Starting from 2022 Oculus Quest 2 will be called Meta Quest and will contain the Meta Apps. In other words, the Oculus brand will disappear. Perhaps the most interesting application is Horizon Workrooms, launched in August, which aims to be a new platform for smart working in VR. As Andrew Bosworth, vice president of Facebook’s AR / VR division explained, it will not be a videoconferencing service with avatars but wants to be a new way of working in which you can share files and projects, replicate desktop or use it as an electronic whiteboard. Space management with controllers and therefore the interface is perhaps the most critical aspect of the project together with that related to the production of content by competitors or independent developers.
Less imaginative, more concrete in the application but no less complicated is the challenge of Project Aria: no viewers closed on synthetic worlds but “normal” glasses capable of sending and receiving information from the web, recording videos, taking photos and accessing holograms and artifacts digital. In practice, Facebook has launched the Ray-ban Stories with Essilor Luxottica which are limited, however, to the social aspect (videos and photos). However, there are other smart glass experiences.
The most compelling is the Windows Mixed Reality platform (formerly called Windows Holographic). In particular, during the event, two projects for the evolution of the metaverse were announced: Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces and Mesh for Microsoft Teams. The first solution, now in preview, provides “a new perspective on how people move and interact with spaces and how they manage health and safety in a hybrid workplace”.
The second, on the other hand, is a modality of “collaborative communication that makes the human presence the last frontier of connection. Thanks to this platform, all participants in a meeting can be present through personalized avatars and immersive spaces that can be accessed from any device, without the need for special equipment ”.
But despite the numerous smart glasses in circulation, a reference ecosystem of applications is missing. Facebook has launched its candidacy. For now there is only that concrete.