At yesterday’s Meta Connect 2023 event, after Mark Zuckerberg and a parade of Meta employees extolling the wonders of Meta products and services, there was a post-keynote, a conversation between Michael Abrash (the Chief Scientist of Meta’s Reality Labs) and Andrew “Boz” Bosworth (Meta’s CTO and Head of Reality Labs). I hadn’t had a chance to watch this yesterday because I was so busy, but I did have some time today to watch. Here are my notes.
First off, I was pissed off that the only way I could watch this conversation was via Facebook. This is so typical of the gatekeeping that Meta engages in: forcing you to connect to a Facebook website, where you aren’t given the option of disabling any cookies that are set. At least I was able to use Firefox browser’s Facebook Container plug-in to mitigate things somewhat, but yes, I was irritated. Believe me, if I could have found this conversation on YouTube or elsewhere, I would have watched it there!
To give another example, Meta has the gall to say that they’re embracing “open source”, yet they pull stunts like making several of their newly-announced games for the Meta Quest 2 and 3 exclusive to the Quest ecosystem, and unavailable to, say, Steam players. Not cool. But I disgress; let’s get back to the topic at hand: the conversation between Boz and Michael.
Michael Abrash talked about codec avatars and how they’re not quite yet at the place where your brain is fooled that you are looking at a real person (in the same way that, perhaps, a well-designed virtual space feels “real” and immersive to your brain, and not just an image you are looking at, something many of us have experienced). Here’s a recent example to give you a sense of just how quickly the technology is evolving (this is, to my knowledge, at a research stage only, and not yet commercially available):
Michael considers codec avatars to be something that will help the concept of the metaverse reach its full potential: a way to put people together in a virtual space that feels fully real.
When Boz asked Michael to reflect on what he’s working on that’s most inspiring to him, he replied with a beauty-pageant-contestant answer that everything they’ve been working on is important. Michael then replies:
If I had to pick one thing, I would say that the personalized, contextualized, ultra-low-friction, Ai interface is the thing that I find most exciting, and the reason is…the way that humans interact with the digital world has only changed once ever, and that really was Doug Engelbart, Xerox PARC, the Mac, and since then, we’ve been living in that world. And as we move into this world of mixing the real and virtual freely, we need a new way of interacting. And so I feel that that has to be this contextualized AI approach, and getting that to happen is the thing that I find most exciting. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the way that everybody lives.
Meta is playing a long game here; betting that the research work that they are doing now will lead to their dominating the virtual reality/augmented reality/mixed reality/extended reality marketplace, and it’s clear that they do see their AI work as being a key part of that. How that will play out remains to be seen, but it is fascinating to see two people talk about this in a public form (even if it is on Facebook!).
Let’s just hope and pray that this “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the way that everybody lives” does not become some corporate-run, surveillance-capitalism dystopia!
Following this was segment called the “Developer State of the Union,” a promised deeper dive into tools, programs and features for Meta ecosystem developers. Funny how “ecosystem” sounds so much friendlier than “walled garden.” 😉
But I am going to pause my cranky snark, hit publish on this blogpost, and call it a day.
UPDATE Sept. 28th, 2023: If you’re looking for a good, concise summary of the Meta Connect 2023 event, TechCrunch has you covered.
The Meta Connect 2023 virtual event will start on September 27th, 2023 (today) at 10:00 a.m. PST / noon CST / 1:00 p.m. EST / 5:00 p.m. BST. Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook) will stream the event live on its website. You can also watch the stream on YouTube, Twitch, and via the official Meta page on Facebook. The event will start with a keynote by Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who is expected to officially launch the Meta Quest 3 headset, talk about its features, and give an update on where the company is planning to go with its virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and extended reality (VR/AR/MR/XR) initiatives over the next few years.
As the BBC reported yesterday, Meta is facing growing skepticism about its metaverse plans and their impact on the company’s bottom line:
Remember the metaverse?
For a while it dominated tech news. A virtual reality world that would be so immersive, so engaging, that we would want to spend part of our lives in it.
Driving the metaverse narrative was Mark Zuckerberg.
The tech billionaire was so committed that in October 2021 he changed Facebook’s name to Meta…
No one could accuse him of a lack of ambition.
But almost two years on, Zuckerberg’s vision of the metaverse is in trouble.
In April, he was forced to deny that he is now jettisoning the idea.
