Should you be Excited About Meta's Future?
It’s no secret that I’m an Oculus die-hard fan. As a company, it was beyond promising, attracting some of the most prominent people in the industry to join a small, scrappy startup with nothing but a dream and a pocket full of Kickstarter cash. (Side note: everyone should read “The History of the Future”) To stop myself from writing 15 pages about Oculus’s history, I’ll skip to the important part. In 2014 Facebook bought Oculus for 2 billion dollars. There were a few immediate positives and many potential complications for those waiting for Oculus’s debut VR HMD, the Rift. For one, the price of the Rift would be lowered, as now Facebook is willing to take a loss on hardware to make up for in software sales. Also, Oculus now had far more resources at its disposal, with Facebook money helping fund the development of advanced optics and mobile hardware and creating more monetary incentives for developers.
The potential downsides were numerous, with everyone’s primary concern being a Facebook login requirement, which for most is a dealbreaker given Facebook’s extensive collection of user data. A less apparent downside to those outside the walls of Facebook was the clash between Oculus engineers and Facebook management, as Oculus wanted to focus on PC hardware. At the same time, Facebook was insistent on pushing mobile hardware. This assistance led to severe conflict within the company, eventually resulting in the departure of Oculus’s founder Palmer Luckey, CEO Brendan Iribe, CTO Michael Antonov, and various other engineers and critical staff. All the company’s departures were quickly replaced with Facebook engineers, resulting in the death of Oculus and the birth of Meta. In recent interviews, Palmer Luckey’s view on the matter was optimistic, stating, “When we were acquired, people told me Oculus would be taken over and turned into Facebook. I think it’s been the other way around: Facebook got taken over by Oculus, and it turned into Oculus.” when interviewed by Wired magazine. Frankly, it’s hard to disagree with him; Meta has bet big on the metaverse, with Oculus being the spearhead in its push to secure the company’s future. So, should we be excited?
Over the last few days, Meta has revealed a lot of experimental hardware, ending with holocake 2, which looks like project Cambria on steroids. It’s clear they’re putting in the effort, and with all the money they’re dumping into research, their only competitor is Apple. Given recent apple leaks, their first HMD will be more expensive than a MacBook Pro, and given Facebook’s software dominance, it’s hard to imagine it will have better experiences than the 300$ quest 2. Still, Facebook is scared of Apple entering the market, and rightfully so, given Apple’s ability to dominate every industry they enter. Mark Zuckerberg’s solution is Project Cambria, an over $1000 HMD with full-color passthrough and mixed reality capabilities. It’s a promising product, with many sources claiming it’s supposed to be a laptop replacement. However, making a genuine laptop replacement has specific requirements; for starters, it needs an operating system that isn’t Android. Oculus Quest currently uses a custom Android version, which, while great for games, lacks the productivity software base of windows and Linux. Hopefully, they’ve realized this internally and have created either a compatibility layer between android and windows applications or have chosen to use a custom fork of Linux for Cambria.
Either expectation is unrealistic at best, but in the same way iPad OS isn’t a laptop replacement, neither is Android. Another Problem is Varifocal. Right now, all VR HMDs use lenses that are focused at around 5 ft, meaning in VR, anything 5ft away or further looks normal, but as soon as you look at anything closer, it appears blurry. The solution to this problem is lenses that change their focal length based on where the user is looking. Meta solved this problem with the Half Dome 3 Prototype, but they have stated that the lenses and eye-tracking aren’t good enough for a mass-manufactured product yet. The final issue is the display resolution. If you’ve ever tried to read small text in VR, you’ll know it’s nearly impossible, with tiny text either too blurry or too far away to read. Solving this problem requires incredibly dense displays that Meta has managed to implement on their Butterscotch prototype. So, everything Cambria needs to be a success exists, but the chances of it being ready for Cambria are slim. In conclusion, Cambria is a step in the right direction, but until Meta’s prototypes have matured into shippable products, it’s hard to be genuinely excited. Don’t get me wrong though, I will probably order Project Cambria when it ships later this year.
Either expectation is unrealistic at best, but in the same way iPad OS isn’t a laptop replacement, neither is Android. Another Problem is Varifocal. Right now, all VR HMDs use lenses that are focused at around 5 ft, meaning in VR, anything 5ft away or further looks normal, but as soon as you look at anything closer, it appears blurry. The solution to this problem is lenses that change their focal length based on where the user is looking. Meta solved this problem with the Half Dome 3 Prototype, but they have stated that the lenses and eye-tracking aren’t good enough for a mass-manufactured product yet. The final issue is the display resolution. If you’ve ever tried to read small text in VR, you’ll know it’s nearly impossible, with tiny text either too blurry or too far away to read. Solving this problem requires incredibly dense displays that Meta has managed to implement on their Butterscotch prototype. So, everything Cambria needs to be a success exists, but the chances of it being ready for Cambria are slim. In conclusion, Cambria is a step in the right direction, but until Meta’s prototypes have matured into shippable products, it’s hard to be genuinely excited. Don’t get me wrong though, I will probably order Project Cambria when it ships later this year.
