Facebook’s VR game: Quest Pro and the social meta-universe.
On May 10th, CNET reporter Scott Stein recently interviewed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an exclusive interview, and discussed Facebook’s future development plans in the field of virtual reality (VR), including the features and capabilities of the next-generation headset Quest Pro. Views on fitness apps, the future of Facebook’s social metaverse, and whether there will be a children’s version of Quest VR, etc.
Zuckerberg mentioned that during the more than a year of the outbreak, VR has always been an area he has been paying close attention to. Although it was estimated that only 5.5 million VR headset Oculus Quest 2 were sold last year, he is still very concerned about the future development of this field. Full of confidence.
▲ Zuckerberg uses Oculus Quest 2
Zuckerberg mentioned that the biggest advantage of Oculus Quest in the competition lies in its convenient wireless experience, and the company reduced the price of the product from the initial $399 to $299. The purpose of the price reduction is to reach the range acceptable to the public as much as possible, so that the VR experience can be more popular.
At the same time, he wants to further enhance the VR experience in the design of Quest Pro. The new headset will incorporate new sensor components, such as face and eye tracking, and even include fitness-related functions, and use it as a Facebook VR social program. Part of this, increase the “sense of presence” in communication. In order to ensure its better performance, the price of this device may be higher.
Zuckerberg emphasized that Facebook is currently committed to expanding its user base, and he is willing to acquire customers regardless of cost, so that the world’s largest social media network can create more social opportunities for users in the virtual world.
“We don’t want to charge users more through equipment, but want to provide users with a sense of presence.” Zuckerberg said. For him, the focus of VR is to create a sense of social connection. It has nothing to do with resolution or processor speed. It is about the opportunity to create an immersive world.
“We hope that as many people as possible can experience VR, and enter the virtual world to get a brand new social experience… This is our company’s VR field and core, as well as our business.” Zuckerberg Continue to add.
Facebook is currently achieving their goals with a large-scale social meta-universe project called Facebook Horizon.
This meta-universe provides users with a series of creative tools, allowing them to build their own virtual personal worlds, such as “AltspaceVR”, “Rec Room”, and even “Fortress Night”, “Roblox” and “My World”, etc. application.
Zuckerberg called Facebook Horizon their “important priority”, and it will help build a broad meta-universe of VR/AR to play an important role.
But in the initial stage, Zuckerberg plans to test Horizon by office staff first, which is an important “Dogfooding” stage. (“Dogfooding” stage: Refers to if you want customers to buy your own product, you need to at least approve and use it first) He hopes that after the epidemic, all Facebook employees can hold meetings in VR and adjust the application product experience by the way .
In his view, compared with other current communication methods, the VR experience has a lot of advantages. Not only does it have a strong sense of presence, it can also achieve high fidelity. Zuckerberg said: “For me, Zoom video calls now lack a sense of presence. It is difficult for me to remember exactly what I said in which call. And we are focusing on the VR social aspect. It is believed that within five years, its advantages will be significantly better than other cutting-edge communication methods.”
On the one hand, although the number of Oculus Quest users in the younger age group is increasing, Zuckerberg said that there will be no children’s version of Oculus VR for the time being, although he admits that he has a strong interest in what VR should be in the education industry.
On the other hand, Facebook is also developing advanced AR glasses with a wrist-worn neural interface, but it may take several years. Before that, Facebook’s VR ecosystem will first introduce Oculus Quest Pro equipped with advanced sensors.
▲In 2017, Zuckerberg studied prototype hardware at Facebook’s Redmond, Washington Research Laboratory
The following is a summary of the core content of the interview between Scott Stein and Zuckerberg:
01.
Talk about product iteration: preview the more high-end Quest Pro
1. Scott Stein: It has been five years since Oculus Rift came out. Compared with 2019, where will you see VR and AR technologies now? Has there been a major change? Or is there anything less than expected?
Zuckerberg: Exciting, many original ideas have already been implemented. But it is still a long journey to fully realize the idea, and a lot of investment will still be needed in the next five years. But I am very happy to say that there will be many great works coming soon.
