Zebeth Media Solutions

Meta Connect 2022

Meta partners with Microsoft to bring Teams, Windows apps and games to Quest devices • ZebethMedia

Meta today announced a partnership with Microsoft to bring new content, including Windows apps and Teams tie-ins, to Meta’s metaverse hardware efforts. During Meta’s Connect conference this morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that Microsoft Teams will integrate with Quest devices and that Microsoft will provide a way to stream Windows apps to Meta’s headsets. Nadella also revealed that Microsoft’s streaming game service, Xbox Cloud Gaming, will arrive on Quest devices sometime within the coming months. Image Credits: Meta “We’re bringing the Microsoft Teams immersive meeting experience to Meta Quest in order to give people new ways to connect with each other,” Nadella said, noting that custom avatars will eventually come to the experience. Horizon Workrooms, Meta’s VR space for collaboration, will connect with Teams, he added — allowing people to join a Teams meeting directly from Workrooms. “Now, you can connect, share and collaborate as though you are together in person,” Nadella added. On the Windows end, Nadella said that Microsoft 365 will come to Quest in a way that lets users interact with content from productivity apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. The Verge’s Tom Warren notes that these aren’t full-blown versions of apps designed for VR, importantly; They’re Progressive Web Apps, rather. “You [will] have a new way to securely stream the entire Windows experience, including all the personalized app content settings to your VR device with the full power [of Windows,]” Nadella said. “We’ve been thinking about how to bring the power of Microsoft 365 and Windows 365 to 3D spaces to really help drive productivity and enable you to create, communicate and collaborate in completely new ways.” Image Credits: Meta As for Xbox Cloud Gaming, on the Quest, it’ll stream games to a 2D VR screen, supporting existing Xbox controllers. But Nadella hinted that additional features might arrive down the line. Microsoft’s team-up with Meta comes as the former dials back its internal VR and AR hardware projects, including HoloLens. Windows Mixed Reality platform, Microsoft’s software foundation built into Windows 10 to support VR headsets, never quite took off in the way the company hoped. Early this year, Business Insider reported that Microsoft scrapped plans for the third generation of HoloLens in favor of partnering with Samsung on a new “mixed-reality” device. Microsoft pushed back on the HoloLens assertions. But then, one of the executives leading HoloLens’ development, Alex Kipman, resigned after allegations of misconduct including inappropriate sexual behavior, leaving the division in flux. That being said, Microsoft has shown a keen interest in investing in creating software for the metaverse — whatever form it might take. At its Ignite conference last year, the company announced Mesh for Teams, which combines the company’s Mesh platform for powering shared experiences in virtual reality, augmented reality and elsewhere with Teams and its built-in productivity tools.

Meta announces legs • ZebethMedia

Meta didn’t hold back with their announcements at Meta Connect this year. As Facebook has done every year or so, the company is shaking up their avatar products. This year as Meta focuses more heavily on the metaverse, the company made a big addition to their updated higher-detail avatars: legs. The announcement that the avatars, which were previously floating torsos with arms and heads, now have evolved to walk was something Zuckerberg was very excited about with his avatar jumping for joy during the keynote. Alongside announcements around the appearance and movements of the new full body avatars, Meta also announced that there will soon be an avatar store where people will be able to spend real money to buy accessories for their Meta avatar. There was notably no mention of NFTs.

It’s painful how hellbent Mark Zuckerberg is on convincing us that VR is a thing • ZebethMedia

