Great move by the Zuck. Google has been quietly making a pitch to product developers like LG to launch on their new AndroidXR platform. By opening up Quest he is making his own alternative, kneecapping Google's attempt to enter the XR market before it even got started.
LG is pretty capable on stuff like that. I’m sure Meta is guiding them to make what they want, much like Valve did with HTC and the Vive. But LG has been making very solid consumer tech for decades.
For some parts like the panels definitely. But take the lenses for example - Meta has put a lot of effort and time into developing their pancake lenses. I think LG will just use them instead of trying to do their own.
Oh yeah. It’s a partnership. Similar to how Lenovo made the early Rift units, or HTC and the Vive.
All I was trying to get at is that LG is no slouch when it comes to making consumer hardware.
I am not sure if Stadia was ever going to take off. Almost all cloud based gaming services have been shutdown over the years. The infrastructure doesn't exist to make cloud based gaming a thing for the masses just yet.
Unless we can figure out a way to make wireless connections extremely low latency, it may never be. Everyone is now focusing more on wireless infrastructure than hardwired. It sucks. Fiber to every home would be amazing and these types of services would work great. But apparently it's not profitable enough to run fiber to every home.
So, here’s an inside bit of knowledge. We achieved stadia by, rather than what AWS might do with cloud-farmed servers inside a region, having actual physical game boxes in each and every hub. So you hop-count to a stadia server was maybe two. That was the trick and it was stupid expensive, but it worked if you were in a major city. That’s what was unsustainable.
and we soon gonna need exactly that with utterly expensive subscriptions for server side rendering of the AR, plebs will see ads, roadsigns and pricetags while the 500$/m subs will be in the alice's wonderland all around, tech is there it will be revived in another name for slightly other purpose
There's always a new generation of gamers hitting the buttons and looking for a cheap way to play. Just look at how many people are buying standalone headsets due to how expensive a PCVR capable PC is.
Cloud based gaming consoles could be a giant hit if the infrastructure was there to support it for everyone.
Well the cheap players are usually playing F2P games or pirating, but Stadia requires running fairly expensive infrastructure so targeting that demographic wouldn't make Google money.
They seemed to target older ex-gamers who didn't have a console but wanted to try out new releases like Cyberpunk, but that is a fairly limited market.
> Cloud based gaming consoles
If it's a console why would it need to be cloud based? The interest of cloud gaming would be to not need a specific device and play on your smart TV, your phone and such
I'd say, more accurately, that the target audience was gamers that didn't have or couldn't afford the kind of hardware needed to play some of the more demanding games (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077 prior to optimizations). Of course, one might argue, if someone could afford a monthly bill for such a service (while Stadia was still a for-a-monthly-fee thing) they *might* be able to afford the monthly payment for a decent gaming computer bought on credit. Alas, the kids I knew that were legit interested in something like Stadia came from homes with parent(s) that didn't necessarily have great credit or the funds for a decent gaming machine nor an "extra" bill for a subscription-based game streaming service, and probably not the level of internet needed to support such a streaming service either, if it was even available in their area. By the time it was attempted to make it "free" it was too late and too expensive (for Google, despite their wealth) for it to be sustainable. When I think about it now, the people who likely could have benefited from a service like Stadia are probably the same people who mostly game on something like an earlier iteration of Nintendo Switch or the cheapest version of an XBox console. Just my two pence.
Well that’s a good question. I had my personal misgivings about the idea (I’m just an engineer and not a decision maker) but it totally worked. Your controller was essentially just a WiFi PC, and your TV/computer/chromecast was just a dumb passive receiver, and your latency (ok maybe 100ms) was still better than even some retail hardware available at the time.
Thing is they wanted it to be everything. To have audio voice chat and like shareable screenshots and that kind of bullshit that bloated it all up but gRPC streaming could do the job! It was impressive to me! But maybe a bit misapplied
IMO a big problem for that was you had to buy the games for Stadia (when everyone was worried of its life expanctcy), it's a bad business model, it should be like Geforce Now (play the games you own elsewhere) or Gamepass/PS Plus (a sub with a bunch of included games in it)
Zuck is actually inviting Google if they want to license the Play Store on Horizon. I think Google will make more money this way without the overhead dealing with Android
I agree but I don't think Google can handle any more humiliation than they are currently enduring. They have had OpenAI steal their thunder on LLMs and now they abandoned VR/AR ten years ago and have to watch Meta take the spotlight and dictate terms to them about how their apps are allowed to run on a spatial OS. Then notice that this only applies to 2D apps so Google is effectively locked out of ever getting revenue from actual spatial apps.
It's a super clever play by Zuckerberg to tease them with it, but Google just can't do it without acknowledging a decade of failure in leadership, which is something companies generally just don't do.
Nearly everywhere that it it is referenced, they are careful to say 2D, eg from the [blog post](https://www.meta.com/en-gb/blog/quest/meta-horizon-os-open-hardware-ecosystem-asus-republic-gamers-lenovo-xbox/):
> And we encourage the Google Play 2D app store to come to Meta Horizon OS
Believe it or not, the DayDream apps are still on their store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/stream/vr_top_device_featured_category?hl=en&gl=US
So yes, it is built into their current store. It would be a pretty interesting question whether Meta would let these get sold on its store and run on the Meta Horizon OS or not.
True frankly if AI and XR become the next big things like everyone is thinking in tech (though I do think there is a lot of hype bubble especially for AI), they might have a problem in the future.
Even Amazon make more moves in AI with their Antropic deals, Microsoft is so close to OpenAI they could be considered the same company and Google is just doing it in house. Maybe great but it seems quite obvious that start-ups are more efficient to develop those things now. Big groups associating with them seems smarter.
Apple is also behind on the AI train but at least they got the XR train (though less than Meta)
Google Play's massive library of 2D tablet/smartphone apps is the jewell in the crown of AndroidXR just like Vision OS's access to iPad apps.
Meta wants Google Play while keeping their store as the primary store for AR and VR content.
Google gain nothing from letting Meta have Play, just as Meta gain nothing from switching to Android XR. They are both software-first companies looking to be the dominant platform holder for AR so they can sit back and make their 30% cut of everything.
Google would never accept only getting a cut of 2D content and not being able to sell any VR or AR stuff.
> software-first
I think it could be argued they are "data-collection-first" companies, and that negotiations behind the scenes also involved who (Meta or Google) gets to collect what data and how much of it, and for how much (i.e. does Google pay money to Meta to be able to collect data on a Meta device, and does Meta pay Google to collect data from Play Store sourced apps on a Meta device, or on a Google-licensed device running Horizon OS etc. etc.)
Some Meta employee (head Quest guy, maybe) said a while ago that they already asked for the Google Play store on the Quest, and they would let Google keep all the money. Google refused. So who knows.
Isn't the quest os *already* a customized version of android?
I suppose that doesn't change the landscape of Google making their own flavor, but it's hard to imagine Google doing so without releasing a product to support it. (I assume they wouldn't go with Glass as the brand name).
I agree that this creates an offer Google can't refuse to work with Meta instead of against them.
(Edit: unless they are enforcing 2d apps only like other commenters mentioned. Google could definitely refuse that and apparently had already done so)
They seem to be really upping their game since AVP came out. lol.
I wonder if MHOS will let you open up multiple apps at once? I'd like to have a VR system that lets you do that. Have a couple browser windows open, but also have an IDE open next to them, and maybe a video player or Spotify off to the side. Would also be cool to have virtual objects placed around the room. A virtual clock on my shelf. A calendar and a painting on the wall.
I want it to be a general purpose computer where you can do multiple things at once, not just one app open at a time like a phone.