At the same time, as you said, with the spread of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, many people can only interact remotely, which makes people pay more attention to technologies that can build a sense of presence. Let people feel together and really build connections, involving social, work and entertainment and other fields. This has always been the original intention of VR/AR technology.
The various social media we have built are bringing people closer, but VR/AR is our first batch of products to truly realize the sense of presence. With the end of the epidemic, as the world becomes farther away, this also becomes more and more important.
2.Scott Stein: You mentioned the sense of presence, and I am more concerned about social use. It seems that few friends around me use VR headsets, so how about the sales of VR products? Does its social function meet your expectations?
Zuckerberg: The current Quest 2 performed quite well, even exceeding expectations. With Quest 2 this product, we break through the size limit and achieve a high-quality wireless device experience. If the user’s neck or shoulders are wrapped with wires, the body and movement are also restricted, which will greatly reduce the sense of immersion and presence.
To achieve a good wireless experience, a lot of innovation is needed, which many other peers have not yet achieved. But we will iterate the first generation of Quest to Quest 2. We see the development trajectory of these things, and there will be the next version afterwards. In the next roadmap, we have great products that we are very excited about. Quest 2 was an important turning point.
3. Scott Stein: Regarding the rumors of Oculus Quest Pro, is it for the enterprise market? Do you think the market may have different demands for Oculus Quest Pro?
Zuckerberg: Oculus Quest 2 is still dominated by games, but we found that the top few applications in the rankings are social applications.
This means that in addition to the VR gaming experience, Oculus Quest 2 can also be used for party entertainment, so it is used for creative production or an increase in applications that allow everyone to work together. For example, “FitXR” and “Supernatural”, they are basically subscription services, you can take different courses, such as boxing, dancing, and even fitness.
For me, the emergence of multiple types of applications has expanded the scope of Quest and filled our original vision.
If you focus on building a higher-end device, it can play an important role in some other use cases. Quest Pro will not be launched soon, but this is definitely something we are excited about, and there are basically different products that can serve different use cases well.
02.
Talk about VR fitness: sensor innovation is an important direction in the next five years
4. Scott Stein: What do you think of Quest as an application for fitness equipment? Will it work with sports watches or trackers? Because I understand that you are still studying the technology of neural input and AR wrist-worn devices, have you considered the connection between fitness applications and technology?
Zuckerberg: We mentioned before that Quest’s high-end devices will be equipped with new sensors, such as eye tracking and face tracking. What you mentioned is about different health sensors, whether it’s a heart rate monitor or a fitness watch, they may be equipped with other types of fitness sensors. But these functions have one thing in common is that it needs to provide additional computing power to give this function.
Therefore, if you want one that can meet the requirements of all functions, then you need to use higher-end equipment. I think the innovation of sensors can power us to build high-end equipment and increase the penetration rate of equipment. This is an important direction for our work in the next five years.
5. Scott Stein: We have used Quest 2 more extensively and see it more targeted for fitness. I saw an advertisement saying that it is a fitness device, and Facebook is letting it charge for fitness. Do you use it yourself for fitness?
Zuckerberg: Will use all these different applications, I love “Beat Sabre”, this is one of my favorites on Quest. Of course I also like “FitXR” very much, you know I am a running enthusiast. We haven’t really realized the creation of fitness equipment products in VR, but doing “Beat Saber”, “FitXR” or “Supernatural” are all real exercises.
You may be surprised that I can compete with friends in “Beat Sabre” for half an hour to an hour. It is clear why people like it from the bottom of their hearts.
6. Scott Stein: Have you set up a dedicated VR area at home to exercise, and use this function to exercise at any time?
Zach Burke: Quest is a wireless, independent device, very portable. It can be used anywhere, so I have it in my living room, basement, and sometimes I go to more spacious places. But again, we attributed its main factor to the appearance problem. The previous solution had to put people in front of the table and around the PC, which was very restrictive. Quest allows people to move around freely and is easy to use anytime, anywhere.