“A narrative has developed that we’re somehow moving away from focusing on the metaverse,” he told investors in April. “So I just want to say upfront that that’s not accurate.”
On Wednesday, the company holds its annual VR event called Meta Connect.
It’s a chance, perhaps, for Zuckerberg to again explain his reasoning for taking an extremely profitable social media company and diverting its focus to an extremely unprofitable VR venture.
How unprofitable? Well, the most recent figures from Meta are eye-watering.
Reality Labs – which as the name suggests is Meta’s virtual and augmented reality branch – has lost a staggering $21 billion since last year.
Part of the losses reflect long-term investment. Meta wasn’t expecting short-term returns. But the worrying fact for the company is that, so far, there is very little evidence that this enormous punt will work.
I fully expect an announcement that Horizon Worlds, Meta’s social VR platform, will be rolling out to non-VR/flatscreen web and mobile users. Using a Meta Quest 2 test unit purchased for the virtual reality lab project I am involved with at the University of Manitoba, I have paid several short visits to Horizon Worlds, and I am, to put it politely, not a fan. Horizon Worlds is something even worse than boring—it’s soulless. It looks and feels like it was put together by a bureaucratic committee of engineers that was given a task to do, in order to report back to the executives that they did something, but the builders had no real understanding, appreciation, or love of what social VR is and can be. To be frank, I don’t believe that expanding Horizon Worlds access to web and mobile users is gonna bring a hell of a lot more users to the platform. In my opinion, it’s a dog that needs to be taken out back and shot, to be put out of its misery. 🐕
Mark Zuckerberg: Hey, look! Our avatars have legs!
Second Life: Isn’t that just adorable. Meanwhile, our avatars can look like this…:
Second Life: …and your avatars look like this:
(And yes, I know, comparing a social VR platform like Horizon Worlds to a flatscreen virtual world like Second Life, which also has a 20-year head start, is not fair. But honestly, Meta’s avatars have a long, long way to go, in my opinion. Obligatory editorial.)
UPDATE 11:28 a.m.: I’m signed in to a livestream from one of the virtual reality YouTubers I follow, Virtual Reality Oasis, which apparently is starting half an hour before the actual Meta Connect event with a bit of a pre-show, perhaps. I will probably stay on this channel, for the additional commentary by this YouTuber (there’s also a very active comment stream to follow), but I might switch to another source later on. I will be making full use of two monitors here at work on my desktop PC—one for watching the livestream, and the second for blogging on the fly!
UPDATE 11:40 a.m.: Mike’s Virtual Reality Oasis livestream has started; apparently, he is located in a “side office” near backstage or behind the scenes at the Menlo Park auditorium, where the Meta Connect event is taking place (I think I got that part right!). He and another VR expert (whose name I unfortunately didn’t catch) will be providing some colour commentary and even taking questions from the over 3,700 livestream viewers. (Unfortunately, this livestream video was marked private after the event, so I cannot link to it.)
UPDATE noon: Meta has just announced a 30-minute delay to the start of the event, which is rather disappointing. Apparently, instead of an indoor stage, this event will be taking place on an outdoor stage in Menlo Park. I will be able to view and post blog updates until around 2:00 p.m. my time (Central Standard Time), so I am only going to be able to comment on the first hour-and-a-half of Meta Connect.
UPDATE 12:18 p.m.: I’ve switched to a different livestream, this one by IGN, with almost 7,000 people watching. Virtual Reality Oasis was reporting problems with both video and audio from the Meta Connect livestream, so I’ll be switching back and forth. (I could also watch it via Facebook, but I’ll be damned if I have to set up a Facebook account just to do that! Back in 2018, I kicked Facebook to the curb, and I have zero intention of returning to its surveillance-capitalism embrace, with the sole exception of a Meta account I set up for the test unit Meta Quest 2 headset I got.)
UPDATE 12:31 p.m.: The show has finally started!
Mark starts off with the usual piffle about “the power of human connection”. 🙄 He’s talking about being in a room with a mixture of real-life humans and holographic humans and embodied AI tools. Mixed reality, smart glasses, and AI are key to what Mark calls the metaverse.
Mark introduces the Quest 3, which he calls “the first mainstream mixed-reality headset” to applause from the crowd, followed by a brief presentation of various examples of this mixed reality in a number of games and apps. Xbox cloud gaming is coming to the Quest later this year.