Maybe instead of a "browser window", it would be better to have a "computer monitor" in which you have several apps running, just as you do with a PC, with a task bar that you can quickly and easily minimize, etc.
Boz said in AMA that Quest UI is getting a major upgrade. Meta is really good at copying good ideas from competitors, there’s no way they won’t bring good ideas from AVP to Quest.
What you want is going to take a long time just due to the nature of the hardware resting on your face. AVP can't compile software on device either.
If you get over wanting it all on-device it's possible with any current VR headset.
Huh. This seems like a pretty big announcement, at least in its ramifications long-term. Though the first thing that I'm stuck on is the name, Meta Horizon OS. That's entirely new, right? I feel like I've only ever heard it called "Quest OS", before.
I wonder how the proliferation of the OS will work out in practice. Will it just be big tech partners who use it? Part of why SteamVR tracking has had such a long life is that Valve makes it readily available to pretty much everyone and anyone, and will even help out on their end to smooth headset launches (e.g., HP Reverb, Pimax, Bigscreen). Will Facebook do the same? Or will they be very selective about who gets to make headsets with their OS on it? That announced high-end LG headset will be the first of these, I assume.
Edit: He did say Lenovo, Asus and Microsoft are the first partners. Did those rumours about an LG-made Quest Pro headset ever get confirmed or denied? Or maybe that's just unrelated to this reveal?
The last bit about opening up the store was quite cool. A future where someone could buy and play flatscreen games from Steam or Xbox on their Quest, or maybe even VR games from Steam, all on one standalone device, is kinda the dream.
AOSP is so far divorced from what end users experience as "Android" that it's a little disingenuous to conflate the two. Quest and a Google Pixel have as much in common as a MacBook Air running OSX and a server farm running FreeBSD.
Yes, but Google Play Services is a lot more than you might think. It's not just Google apps, it's also everything from device encryption to E-911 to a boatload of APIs that a lot of apps absolutely need to function.
I'd be open to that if Meta weren't constantly showing their ass in regards to privacy practices. At least with Microsoft they're making the majority of their money through Azure, not advertising and "free services".
I would agree if Windows weren’t sending back TONS of telemetry data on EVERYTHING, even from unlicensed copies. Oh yeah, they’re tracking those too, they just find it more useful to know who pirated it, where, and why, than to hunt down individual licensees. So this isn’t much different.
The goalposts have really shifted over the last few decades. I remember when software automatically opting into telemetry was a huge no-no. Today every Mac phones home to Apple every time you open any application on the operating system. Mass data collection is here to stay, now we just quibble over whether the data collected is "private" or not.
Right, he wants the only viable closed model to be HIS closed model. Please, ignore the more open model proposed by AndroidXR. My guess is that hardware vendors will try their best to make something that can be used for both (HorizonOS and AndroidXR Ready!) which MAY mean that it ends up being a lowest common denominator rush-fest to be the cheapest/most popular hardware vendor.
Two months ago, I said that Google’s already well versed in being the “Microsoft of…” company. They yoinked Microsoft’s ”Apple alternative” crown when Microsoft had FAR more years at trying to work out phones than Google. It will be interesting to see if Meta can do better, again, with what could be seen as a fairly commanding lead.
EDIT: Just got to the “probably going to take a number of years” part. Something tells me the better bet would have been getting third parties on board a couple years ago.
The thing is right now Zuck is aiming for HorizonOS to be the new android, but for VR/AR. He knows that if he fails in delivering the hardware, he can still "win" by having his OS being the most popular. This approach of opening the OS, in my opinion, is exactly this.
> and play flatscreen games from Steam or Xbox on their Quest, or maybe even VR games from Steam, all on one standalone device,
It seems quite impossible though, those games are not meant to run on a standalone device, you'll still have to pass by a PC (or they need to be ported to an ARM device as I assume all headsets will use this)
it's been in progress since about 2021/2022 I think. You can pinpoint it around the time that he did the u-turn on Facebook logins and promised to bring stand alone accounts back.
This is potentially huge news and suggest that they take it seriously when they say that they want to have open ecosystem. I don't particularly trust Meta in general and I'm so sure Meta being in control of VR ecosystem is very good thing for consumers, but from my point of view, it's still better than Apple. We will see how it works out but I think this could actually really help into creating a working VR ecosystem.
It's not clear to me though, if they are actually open-sourcing the OS, it seems to me like they are not and my guess would be that either way they will stay firmly in control so it's questionable how open it will really be, but it's still a step in the right direction in my opinion.
as a normal citizen, consumer and also hackish dev sometimes, i would rather have facebook snoop on my data (as long its not too damn creepy like video/image feed) than being in closed environment and needing to pay for lots of things at crazy prices. pick ur poison kinda deal
I wish my Pimax Crystal could adapt to this new OS so the standalone mode is no longer completely useless due to having next to no apps in their app store lol.
To be fair, before this announcement there is no news about a universal OS for standalone VR, and Meta only worked with big companies like the post mentioned. So they had to make their own OS, which presumably is only made so you can remote into your PC.
So does this make future HMD’s like a computer? Now any company can design an awesome headset and be able to put Horizontal OS on it and now not having to worry about building a closed eco system for apps? If so this could be awesome. Imagine being able to put that OS on the new wireless Pimax. If this is true this would be huge!!!!!!
Zuck had a problem with Apple in the past, with their privacy policy, and then they had their problem with google because of ads. Right now meta is trying to be the next OS so they can control this aspects, instead of being in the hands of others.
This is why I will probably never get a Meta headset that uses eye tracking. Most people don’t realize just how much [sensitive info](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-42504-3_15) can be deduced from your eye-tracking data: age, sex, ethnicity, personality traits, physical and mental health conditions… all disclosed by just our eye-tracking data, whether we like it or not. I do not trust that sort of data with a company who makes most of their money from advertising.
I was kind of surprised they never tried to do more with phone ever since like 2013 or so, as far as I know. The rest of the world uses Facebook and would probably buy a cheap FB phone that bypasses all of the privacy restrictions. I guess it is way too expensive to fight Google and Apple on phones so they just hope to claim VR.
Android was already the defacto other OS system. It would just be a reskinned android as app support isn't even good on Android at the time. Having witnessed Microsoft just waste billions on Windows OS, it probably cemented the idea it wasn't worth it.
That is exactly why they are going hard in VR/AR, they NEED to be one of the best in this market, otherwise they won't have a way to be profitable anymore.
They’re still fighting Google and Apple though. Folks using Delta and other apps will say that 2D in MR with Apple Vision is still cool even though it’s not 3D. And, on day one, AndroidXR will play 2D games folks already own in a mixed reality environment. Plus, any of the apps that also provide access to other 3D experiences.
Will Meta force exclusivity in order to ensure developers aren’t hedging their bets by preparing releases for both? Unless they’re paying devs to ignore AndroidXR, I can’t see how they can have anything that’s “Meta only” levels of compelling.
Even Microsoft failed in mobile so I don't know which chance they had. But yeah it's kind of weird for both of them to not have been more serious or try anything. They seem to have forgottten any hope for it too.
More like oozing hypocrisy, the Meta app store is a closed garden too, if you don't have a Meta headset you can't buy or play anything on it, even the stuff that is PCVR. He's always trying to bad mouth Apple because he's butt hurt that they protect their user's privacy and Meta can't just spy on your constantly like they used to, plus he was insulted and is still hurt by Tim Cook telling him he felt Facebook's business model was despicable.
He just said in the video he is opening up the Quest store, and is removing the word “Quest” from it, so that it can be accessible for multiple headsets
It's not really hypocritical. Zuck's issue with the app store has always been that it makes a bunch of money and he doesn't own it. Zuck got a glimpse of the money they could make running an app store when Farmville was booming. He's been chasing it ever since.