You also asked about the schedule. Every weekend, friends ask me to play games. We really need to be urgent and feel how things make friends feel together to play. During the epidemic, I couldn’t meet many people. It really made me realize the value of combining social and gaming experience.
03.
Talking about the virtual world: Facebook is creating a social meta-universe
7. Scott Stein: You just said that you have launched an improved version of the social avatar. Facebook Horizon is like the meta-universe of Facebook. Can you talk about your plans for this?
Zuckerberg: Building a social meta-universe is a major project for us, and we hope to complete it through Horizon. We are currently creating an environment where people can use their creativity, join in with friends, and build their own virtual doubles.
Horizon provides more creative elements for the creators and developers of the platform. The meta-universe covers virtual and augmented reality. Both developers and creators play an important role in constructing this broader meta-universe.
I will provide the company’s employees with tools to build with Horizon, which is a very important priority. We are building it into more platforms, enabling people to build many different things over time. This is why we spend so much time and energy to build it.
Therefore, the opening of the full version of Horizon may take longer than before. It is not only a platform for games, chat and entertainment, it will also play a greater role in collaborative work.
04.
Talk about VR education: Children’s Quest is meaningful to children
8. Scott Stein: Now more and more people are accepting Oculus Quest, and children also use it to play games. But the interesting thing is that I know that there is no Facebook account under 13 years old, so these children use adult account information to experience. How do you feel about this? Will you consider launching a device similar to the children’s version of Quest?
Zuckerberg: This is a good question, and over time I think it is part of our overall vision, and this is a problem that must be solved.
But we need to have a Facebook login account to use this feature. If you are under 13 years old, you will not be able to have a Facebook account. Therefore, I think there may be a long way to go before this product can be implemented. Moreover, there are still some design challenges for children’s devices. For example, VR devices have a certain IPD (interpupillary distance) range, and some headsets have requirements for the weight of the user’s head, so the players are basically teenagers or adults. I think all issues like this need to be considered before designing the hardware. But for young children, I think the use of VR devices does make sense to them.
But this is of course very interesting. I think in the long run, the education industry is definitely one of the most promising vertical directions. We have seen and have been hearing these stories in higher education. In fact, there have been successful practical experiences in the education industry.
For example: compare cardiac surgeons with 3D training so that they can see the heart and see what they are doing, compared to someone who has just attended a lecture and experienced it in a more theoretical way. In my opinion, people who have received VR training perform better than those who attended lectures because it can understand the whole process more intuitively. So, I think it is better to give people the ability to do things and experience them than to be taught often or just read a book in the future.
Establishing this kind of educational experience can be used not only for the education of preschool children, but also for teenagers and adults, and can even be used in conjunction with traditional education. One view on communication technologies is that they are basically technologies that revolve around shared perspectives, while books are technologies that share perspectives and try to internalize the perspectives of others.
In many ways, I think the ultimate goal of VR is to integrate you into the environment at the time and experience their feelings as a participant. I think this is not only very helpful to the education of the school, but also of great significance to the dissemination of culture and the sharing of experience.
I think for the current children, how to correctly guide them from the perspective of parents is the top priority at present. We will explore this issue through an open community of educators and experts to ensure that in the next 10-20 years, we will use VR in the right way and let more people experience it.
05.
Conclusion: In the next ten years,
VR is expected to challenge mobile phones with immersive experiences
Through Zuckerberg’s interview on the future development trend of Facebook in the VR field, it is not difficult to see that Oculus Quest products hope to make breakthroughs in the following aspects: no PC, no cables, no external Sensors, and there is a lot of room for imagination in the future in terms of immersive social interaction and the popularization of VR.
In a previous interview, Zuckerberg imagined that by 2030, people will be able to use advanced smart glasses to “transmit” to other people’s houses, just like talking face to face. At the moment, many companies including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google are vying to join the AR/VR war, and there are also many VR players in China who have sprung up. The power of players and the concentration of capital are expected to make VR devices an electronic product that will replace smart phones in the next ten years.
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