I went straight to the video and about 1 minute in I was sure it was some kind of college humor parody. I guess startups are under a lot of pressure to conform to type expectations and PR companies will make them look a certain way in these promo videos, but seriously, it's so extreme now that it's just laughable. The head of engineering was the only normal person in the video. To make something like this there must be a core group of hardcore engineers, and I can't help but imagine them collectively eye-rolling in the face of all the vice presidents with their perfectly tousled hairstyles and oh-so emphatic TED-talk styled speech.
I used to work at Meta while they were located in Portola Valley.<p>Meta "applications" are highly customized Unity 3D scenes with a generous amount of custom GUI elements.<p>I would take everything in this video with a grain of salt.<p>Also, Meta has a terrible habit of copying logos. Their old logo was a blatant copy of MIT's "M" and their latest is eerily similar to Mazda's "M" series logo<p><a href="http://www.miata.net/faq/mfield_files/image004.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.miata.net/faq/mfield_files/image004.jpg</a>
Doing the math to compare resolution to the Hololens...<p>Hololens has "2.5K radiants," where a radiant is a "light point per radian." [1] A radian is ~57.3 degrees, so 2500/57.3 = <i>44 pixels per degree.</i><p>Meta has a "2560x1440 display with a 90 degree field of view." Horizontally, that's 2560/90 = <i>28.4 pixels per degree.</i><p>Having used the Hololens for 30 minutes at Build last year, the field of view was definitely less than 90 degrees. However, the tracking was <i>perfect,</i> there was no lag, and generally speaking the illusion was complete.<p>Watching the video at the top of metavision.com, it's hard to get a good impression-- some shots look like they pointed a video camera through the Meta glasses!? The frame rate is noticeably low and the gestures look like they... sort of work.<p>Both headsets' problems seem fixable-- Meta will presumably fix the lag and gesture accuracy (assuming those weaknesses in the video are real). And Hololens will presumably get a larger field of view with later hardware revs. To me it'd be a mistake to dismiss these systems as not being ready. It probably won't be a long wait.<p>[1] <a href="https://dev.windows.com/en-us/holographic/hardware_details" rel="nofollow">https://dev.windows.com/en-us/holographic/hardware_details</a>
They make it sound like there's no native SDK, only a Unity SDK. That seems like a mistake if it's true. Unity it's great for prototyping and for certain kinds of applications but as a current VR and possibly future AR developer I want the option of a native SDK, not least for access to other engines like Unreal.
<p><pre><code> 90-degree field of view and 2560 x 1440
</code></pre>
In other words, not a breakthrough in regards to the readability of text. I'm not saying text will be unreadable. I mean, I do run a project that has a significant text-editor component in VR, and I do this on the DK2, which is significantly lower resolution. But I think that also means I'm one of the most qualified people to say that it's not going to be "like unlimited monitor space". For the application support they are touting, this is going to be a bit like the old 800x600 days. Now, we certainly got work done in that time. And for a variety of reasons, the perceived resolution of text is higher than the actual resolution in an HMD, but it's maybe only a factor of 2. You're not going to be replacing your office with this device. We just aren't there yet. I'm working towards that day, and I think the work needs to be done now to be prepared for that day. But we aren't there yet.<p>Given that VR is already pretty taxing on modern, top-of-the-line hardware, I'm personally waiting until at least the next generation for an AR device.
Looks better than HoloLens and props for showing the actual footage trough the headset and not just some misleading illustration like Microsoft did, but the tracking needs some improvement because it looks annoyingly laggy and I cannot imagine using it for anything serious for a longer time.
does anyone know the HW specs needed to develop and use apps for Meta2?<p>UPDATE: HW requirements have been posted!<p>Intel Iris Pro / NVIDIA GT 650M / AMD Radeon HD7970 (recommend NVIDIA GTX 960 / AMD 280 equivalent or greater) Intel i7-3610MQ equivalent or greater 8 GB RAM HDMI 1.4 video output 1x USB 3.0 ports Windows 8.1 or newer 64 bit Unity 5+ on Windows (for development, not end users) Intel HD compatible sound card USB 3.0.<p>SOURCE: <a href="https://www.metavision.com/faq" rel="nofollow">https://www.metavision.com/faq</a>
Looks like half their staff is made of vice presidents. <a href="https://www.metavision.com/join-meta" rel="nofollow">https://www.metavision.com/join-meta</a><p>Maybe they're running the leanest of lean operations, but given the challenge of actually making hardware, I'm not certain anyone will see a working version of this until the second Hololens is out.
What I'm really looking forward to is a virtual desktop, where I can work on a tropical beach with a very large high-res monitor in front of me (virtually).<p>But it seems that the resolution of the current VR goggles is not sufficient :/ This seems a bit weird given that "retina" displays are already quite mainstream.
One interesting thing, Meta is being accused of stealing the designs from other startup: <a href="http://augmentl.io/ar-manufacturer-meta-being-accused-of-stealing-designs/" rel="nofollow">http://augmentl.io/ar-manufacturer-meta-being-accused-of-ste...</a>
I just got approved for a HoloLens dev kit (like everyone else and their dog who applied) at $3000. This looks like a very similar product for 1/3rd of the price. I wonder what the differences are.
I watched a Video interview by Robert Scoble with the Meta CEO and they talked to a developer who actually used this as a monitor replacement to write code. Pretty interesting, but i still doubt the resolution is enough to really replace monitors yet, but the premise is very interesting. From what i understand their implementation looks similar to an effect called "Pepper's Ghost" just in a mobile form. I have seen this done using smartphones and some plexiglass but in a static form.
I loved everything about it until I saw this image and then I literally laughed out loud. I think the "you look ridiculous" factor is even higher than VR... Imagine going to a meeting with this on!<p><a href="https://d3mzncm6cj8c3y.cloudfront.net/assets/pages/home/side6-6fec4768d05497994e522a055db9ac34d8ab1470c3704f8401030a7fca40e705.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://d3mzncm6cj8c3y.cloudfront.net/assets/pages/home/side...</a>
The interaction with the objects looks interesting and is something I haven't seen in similar product videos. Good content is obviously key but there should be some immediate use cases for business settings where you can sell development of the needed content (consumer, not so sure the content "needs to be there").<p>Ships Q3, I'll see if I can convince someone to get at least one for our HCI labs.
Cool to see another company in the AR space! However, their videos that say "actual footage" make the holograms look jumpy and the worry is that could lead to fatigue or nausea. Has anyone tried one of these?
As I see these headsets, I have a feeling that these should have been the tech of the '90s.<p>As they were, actually.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(gaming)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(gaming)</a>