by tyler | Sep 27, 2023 | Tech
Roblox is launching on Meta Quest VR headsets today, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at the company’s Connect event . The announcement comes as Roblox, a major player in the metaverse space, was rumored to become available on Meta Quest VR headsets sometime this year.
Meta previously shared that players will be able to access the Quest version of Roblox on the Quest 2 and Quest Pro. It will also work on the newly-announced Quest 3 , which costs $500.
“Roblox is launching today,” Zuckerberg said during the Meta Connect keynote. “I’m really excited for this one. After taking a long time to optimize it for VR, it’s going to be a big deal.”
Today’s announcement doesn’t come as a surprise. Back in July, Meta announced that Roblox was coming to Meta Quest VR headsets, starting with an open beta that will be available on App Lab.
Back in 2021, Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki said during a call with investors that Quest makes “perfect sense for Roblox.” Baszucki’s comment indicated that the company had planned to make Roblox available on the Meta Quest in the future.
Although Roblox is already compatible with various VR headsets , including Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, gamers currently need to connect their PC to a VR headset to play. The Quest version of Roblox should be a lot easier to load and access, especially since you will eventually be able to download it directly from the Meta Quest Store.
by tyler | Sep 27, 2023 | Tech
Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the Meta Quest 3 VR headset on stage at Meta’s Connect event in California today, but I was lucky enough to get a chance to try it out last week in San Francisco. The Meta Quest 3 is similar to its two predecessors, and borrows a lot from the much more expensive Meta Quest Pro, but it improves upon all of the above in some key ways, and the result is something genuinely new and improved that stands to create a much larger tent for virtual and mixed reality in general
The things I did on the Meta Quest 3 weren’t astoundingly different from things I’ve tried in VR before: For reference, I’ve owned both the original Oculus Rift, and the HTC Vive, as well as the first-generation Quest. I skipped the second iteration, mostly because those other three devices, which in total represent a fairly significant costs, spent a huge amount of time either collecting dust on a shelf, or squirrelled away into a closet to hide my great shame about how little I used them. The OG Quest also scratched my glasses but that’s another story.
What surprised me about Meta Quest 3 was how much I immediately enjoyed using it. I thought my heart was hardened against VR honestly, and irreversibly so. Donning this headset immediately started to thaw my feelings, however, in part because the form factor is actually much-improved, with a lighter, more balanced design that is super easy to adjust and that wears much more naturally than previous generations. The headset also has built-in fine adjustment not only for pupillary distance, but for lens depth, which lets you make sure your own glasses will never experience the conflict mine did with Quest 1.
Software and system setup is also greatly improved, and the passthrough, while not as hyper-real as Apple’s Vision Pro by all accounts, is very, very good for most uses. It feels seamless to switch between a mixed and fully immersive view, and to interact with people around you. Meta has cut some corners vs. Apple, like using a simple breathing white LED to show when passthrough is active to those around you, vs. photorealistic renderings of your eyes, but it’s remarkably good for something that costs nearly 7x less.
My first actual mixed reality experience was a multiplayer game that allowed up to four players to join in and participate in a Smash-type 3D platform combat game, and it was actually incredibly fun. I played with a Meta handler as well as another journalist, and I trounced them both soundly. I won’t mention the other journalist to spare him the embarrassment.
Later, I got to try out a longer, more varied demo with a lot of different test experiences, including some showing mixed reality, and some showing more fully immersive experiences that were more similar to what I’ve tried before with past headsets. All were impressive, and even the full VR was much better than it has been due to the improved visual quality and processing power of this generation.
What was maybe the best part about all of these demos, and about Zuck’s presentation of the Quest 3 overall, was that no one in the demo room ever mentioned the ‘metaverse,’ and Mark only said the word twice during the entire keynote today – the first time 34 minutes into the presentation and long after the Quest 3 segment, and then again in passing about five minutes later.
The metaverse as a concept almost became Meta’s Titanic iceberg – a threatening, implacable inevitability that seemed to inspire more dread than excitement and optimism. No one like the idea of being plugged into a virtual world controlled by Facebook and Zuckerberg to live out the rest of their lives as digitally being deprived of senses and exposed, not infrequently, to nausea-inducing stimuli.
This time around, Meta clearly wanted to keep things light and fun, and additive to your existing, fulfilling life. What’s more impressive – they pretty much pulled that off!
