Horizon Workrooms 1.2 is available now, bringing more customization to rooms and a lectern for easier presenting.
Originally announced back at Connect 2021, the new update lets users upload custom posters and logo graphics to display in the room, as well as pick a room theme.
When Workrooms launched, there was only one room available (the ‘Lakes’ room). Now there are two room locations available, each with two different themes: Lakes – Cabin, Lakes – Vibrant, City – Bright and City – Sleek.
The latter Vibrant and Bright themes feel a bit more casual, while the Sleek and Cabin themes take on a slightly more professional tone, especially the former.
The City room is a nice change of pace from the standard offering, but the view does look a little close to the ‘The World If’ meme skyline for my liking. Nonetheless, you can make it feel a little more homely by uploading custom graphics and decorating the walls.
To upload custom graphic files to Workrooms, you’ll need to ensure that both your Workrooms Quest app and the Oculus Remote Desktop app are updated to version 1.2. Oculus Remote Desktop doesn’t update automatically, so you’ll need to head over to workrooms.com and download the latest version.
Once everything is updated, head to the Room tab in Workrooms in VR, then scroll down until you find the option that lets you customize the room’s graphics. Clicking on the plus icon for each graphic will open a link in the browser of your connected computer, where you can upload the poster and logo graphics.
Once uploaded, apply them to your room and feel a little bit more at home. We managed to get our UploadVR logo into the City – Sleek theme, as pictured above, and it definitely makes the space feel a little more personal.
The last new feature is a lectern, to be used when presenting so that you still have access to your desk area while speaking to the audience.
Will you be customizing your Workrooms environment? Let us know in the comments.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave insight into the company’s current and future hardware business model at Connect 2021, indicating that the plan is to continue to sell devices at cost or with subsidies to help build a larger ecosystem with as many users as possible.
The Quest 2 starts at just $299 despite having a higher resolution, more features, and less weight than its predecessor. That entry level price, however, may just be the start for Meta’s long-term ambitions.
Last week at Connect 2021, Zuckerberg gave further details about Meta’s commitment to this model, now and going forward. You can read a transcription below or watch from the 43:15 mark on the video embedded above.
Most of all, I’ve come to believe that the lack of choice and high fees are stifling innovation, stopping people from building new things and holding back the entire internet economy. We’ve tried to take a different approach. We want to serve as many people as possible, which means working to make our services cost less. not more.
Our mobile apps are free. Our ads’ business model is an auction, which guarantees every business the most competitive price possible. We offer our creator and commerce tools either at cost or with modest fees to enable as much creation and commerce as possible.
And it’s worked. Billions of people love our products. We have hundreds of millions of businesses on our platform, and we have a rapidly growing ecosystem and a thriving business.
That’s the approach that we want to take to help build the metaverse too. We plan to continue to either subsidize our devices or sell them at cost to make them available to more people. We’ll continue supporting sideloading and linking to PCs, so consumers and developers have choice rather than forcing them to use the Quest Store to find apps or reach customers. And we’ll aim to offer developer and creator services with low fees in as many cases as possible. So we can maximize the overall creator economy, while recognizing that to keep investing in this future we’ll need to keep some fees higher for some period to make sure that we don’t lose too much money on this program overall.
After all, while a growing number of developers are already profitable, we expect to invest many billions of dollars for years to come before the metaverse reaches scale. Our hope though is that if we all work at it then within the next decade, the metaverse will reach a billion people, host hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce and support jobs for millions of creators.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Launching in 2022, this new Active Pack contains new accessories aimed at those using VR for fitness.
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
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
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Meta (formerly Facebook) is expanding 2D app support on Quest — apps like Instagram, Dropbox and Slack will soon be available to download on the Oculus Store.
Announced at Connect today, these 2D apps for Quest will use a new framework based on the PWA (progressive web app) industry standard.
Starting today and expanding with increased support to come, this will expand the Quest Home’s 2D app capabilities from just the operating system first-party 2D apps and services (Explore, Oculus Store, Oculus Browser) to include other first and third-party apps from “a variety of developers” that can run in a 2D panel model and take advantage of the Quest’s multitasking capabilities.
“You just download them and then you use them like panel apps in Home, just like the first party apps,” said Product Management Lead, AV/VR for Enterprise Jill Campbell on a call earlier this week. “Enabling more 2D apps is another step forward in making VR more flexible and more useful … Services like Slack and Dropbox, Facebook and Instagram, and many more open up opportunities, not just for how to use the headset, but for developers and how they might build for the headset.”
Select apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Smartsheet and Spike, will be available in the Oculus Store for Quest from today. Apps such as Dropbox, Monday.com, MURAL, My5, Pluto TV and Slack “will follow soon” along with other unannounced apps in the future.
Meta says that these apps 2D panel apps are using a new framework based on the Progressive Web App (PWA) industry standard, which will make Home a developer platform for the first time and allow an app to “have the look and feel of a native app and gain access to discovery and distribution features on the Oculus Platform.”
There’s also a new work-focused home environment, designed to be used with 2D panel apps and a desk as a virtual office location, pictured above. Unlike Horizon Workrooms, which is designed as a communal meeting and collaborative workspace, this environment is simply an aesthetic change to the home environment optimized for 2D apps and multitasking — essentially an area to work on something by yourself.