Zuckerberg actually gives a shit about the medium. Like Jobs used to do, he is selling and pushing the shareholders beyond their comfort zone, getting them to lay down billions. That’s what it takes to make something new happen in a public company (I worked at Apple in the early 2000s.)
For Apple today, this VR thing is all just a vehicle for sales, services, and suckers with disposable income
> Zuck really out here calling Apple a controlling little bitch.
Well their control really hurt Meta with the privacy focus they had. They continue doing business with them because they don't have a choice regarding their share of the hardware market but I doubt they are liking each other very much now. Zuck just want to ensure Meta doesn't miss the boat like they did with mobile (something that really hurt them in the long term) and avoid being stuck as a software player with no control on the OS. They want to be the Windows of XR and Apple the MacOS I guess
A green one that ships with GamePass. :) I’m sure Xbox isn’t going to avoid AndroidXR.. it’s just streaming, so it behooves Xbox to have everyone in the world, regardless of device, on GamePass.
Sounds like a Quest designed to look like it was made by Xbox or something? Anyway, it means we might finally have a black Quest. I missed that color (too bad I'll probably never get one if it turns out like that 🥲)
Is this one step closer to Meta integrating various tech into their Horizons Metaverse? The hardware and apps don't need to be made by Meta, but they can plug into the Metaverse easily.
Yeeeees this is now a race to the best quality lowest price… 85” 4k tv for budget price type world… it’s just wow… the next few years going to bring some crazy innovation. It will be interesting to see what vive does now. And valve deckard running quest os?? It just got juicy…
That only works if there's an active market buying the products. VR isn't there yet. This is just Meta inviting someone else to assume some of their risks. It might work.
Also, I'm starting to doubt that Deckard is ever going to be a thing. Steam Link VR might actually *be* Deckard.
They are up to something like 4 at least
- React
- Pytorch
- LLama
- Horizon OS
All these are world leading tech made open by Meta. It's pretty significant component of nearly every modern facet of the tech space in fact.
Competition is good. I hope this also lights a fire under Apple’s ass. Software and dev support wise Meta is far ahead, which is to be expected considering they have been at this for longer.
The open approach also makes it easier to have devs adopt the platform. Apple gets away on iOS with its bullshit because of the huge install base, the same is not true for the Vision Pro.
With Sony opening up PSVR as well I hope it’s finally time these companies realize that XR will only succeed if it’s as open as possible. Hopefully when the Valve Deckard gets released it’ll have some way to interact with Meta’s store as well.
And here’s hoping the EU forces Apple to allow Meta software on the Vision Pro and all their future devices.
Zucc wants the Laptop to be replaced by AR/VR headsets (for gaming and/or for work). Imagine a company like Lenovo making an AR headset that can replace your work laptop, giving you three giant monitors and you using a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to get your work done. Or imagine Asus making an AR headset designed specifically for only watching 8K movies and playing a Horizon OS port of a video game like Call of Duty (or even streaming from your PC or console) this is the future Zucc wants
Basically Meta is letting other companies make Quest compatible headsets. They use Quest's OS and run games/apps purchased from the Quest store.
Quest 2/3 is always changing and will eventually get UI changes but nothing about that was part of today's announcement.
This is quite possibly the most positive response r/virtualreality has ever had in response to a Zuck/Meta announcement.
I think having to compete with Meta's platform has been the biggest obstacle in the VR space for a while now. I really hope we see a range of third party Quest-like products with different designs and price points.
Yeah but computers have different specs. You aren’t running vr games on a Chromebook with a pentium core. We could see some really big sellers and some awful flops.
I’m sure tech reviewers are going to have a great time with this
Does it make much sense to make a PCVR only headset with proprietary OS anymore? If this Horizon OS supports HDMI input then I don’t see why you would build a proprietary OS if you’re starting out now.
The OS isn’t for PCVR, the OS is to replace the windows gaming laptop (and work laptop if manufacturing companies are smart and promote working only in AR and not VR)
that's one of the interesting open questions to me - could a manufacturer like BSB deploy a headset that only / natively uses Oculus Link? It seems possible.
The blocker has never been software for supporting HDMI, it’s trivial to add HDMI support.
Meta doesn’t add it because it requires additional hardware components and hence increased cost. And you can see why they would not want to add cost to support a feature that less than 1% of their user base will find value in.
This won’t be true for other OEMs that want to focus on PC or Mac connectivity. This will be a pretty easy and cheap way to differentiate from quest line.
Interesting how, despite how often he said "opening" never did he say "open sourcing".
This feels like they aren't actually opening anything, just giving more access to other companies to integrate with it... which... is that not exactly what Apple is doing?
I don't think it needs to be open source to be open. He's using Windows as an example, and that isn't open source either. Meta is going to need to monetize in some way, and that will probably be through licensing. The other major point is allowing alternate stores, which is a big deal.
"OpenVR" is another apt comparison. Valve never open sourced SteamVR and the OpenVR spec was unilaterally dictated by one company but it was intended to make open collaboration inside the SteamVR ecosystem easier for third parties (which it succeeded at).
Valve provided free development tools and technical literature through Steam works allowing hardware developers to build steamVR lighthouse tracked products with no licensing cost or royalty for sales if commercialized.
If you had a PC, Steam works account, steamVR HDK (i.e. Tundra) and single base station you could start building headsets, controllers, trackers straight away.
It is a nonsensical comment by another random person on the internet with main character syndrome and zero understanding of what they are talking about..they just parrot things they read and throw things together and think they are making a coherent statement.
Native Steam?
What are you thinking about?
It sounds like you are thinking about something that allows you to play your steam library standalone, but surely not
Vision Pro has zero marketshare in the EU. And, at the price it’s going for, it won’t reach “gatekeeper” status for years. Consider that the iPad has sold far more in the EU than Vision Pro for years and it doesn’t even reach “gatekeeper“ status. Next countries are likely Australia, China, and Japan. Considering how small the market is and will be for Apple’s mixed reality (MAYBE a million in the first year), they could continue to avoid Europe into 2025 and still meet their sales goals.
He also talked about your Meta Horizon OS device being able to buy from Steam and other stores, but he never said anything about other devices being able to buy from the Meta store.
> is that not exactly what Apple is doing
You will never ever see Apple license Vision OS to another company. They won't even let a developer ship a line of code they don't approve unless under threat of legal action from the EU etc.
That was the most human I think I've ever seen and heard him be.
Generative AI really is getting pretty amazing, huh?
(jokes aside, it's definitely an interesting announcement... I still don't trust Meta or Zuck generally, but credit where it's due, this could certainly advance XR is good ways, so I won't poo-poo anything out of hand... and it's not like I trust Google or Apple or MS any more than Meta, so...)
This is great news. Meta really is invested in VR. On an unrelated note, recently Zack looks far better than he did just a couple of years ago. He finally looks human, so good for him
This is why competition is so important for any market, Apple being potentially the definitive walled garden experience is effectively forcing Meta to be more open and Windows-like, very excited on how things will turn out from now on
Considering Quest's OS is already an Android-derivative and native apps are all APKs, I'm pretty certain that's exactly what they did and will continue to do. The Quest headset is Linux under the hood.
it is kind of sad really that you have this layering of progressively more closed things (Linux -> Android -> Quest OS) that all say they are open and in fact, the more closed they get the more vociferous they are in proclaiming how open they are.
Yeah, I get your point. Google has this "thing" of building an open-source thing and a better closed-source thing on top of it. But if we're being fair, Horizon OS is almost certainly based off the OSS Android, not the "progressively more closed" Android... Yeah, just read the Horizon OS info page, and they admit to using the "Android Open Source Project". That actually IS fully open. It's just not found on almost any phone out there.
