Everything Announced At Connect 2021: Meta, Project Cambria & More (Updated)

Did you miss this year’s Connect conference? Well don’t worry — from Facebook to Meta to Project Cambria, we have a summary of everything announced at Connect 2021.

If you want to watch an abridged version of the main keynote presentation, we’ve cut it down to around 20 minutes highlighting the biggest and most important announcements, entirely cringe-free. That’s embedded above, otherwise you can check out a summary of each topic below.

Facebook Goes Meta

meta quest facebook zuckerberg

At the very end of the keynote, Mark Zuckerberg dropped an impactful ‘one last thing’ announcement.

Facebook is rebranding its corporate name to Meta. Facebook, Instagram and other services and apps will keep their existing names, but fall under the umbrella company now called Meta.

Read more here.

RIP Oculus, Quest Becomes Meta Quest

OculusRiftLogo

After the keynote, current VP of VR/AR and incoming Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth announced that the Oculus brand will be retired from existing and future hardware releases. The Oculus branding will live on in some software departments but for the most part, Oculus is no more.

This also means that Oculus Quest 2 will be renamed next year to Meta Quest 2.

Read more here.

Facebook-Free Quest Login From 2022

Zuckerberg Quest 2

We don’t have an exact date or many specific details yet, but Meta is getting rid of its mandatory Facebook-login for Quest headsets.

The change is being made in light of community feedback and will be available sometime next year.

Read more here. 

High-End VR: Project Cambria Revealed

Hot off the leaks that circulated last week, Meta revealed that a new ‘high end’ standalone headset codenamed Project Cambria will launch in 2022.

It will feature eye tracking, face tracking, high resolution color passthrough and multi-element pancake lenses, and will be on the higher end of the price spectrum.

Read more here

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on Quest 2

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas Oculus Quest 2

A port of Rockstar Games’ huge hit Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is in development for Oculus Quest 2.

Read more here.

First Fully-Fledged AR: Project Nazare Revealed

Project Nazare AR Meta

Meta revealed the codename of its first pair of consumer AR glasses — Project Nazare.

A demo video gave us a peek at a little of what to expect, but the glasses are “still a few years out” from release.

Read more here.

Horizon Home Sweet Home

Horizon Home Oculus Quest

Move over Quest Home — Horizon Home is here to stay.

This overhaul turns your Quest’s home environment into a social space, with the ability to invite friends over and host watch parties. Building and customizing your own home space is coming too, but is a bit further down the pipeline.

Read more here.

Quest Goes 2D

2D apps in Home oculus quest

Quest will also get support for new 2D apps, available in the Oculus Store, which use a new framework based on the progressive web app industry standard. There’s a few apps expected to launch soon, like Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox and Slack, with others arriving further down the line.

Read more here.

Broken Cloud Gets Fixed

oculus quest content

The broken cloud storage system for save files on Quest is being replaced by a new service called Cloud Backup, which will be turned on by default for all apps.

Read more here.

Oculus Avatars in Unity

Unity developers will be able to integrate the new Oculus Avatars 2.0 from December, with Unreal Engine support coming next year.

Read more here.

Mixed Reality On Quest Store Apps

After being available as an experimental API, Quest developers will soon be able to ship apps or updates that use the mixed reality functionality on Quest, starting from the next SDK version.

More features are being added as well, to make up what Meta calls the Insight SDK.

Read more here.

Speech Recognition, Tracked Keyboards and Hand Interaction Library

The next SDK release will give Quest developers access to speech recognition capabilities, while tracked keyboard support and a Unity hand interaction library are planned for next year.

Read more here.

Blade and Sorcery on Quest

Blade And Sorcery Oculus Quest

The physics-driven VR combat simulator Blade And Sorcery is coming to Oculus Quest 2 next month.

Read more here.

Horizon Workrooms Customization

Workrooms customization_Still1

Later this year, Workrooms users will be able to add custom logos and posters to their rooms, and switch between “a wider variety of environments.”

