So are Zuckerberg’s new glasses to conquer the metaverse

by time news

Meta Quest Pro. That is the name that Meta has chosen for its new mixed reality viewer, more focused on its use in the professional field. This was announced this afternoon Mark Zuckerbergexecutive director of that company known until a year ago as Facebookduring the development of the event Meta Connect, the same one that took advantage of the past 2021 to show his vision of that new virtual world known as the metaverse. A space considered by many technology companies as the evolution of the current Internet, in which experiences will be much more investment thanks to the use of virtual reality and augmented reality.

Precisely, the new Meta viewer, much more powerful than the Oculus Quest that has been on the market since the end of 2020. It mounts a Snapdragon XR2-Plus chip and has mixed reality functionalities, so the user can use them to superimpose virtual graphics on the actual environment. It is expected that in early 2023 Apple will show its own viewer, which would also have, according to analysts, this type of functionality.

The brand new Meta glasses will have technology to detect the movement of the user’s eyes. Thanks to it, the viewer will be able to alter the resolution of the image to make the experience more realistic. It has much more pixels per lens, 37%, than in Meta Quest. The contrast is increased by 75%.

According to Zuckerberg, the headband-shaped device is much more comfortable, and is designed to make the user feel truly present when socializing with others in the virtual world. Now, those who want to get hold of a unit will have to scratch their pockets. The price starts at $1,499, and will be higher in euros, for sure. It will arrive in stores on October 25, where it will coexist with the Meta Quest 2, which will continue to be available to most users for just over 400 euros that they currently cost.

The event, obviously, has also served for Zuckerberg to share, again, with great fanfare, the benefits that the metaverse will bring with it when it crystallizes. Come when that time comes, which certainly won’t be any time soon. For now, the technology company shared that it is going to open its fundamental tool to interact with other people in the metaverse, Horizon Worlds, to all kinds of devices. Until now, it was only possible to access it through an Oculus headset.

The company also announced a collaboration for 2023 with NBCUniversal, an American company with which it will make various audiovisual experiences focused on series such as ‘The Office’ available to users. The objective is that Internet users can meet friends through their viewers to be able to socialize and consume the content.

The video game is another of the main legs of the new virtual world. Meta shared during the event the arrival at its virtual store of a good handful of titles, including ‘IronMan VR’ and ‘Among Us VR’. Both will be available to Quest users next November. In addition, a title based on the popular The Walking Dead franchise was shown, which looked very good. In this case, it will reach the glasses in December.

Alliance with Microsoft

Zuckerberg referred to the entry of new players in the business in recent months, noting that the number of companies that are currently developing platforms and devising plans to compete in the new virtual world has not stopped growing.

The executive shared the closing of a ambitious deal with Microsoft together with the CEO of this company, Satya Nadella. Companies have agreed to the arrival of Teams, Office, Windows or even the Xbox cloud video game service to Meta viewers. It should be remembered that the two companies are part of the Metaverse Standards Forum, a recently created organization dedicated to the standardization of the metaverse. In other words, the experiences created by each company for the new virtual world are compatible.

A very complicated 2022

It should be remembered that 2022 has been one of the most complicated years in the history of technology. The company’s shares are currently half as expensive as they were a year ago, and the expense of building the new virtual world – with losses of approximately 10,000 million dollars a year – is partly to blame. Meta has gone so far as to freeze hiring and take measures aimed directly at reducing the number of employees.

To make matters worse, a few days ago, the specialized media ‘The Verge’, shared that some company workers do not even currently use Meta solutions designed for the metaverse, such as Horizon Worlds, because of “low quality and problems of performance” they have. Precisely, during the presentation, Zuckerberg announced the arrival of a new update of avatars for users that, at least in principle, look much more realistic and accomplished than the current ones. They also incorporate legs, which were not present in the current version.

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