At Meta Connect 2022, the company’s annual developer conference for its VR efforts and Oculus hardware platform, the company announced a lot of stuff — but what it communicated more effectively than anything else was just how incredibly thirsty — one might even say desperate — Mark Zuckerberg is for his metaverse bet to pay off. Before I get ahead of myself, let me be clear that I understand all of these prerecorded presentations given by large tech companies are extended advertisements. No one’s disputing that, but Zuck’s overscripted and overproduced dev event keynote today was easily the hardest sell for not just a product or a platform, but the premise upon which it’s based, I can ever recall seeing in a decade in tech. The presentation basically kicked off with Mark assuring us that VR is bigger than ever, though almost entirely in relative terms. It’d be hard for it not to be, given the pace of its growth to date since its advent (counting either from the days of the first VR headsets or what you might call “the modern era,” when the original Oculus Rift finally made its ways to consumers in 2016. It then went into a series of cherry-picked revenue numbers set up by Facebook CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, a direct appeal to an ecosystem in need of fleshing out. These were mostly individual highlights, however, rather than the cumulative rapidly incrementing ecosystem numbers that Apple used to balloon its own mobile App Store efforts through its early days. The rest of the presentation was basically a series of hand-wavy “announcements” (many reheated versions of prior ones) that aimed to define use cases and domains in which the metaverse and VR would actually be useful to people. Zuck covered all the old stand-bys — social, gaming, fitness and “future of work.” None looked significantly improved or capable of acting as a turning point in terms of mass adoption, and most had either vague or nonexistent ship dates. One of the biggest swings involved a partnership with Microsoft, which was jointly announced by Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella. Basically, Mark is so desperate to get people in the metaverse that he’s allied with an erstwhile competitor, in a move reminiscent of when Steve Jobs welcomed Bill Gates via satellite link during the Macworld Boston keynote in 1997. That worked well, but it’s not yet clear if this will. Nadella himself articulated the main and recurring theme of VR: “it’s early days.” Only around 5,400 people were watching in VR when my colleague Taylor tuned in partway through the presentation, just before Mark switched over to using his new avatar and finally actually presenting in the metaverse itself. The avatar itself was a big improvement from prior iterations; it was a fully animated version of the better-looking version Mark showed off after his much-mocked announcement of Horizon’s expansion to France and Spain. It looked better, yes, but it sure didn’t look like the future.

Meta wants you to drop $1,499 on a headset to… go to work • ZebethMedia

What happens when you’re working away from your office, so you don’t have your big desk and multiple large monitors with you? You could just use your laptop and make do. Or, you could buy a $1,499 Quest Pro, which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says is built with work specifically in mind. Today, in Horizon Workrooms, Meta is adding a Personal Office feature, which lets you create your own custom slice of the metaverse to… work. “One of the best things in VR is you can create environments that go beyond what’s possible in the physical world,” Zuckerberg said in the Meta Connect presentation today. “Of course, that goes for productivity setups too, so you have instant access to your perfect workspace that’s set up just how you want, no matter where you are.” A similar app, Virtual Desktop, first became available on the Oculus Rift (RIP to Oculus branding) in 2016. So, the idea of bringing your computer into VR isn’t exactly new. But from the brief glimpse we saw in today’s presentation, it looks like Meta has elevated their idea a bit. Image Credits: Meta “Eventually, we think that your Quest could be the only monitor that you’ll actually need,” said Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. No matter how advanced a virtual workspace gets, it’s hard to imagine people using a VR headset to work eight-hour days. If people already suffer from eye strain and headaches from working at a computer (staring through my blue light glasses as I type this), will they really want to strap screens to their face? Still, Meta’s executives are confident that this is the way forward. “There’s an opportunity for a VR headset designed from the ground up to be great for work, as well as playing games and hanging out,” Zuckerberg said, before unveiling the Quest Pro, along with Meta’s partnership with Microsoft.

