Meta to Break Up Its 300-Employee Team for AR/VR OS Development
Alison Anderson
02 Mar 2022
R and VR are often mentioned together, and no wonder that an OS by Meta now in development initially was planned as AR/VR one. But it looks now that Meta alters its plans. Breaking up the team that works on it is evidence that there might be two OS instead of one unified.
Each of the systems the company works on is meant for a certain sort of device – namely, AR and VR headsets. Splitting it in two after the reported quitting of the unified XROS project seems logical. Parts of the team were assigned to other projects that are now in development. These engineers will join either the Quest team developing the VR headset by Meta or the team that now refines Facebook AR glasses. So far, the current generation of headsets runs an Android-based OS. But the next generation, as we see, may receive a specialized proprietary OS tightly tied with the hardware.
Now, acknowledging the difference between the two lines of products, Meta obviously means to use the specifics of each project. More types of products can appear after that, including those utilizing pure computer vision for an eye- and hand-tracking. This application well combines with the Metaverse prospects that merge the physical universe with the virtual one. But there might be others as well, for example, developing prosthetic eyes that can indeed provide vision.
This constant reorganization shows that Meta gets more assured about its real aims. Through trials and errors, it’s ready to correct its plans. And we should be thankful that it cancels its projects before launching them for the public. At least, we don’t have a Meta cemetery for canceled projects that were once well alive.
What do you think about the perspective of Metaverse supported by AR and VR reality devices? Maybe you already own one of them? Then tell us how it feels now in the comments, and let’s dream about new features it may once have.