Read more here.

Beat Saber Passes $100 Million

Beat Saber OST 4

Meta announced that Beat Saber has made over $100 million in revenue on the Quest platform alone.

Read more here.

Oculus Gaming Showcase

Oculus Gaming Showcase

After the game announcements at Connect, Meta VP of Play Jason Rubin confirmed that the Oculus Gaming Showcase will return for a 2022 show in the future. You can read more here. 

Oculus Quest 2 Active Pack

Oculus Quest 2 Active Pack

Launching in 2022, this new Active Pack contains new accessories aimed at those using VR for fitness.

You can read more here.

Building the Metaverse

TODAY I THINK WE LOOK AT THE INTERNET BUT I THINK IN THE FUTURE YOU'RE GOING TO BE IN THE EXPERIENCES Mark Zuckerberg October 2021

Lots of comments were made about the metaverse at Connect 2021. Here’s what Meta executives had to say about the metaverse on a pre-Connect briefing call and during Connect itself. 

Beat Saber Teases New Content & Cosmetic Sabers

This very short Beat Saber tease gave us our first look at what is seemingly cosmetic sabers, coming as part of a larger update to Beat Saber at some point in the future. Read more here. 

Quest Users Unlinking Facebook Account Keep Their Purchases

meta quest facebook zuckerberg

Just after Connect, Meta confirmed that Quest 2 owners who unlink their headset from their Facebook account will retain their software purchases. Read more here.

Vertigo Games Bringing Deep Silver Franchises To VR

Vertigo Games Oculus Studios Deep Silver

Arizona Sunshine and After The Fall developer Vertigo Games is set to bring some of the worlds from gaming publisher Deep Silver to VR in a new deal with Meta and the Oculus Studios label. Read more here. 


What was your favorite Connect 2021 announcement? Let us know in the comments.

This article was first published on October 29 and updated with more entries on October 31. 

Facebook Rebrands as ‘Meta’, Oculus Branding to be Phased Out

Facebook today announced that it’s changing its name to Meta. The rebrand comes as the the company shifts its primary focus toward building the metaverse and the XR products that will support it. The Oculus brand will be phased out, with the Quest product line becoming Meta Quest.

Facebook has been increasingly signaling the shift toward its forward-looking metaverse efforts, and today that shift has culminated in a complete rebrand of the company.

Henceforth, the company will go by the name Meta, while the name Facebook will be reserved for the company’s social VR platform specifically, alongside its other products like Instagram and WhatsApp.

The goal, the company says, is to realign its name with its primary objective of building out the metaverse—a sort of immersive internet that the company believes wholeheartedly is the future of human communication and interaction.

The Oculus brand, which has existed alongside the company’s other products, will be phased out in order to allow the company’s metaverse and XR efforts to be positioned under Meta as the parent brand.

Oculus was acquired by Meta back in 2014 and after a few years of relative independence it began steadily merging with the company. The decision to dissolve the Oculus name into Meta finally brings a symbolic end to the company which was partly responsible for reigniting the VR industry as we know it today.

Image courtesy Meta

Meta’s VP of XR, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, explained how the rebranding will trickle down to (former) Oculus products.

For one, the company’s leading VR product, Oculus Quest, will become Meta Quest starting in early 2022.

Other ‘Oculus’ branded properties like the Oculus smartphone app will become the Meta Quest app in due time.

“We all have a strong attachment to the Oculus brand, and this was a very difficult decision to make. While we’re changing the brand of the hardware, Oculus will continue to be a core part of our DNA and will live on in things like software and developer tools,” wrote Bosworth.

Additionally Meta is pulling its overall XR organization (formerly Facebook Reality Labs) under the Meta brand as well, which will be known going forward as Meta Reality Labs. Meanwhile, the company’s social VR apps have steadily shifted under the Meta Horizon brand, which now includes Horizon Worlds, Horizon Workroom, Horizon Venues, and the newly announced Horizon Home which will enhance the Quest home space with social features.