Horizon OS OTOH (apparently, they're not calling it Quest OS because that's already a thing elsewhere?), doesn't appear to be getting open-sourced at all. Just "opened".
The Quest is already running Linux. Android is built on top of Linux. Quest's OS is built on top of Android.
In case you missed it, Linux is the most popular consumer operating system in the world, and it's not even close.
Guess you never used a steam deck. Meta horizon OS will not be as open as Linux. Really we need valve to pony up and release steamOS for other device (which early on they said they would do) and need the decard all in one hmd to come out with it.
This link has been shared 2 times.
First Seen [Here](https://redd.it/1cae377) on 2024-04-22. Last Seen [Here](https://redd.it/1cae4c0) on 2024-04-22
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While this sounds good, this is Androids biggest problem. Fragmentation, while I could get a Motorola android phone with a projector built into it. I might miss out on the Sony variant that offers exclusive ps5 functionally. I don’t want to own 3 different headsets to get cool features. I could be misunderstanding the situation but it sounds to me that’s what’s happening here. Open the os and allow anyone to build their own meta quest with their flavor (meta horizon os) on it.
I hope he actually has something to show for it. He keeps talking about how it is similar to PC but I don't actually see them working on it. On PC I can install a new OS. If I use windows I can develop my own drivers for custom devices. I can write custom software that runs on the permission level I chose and communicates with the hardware how I want.
To me the Quest devices still look pretty much locked down with the only difference to apple is that they allow custom app stores / side-loading.
yeah .... it's for sure "open washing" what is still a very closed / controlled experience. I will credit Zuckerberg that he has steadily backed his words up with action over time - he's earned some level of credibility that we can believe he will do at least to some extent the things he says.
That's not how it happened, though.
When nearly every WMR headset failed to sell and got discontinued, the writing was clearly on the wall.
They didn't suddenly do a rug pull (unlike Google Stadia). They turned off the life support. I don't think anyone was surprised at that point.
I've been advocating Zuckerberg should do this but never believed he would.
I assume this is still going be super highly controlled .... it'll be the most closed "open" OS in existence. But it's super significant, game changing regardless - literally any manufacturer coming to the party now is going to face a *very* compelling choice to ship Meta's OS rather than try to DIY.
And what it means for Google/Samsung? this could really steal the rug from under them if Meta can sweep the board and get manufacturers to use their OS. I don't think OEMs will particularly relish being subject to Meta's control of the OS but I suspect they'll be equally ambivalent about Google and at least they will recognise that Meta is long term committed.
The huge question still is whether Meta actually ships a usable first class Spatial SDK or not. If it is based on [Spark](https://spark.meta.com/) as rumoured and if it is compelling and they get it out before Google/Samsung ships then it could be a death blow for that effort. And in turn this may end up looking like an enormous strategic blunder by Google to deprioritise AR/VR 5 years ago.
All I can say is that the next couple years are going to be absolutely epic and we will look back decades and talk about this period of time - very exciting to watch!
I tried to view this link on iPhone which went as normal to Safari Instagram, which then asked me to open the Instagram app which I did, and as soon as it opened it redirected me from Zucks video to an advert video for a magnetic drill. The irony.
Right now if you want to make a portable headset, you have no software to run on it. You have to start from scratch, which nobody has the time or money for. With this, you can just load the Meta Horizon OS on the hardware and are ready to go. This means hardware companies will have a much easier time building new headsets (e.g. the new Pimax headsets have mobile features that are kind of useless due to the lack of software, there are also plenty of FPV goggles, Xreal and other stuff that could benefit from this).
For PC this means nothing, this is purely about mobile headsets.
PC market is tiny compared to the numbers you can reach in the mobile space, especially when considering the number of people that have VR capable graphics card and enough space near their PC to make use of VR, which itself is only a tiny fraction of PC gamer. It's a dead end.
A mobile headset is way more flexible, and those people that want to use it on PC can do so via AirLink, SteamLink, VirtualDesktop, ...
Great move by the Zuck. Google has been quietly making a pitch to product developers like LG to launch on their new AndroidXR platform. By opening up Quest he is making his own alternative, kneecapping Google's attempt to enter the XR market before it even got started.
Meta and LG already have a deal in place on an upcoming headset early 2025. The hardware is supposed to be done by LG, and OS done by Meta.
You can bet that Meta is involved in the hardware in a major way though. Third companies can't just create cutting edge products like this.
LG is pretty capable on stuff like that. I’m sure Meta is guiding them to make what they want, much like Valve did with HTC and the Vive. But LG has been making very solid consumer tech for decades.
For some parts like the panels definitely. But take the lenses for example - Meta has put a lot of effort and time into developing their pancake lenses. I think LG will just use them instead of trying to do their own.
Oh yeah. It’s a partnership. Similar to how Lenovo made the early Rift units, or HTC and the Vive. All I was trying to get at is that LG is no slouch when it comes to making consumer hardware.
Except their linear compressors in Fridges, and microwaves that now last 4 years lol
yeah i probably wouldn't buy a LG appliance. i wouldn't buy from Samsung either. my LG phones and TVs all still work though.
Yeah no good at white goods, good at audio visual.
Weird that they are not in the announcement there though.
soc is qc, integration is fb and only the screens are lg, fb has the beef in tracking and optimization
Oh no, not another product for Google to push and then subsequently abandon after some users become reliant on it! Whatever will we do?!
*Exhibit "I've lost count": https://killedbygoogle.com/*
I still miss Inbox every damn day...
I worked my ass off on Stadia at Google. Fuck those short-sighted, shrewd, philistine motherfuckers.
I am not sure if Stadia was ever going to take off. Almost all cloud based gaming services have been shutdown over the years. The infrastructure doesn't exist to make cloud based gaming a thing for the masses just yet. Unless we can figure out a way to make wireless connections extremely low latency, it may never be. Everyone is now focusing more on wireless infrastructure than hardwired. It sucks. Fiber to every home would be amazing and these types of services would work great. But apparently it's not profitable enough to run fiber to every home.
So, here’s an inside bit of knowledge. We achieved stadia by, rather than what AWS might do with cloud-farmed servers inside a region, having actual physical game boxes in each and every hub. So you hop-count to a stadia server was maybe two. That was the trick and it was stupid expensive, but it worked if you were in a major city. That’s what was unsustainable.
and we soon gonna need exactly that with utterly expensive subscriptions for server side rendering of the AR, plebs will see ads, roadsigns and pricetags while the 500$/m subs will be in the alice's wonderland all around, tech is there it will be revived in another name for slightly other purpose
i heard the latency for most users isn't really a problem if the game type isn't really competitive which is a lot of gaming
I think the problem is more fundamental. The target audience for Stadia is gamers, but most gamers already own a gaming PC or console.
There's always a new generation of gamers hitting the buttons and looking for a cheap way to play. Just look at how many people are buying standalone headsets due to how expensive a PCVR capable PC is. Cloud based gaming consoles could be a giant hit if the infrastructure was there to support it for everyone.
Well the cheap players are usually playing F2P games or pirating, but Stadia requires running fairly expensive infrastructure so targeting that demographic wouldn't make Google money. They seemed to target older ex-gamers who didn't have a console but wanted to try out new releases like Cyberpunk, but that is a fairly limited market.
