Facebook’s “Meta”
The biggest news in XR still seems to be Facebook’s new umbrella company “Meta”. The internet was quick to mock the name rebrand, mentioning the controversies that are still surrounding the company, regarding the continued neglect of user wellbeing in favor of profit. It opens the debate on the downsides of a corporate funded and managed metaverse, versus a decentralized and democratized network of metaverse modders.
Shortly after announcing the rebrand towards the metaverse, they announced a new set of metaverse build tools at this year’s “Facebook Connect” conference. The Presence Platform is a new suite of tools for developers to create mixed reality (MR) experiences for the Oculus Quest VR headset. The company also announced on October 29 an acquisition of Within, the studio behind the popular Quest exclusive VR fitness app Supernatural.
Society6
Society6, the Print-On-Demand (POD) product company launched a “view in your room” augmented reality feature for wall art. We’ve already seen this feature in companies like Amazon or Ikea. This will allow consumers to preview their products in their space before purchasing.
Apple’s Mixed Reality headset
Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman claimed Apple is “planning to unleash its own pricey device with advanced chips, displays, sensor, and avatar-based features as early as next year [2022],”.
Rumors and patent releases over the years have given hints about Apple’s upcoming AR / VR headset, but Apple has yet to publicly announce the development or release of any sort of device.