret in Silicon Valley and revealed the Vision Pro, a $3,499 VR headset.
“With Vision Pro, you’re no longer limited by a display. Your surroundings become an infinite canvas,” the Apple chief executive, Tim Cook, said. “Vision Pro blends digital content into the space around us. It will introduce us to Spatial Computing.”
Zuckerberg took to Instagram to tease an announcement for… something… ahead of its big Quest Gaming Showcase tomorrow. Signs are pointing to Quest 3.
We have no insider info on what might be behind the countdown clock on Zuckerberg’s Instagram story, but the obvious guess is it could be our first look at Quest 3.
Quest 3 recently got a somewhat mysterious hands-on preview from, as far as we can tell, only a single reporter—Mark Gurman. That just happens to be the same reporter that’s been leading the charge in recent months with apparent insider info about Apple’s rumored headset that’s expected to be announced next week.
Zuckerberg’s countdown teaser takes us to 7AM on June 1st, the same day as the Quest Gaming Showcase, the company’s biggest annual event for VR game reveals. And in the background of the photo we can see a view of Zuckerberg’s feet, apparently from a camera on the device that he’s holding.
Image courtesy Mark Zuckerberg
With Meta having cancelled other hardware products like its Portal smart video speakers, it’s hard to imagine what else Zuckerberg would be physically holding other than a new hardware product.
It would certainly make sense for Meta to offer a glimpse of Quest 3. Apple’s rumored headset announcement is expected in just a few days. Meanwhile, Quest 2 is now nearly three years old, which might make an Apple headset look especially new and shiny to Questers looking for the next big thing.
In any case, tomorrow promises to be a big day for Quest gaming news, and maybe more. Stay tuned.
The CEO of the social media giant has spent billions on his virtual reality dream – and still no one understands the idea. Now the world’s richest firm could change the game
In Meta’s quarterly earnings call in April, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was on the defensive. The metaverse, the vision of a globe-spanning virtual reality that he had literally bet his multibillion-dollar empire on creating, had been usurped as the new hot thing by the growing hype around artificial intelligence (AI).
Critics had even noticed Meta itself changing its tune, highlighting the difference between a November statement from Zuckerberg, in which he described the project as a “high-priority growth area” and a March note that instead focused on how “advancing AI” was the company’s “single largest investment”.
Meta sank tens of billions into its CEO’s virtual reality dream, but what will he do next?
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember the metaverse, which was quietly laid to rest a few weeks ago by its grieving adoptive parent, one Mark Zuckerberg. Those of you with long memories will remember how, in October 2021, Zuck (as he is known to his friends) excitedly announced the arrival of his new adoptee, to which he had playfully assigned the nickname “The Future”.
So delighted was he that he had even renamed his family home in her honour. Henceforth, what was formerly called “Facebook” would be known as “Meta”. In a presentation at the company’s annual conference, Zuckerberg announced the name change and detailed how his child would grow up to be a new version of cyberspace. She “will be the successor to the mobile internet”, he told a stunned audience of credulous hacks and cynical Wall Street analysts. “We’ll be able to feel present – like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are.” And no expense would be spared in ensuring that his child would fulfil her destiny.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared plans for upcoming layoffs across three areas of the company, which will begin this week and continue into late May.
The first affected group will be the recruiting team, with layoffs beginning this week, according to a note shared by Zuckerberg to Meta employees. This will be followed by layoffs and restructuring in tech groups in April and business groups in May. We contacted Meta to clarify whether this round of layoffs will affect the VR/AR teams but a representative declined to comment.
Overall, this round of layoffs will see Meta reduce its total headcount by around 10,000 by April, while also closing applications for 5,000 open roles that have yet to be filled. The timeline marks the next few steps in Meta’s “Year of Efficiency,” which sees the company attempt large structural changes while still pioneering VR/AR technology and maintaining its position as market leader.
Estimated Meta headcount changes over time.
Zuckerberg called 2022 a “humbling wake-up call” in the announcement this week, which he credits to changes in the economy and increased “competitive pressures.” He then noted that Meta should “prepare [itself] for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years,” which he nonetheless feels will grant the company “the opportunity to be bolder” with its long-term visions.
Alongside its AI and apps work, Zuckerberg noted that the company’s efforts in the metaverse and next-generation computing platforms “remains central to defining the future of social connection.”
One section also claimed that, subject to further study, Meta engineers who joined the company in-person and then either transferred to remote or stayed in-person “performed better on average” than those who joined fully remotely. Zuckerberg posited that “it is still easier to build trust in person.”
The last few months have seen rapid changes at Meta. Following layoffs of 11,000 employees in November, games industry legend and executive consultant for virtual reality John Carmack departed Meta in December, writing that he “wearied of the fight.” Meta’s last reported headcount of roughly 86,000 employees doesn’t reflect either layoff round, so we’ll be curious to see what’s reported in Meta’s next quarterly earnings and how the company’s headcount changes going forward.
Meanwhile, executives at the company continue making decisions about Meta’s next generation VR systems with current plans pointing to new headsets this year and next year as well. Meta also faces renewed competition in VR/AR. Pico 4, the first true competitor to Meta’s market-leading Quest 2 headset, released in 2022, while Sony’s next foray into the market, PlayStation VR2, released in February for the PlayStation 5.
Earlier this month, reports indicated Meta has sold nearly 20 million Quest headsets. Pico 4 sales were reportedly not meeting expectations in November, with the company laying off hundreds last month. Sony remains tight lipped regarding sales numbers for PSVR 2, but its CFO feels it has a “good chance” of outselling the original PSVR, which sold 5 million units as of December 2019.
The company now known as Meta has spent staggering amounts on creating an immersive successor to the traditional 2D internet. But what has it got to show for it, apart from 11,000 job losses?
What a difference a year makes. Last October, Facebook supremo Mark Zuckerberg could barely wait to show the world what he was up to. “Today, we’re going to talk about the metaverse,” he enthused in a slick video presentation. “I want to share what we imagine is possible.” Transitioning almost seamlessly from his real self into a computer-generated avatar, Zuckerberg guided us through his vision for the virtual-reality future: playing poker in space with your buddies; sharing cool stuff; having work meetings and birthday parties with people on the other side of the world; customising your avatar (the avatars had no legs, which was weird). Zuckerberg was so all-in on the metaverse, he even rechristened his company Meta.
This month, we saw a more subdued Zuckerberg on display: “I wanna say upfront that I take full responsibility for this decision,” he told employees morosely. “This was ultimately my call and it was one of the hardest calls that I’ve had to make in the 18 years of running the company.” Meta was laying off 11,000 people – 13% of its workforce. Poor third-quarter results had seen Meta’s share price drop by 25%, wiping $80bn off the company’s value. Reality Labs, Meta’s metaverse division, had lost $3.7bn in the past three months, with worse expected to come. It wasn’t all bad news, though: Zuckerberg announced last month that Meta avatars would at last be getting legs.