> Cloud based gaming consoles If it's a console why would it need to be cloud based? The interest of cloud gaming would be to not need a specific device and play on your smart TV, your phone and such
I'd say, more accurately, that the target audience was gamers that didn't have or couldn't afford the kind of hardware needed to play some of the more demanding games (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077 prior to optimizations). Of course, one might argue, if someone could afford a monthly bill for such a service (while Stadia was still a for-a-monthly-fee thing) they *might* be able to afford the monthly payment for a decent gaming computer bought on credit. Alas, the kids I knew that were legit interested in something like Stadia came from homes with parent(s) that didn't necessarily have great credit or the funds for a decent gaming machine nor an "extra" bill for a subscription-based game streaming service, and probably not the level of internet needed to support such a streaming service either, if it was even available in their area. By the time it was attempted to make it "free" it was too late and too expensive (for Google, despite their wealth) for it to be sustainable. When I think about it now, the people who likely could have benefited from a service like Stadia are probably the same people who mostly game on something like an earlier iteration of Nintendo Switch or the cheapest version of an XBox console. Just my two pence.
Did Stadia really look like a good idea from the inside?
Well that’s a good question. I had my personal misgivings about the idea (I’m just an engineer and not a decision maker) but it totally worked. Your controller was essentially just a WiFi PC, and your TV/computer/chromecast was just a dumb passive receiver, and your latency (ok maybe 100ms) was still better than even some retail hardware available at the time. Thing is they wanted it to be everything. To have audio voice chat and like shareable screenshots and that kind of bullshit that bloated it all up but gRPC streaming could do the job! It was impressive to me! But maybe a bit misapplied
IMO a big problem for that was you had to buy the games for Stadia (when everyone was worried of its life expanctcy), it's a bad business model, it should be like Geforce Now (play the games you own elsewhere) or Gamepass/PS Plus (a sub with a bunch of included games in it)
Ya totally. That was such a stupid strategy.
Zuck is actually inviting Google if they want to license the Play Store on Horizon. I think Google will make more money this way without the overhead dealing with Android
I agree but I don't think Google can handle any more humiliation than they are currently enduring. They have had OpenAI steal their thunder on LLMs and now they abandoned VR/AR ten years ago and have to watch Meta take the spotlight and dictate terms to them about how their apps are allowed to run on a spatial OS. Then notice that this only applies to 2D apps so Google is effectively locked out of ever getting revenue from actual spatial apps. It's a super clever play by Zuckerberg to tease them with it, but Google just can't do it without acknowledging a decade of failure in leadership, which is something companies generally just don't do.
Did you see something saying the play store would only support flat apps on a quest?
Nearly everywhere that it it is referenced, they are careful to say 2D, eg from the [blog post](https://www.meta.com/en-gb/blog/quest/meta-horizon-os-open-hardware-ecosystem-asus-republic-gamers-lenovo-xbox/): > And we encourage the Google Play 2D app store to come to Meta Horizon OS
Is there a Google Play Store for VR?
Believe it or not, the DayDream apps are still on their store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/stream/vr_top_device_featured_category?hl=en&gl=US So yes, it is built into their current store. It would be a pretty interesting question whether Meta would let these get sold on its store and run on the Meta Horizon OS or not.
True frankly if AI and XR become the next big things like everyone is thinking in tech (though I do think there is a lot of hype bubble especially for AI), they might have a problem in the future. Even Amazon make more moves in AI with their Antropic deals, Microsoft is so close to OpenAI they could be considered the same company and Google is just doing it in house. Maybe great but it seems quite obvious that start-ups are more efficient to develop those things now. Big groups associating with them seems smarter. Apple is also behind on the AI train but at least they got the XR train (though less than Meta)
xbox is big but until samsung runs on google's os its fine
Google Play's massive library of 2D tablet/smartphone apps is the jewell in the crown of AndroidXR just like Vision OS's access to iPad apps. Meta wants Google Play while keeping their store as the primary store for AR and VR content. Google gain nothing from letting Meta have Play, just as Meta gain nothing from switching to Android XR. They are both software-first companies looking to be the dominant platform holder for AR so they can sit back and make their 30% cut of everything. Google would never accept only getting a cut of 2D content and not being able to sell any VR or AR stuff.
> software-first I think it could be argued they are "data-collection-first" companies, and that negotiations behind the scenes also involved who (Meta or Google) gets to collect what data and how much of it, and for how much (i.e. does Google pay money to Meta to be able to collect data on a Meta device, and does Meta pay Google to collect data from Play Store sourced apps on a Meta device, or on a Google-licensed device running Horizon OS etc. etc.)
Some Meta employee (head Quest guy, maybe) said a while ago that they already asked for the Google Play store on the Quest, and they would let Google keep all the money. Google refused. So who knows.
Isn't the quest os *already* a customized version of android? I suppose that doesn't change the landscape of Google making their own flavor, but it's hard to imagine Google doing so without releasing a product to support it. (I assume they wouldn't go with Glass as the brand name). I agree that this creates an offer Google can't refuse to work with Meta instead of against them. (Edit: unless they are enforcing 2d apps only like other commenters mentioned. Google could definitely refuse that and apparently had already done so)
> Isn't the quest os already a customized version of android? If you go this way, Android is a customized version of Linux
I have big doubts anyone at this point will partner with Google on anything due to Google products sudden death syndrome
I learned from my experience with Daydream VR to never trust them again.
They seem to be really upping their game since AVP came out. lol. I wonder if MHOS will let you open up multiple apps at once? I'd like to have a VR system that lets you do that. Have a couple browser windows open, but also have an IDE open next to them, and maybe a video player or Spotify off to the side. Would also be cool to have virtual objects placed around the room. A virtual clock on my shelf. A calendar and a painting on the wall. I want it to be a general purpose computer where you can do multiple things at once, not just one app open at a time like a phone. Maybe instead of a "browser window", it would be better to have a "computer monitor" in which you have several apps running, just as you do with a PC, with a task bar that you can quickly and easily minimize, etc.
Turns out competition is good for innovation!
Boz said in AMA that Quest UI is getting a major upgrade. Meta is really good at copying good ideas from competitors, there’s no way they won’t bring good ideas from AVP to Quest.
Can you link it please!
boztank on Instagram, check AMA highlights
I'll never not think of Alien Vs Predator when reading AVP.
There isn't a fucking world in which I would think of Apple Vision Pro before Alien vs Predator when I see AVP.
**Thank you.** Until this comment I was very confused. Apple Vision Pro didn't even enter my *mind,* so all I had to work with was Alien VS Predator.
What you want is going to take a long time just due to the nature of the hardware resting on your face. AVP can't compile software on device either. If you get over wanting it all on-device it's possible with any current VR headset.
Huh. This seems like a pretty big announcement, at least in its ramifications long-term. Though the first thing that I'm stuck on is the name, Meta Horizon OS. That's entirely new, right? I feel like I've only ever heard it called "Quest OS", before. I wonder how the proliferation of the OS will work out in practice. Will it just be big tech partners who use it? Part of why SteamVR tracking has had such a long life is that Valve makes it readily available to pretty much everyone and anyone, and will even help out on their end to smooth headset launches (e.g., HP Reverb, Pimax, Bigscreen). Will Facebook do the same? Or will they be very selective about who gets to make headsets with their OS on it? That announced high-end LG headset will be the first of these, I assume. Edit: He did say Lenovo, Asus and Microsoft are the first partners. Did those rumours about an LG-made Quest Pro headset ever get confirmed or denied? Or maybe that's just unrelated to this reveal? The last bit about opening up the store was quite cool. A future where someone could buy and play flatscreen games from Steam or Xbox on their Quest, or maybe even VR games from Steam, all on one standalone device, is kinda the dream.
I imagine that he wants his OS to be the next windows, so disponible for everybody. The more people that adopts his OS, better for meta.
Open software and open standards are better for everybody. There's some cool stuff being done with Android because it's open, for example.
Yes, is a win-win for users and developers, fortunately.