I’m back in as a fan and user of VR thanks to the Quest 3, and excited to see where things go from here. That’s a very different place from where I was this time last year .
by tyler | Sep 27, 2023 | Tech
Meta’s annual Connect conference started today, and this means lots of new hardware and perhaps a Metaverse sighting. Are you ready for an update on Meta Quest 3 ? Didn’t have time to tune in live ? That’s okay — we summed up the most important parts from the keynote below.
Consider this a bonus treat for having to wait an extra 30 minutes for the keynote to begin. Meet Meta’s Quest 3 , the headset model with improved passthrough tech, higher resolution displays and better graphics. There was also a tease for Meta Quest for business .
Image Credits: Qualcomm
Image Credits: Qualcomm
With the hardware news, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the next generation of Meta Quest software. Roblox included.
Image Credits: Meta
Image Credits: Meta
Meta’s new foundational model for image generation, Emu, comes with some fun things. One is generative AI stickers which are coming to Meta’s messaging apps. It will allow users to create unique AI stickers in a matter of seconds across Meta apps including WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and even Facebook Stories.
Image Credits: Meta
Image Credits: Meta
Looking for some new glasses? Meta has you covered with its new Ray-Ban smart glasses .
Image Credits: Meta
Image Credits: Meta
Today, Meta launched AI Studio , a platform that’ll let businesses build AI chatbots for the company’s messaging services, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.
Starting with Messenger, AI Studio will let companies “create AIs that reflect their brand’s values and improve customer service experiences,” according to the company. It is only available in alpha to start.
by tyler | Aug 3, 2023 | Tech
GoStudent — the late-stage tutor marketplace that has raised $686.3 million so far — has now raised another $95 million in what it calls a strategic fundraise from Deutsche Bank and other investors, including Left Lane Capital, DN Capital, Tencent, Prosus, DST, Coatue and Softbank Vision Fund 2. The raise was described as a mix of equity and debt capital.
The company has been on something of an acquisition roll, using its war chest to roll-up complementary products, such as its acquisition last year of Germany-based Studienkreis, a traditional tutoring company.
The edtech unicorn (which has attained an estimated €3 billion valuation) says the raise will be used to bring “enhanced hybrid learning solutions to the DACH region.” In plain English, that means more online and offline educational support and an expansion of the use of its GoVR — GoStudent’s newly launched virtual reality language learning platform.
And of course, the company now says it has an “AI vision” and plans to “prioritise the creation of AI-driven tools.” Join the AI queue…
It now has around 23,000 tutors on its platform and will develop an “AI lesson plan generator” trained on the local curriculum. The idea is that it will save each tutor an average of 15 minutes per lesson.
In a statement GoStudent CEO and co-founder Felix Ohswald said: “We see daily the impact that tailored learning can have on a child’s confidence. By offering AI-driven study support or virtual reality lessons in group environments, alongside traditional tutoring, a truly bespoke learning path can be created for each individual child – readying them for their future.”
Harley Miller, CEO and managing partner at Left Lane Capital, added: “As GoStudent doubles down on its existing VR capabilities, introduces smart AI tools, and drives synergies with Studienkreis, we see even further potential to complete its vision of hybrid offline and online tutoring.”
by tyler | Jul 20, 2023 | Tech
It’s hard to believe that it was only 11 years ago that VR captured the zeitgeist. In April 2012, Oculus hit Kickstarter with the Oculus Rift developer kit , and the tech world whipped itself into a “this is the future” frenzy. Facebook slapped a $2 billion check on the table and acquired the company in 2014.
But today, as it stands, VR is all but dead.
VR — as in, a system for being exclusively in virtual reality — barely exists as a concept anymore. Even the cheapest mainstream headset out there, the Meta Quest 2, has a passthrough feature, meaning it’s got AR capabilities. The Quest 3 adds higher-definition passthrough in full color. And, $3,500 price tag aside , Apple’s Vision Pro takes the concept so far that it doesn’t even really use the VR nomenclature anymore.
That’s because VR is missing the one crucial thing that could’ve taken it from “cool toy” to “must-have device”: a killer app. Even as the market has matured, VR is still struggling to find a reason to exist.
In 2015, TechCrunch published an article that speculated that the market could hit $150 billion of revenue by 2020 . Here we are, nearing 2024, and it looks like the market sits at around $32 billion — a fifth of what the breathless analysts were guessing.