The post Facebook Rebrands as ‘Meta’, Oculus Branding to be Phased Out appeared first on Road to VR.

Meta Announces AR Glasses Prototype Project Nazare

Alongside the reveal of the new Project Cambria VR headset, Meta (formerly Facebook) just gave a codename to its first pair of consumer AR glasses. Meet Project Nazare.

A demo video of Nazare showed some familiar AR experiences, like communicating with friends in virtual windows and even playing multiplayer with avatars appearing in the user’s living room. There was no actual picture of the hardware itself, but expect more information in the future.

Speaking about Project Nazare, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the glasses as the company’s “first full augmented reality glasses,” but also indicated that they are still a work-in-progress:

“There’s a lot of technical work to get this form factor and experience right. We have to fit hologram displays, projectors, batteries, radios, custom silicon chips, cameras, speakers, sensors to map the world around you and more into glasses that are about 5mm thick. So we still have a ways to go with Nazare, but we are making good progress.”

A Connect blog post says the Project Nazare glasses are “are still a few years out.

To watch the full segment from today’s keynote, check out the video embedded above — if it doesn’t start in the right place automatically, skip to 1:07:40.

Last month Facebook also released a pair of glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban named Ray-Ban Stories. However, these are not real AR glasses, and don’t even feature simplistic overlays. The Ray-Ban Stories’ main feature is its built-in camera and microphone for point-of-view photo and video recording.

True AR is shaping up to be a competitive market – Microsoft and Magic Leap already have full but compromised AR devices like HoloLens, which are bulky and have limited field of view. We also know that other companies like Apple are working on AR devices as well.

Enter the metaverse: the digital future Mark Zuckerberg is steering us toward

The company, now rebranded Meta, already has a foothold in the digital world. How far will it go to see it succeed?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday outlined his vision for the future of the social media giant, formalising the company’s focus on the metaverse.

In a presentation at the company’s annual Connect conference, Zuckerberg announced the company is rebranding as Meta and detailed how his company aims to build a new version of the internet.

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Facebook changes name to Meta, embraces metaverse

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg speaking at Facebook Connect. (Image courtesy Facebook.)

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook changing its name to Meta in order to focus on the metaverse. He spoke at today’s Facebook Connect, the company’s virtual reality and augmented reality conference.

The stock symbol will officially change to MVRS on December 1, the company said in an announcement released today. Facebook itself will remain, but will now be just one brand in the Meta portfolio, alongside Instagram and WhatsApp.

“We believe the metaverse will be the successor to the Internet,” Zuckerberg said. “When you’re in a meeting in the metaverse you’ll feel that you are in a room together, instead of looking at a row of faces on the screen.”

Connections will be more natural and vivid, he said.

“Screens just can’t convey the full range of human expression and emotion,” he said. “They can’t deliver the feeling of presence.”

He said that people will have photorealistic avatars for work, as well as more cartoony ones for socializing or gaming.

He said that people will be able to create rooms and spaces anyone can teleport to, using an open standard.

“In order to unlock the potential of the metaverse, there needs to be interoperability,” he said. “That goes beyond just taking your avatar and digital items across different apps and experiences, which we’re already building an API to support. You want to know that when you buy something or create something that your items will be useful in a lot of contexts. you’re not going to be locked into one world or platform. You want to know that you own your items, not a platform.”

This is a departure from how Facebook currently works, where social interactions and content are locked into the Facebook ecosystem.

In another departure from Facebook’s current modus operandi, he added, “privacy and safety need to be built into the metaverse from day one.”

He promised that the metaverse will be broadly accessible. People can use virtual reality headsets, or augmented reality viewers, but also computer screens and mobile devices to access metaverse content, he said.

And interactivity won’t be limited to typing. Input methods will include gestures and voice control, he said.

