Difference between revisions of "Facebook Metaverse"

Revision as of 02:41, 7 February 2022

opening paragraph that summarizes the issue

History

Oculus Founding

In 2012, Palmer Lucky crossed paths with John Carmack on an internet form. Lucky was was attending Cal State Long Beach and was pursing a journalism degree while experimenting with virtual reality on the side. John Carmack was the co-founder of id Software and was the lead programmer for games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Quake. During the online interaction, Luckey showed his head-mounted display off. Carmack asked Luckey to buy a headset and was instead given one for free. Later that year, Carmack went to E3 to demonstrate one of Luckey's rudimentary headset prototypes. Carmack's involvement and the E3 demonstration led to a wave of excitement over the project which led to Luckey dropping out of college and forming OculusVR in June of 2012 ^[1].

Kickstarter

On August 1st, 2012, Luckey launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Oculus. The company originally aimed to raise 250,000 dollars. Prior to meeting Carmack, Luckey had hoped to get around 100 supporters for his project. In 24 hours, the campaign raised 670,000 dollars from 2,750 people. In three days, the million dollar mark was reached. The hype behind the campaign can be attributed to endorsements from Carmack and gaming industry leaders like Gabe Newell from Valve^[2].

Dev Kit 1

Dev Kit 1 was a 350 dollar headset that was targeted to virtual reality developers and early adopters. It later became known as the Oculus Rift DK1. This headset had many drawbacks. It used a scree with a low resolution, downgrading environments that were well crafted. The view has been compared to "sitting too close to an old TV" and "staring at a display through a screen door". This lack of screen quality led to complaints of motion sickness that caused problems with people's inner ears and stomachs. The headset also lacked any positional tracking. It was able to tell if a user was looking up, down, left, or right, but it could not register actions like leaning in. Oculus was able to sell every headset that they produced even with the design limitations. In the end, the company sold 65,000 units, selling out on February 21st 2014^[3].

Dev Kit 2

On March 19th 2014, Oculus began accepting pre-orders for the Dev Kit 2. The Dev Kit 2 had noticeable improvements over the Dev Kit 1. The previous low resolution display was bumped from 640x800 to a 960x1080 display. This was a 100% increase in in pixel count. The second iteration of the headset also implemented measures to prevent motion sickness. The company realized users were getting sick because of how the display blurred motion. Some of the measures include shifting from an LCD to and OLED display. OLED displays have a brighter screens and less motion blur. The latency of the headset decreased from 60 milliseconds to 30 milliseconds. The company also mitigated motion sickness by inserting black frames in between scenes. This tricked user's eyes into perceiving a smoothly moving image. The new version of the headset also introduced additional hardware components including an external camera. This new camera in addition to infrared LEDs built into the headset allowed for users to do things like lean in and peek around a corner, features that were not supported in the Dev Kit 1.

Oculus Store

Antitrust Controversy

Social Networking

Facebook Messenger

In early 2021 Facebook announced the ability to use Facebook Messenger through the Oculus headset. This is a cross platform feature allowing Oculus users to chat with anyone with a messenger account. Users communicate with others by typing out messages in virtual reality, using already generated conversations, or by using the voice-to-text feature. Oculus users can send invitations through messenger to create an Oculus Party^[4].

Horizon Home

Spaces

Gaming

Oculus Party

Fitness

Supernatural

Overview

Supernatural is a subscription based virtual reality fitness application. The service costs 19 dollars per month. Users can chose low, medium, or high intensity workouts that can last anywhere from 10 minutes to one hour. In addition to intensity, players have multiple workout options including a "Flow" workout where a player does lunges and squats, a boxing workout where a player will be ducking, blocking, and punching, stretching activities, or meditations. Users can conduct their exercise from places like France's beaches, the Great Wall of China, or the Egyptian pyramids. Workout progress can be tracked using a smart phone application^[5]. Supernatural players have access to a music catalog while playing. In early 2021, that music catalog was expanded through a deal with the Universial Music Publishing Group to include songs like Bliie Eilish's "Bad Guy" and The Weekend's "Blinding Lights" along with music from artists like KISS, Iron Maiden, and Bob Marley. This musical expansion has led to more themed workouts like one for Women's History Month featuring songs like "Chun Li" and "Savage"^[6].