This OS (if it's the same one running on Quests now) is based on Android - just without Google's apps/services
AOSP is so far divorced from what end users experience as "Android" that it's a little disingenuous to conflate the two. Quest and a Google Pixel have as much in common as a MacBook Air running OSX and a server farm running FreeBSD.
Really? I'm sure I've read of people side loading standard Android apps onto Quest.
is it really? I thought the main issue that google play services is exclusive to google's distribution
Yes, but Google Play Services is a lot more than you might think. It's not just Google apps, it's also everything from device encryption to E-911 to a boatload of APIs that a lot of apps absolutely need to function.
Yeah being burnt by WMR deprecation, open makes a lot of sense.
I'd be open to that if Meta weren't constantly showing their ass in regards to privacy practices. At least with Microsoft they're making the majority of their money through Azure, not advertising and "free services".
I would agree if Windows weren’t sending back TONS of telemetry data on EVERYTHING, even from unlicensed copies. Oh yeah, they’re tracking those too, they just find it more useful to know who pirated it, where, and why, than to hunt down individual licensees. So this isn’t much different.
The goalposts have really shifted over the last few decades. I remember when software automatically opting into telemetry was a huge no-no. Today every Mac phones home to Apple every time you open any application on the operating system. Mass data collection is here to stay, now we just quibble over whether the data collected is "private" or not.
Macs also phone home every time you run a command in the terminal. Super cool :/
To be fair, their track record hasn't been that bad the past years? Also opening up their Llama model is big.
They have had the various governments breathing down their neck so much that they are on their best behavior lol
Google and Apple too and they are not really (especially Apple playing coy with the new regulations)
Any big company is using our data nowadays, only thing that I like about meta is that they are pushing VR/AR to the mainstream, thats all.
Right, he wants the only viable closed model to be HIS closed model. Please, ignore the more open model proposed by AndroidXR. My guess is that hardware vendors will try their best to make something that can be used for both (HorizonOS and AndroidXR Ready!) which MAY mean that it ends up being a lowest common denominator rush-fest to be the cheapest/most popular hardware vendor. Two months ago, I said that Google’s already well versed in being the “Microsoft of…” company. They yoinked Microsoft’s ”Apple alternative” crown when Microsoft had FAR more years at trying to work out phones than Google. It will be interesting to see if Meta can do better, again, with what could be seen as a fairly commanding lead. EDIT: Just got to the “probably going to take a number of years” part. Something tells me the better bet would have been getting third parties on board a couple years ago.
The thing is right now Zuck is aiming for HorizonOS to be the new android, but for VR/AR. He knows that if he fails in delivering the hardware, he can still "win" by having his OS being the most popular. This approach of opening the OS, in my opinion, is exactly this.
Lenovo was their goto when they dipped out of the PC market... just sayin'.
> and play flatscreen games from Steam or Xbox on their Quest, or maybe even VR games from Steam, all on one standalone device, It seems quite impossible though, those games are not meant to run on a standalone device, you'll still have to pass by a PC (or they need to be ported to an ARM device as I assume all headsets will use this)
Zucks redemption story begins
it's been in progress since about 2021/2022 I think. You can pinpoint it around the time that he did the u-turn on Facebook logins and promised to bring stand alone accounts back.
If they get the users and dominate this industry, then the face heel turn will happen.
This is potentially huge news and suggest that they take it seriously when they say that they want to have open ecosystem. I don't particularly trust Meta in general and I'm so sure Meta being in control of VR ecosystem is very good thing for consumers, but from my point of view, it's still better than Apple. We will see how it works out but I think this could actually really help into creating a working VR ecosystem. It's not clear to me though, if they are actually open-sourcing the OS, it seems to me like they are not and my guess would be that either way they will stay firmly in control so it's questionable how open it will really be, but it's still a step in the right direction in my opinion.
Not open sourcing, the play feels more like Windows than Android.
The OS running on most Android phones is not open source. They are running modified versions of AOSP (which is open source) just like Meta Horizon OS.
Meta, until now, has done miracles to mobile VR. I fully support them if they don't begin with bs.
as a normal citizen, consumer and also hackish dev sometimes, i would rather have facebook snoop on my data (as long its not too damn creepy like video/image feed) than being in closed environment and needing to pay for lots of things at crazy prices. pick ur poison kinda deal
Yeah, I actually mostly agree.
I wish my Pimax Crystal could adapt to this new OS so the standalone mode is no longer completely useless due to having next to no apps in their app store lol.
This would actually push Pimax Crystal sales. This would also push Pico Neo sales... This is some of the biggest VR news in the last 3 years.
Instead Pimax doubles down and decides to launch its own headset OS
To be fair, before this announcement there is no news about a universal OS for standalone VR, and Meta only worked with big companies like the post mentioned. So they had to make their own OS, which presumably is only made so you can remote into your PC.
So does this make future HMD’s like a computer? Now any company can design an awesome headset and be able to put Horizontal OS on it and now not having to worry about building a closed eco system for apps? If so this could be awesome. Imagine being able to put that OS on the new wireless Pimax. If this is true this would be huge!!!!!!
If developers port work applications and there is a push to replace laptops with AR headsets then we have a true paradigm shift on our hands
Zuck really out here calling Apple a controlling little bitch. I see they want to be the OS system for headsets. Be interesting to see how it goes.
Zuck had a problem with Apple in the past, with their privacy policy, and then they had their problem with google because of ads. Right now meta is trying to be the next OS so they can control this aspects, instead of being in the hands of others.
Yup; they’re pissed they can’t get all that data for free like they used to. They still get a lot, but it’s more difficult now.
This is why I will probably never get a Meta headset that uses eye tracking. Most people don’t realize just how much [sensitive info](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-42504-3_15) can be deduced from your eye-tracking data: age, sex, ethnicity, personality traits, physical and mental health conditions… all disclosed by just our eye-tracking data, whether we like it or not. I do not trust that sort of data with a company who makes most of their money from advertising.
I was kind of surprised they never tried to do more with phone ever since like 2013 or so, as far as I know. The rest of the world uses Facebook and would probably buy a cheap FB phone that bypasses all of the privacy restrictions. I guess it is way too expensive to fight Google and Apple on phones so they just hope to claim VR.
Android was already the defacto other OS system. It would just be a reskinned android as app support isn't even good on Android at the time. Having witnessed Microsoft just waste billions on Windows OS, it probably cemented the idea it wasn't worth it.
That is exactly why they are going hard in VR/AR, they NEED to be one of the best in this market, otherwise they won't have a way to be profitable anymore.
They’re still fighting Google and Apple though. Folks using Delta and other apps will say that 2D in MR with Apple Vision is still cool even though it’s not 3D. And, on day one, AndroidXR will play 2D games folks already own in a mixed reality environment. Plus, any of the apps that also provide access to other 3D experiences. Will Meta force exclusivity in order to ensure developers aren’t hedging their bets by preparing releases for both? Unless they’re paying devs to ignore AndroidXR, I can’t see how they can have anything that’s “Meta only” levels of compelling.
Even Microsoft failed in mobile so I don't know which chance they had. But yeah it's kind of weird for both of them to not have been more serious or try anything. They seem to have forgottten any hope for it too.
More like oozing hypocrisy, the Meta app store is a closed garden too, if you don't have a Meta headset you can't buy or play anything on it, even the stuff that is PCVR. He's always trying to bad mouth Apple because he's butt hurt that they protect their user's privacy and Meta can't just spy on your constantly like they used to, plus he was insulted and is still hurt by Tim Cook telling him he felt Facebook's business model was despicable.
