At the Connect conference in the early hours of this morning, Facebook officially announced that it “ditched” the name that has been in use for 17 years and replaced it with the new name “Meta”. The stock code will also be changed from “FB” to “MVRS”, which will take effect on December 1st. .
After that, the original Facebook business will become a subsidiary like Oculus, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Zuckerberg’s answer is: to further tell everyone who we are? What are you doing?
Presumably careful netizens have discovered that “Meta” is taken from the first half of “Metaverse”, and the latter is the new track that Facebook and Zuckerberg have been promoting and focusing on in recent days.
Figure | The iconic logo of the headquarters has been replaced
After the brand “deteriorated”, Facebook changed its name to distract attention?
Since the beginning of the month, there has been the worst downtime in history, followed by the former product manager of “Whistleblower” Francis Hogan publicly accusing Facebook products of harming children, amplifying prejudice, and encouraging polarization.
For a time, Facebook’s external brand image was hit hard, and people’s trust in it also inevitably declined.
At this time, Facebook announced the name change, and the motivation behind it is hard not to doubt that it wants to divert part of the attention through the name change, while reshaping the brand and creating a new image.
In this regard, although Zuckerberg denied the association in an interview with the media, and called this association “a bit ridiculous” on the grounds that “the current environment is not suitable for introducing new brands”, is the truth true? Only Zuckerberg and Facebook know.
However, one thing is certain is that Zuckerberg is working hard to tear off the company’s “social media” label for the company and put a new label of “metauniverse”.
“Today, we are usually considered a social media company, but in our DNA, we are a company that builds technology to connect people. Metaverse is the next frontier of technology, just like when we built social networks.” Kerberg said in the conference video.
Before the Connect conference, through Zuckerberg’s external speeches, we can understand that he is “very optimistic” about the meta universe and has launched a number of actions for this, including but not limited to:
Andrew Bosworth, the head of the hardware department and who led Facebook to form the Metaverse team, will take over as the chief technology officer. From the fourth quarter onwards, Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), which includes AR and VR businesses, will be allowed to independently disclose performance and conduct investment activities; this year Since then, more than 10 billion U.S. dollars has been invested in the VR and AR departments; it is officially announced that it will invest 50 million U.S. dollars to build a meta universe with partners; …
At the Connect conference, Facebook also brought a number of software and hardware products around the “meta universe” track.
Zuckerberg “paints a pie” around the meta-universe
As we all know, VR/AR is currently regarded as the product and approach that is closest to the meta-universe form, and this industry has been in the hands of Facebook in the past.
But I am quite disappointed that most of the time at this Connect conference, Facebook is “drawing big pie” around the meta universe.
Next, we look at a few key parts:
· VR all-in-one
Project Cambira
According to Zuckerberg’s description, this is a high-end headset equipped with new features, which will be launched next year and will not replace the $299 Quest 2.
Functionally, Cambira can perform facial and eye tracking functions, natural eye contact between Avatar images, and facial expressions can be refreshed in real time. In addition, the head display is designed in black, adopts PankCake optical scheme, has a color perspective function, and is equipped with a camera that can transmit high-resolution full-color video to the headset screen.
·AR glasses
Project Nazare
This is a consumer AR glasses, Zuckerberg described it as the company’s “first complete AR glasses”, but the time to market has not yet been determined.
In a brief simulation concept, Zuckerberg described a typical scenario in which users send messages through Whatsapp and organize a game night. The friend’s avatar suddenly appeared in the user’s field of vision, and the game began.
“To achieve the correct shape parameters and experience, we still need to invest a lot of technical work. We need to integrate holographic displays, projectors, batteries, radios, custom chips, cameras, speakers, and sensors that map the surrounding world into a 5mm thick one. In the form of glasses. So we are still some distance away from Nazare, but we are currently making good progress.” Zuckerberg said.
·Horizon Home
This is a virtual space for different users to gather, communicate and collaborate, together with Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workrooms and the event application Horizon Venues (formerly known as Venues) as part of the “meta universe” center.
From the demonstration video, users can build their own experience, such as watching movies, and even invite guests to join the experience in the form of avatars.
Most importantly, when a message pops up, a virtual dialog box will also pop up in the Horizon Home space. In the future, Facebook also plans to add Messenger audio calls to VR. This means that even if the user is in a VR environment, they can receive messages normally and make video calls with the outside world.
In addition, the Facebook team also announced that it will provide Oculus Quest with more applications that can be used for multitasking, including 2D applications such as the team collaboration communication tool Slack and the free network file synchronization tool Dropbox.
·Presence Platform
development tools
This tool allows developers to create a mixed reality experience for Oculus Quest, which mainly includes three main toolsets: Insight SDK, Interaction SDK and Voice SDK.
Insight SDK-built on the Passthrough API launched this summer, allowing developers to overlay virtual objects on Oculus Quest’s passthrough video source.
Among them, the tool set also has two major functions: spatial anchors and scene understanding. The former allows developers to “lock” virtual objects to a specific physical area so that the objects can maintain their position in the world; the latter allows developers to build A virtual reality experience that matches the size of the player’s room.
Interaction SDK-makes it easier for developers to integrate controllers and hand-centered interactions.
As part of this, the toolset has improved hand tracking, allowing developers to create their own gestures or integrate ready-made interactive elements such as “grab”, “poke”, “select” and “target”, etc. .
Voice SDK-a tool set supported by Facebook’s Wit.ai natural language platform.
The tool set can provide users with a hands-free virtual experience, allowing developers to create voice navigation and search functions.
finally
After the Connect conference, Zuckerberg also sent an open letter, in which it wrote:
It is hoped that in the next ten years, Meta Universe will cover one billion people, carry hundreds of billions of dollars in digital commerce, and provide employment opportunities for millions of creators and developers.
And he also emphasized that the company is no longer Facebook first, but Meta Universe first.
But it takes time to get to the meta-universe, so in the area of education, Meta has also taken action-invest 150 million US dollars in 3 years to build an ecosystem that supports meta-universe learning. The focus will be on training the next generation of AR/VR creators, changing the way of learning through high-quality immersive experiences, and increasing educational opportunities through technology.
It can be seen that Zuckerberg’s obsession with the “meta universe” is very deep, just don’t know whether his obsession will eventually become a reality as expected. After all, judging from the current situation, Zuckerberg It is just a CG animation to show his complete meta-universe imagination. As for the specific products, it still falls into the general sense of VR/AR.
At the same time, I don’t know whether this wave of name changes, tearing off old labels, and new labels can successfully pull him and the company out of the negative impact of the scandal vortex.Return to Sohu to see more
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