Acquisition

Shortly after rebranding from Facebook to Meta, the company announced it was acquiring Within, Supernatural's parent company. According to the CEO Chris Milk, the acquisition would lead to "more resources to expand and bring you even more music, more creative ways to workout, more features and more social experiences for VR" ^[7]. After announcing the acquisition of Within, The United States Federal Trade Commission opened a antitrust probe of the deal. This is an expansion of the federal scrutiny Meta was facing about its previous social media acquisitions. According to insiders, this deal was flagged because of its 400 million dollar price tag^[8]. This investigation may cause the finalization of the deal to be delayed until November of 2022. The investigation is a part of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan's broader mission to prevent big technology companies from illegally shutting out the next generation of competition^[9].

Productivity

Quest for Business

Quest for Business is a set of features that is run on the consumer version of the Quest 2 headset. This program will allow you to login with a work account to collaborate with coworkers by giving users access to productivity applications^[10]. Current applications that are available include Facebook, Instagram, Smartsheet, and Spike. The addition apps like Dropbox, Monday.com, Mural, My5, Pluto TV, and Slack has been announced^[11]. Quest for Business is the successor to the existing Oculus for Business program that began winding down at the end of 2021. In 2022, Facebook plans on expanding beta testing to additional users, and in 2023, Quest for Business is targeted to be available to all businesses^[12].

Horizon Workrooms

Horizon Workrooms is Facebook's virtual reality office meeting platform. It is a free to use software that can be accessed through video calling. In order to utilize full functionality, users need an Oculus 2 headset. Workrooms is able to support existing hardware by allowing users to connect their keyboards to provide input in virtual reality. Users are able to collaborate by using hand gestures to write on virtual whiteboards. Similarly, notes can be projected to a board in the center of the screen. People are able to communicate with each other using audio, and they are able to adjust who they are listening to by tilting their headsets towards other participants^[13]. Workers are able to customize their virtual reality space. They can do this by placing company logos or posters to personalize their environment. Third party productivity applications are available through Horizon Workrooms. In 2021 Oculus announced that Zoom Meetings and Zoom Whiteboard features would be integrated into Workrooms^[14].

Future Features

Education

Controversy

Privacy Concerns

Public Perception

Employee Perception

References

1. ↑ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/26/a-brief-history-of-oculus/
2. ↑ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/26/a-brief-history-of-oculus/
3. ↑ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/26/a-brief-history-of-oculus/
4. ↑ https://www.oculus.com/blog/latest-oculus-quest-update-fosters-developer-creativity-with-app-lab-and-connects-people-with-messenger/
5. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/11/11/vr-fitness-apps-to-try/
6. ↑ https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/vr-fitness-app-supernatural-umg-licensing-deal-impact-9538423/
7. ↑ https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/29/meta-facebook-is-buying-within-creators-of-the-supernatural-vr-fitness-app/
8. ↑ https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/16/22840635/ftc-opens-antitrust-probe-meta-deal-vr-fitness-app-supernatural
9. ↑ https://www.reuters.com/technology/ftc-initiates-probe-into-metas-400-mln-vr-deal-supernatural-information-2021-12-17/
10. ↑ https://www.oculus.com/blog/connect-2021-recap-horizon-home-the-future-of-work-presence-platform-and-more/
11. ↑ https://www.oculus.com/blog/connect-future-of-work-vr/?intern_source=connect-2021-recap-horizon-home-the-future-of-work-presence-platform-and-more
12. ↑ https://www.oculus.com/blog/connect-2021-recap-horizon-home-the-future-of-work-presence-platform-and-more/
13. ↑ https://www.vox.com/2021/8/19/22631573/facebook-horizon-workrooms-virtual-reality
14. ↑ https://www.oculus.com/blog/connect-future-of-work-vr/?intern_source=connect-2021-recap-horizon-home-the-future-of-work-presence-platform-and-more