Here’s what you missed at Meta Connect 2022 • ZebethMedia

Last year at Meta Connect, the company then known as Facebook dropped a bombshell: it would now be known as Meta and focus on building the “metaverse.” After investing billions of dollars into the future of virtual reality, the rebranded Meta came back this year for its next big announcement: legs. Yes, avatars are going to get legs — our disembodied torsos will finally assume their bipedal form. Okay, fine, we all know that the biggest announcement today was the anticipated Meta Quest Pro, a high-end VR headset retailing at $1,499.99. But in between its new hardware and… legs, Meta unveiled a number of updates in its plan to dominate virtual reality. Here’s what CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta executives revealed at Meta Connect 2022: The Quest Pro is shipping out this month. After months of buzz, Meta unveiled the upcoming Quest Pro headset. With Meta’s last headset, the Quest 2, the company’s goal was to produce an affordable, consumer-grade product. But the mixed reality Quest Pro is Meta’s chance to flex the result of all the money it’s invested into Reality Labs. Microsoft is partnering with Meta to bring workplace tools to VR. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, joined Zuckerberg at Meta Connect to announce that Windows apps, a Teams integration and Xbox Cloud Gaming will come to Quest. Users will also be able to use progressive web app versions of tools like Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. Avatars in Microsoft Teams. Meta is really doubling down on this whole “working in VR” thing. Who’s the audience for a $1,499 headset? Corporations, maybe. Meta said it deployed 60,000 Quest 2 headsets as part of a partnership with Accenture, and it’s building a “Meta Quest for Business” subscription product next year. “There’s an opportunity for a VR headset designed from the ground up to be great for work, as well as playing games and hanging out,” Zuckerberg said. CTO Andrew Bosworth seems to be on the same page, noting that one day, VR headsets might replace our desktops all together. We’ll believe it when we see it. Meta finally revealed some revenue numbers. Until now, Meta has been pretty cagey when it comes to revealing any financials about its metaverse (unless if it’s the SEC asking). Today, the company said that its Quest Store has made over $1.5 billion on sales of games and apps. That sounds impressive, but consider that just last quarter, Meta invested $2.8 billion into virtual reality. It’s time to get swole. Exercise is an unexpected use case for virtual reality. There’s a lot to be skeptical about when it comes to Zuckerberg’s intense metaverse push, but VR fitness apps like Supernatural are actually very fun. Now, Meta is releasing a product bundle to help you be… less sweaty when you’re boxing in your headset. For $69.99, you get a wipeable facial interface, wrist straps and adjustable knuckle straps. Is that really worth $69.99? I don’t know, is the Quest Pro really worth $1,499.99? We’ll see. Image Credits: Meta Meta lands a partnership with NBCUniversal. As part of a multi-year deal, the streaming app Peacock is coming to Quest. Meta also said that it will develop experiences around IP like The Office, Universal Monsters, DreamWorks, Blumhouse, Halloween Horror Nights. Share videos from Horizon Worlds on Reels. We’re not sure who wanted this, but sure. Why not. In all seriousness, it could be a good way for Meta to simply raise awareness about what Horizon Worlds is and how (a small number of) people are using it. But Horizon Worlds is kind of boring at best, so we don’t see this catching on. Image Credits: Meta But what if legs could change everything? Yeah, Horizon Worlds is a pretty cringe-worthy attempt at convincing people that the metaverse is cool. But what if our disembodied torsos finally had legs? In the next update to Meta’s avatars, we will finally look like real people. Kind of. “Seriously, legs are hard!” Zuckerberg quipped during the presentation. Well, if you’re eager to edit some spreadsheets, hop on Teams calls in VR and stretch your new digital legs, the Quest Pro is available for pre-order now and is expected to ship October 25.