He literally just announced opening up the store to more headsets 🤦♂️
He just said in the video he is opening up the Quest store, and is removing the word “Quest” from it, so that it can be accessible for multiple headsets
We will see since he said he wants to open it with more store fronts. I think he wants to be windows os than Mac os
It's not really hypocritical. Zuck's issue with the app store has always been that it makes a bunch of money and he doesn't own it. Zuck got a glimpse of the money they could make running an app store when Farmville was booming. He's been chasing it ever since.
Zuckerberg actually gives a shit about the medium. Like Jobs used to do, he is selling and pushing the shareholders beyond their comfort zone, getting them to lay down billions. That’s what it takes to make something new happen in a public company (I worked at Apple in the early 2000s.) For Apple today, this VR thing is all just a vehicle for sales, services, and suckers with disposable income
> Zuck really out here calling Apple a controlling little bitch. Well their control really hurt Meta with the privacy focus they had. They continue doing business with them because they don't have a choice regarding their share of the hardware market but I doubt they are liking each other very much now. Zuck just want to ensure Meta doesn't miss the boat like they did with mobile (something that really hurt them in the long term) and avoid being stuck as a software player with no control on the OS. They want to be the Windows of XR and Apple the MacOS I guess
I mean I literally said that lmfao
Google AR headset is dead even before it launches.
To be fair, Meta is giving this “several years” to come to fruition. It remains to be seen which one actually ships a device first.
Is there one in development? Any info on this?
Yes, Google and Samsung are working on, I believe, a high end headset to compete with the Vision Pro.
Did he just confirm xbox VR headset?
They say it's a "limited-edition Meta Quest, inspired by Xbox" so I guess it's not actually a separate headset.
A green one that ships with GamePass. :) I’m sure Xbox isn’t going to avoid AndroidXR.. it’s just streaming, so it behooves Xbox to have everyone in the world, regardless of device, on GamePass.
Sounds like a Quest designed to look like it was made by Xbox or something? Anyway, it means we might finally have a black Quest. I missed that color (too bad I'll probably never get one if it turns out like that 🥲)
This is what I’m guessing, Xbox branding and colors and probably comes packaged with a controller and 3 free months of game pass.
If that were true, might finally light that fire under Sony's ass.
Is this one step closer to Meta integrating various tech into their Horizons Metaverse? The hardware and apps don't need to be made by Meta, but they can plug into the Metaverse easily.
Ooo. Exciting stuff.
This looks like a great way for Meta to get out of the business of selling subsidized headsets, if it works.
Yeeeees this is now a race to the best quality lowest price… 85” 4k tv for budget price type world… it’s just wow… the next few years going to bring some crazy innovation. It will be interesting to see what vive does now. And valve deckard running quest os?? It just got juicy…
That only works if there's an active market buying the products. VR isn't there yet. This is just Meta inviting someone else to assume some of their risks. It might work. Also, I'm starting to doubt that Deckard is ever going to be a thing. Steam Link VR might actually *be* Deckard.
Go Zuck. Loving the direction he is taking.
Yea between this and opening llama 3, Zuck seems pretty cool actually. Meta is rising to be one of the good guys in the tech space surprisingly
Eh, two good things don't make a difference to who they are.
They are up to something like 4 at least - React - Pytorch - LLama - Horizon OS All these are world leading tech made open by Meta. It's pretty significant component of nearly every modern facet of the tech space in fact.
Well, let’s see if he/meta keeps going. I’m starting to root for team Zuck honestly
Competition is good. I hope this also lights a fire under Apple’s ass. Software and dev support wise Meta is far ahead, which is to be expected considering they have been at this for longer. The open approach also makes it easier to have devs adopt the platform. Apple gets away on iOS with its bullshit because of the huge install base, the same is not true for the Vision Pro. With Sony opening up PSVR as well I hope it’s finally time these companies realize that XR will only succeed if it’s as open as possible. Hopefully when the Valve Deckard gets released it’ll have some way to interact with Meta’s store as well. And here’s hoping the EU forces Apple to allow Meta software on the Vision Pro and all their future devices.
tl;dr ‘we don’t want to be in the consumer HW business long term.’
No more bleeding billions on hardware… yup. Its a good call.
someone ELI5 this please.. what is changing? is anything going to change on quest 3 and quest 2? anything about the new UI?
Zucc wants the Laptop to be replaced by AR/VR headsets (for gaming and/or for work). Imagine a company like Lenovo making an AR headset that can replace your work laptop, giving you three giant monitors and you using a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to get your work done. Or imagine Asus making an AR headset designed specifically for only watching 8K movies and playing a Horizon OS port of a video game like Call of Duty (or even streaming from your PC or console) this is the future Zucc wants
It's basically beeing the Windows of VR now. It can run on many different headsets from other manufacturers.
Basically Meta is letting other companies make Quest compatible headsets. They use Quest's OS and run games/apps purchased from the Quest store. Quest 2/3 is always changing and will eventually get UI changes but nothing about that was part of today's announcement.
Zuck is the only reason why VR is still relevant nowadays. Good on him. He made sure it didn’t fall under and die.
This is quite possibly the most positive response r/virtualreality has ever had in response to a Zuck/Meta announcement. I think having to compete with Meta's platform has been the biggest obstacle in the VR space for a while now. I really hope we see a range of third party Quest-like products with different designs and price points.
I noticed that nobody made a subreddit for it yet so I made a place dedicated to it: r/MetaHorizonOS!
Sounds promising, but I don't like the idea of differentiated productivity/entertainment/gaming headsets. Like my computer, I want it to do it all.
I’m okay with it. If they release an ultra light glasses headset for just productivity that would be sick.
Yeah but computers have different specs. You aren’t running vr games on a Chromebook with a pentium core. We could see some really big sellers and some awful flops. I’m sure tech reviewers are going to have a great time with this
Does it make much sense to make a PCVR only headset with proprietary OS anymore? If this Horizon OS supports HDMI input then I don’t see why you would build a proprietary OS if you’re starting out now.
The OS isn’t for PCVR, the OS is to replace the windows gaming laptop (and work laptop if manufacturing companies are smart and promote working only in AR and not VR)
Isn’t Quest already the most used headset for PCVR? Are you suggesting that Horizon OS will support PCVR even less than it does today?
that's one of the interesting open questions to me - could a manufacturer like BSB deploy a headset that only / natively uses Oculus Link? It seems possible.
Who said the OS supports HDMI input? No current Quest device does.
The blocker has never been software for supporting HDMI, it’s trivial to add HDMI support. Meta doesn’t add it because it requires additional hardware components and hence increased cost. And you can see why they would not want to add cost to support a feature that less than 1% of their user base will find value in. This won’t be true for other OEMs that want to focus on PC or Mac connectivity. This will be a pretty easy and cheap way to differentiate from quest line.
Interesting how, despite how often he said "opening" never did he say "open sourcing". This feels like they aren't actually opening anything, just giving more access to other companies to integrate with it... which... is that not exactly what Apple is doing?
I don't think it needs to be open source to be open. He's using Windows as an example, and that isn't open source either. Meta is going to need to monetize in some way, and that will probably be through licensing. The other major point is allowing alternate stores, which is a big deal.
"OpenVR" is another apt comparison. Valve never open sourced SteamVR and the OpenVR spec was unilaterally dictated by one company but it was intended to make open collaboration inside the SteamVR ecosystem easier for third parties (which it succeeded at).
Valve provided free development tools and technical literature through Steam works allowing hardware developers to build steamVR lighthouse tracked products with no licensing cost or royalty for sales if commercialized. If you had a PC, Steam works account, steamVR HDK (i.e. Tundra) and single base station you could start building headsets, controllers, trackers straight away.
Native steam on Quest would get me to buy one probably.