“Or even just make things happen by thinking about them,” he said.

You can watch the whole keynote presentation below:

Zuckerberg Announces Facebook Company Rebrand To Meta

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook’s company title will be renamed to Meta. 

Facebook Becomes Meta

The social media platform Facebook will keep its name, as will other company services and apps, while Meta will become the official name for the umbrella company that oversees Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Reality Labs and all its other subsets. 

The official announcement follows on from a report from The Verge last week that indicated the change might be incoming and announced officially at Connect.

As we remarked last week, the move is not dissimilar to Google’s 2015 decision to rebrand their company title from Google to Alphabet. This was done to distinguish Google from the search engine and provide a more encompassing name for the umbrella company managing all of its services and products. 

For Meta, the new name signals a shift towards the metaverse, which has been a big focus of Facebook’s recent VR/AR efforts and today’s Connect keynote. Currently the company brands its own social VR applications on platforms like the Oculus Quest as ‘Horizon’, including Horizon Home, Horizon Workrooms and Horizon Worlds.

Meta says that the name was chosen “because it can mean “beyond,” and captures our commitment to building social technologies that take us beyond what digital connection makes possible today.”

What do you make of the new Meta name? Let us know in the comments below!

 

Meta AR Headset Reborn With Launch Of Campfire Startup

A new startup called Campfire emerged to announce a familiar AR headset design and reveal it raised more than $8 million from investors.

The system is built partially on the bones of Meta, the startup founded by Meron Gribetz which raised around $75 million before it ran out of cash a couple years ago and its pieces were sold by a bank. Some of those pieces were purchased by a venture capital firm and reborn as Campfire with CEO Jay Wright recruited to deliver a new solution.

So what’s different this time around?

“I think one of the things that’s been really challenging for everyone in this space is focus,” Wright said in an interview with UploadVR in response to a question about why Meta failed. “It’s hard to pick a direction and just do one thing.”

Wright sees Campfire’s offering as a focused product aiming to solve a single problem. Namely, he’s targeting the ability for professionals to view 3D models in AR pulled from their existing workflows. “We’re not depending on a developer ecosystem and don’t offer an SDK,” a document outlining the company explains. Wright declined to provide pricing details at this time but plans to ship commercially later this year with subscription pricing.

Campfire Meta

The startup claims the product will offer a 92-degree diagonal field of view with an accessory to turn a phone into a controller and the x-shaped “console” shown in the image above meant to be a physical object above which 3D content can be centered for easy reference. “There’s no ‘where am I? Where are you? Where should we be looking?’ Those questions are answered implicitly. You look at the console like you look at a monitor,” the document for Campfire explains.

So what do you think? Is Campfire going to succeed where Meta failed? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

How To Find And Install App Lab Games On Quest 2 (Updated 2022)

Meta (formerly Facebook) introduced App Lab in 2021 — a new method of app distribution, allowing you to easily install non-Oculus Store games and apps onto your Oculus Quest and Meta Quest 2 (formerly Oculus Quest 2) headset.

Since launch, the Quest platform has operated much like a console, with a strict curation policy. The Oculus Store is the official avenue for discovering and installing apps on your headset, with developers submitting pitches to Meta to have their content available on the store.

However, App Lab gives Quest users and developers an alternate non-Store avenue for Quest content. Quest users and developers can use App Lab as an easy way to distribute and install experimental VR content from outside the Oculus Store. That being said, Meta doesn’t curate App Lab content quite as strictly, so the quality can vary — App Lab content is sometimes still a work-in-progress, unstable or of generally lower quality than official store content. App Lab apps can be free or paid, with multiple easy installation options.

Here’s how to install App Lab apps on Oculus Quest and Meta Quest 2.

How is App Lab different to sideloading?

santa cruz dev kit 2 zuckerberg

App Lab and sideloading are similar in that both of them provide a way to install non-store content on your Quest. However, App Lab is Meta’s official solution for doing so, with a much easier installation process for apps and much less finicky setup process.

