Apr 09, 2024 08:00:00

Meta's VR/AR research division 'Reality Labs' releases 10th anniversary movie that clearly shows how they arrived at Meta Quest 3

Meta's VR/AR research division, Reality Labs, has celebrated its 10th anniversary. To commemorate this, a movie summarizing the progress of Reality Labs to date has been released.

Celebrating 10 Years of Reality Labs | Meta

https://about.fb.com/news/2024/04/celebrating-10-years-of-reality-labs/

Celebrating 10 Years of Reality Labs - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlu4iCa3KWc

Oculus VR, the predecessor of Reality Labs, was originally a VR company founded by Palmer Luckey and others, and developed the VR headset Oculus Rift . Below is the development machine Oculus Rift DK1.

Its successor,

the Oculus Rift DK2

And now, the further improved '

Crescent Bay '

In March 2014, Oculus was acquired by Facebook (now Meta). Initially, the company was called 'Oculus' and had an independent management structure despite being a subsidiary of Facebook. Below is Michael Abrash, who was Oculus' chief scientist at the time. In December of the same year, Oculus announced

the Samsung Gear VR Innovator Edition, which was co-developed with Samsung.

In 2015, Oculus acquired British VR company Surreal Vision, signaling the possibility of bringing VR headsets to the mass market.

In 2016, the first consumer version of Oculus Rift

, Oculus Rift CV1, was released. Oculus Rift CV1 is a PC-connected VR headset equipped with a 1080 x 1200 pixel OLED display per eye. Oculus Touch , a VR-specific controller, was also announced in the same year.

In 2017, CEO Mark Zuckerberg coined the phrase 'creating opportunities for everyone.'

Then came

the Oculus Go . The Oculus Go was the first standalone VR device in Oculus history, and the point was that it could be used by itself without connecting to a PC. However, the degree of freedom of the Oculus Go was 3DoF, which could sense the height, up and down, and horizontal angles, and it did not support forward, backward, left and right movement.

To further enhance the immersive experience, Oculus is researching how to project the surroundings into the VR space.

In 2018, the project 'Project Santa Cruz' was launched to develop a standalone VR device that could recognize the coordinates of the device and Touch controllers with 6DoF degrees of freedom.

Then, in September of the same year

, Oculus Quest was announced.

In 2019, development of hand movement tracking technology will also progress.

In 2020, Facebook announced that it would collaborate with sunglasses manufacturer Ray-Ban to develop smart glasses in the shape of sunglasses. The development project was called '

Project Aria .'

Oculus Quest 2, a standalone VR device, will be released in 2020.

In addition, ``

Ray-Ban Stories '', a smart glass developed in collaboration with Ray-Ban, was also released.

At the end of 2021

, Facebook renamed it 'Meta' and Oculus became Reality Labs, Meta's VR division. In 2022, the name Oculus was no longer the company name, but remained for a time as a brand name for VR devices and platforms. The arrival of a VR headset following the Oculus Quest 2 was announced. This headset was later announced as the ' Meta Quest Pro '.

The main feature of the Meta Quest Pro is that the pass-through image captured by the inside-out camera is now full color. Meta will strongly promote MR (mixed reality) instead of VR.

Also in the same year, Meta revealed that it was developing

a wristwatch-type device that would enable computers to be controlled by hand movements alone , using technology from CTRL-Labs, a startup it had previously acquired .

In 2023, the company will announce

Ray-Ban Meta , a successor model to its smart glasses, which it is developing in collaboration with Ray-Ban.

In addition, it was announced that the company will release devices equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, a chipset specialized for VR and AR.