Meta’s vision for the future of VR is a worse version of the past • ZebethMedia

Meta keeps saying VR is the future, but everything it shows us is an inferior rehash of the things we already have. Its event today was, between assurances that everything is great in the Metaverse, a collection of tacit admissions that the best they can hope to do is ape a reality we are all desperately trying to leave behind. The silliest example of this is the new capability to enter a Meta VR environment through an embed on a website. This was described as perhaps the first way many people will experience a virtual environment. It’s hard to know where to start with this notion. With the no doubt internally depressing acceptance that $1,000 VR hardware doesn’t scale well and most people can’t be bothered to try it? With the idea that a shared 3D environment is a new experience? Or that this is something that people actually want to do? Of course people have shared virtual environments for decades. When it’s viewed on a regular monitor, it’s no different than Second Life, or World of Warcraft, or any other of the popular games and platforms that have come and gone (and come again) over the years. The difference is those had a reason to exist: being a game you can progress and share hundreds of hours of unique experiences in, for instance. Meta’s environment is just that: an environment. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to join via this web interface unless they had no other option, like if the meeting was only being held in VR. But of course Meta has had trouble even getting its own employees to do that. Meanwhile most people in the world are waiting for VR to be worth the price of a gaming console or laptop. Today’s presentation didn’t really make much progress there. In fact there was an alarming and baffling reiteration of an idea that I thought we left behind a long time ago: a virtual desk. Image Credits: Meta This concept has been cursed for decades, since the most notable failure in the domain: the infamous Microsoft Bob. Meta has very unwisely recreated Bob, a virtual desktop, in ways that have no benefits whatsoever. You can have a worse experience reading emails, or a worse video call, or play games and watch movies on a worse screen. Notably there was very little showing what working at a virtual desk would actually look like, because most of the things people take for granted — effortless multitasking, quick switching between cursor and typing, easy compatibility with apps and websites — don’t exist in VR. Sure, they’re partnering with Microsoft and Accenture and so on, but even so, would Slack or Teams be better in VR, or worse? Like nearly everything, the answer is worse. Virtual meetings with everyone around a virtual office table sound like a nightmare to me. The most telling piece was the admission that the subtleties of human expression are important to communication — someone’s unique smile or posture, a moment of eye contact when the boss flubs a line in a presentation. Their solution is, like nearly everything Meta does, technically impressive and completely misguided. The new headset tracks facial expressions and gaze, meaning it can replicate these in a decent way in a virtual environment, on your new avatars with legs and everything. But it’s so plainly a poor recreation of the real thing, and video calls — for all the issues they have — are actually quite good at catching those little expressions and moments. VR meetings with the expression-tracking tech may be better than VR meetings without, but any VR meeting is still a huge pain in the ass that no one, including the faithful at Meta, would do regularly if they had a choice. Not only that, but working long term within VR doesn’t make sense in most ways, as Meta again admitted without explicitly saying so. The new Quest Pro headset actually has removable eye cups so you can see the real world in your periphery, in order to take some notes, grab your coffee, and so on. They literally cut holes in the headset so you could do normal things that ought to be possible with their much-vaunted mixed reality. Fortunately you won’t have to worry about that because the battery life is very limited. Even if your boss wanted you to be in virtual meetings all day, the headset would conk out before lunch. Isn’t the entire world trying to think past the idea of the office, of the meeting-filled workday, of the traditional form of work that’s essentially a relic of the postwar era? Why would anyone want to cling to these paradigms, unless they had no ideas about what actually comes next? It’s funny because VR is such a powerful technology, as anyone who has used it even once can attest. But Meta, its biggest proponent, doesn’t seem to know what to do with it beyond “what you already do, but worse.” So little of what it showed today suggested the future, and so much clawed at the past to find a crack into which to inject VR — hoping someone, somewhere might agree with them that appearing as a VR avatar in Zoom is something that makes sense. “Is it this? Is this the killer app for VR?” they seem to be asking. Needless to say it isn’t. And judging from the company’s inability to innovate at a large scale over the last years, it may not be capable of finding it.

Among Us is coming to the Meta Quest 2 on November 10 • ZebethMedia

Among Us may have had its heyday two full years ago, but Meta isn’t counting out 2020’s hottest multiplayer whodunnit. Today during its big VR developer event, Meta announced that the indie game will hit the Meta Quest 2 on November 10. Meta first announced Among Us back in April, promising that the game would hit the VR platform by the end of the year for players age 13 and up. It’s not likely that we’re going to see AOC playing Among Us in VR these days — that ship has sailed — but Meta can still use all the help it can get pushing adoption for its VR hardware with hit titles that might lure people away from traditional gaming consoles and PCs. Still, it’s pretty late for a viral multiplayer Twitch-powered title like Among Us, which even felt late to the Nintendo Switch and that version hit all the way back in December 2020.  

Meta partners with NBCUniversal to bring you into “The Office” • ZebethMedia

We already know that Meta wants us to go to the office in in virtual reality — but what about The Office? As part of a multi-year partnership with NBCUniversal, NBCUniversal’s streaming app Peacock is coming to the Meta Quest virtual reality headset. “Starting next year, Meta and NBCU will co-create experiences around The Office, Universal Monsters, DreamWorks, Blumhouse, Halloween Horror Nights and so much more,” said Vishal Shah, Meta’s VP of Metaverse, at the Meta Connect event. Fans can engage with this content through the social VR app Horizon Worlds, as well as at Universal Studios theme parks in real life. This partnership could help Meta capitalize around existing fandoms to get them to buy VR headsets, but Meta didn’t provide much detail about what these VR experiences will entail. A Halloween Horror Nights-themed experience could capitalize on VR’s unique ability to make horror even more horrifying (I mean, it is immersive). And, since DreamWorks is in the mix here, may we suggest a Shrek game?

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