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!
After months of speculation of a Quest Pro, Meta announced a VR headset codenamed Project Cambria which will launch in 2022.
Cambria isn’t Quest 3 and will not replace Quest 2. Mark Zuckerberg described it a a new product line separate to the Quest line – “a completely new advanced and high end product” which will be “at the higher end of the price spectrum”.
Multi-element pancake lenses used instead of fresnel lenses will let Cambria achieve a more compact form factor than any previous Oculus headset.
The reveal comes after months of speculation, rumors and leaks about a device that’s been commonly referred to as Oculus Quest Pro. Meta executives confirmed its existence earlier in the year and this week we saw leaked tutorial videos that seemed to confirm the device was nearing reveal.
Quest 2 itself is now a year old and, although Facebook has never revealed official sales figures, it’s thought to have been incredibly successful compared to other VR headsets, outselling all previous Quest and Rift headsets combined. Developers have reported huge software sales on the platform and a recent recall document suggested Facebook may have sold in the region of four million headsets in the US and Canada alone.
Consulting CTO John Carmack said in April that while he’s “happy to have some Pro version” he worries it will “wind up with 1/10th of the users on there and we should be about kind of maximizing the user base.”
Meta says more information will be shared next year, and the company is now working with developers on apps that take advantage of the new capabilities.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg signaled the company will be “making it so you can login into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account.”
Here’s the full comment from Zuckerberg in the Connect keynote:
“As we’ve focused more on work, and frankly as we’ve heard your feedback more broadly, we’re working on making it so you can login into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account. We’re starting to test support for work accounts soon, and we’re working on making a broader shift here, within the next year. I know this is a big deal for a lot of people. Not everyone wants their social media profile linked to all these other experiences and I get that, especially as the metaverse expands.”
Details on the Oculus Blog indicate that a new Quest for Business program will “let you log in to your Quest 2 headset with a Work Account, an upcoming business-only login that will allow you to collaborate with coworkers and access productivity apps from the Oculus Store like Horizon Workrooms and Gravity Sketch without using your personal Facebook account details.”
Facebook confirmed on a call earlier this week that current Quest for Business headsets did not have access to Oculus Store content, as they ran on a different software platform and used a different stock-keeping unit (SKU) code. However, the new Quest for Business program will be provided as an option on consumer headset models, with access to all the same content and with support for work account login.
This new program is set to begin in a small beta with current business customers this year, before moving into open beta in 2022 and general availability in 2023.
However, Zuckerberg’s comments indicate there will be changes to Quest login options beyond support for work accounts. A Facebook representative confirmed to UploadVR that the company is working on providing “more options” within the next year, with more details to come at a later date.
In a post on his Facebook profile, VP of VR/AR (and incoming 2022 CTO) Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth had the following to say:
As we’ve focused more on work, and as we’ve heard feedback from the VR community more broadly, we’re working on new ways to log into Quest that won’t require a Facebook account, landing sometime next year. This is one of our highest priority areas of work internally.
Bosworth also mentioned a new upcoming type of profile for first-party social experiences, called a ‘Horizon Profile’, in his post, which could play a part in the upcoming changes to Quest login options.
This news is breaking and the article will be updated as new information becomes available.
Horizon Workrooms is set to expand, offering users the ability to customize rooms and add custom logos and graphics.
These new features won’t be available until later in the year, but will let users add some personal touches to the Workrooms, including a custom logo graphic on the wall and custom posters. Users will also be able to switch between “a wider variety of environments”, one of which is pictured below.
In its current state, Horizon Workrooms only offers one room with no customization beyond the seating arrangement. Users can only choose between conversation, boardroom table and presentation settings, which alter the direction of the seats but nothing about the room itself.
On a call earlier this week Facebook’s Product Management Lead, AV/VR for Enterprise Jill Campbell said that these new customization options are only the beginning of future personalization plans for Workrooms. “This is one step we’re going to take in that direction with lots more to come.”
The image embedded above shows a brand new environment set among city skyscrapers, while the image below shows the default countryside setting that launched with Workrooms. The images also show the custom logo and poster integration, exampled here by Zoom (whose video conferencing service is soon to receive native integration with Workrooms).
Workrooms launched earlier this year as Facebook’s remote work and collaboration solution for VR. It allows teams to meet in VR and work together with a sense of presence as if everyone is in one room. It achieves this by harnessing a combination of existing and emerging technologies, such as spatial audio, keyboard and hand tracking, passthrough, remote desktop and Oculus Avatars.
The full line-up and schedule for this year’s Facebook Connect is now available, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote speech and John Carmack’s unscripted talk.
This year, it looks like events and sessions will “unlock” across the Connect schedule– some sessions unlock at specific times, while others simply become available “after the keynote.”
The keynote speech itself unlocks at 10am Pacific on October 28, which will see Mark Zuckerberg and “other Facebook executives” deliver the annual keynote address and “share the vision for the metaverse — a place of new immersive experiences and the next evolution of social technology, built by people like you.” There’s also a Facebook event and Oculus Venues event for the keynote, both of which reveal the keynote title to be “Infinite Horizons” — a nod to the Horizon branding that’s now being used as the moniker for the different branches of Facebook’s social VR platform.
