Meta shows off Web3-to-reality bridge with ‘Hyperscape’ metaverse demo

October 3, 2024 Coin Telegraph

The tech is still experimental, but its implications could change how users view reality.

Meta recently showed off a new “Hyperscape” tech that takes the idea of stitching photographs together to form a 3D environment — such as YouTube’s 360 videos — and turns it into a real-time rendering system that could potentially revolutionize telepresence and redefine the idea of working from home.

Meta’s still as bullish as ever when it comes to the metaverse. As Cointelegraph recently reported, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off the company’s new “Orion” smart glasses at the company’s “Connect” event on Sept. 25.

The Orion glasses purportedly give the user an effective heads-up display, allowing them to navigate the physical world with digital information seamlessly integrated into what they are seeing.

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Meta cancels next-gen headset as Reality Labs remains mired in VR

August 24, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

There’s more to the metaverse than hardware, and Mark Zuckerberg appears to be learning that lesson the hard way.

Meta’s metaverse ambitions may not be going as well as planned. The company’s Realty Labs division reportedly stopped work on a next-generation headset amid concerns the product wouldn’t sell well enough to justify its production.

According to a report from The Information, workers were given the cease order after CEO Mark Zuckerberg weighed-in during a product update meeting. Evidently, Meta was expecting Apple’s Vision Pro — a product similar to the one Reality Labs was developing — to perform better than it has.

Despite involvement from some of the top technology firms in the world, including Sony, HTC, Meta, and Google, virtual reality hardware remains a niche market. As far as consumers are concerned, VR remains a niche product.

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Half of the 10 most valuable companies on Earth are making metaverse hardware

August 11, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Apple

The metaverse is dead, long live the metaverse.

Microsoft is reportedly looking to take on Apple’s Vision Pro headset with new hardware it would develop in partnership with Samsung. This would mean that five of the ten most valuable companies by market capitalization — Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia — are currently developing new metaverse gear.

The Microsoft news comes from a local outlet in South Korea, The Elec. According to the report, Microsoft plans to order hundreds of thousands of OLED panels from Samsung for a device to be mass produced in 2026.

That’s a ways off and, according to The Verge, the device will be a headset meant for spatial computing (as opposed to virtual reality). The Verge also indicated that it was specifically not meant for the metaverse — but, any display device, including a computer monitor, can interface with “the metaverse,” spatial computing devices just offer a different level of immersion.

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Metaverse book gets boring rename in latest sign of waning enthusiasm

July 21, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Augmented Reality

The growing malaise for metaverse hype is reminiscent of the AI sector directly before the launch of GPT-3.

Matthew Ball, former global head of strategy at Amazon Studios and author of the 2022 book “The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything,” is re-releasing the book under a new, more underwhelming title: “Building the Spatial Internet.”

To be clear, the book will still be called “The Metaverse,” but the spatial internet bit will replace the former language indicating that the metaverse would revolutionize everything.

Evidently, after two years, the revolution has either come and gone or remains impending. Either way, on July 23, the book's newest edition launches.

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Meta reportedly cut metaverse budget by 20% as Q2 earnings call looms

July 20, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Augmented Reality

Despite Q1 company earnings rising 27% year-over-year, Reality Labs will have to cut costs.

Meta will reportedly cut the budget of its Reality Labs, the division responsible for developing the company’s metaverse hardware and software, by about 20% between now and 2026.

This comes via a report from The Information and aligns with recent indications that Meta plans to shift Reality Labs into production mode ahead of several high-profile hardware launches slated over the next couple of years.

Analysts for Bank of America opined that the cost-cutting measures would net Meta a savings of about $3 billion.

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Google and Magic Leap partner up to make metaverse goggles despite past flops

June 2, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Apple

It’s unclear why the two companies have partnered up, but the scheme comes amid Apple’s push to dominate the “spatial computing” market.

Magic Leap recently announced “a multi-faceted, strategic technology partnership” with Google to develop new extended reality technologies.

The partnership marks what could be considered an odd pairing in the tech world. Google recently trimmed down its augmented and extended reality teams (AR/XR) and Magic Leap is the creator of one of the field’s biggest flops. Still, as this news could indicate further competition for Apple and Meta when it comes to metaverse hardware and experiences, it very well could bode well for the metaverse as a whole.

The partnership will highlight Magic Leap’s advances in the field of optics alongside Google’s infrastructure, according to a statement from Magic Leap CTO Julie Larson-Green:

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Religious leaders debate going to church in the metaverse

May 12, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Augmented Reality

With the Pope sounding off on AI recently, the discourse surrounding religion and technology has heated up.

When the first radio and television broadcasts began to trickle into homes around the world, religious programming was among the early mainstays of both new mediums. Now, as the world pivots away from flat, 2D screens and frequency-bound audio broadcasts, religious practitioners from around the globe have begun adopting metaverse, Web3, spatial computing, and artificial intelligence technologies as conduits to faith.

However, there are still naysayers who believe there are dangers associated with these technologies, faith leaders who wonder if modern technological trappings are necessary, and billions of traditional religious followers awaiting guidance.

On the supporting side, Sreevas Sahasranamam a Professor at the University of Glasgow, recently expounded on the positive potential for a metaverse for practitioners of the Hindu faith in Swarajya magazine:

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More than half of the Fortune 100 uses Apple’s Vision Pro headset

May 4, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Apple

Spatial computing in the industrial metaverse appears to be paying off for the company that Steve Jobs built.

Apple’s Vision Pro headset, a mixed-reality spatial computing device, has been adopted by a majority of Fortune 100 companies with more than half purchasing at least one.

Company CEO Tim Cook relayed the information during Apple’s first quarter 2024 earnings call, citing Vision Pro adoption as a sign of increased enthusiasm for the company’s products:

The Vision Pro launched in early February of 2024 with a price tag of $3,499 in the United States. In the time since, it doesn’t appear to have made much of a dent in the consumer market where much lower priced options such as Meta’s Quest line of VR headsets.

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EU touts health benefits for children in the metaverse despite risks

April 26, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Augmented Reality

The European Union’s in-house think tanks says the metaverse can help children heal from diseases.

The European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), a government think tank for the European Union, recently published a letter discussing the opportunities and challenges for children in the metaverse.

According to the post’s author, EPRS policy analyst Maria Niestadt, the metaverse can “boost children’s creativity and motivation to learn and even help them heal from diseases” and enable cultural and social experiences they may not otherwise be able to experience.

However, there are numerous challenges that the EU must face, according to the EPRS, including protecting children from adverse mental and physical outcomes related to the use of virtual, augmented, and/or mixed reality headsets as well as security and privacy issues.

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Meta’s letting Xbox, Lenovo, and Asus build new Quest metaverse hardware

April 25, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Augmented Reality

Each company has its own special plans for the Quest mixed-reality device.

Meta recently announced that it would “open” the operating system that powers its Quest line of mixed-reality devices for third-party hardware and software development.

The change comes with a new name, “Meta Horizon OS,” and a rebranding of the Quest Store to the “Meta Horizon Store.” It also brings a trio of high-profile partners in Asus, Lenovo, and Microsoft’s Xbox brand.

According to a blog post from Meta, each of the partners will work with Meta to develop their own mixed/virtual reality devices.

Virtual reality