App Lab is not replacing other sideloaded content, nor does it mark the death knell for SideQuest. In fact, SideQuest can now be used as a directory for App Lab apps — more on that below.

How App Lab Works

App Lab content works a little differently to Oculus Store content.

Much like other platforms, the Oculus Store operates as a virtual storefront that you can browse, with everything visible in one place. Whether you’re browsing online, on your phone or in headset, you can see the see the entire catalog of Meta-approved content in the Oculus Store, all in one place.

App Lab doesn’t work this way — there’s no there’s no official centralized listing of every App Lab app available. App Lab is a service for developers to distribute content for users to install, but there’s no official way to browse a database of all App Lab content in one place.

Instead, each App Lab app has its own direct URL listing. Developers can choose to share and promote their app URL in any way they like — the URL presents users with basic info on the app and they can then add it to their library. Once it’s in your library, you can install the game on your Quest just like any other Oculus Store title — through the Oculus app or in-headset.

Discovering App Lab Content

There are a couple of ways you might discover App Lab content.

The simplest way is through a direct link — a developer or user may share a link to an App Lab experience, like this one, somewhere online.

Otherwise, if you want to browse through a list of App Lab content in a similar manner to browsing the Oculus Store, then the best way to do that is through SideQuest.

You don’t have to install anything* — on your computer or mobile simply head over to sidequestvr.com (click the App Lab button to filter the content on the homepage) or just visit SideQuest’s App Lab section directly. On the SideQuest site, you can browse through all major App Lab games and apps available for developers, as pictured above.

Clicking on a SideQuest listing for an App Lab game will bring up more information, along with a pink ‘Install App (Oculus)’ button — this will redirect you to the official App Lab URL/listing.

* If you do have SideQuest installed on your computer already, you can use the desktop client to browse App Lab content as well — it works the same way.

Adding App Lab Content To Your Library

App Lab Page Oculus

Once you’ve got a direct App Lab URL open, you can purchase the content or add it to your library with the blue button on your browser or in the Oculus app (pictured above), just like you would with any other Oculus Store app. This will add it to your library, ready to install.

Installing App Lab Apps

You can either queue installation of App Lab content to your Quest via the Oculus app, or begin the installation manually inside the headset itself.

In the Oculus app, locate the App Lab content in your library, then hit the ‘Install on Headset’ or ‘Play Later’ button, pictured below, and choose the desired headset for installation.

vrigade app lab

Provided your headset is charged and in idle sleep mode, the Quest will then install the App Lab app in the background, ready for your next VR session.

If you’d rather begin the installation manually, put on your Quest and head to the app library. Your App Lab content should be visible under the ‘All’ category, alongside regular Oculus Store content, allowing you to begin the installation just like any other app.

There’s no way to begin installation from a computer — you’ll need to either use the Oculus app or the headset itself.

Browsing and Installing App Lab Content In VR With SideQuest

SideQuest Quest 2

As of mid 2022, SideQuest released a VR app that lets you browse and install unofficial content, including App Lab games, entirely within VR using your Quest. If you want to ditch your computer and phone, and install App Lab content using just your headset, this is a fantastic option.

You will still need a computer for setup, to install SideQuest on your headset, but after that you can do everything directly on your Quest itself.

For instructions, head over to our guide on sideloading — follow the steps in the ‘First Time Setup’ section first, then follow the steps in ‘Easy Installer – SideQuest for VR on Quest’ section. That will run you through installing SideQuest and using it to browse, download and install App Lab content entirely on your Quest, without using your computer or phone.


That’s everything you need to know on how to find and install App Lab apps on Oculus Quest and Meta Quest 2. Any questions? Let us know in the comments and we’ll try to help out.

Looking for more guides like this one? Check out the New to VR? section of our site.

This article was originally published in February 2021, but was updated and re-published in June 2022.