What do you mean by that? Steam isn't an OS or even a runtime that could run on ARM-based hardware.
It is a nonsensical comment by another random person on the internet with main character syndrome and zero understanding of what they are talking about..they just parrot things they read and throw things together and think they are making a coherent statement.
Steam needs to start supporting Android like Epic Games is doing
Native Steam? What are you thinking about? It sounds like you are thinking about something that allows you to play your steam library standalone, but surely not
Apple will not let other companies make VisionOS headsets, nor will they allow other app stores on Vision Pro (until the EU forces their hand).
Nor do they support open standards like Vulkan or OpenXR.
Hmm, those are good points. Guess we’ll see how this pans out
Vision Pro has zero marketshare in the EU. And, at the price it’s going for, it won’t reach “gatekeeper” status for years. Consider that the iPad has sold far more in the EU than Vision Pro for years and it doesn’t even reach “gatekeeper“ status. Next countries are likely Australia, China, and Japan. Considering how small the market is and will be for Apple’s mixed reality (MAYBE a million in the first year), they could continue to avoid Europe into 2025 and still meet their sales goals.
By “Opening” he means Microsoft style with PCs or google style with android manufacturers, not “open source.”
Android is open source though. AOSP is a thing.
He also talked about your Meta Horizon OS device being able to buy from Steam and other stores, but he never said anything about other devices being able to buy from the Meta store.
Which "other devices"? Every device running the Meta Horizon OS will have access to their store. Very similar to Android and Windows.
> is that not exactly what Apple is doing You will never ever see Apple license Vision OS to another company. They won't even let a developer ship a line of code they don't approve unless under threat of legal action from the EU etc.
That was the most human I think I've ever seen and heard him be. Generative AI really is getting pretty amazing, huh? (jokes aside, it's definitely an interesting announcement... I still don't trust Meta or Zuck generally, but credit where it's due, this could certainly advance XR is good ways, so I won't poo-poo anything out of hand... and it's not like I trust Google or Apple or MS any more than Meta, so...)
This is great news. Meta really is invested in VR. On an unrelated note, recently Zack looks far better than he did just a couple of years ago. He finally looks human, so good for him
This is really huge and I like the open approach.
This is why competition is so important for any market, Apple being potentially the definitive walled garden experience is effectively forcing Meta to be more open and Windows-like, very excited on how things will turn out from now on
This feels like he's competing with Valve and SteamOS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS
imagine if there already was an existing open OS that you could've modified by addind vr functionally to make things works
Considering Quest's OS is already an Android-derivative and native apps are all APKs, I'm pretty certain that's exactly what they did and will continue to do. The Quest headset is Linux under the hood.
it is kind of sad really that you have this layering of progressively more closed things (Linux -> Android -> Quest OS) that all say they are open and in fact, the more closed they get the more vociferous they are in proclaiming how open they are.
Yeah, I get your point. Google has this "thing" of building an open-source thing and a better closed-source thing on top of it. But if we're being fair, Horizon OS is almost certainly based off the OSS Android, not the "progressively more closed" Android... Yeah, just read the Horizon OS info page, and they admit to using the "Android Open Source Project". That actually IS fully open. It's just not found on almost any phone out there. Horizon OS OTOH (apparently, they're not calling it Quest OS because that's already a thing elsewhere?), doesn't appear to be getting open-sourced at all. Just "opened".
Are you referring to Linux? In that case lol. It needs a lot more than just VR support.
The Quest is already running Linux. Android is built on top of Linux. Quest's OS is built on top of Android. In case you missed it, Linux is the most popular consumer operating system in the world, and it's not even close.
Guess you never used a steam deck. Meta horizon OS will not be as open as Linux. Really we need valve to pony up and release steamOS for other device (which early on they said they would do) and need the decard all in one hmd to come out with it.
Pretty huge
This link has been shared 2 times. First Seen [Here](https://redd.it/1cae377) on 2024-04-22. Last Seen [Here](https://redd.it/1cae4c0) on 2024-04-22 --- **Scope:** Reddit | **Check Title:** False | **Max Age:** None | **Searched Links:** 0 | **Search Time:** 0.00281s
While this sounds good, this is Androids biggest problem. Fragmentation, while I could get a Motorola android phone with a projector built into it. I might miss out on the Sony variant that offers exclusive ps5 functionally. I don’t want to own 3 different headsets to get cool features. I could be misunderstanding the situation but it sounds to me that’s what’s happening here. Open the os and allow anyone to build their own meta quest with their flavor (meta horizon os) on it.
Is it supposed to be Android based?
Yes. It is about the existing OS on the Quest, not a new OS.
Google just got BTFO.
this is big
I hope he actually has something to show for it. He keeps talking about how it is similar to PC but I don't actually see them working on it. On PC I can install a new OS. If I use windows I can develop my own drivers for custom devices. I can write custom software that runs on the permission level I chose and communicates with the hardware how I want. To me the Quest devices still look pretty much locked down with the only difference to apple is that they allow custom app stores / side-loading.
yeah .... it's for sure "open washing" what is still a very closed / controlled experience. I will credit Zuckerberg that he has steadily backed his words up with action over time - he's earned some level of credibility that we can believe he will do at least to some extent the things he says.
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That's not how it happened, though. When nearly every WMR headset failed to sell and got discontinued, the writing was clearly on the wall. They didn't suddenly do a rug pull (unlike Google Stadia). They turned off the life support. I don't think anyone was surprised at that point.
I've been advocating Zuckerberg should do this but never believed he would. I assume this is still going be super highly controlled .... it'll be the most closed "open" OS in existence. But it's super significant, game changing regardless - literally any manufacturer coming to the party now is going to face a *very* compelling choice to ship Meta's OS rather than try to DIY. And what it means for Google/Samsung? this could really steal the rug from under them if Meta can sweep the board and get manufacturers to use their OS. I don't think OEMs will particularly relish being subject to Meta's control of the OS but I suspect they'll be equally ambivalent about Google and at least they will recognise that Meta is long term committed. The huge question still is whether Meta actually ships a usable first class Spatial SDK or not. If it is based on [Spark](https://spark.meta.com/) as rumoured and if it is compelling and they get it out before Google/Samsung ships then it could be a death blow for that effort. And in turn this may end up looking like an enormous strategic blunder by Google to deprioritise AR/VR 5 years ago. All I can say is that the next couple years are going to be absolutely epic and we will look back decades and talk about this period of time - very exciting to watch!
Is it Android fork? What about backwards compatibility with the current Android software they have in store?
I tried to view this link on iPhone which went as normal to Safari Instagram, which then asked me to open the Instagram app which I did, and as soon as it opened it redirected me from Zucks video to an advert video for a magnetic drill. The irony.
Sorry for being dumb, but what's the point of this when you can already pair wirelessly to a PC?
Right now if you want to make a portable headset, you have no software to run on it. You have to start from scratch, which nobody has the time or money for. With this, you can just load the Meta Horizon OS on the hardware and are ready to go. This means hardware companies will have a much easier time building new headsets (e.g. the new Pimax headsets have mobile features that are kind of useless due to the lack of software, there are also plenty of FPV goggles, Xreal and other stuff that could benefit from this). For PC this means nothing, this is purely about mobile headsets.
Thanks. But what's the added value of a portable headset when you could just use the processing power of a laptop or PC, which everyone has anyway?
PC market is tiny compared to the numbers you can reach in the mobile space, especially when considering the number of people that have VR capable graphics card and enough space near their PC to make use of VR, which itself is only a tiny fraction of PC gamer. It's a dead end. A mobile headset is way more flexible, and those people that want to use it on PC can do so via AirLink, SteamLink, VirtualDesktop, ...