Augments are persistent, spatially-anchored digital objects (like digital portals and photo albums you can hang on your walls). You can double-tap on your headset to return instantly to the real world.
Now he’s talking about content, including new titles. Meta Quest 3 has twice the graphics performance of any previous headset and is 40% thinner than the Quest 2. Roblox is launching for the Quest, which is going to bring a lot of younger users to the headset!
Mark teased new Horizon content, saying that the visuals are improving. He also talked about tools for business, citing productivity and work apps. Coming soon is something called Meta Quest for Business, with integrations with apps like Office 365 (something that was previously promised). Lack of details is very frustrating!
Meta Quest 3 is shipping October 10th for US$499 (Mark slipped up and said “August 10th” LOL!).
UPDATE 12:47 p.m.: Now the talk switches to artificial intelligence, which is hardly surprising since that is where all the hype went after the previous metaverse hype cycle (which included Mark renaming his company from Facebook to Meta!). A new tool, called Emu (Expressive Media Universe) is an image-generation tool similar to DALL-E 2. You will be able to use AI chat to create stickers (wow, groundbreaking!🙄). AI editing tools will be added to Instagram next month, with a cute demo of Mark applying various textures to his dog, Beast.
(Right now Mark is just spouting AI word salad, and my eyes are rolling so hard they disappeared into my skull.)
Meta AI: your basic assistant you can talk to like a person, help you answer basic questions and requests. Based on Llama 2 large language model, through a partnership with Microsoft and Bing search. Emu: is built into Meta AI with the “/imagine” prompt built into various apps.
Max the sous-chef AI who will help you come up with a recipe, etc. Lily, the personal editor AI that can help you brainstorm and improve your writing. Lorena the travel expert AI to recommend a good national park to take the kids to. These are three of the many different types of AI chatbots Meta is dreaming up to answer queries and entertain you. Meta actually appears to have hired actors and celebrities to play these roles! (Honestly, this is kinda creeping me out.)
Oh, sweet minty Jesus, Snoop Dogg has been cast as your Dungeons & Dragons dungeonmaster. Nope, I’m out…NOBODY WANTS THIS, MARK. I never want to see that cursed image again!!! Who the fuck thought this was a great idea? Mark brought his keynote to a screeching halt as he fumbled with his cellphone to “chat” with Snoop Dogg (who I’m sure is being paid a pretty penny to give up his likeness for this ridiculous idea).
Snoop Dogg is your D&D dungeonmaster! (NOPE.)
Among the many other “experts” who signed on to be the face of a Meta AI chatbot is Paris Hilton, who role-plays your “detective” (I kid you not):
Here comes the part where Mark pays lip service to safety and security, since there are some serious user privacy concerns associated with all this new, AI-powered tech (something which Meta has notably been egregious about in the past). “I’m really optimistic about this,” says Mark, and once again, my eyes rolled so far back I was staring at my brain. Yeah, sure, Mark, I really want to have my every conversation with Detective Paris Hilton strip-mined as yet another opportunity to provide data to sell to advertisers for the next Cambridge Analytica scandal. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄 As a commenter stated on the r/technews subreddit (source):
Does anyone else think AI chatbots are just another way to harvest data about people by engaging them in conversation?
Now Mark turns to the next generation of Ray-Ban smart glasses, which I must confess look a lot like regular glasses with slightly thicker arms. These new glasses will include Meta AI, so you can bring Snoop Dogg or Paris Hilton wherever you go (shudder). Next year, a software update will make these glasses multi-modal, so you can read signs in foreign languages, for example, which sounds kinda cool.
A brief video was shown where you will be able to livestream what you see from your own glasses to others, using as an example a racecar driver who is presenting what he sees to other viewers watching on their cellphones. These new glasses are available starting Oct. 17th for US$299.
UPDATE 1:16 p.m.: Mark has wrapped up his keynote, and is passing the torch to Meta’s Chief Technology Officer, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, who in previous years has not shied away from speaking his mind and even criticizing what he sees as some missteps the company has made. He’s talking about the ability to double-tap on the side of your Meta Quest 3 to switch seamlessly between mixed-reality and pass-through of the real world.
You will no longer have to manually set up your play boundary in the Meta Quest 3, which will automatically map the room you are in, and the objects that are in that room, when you put the headset on:
(There are some livestream skips happening now, so I might miss something.)
Okay, I am taking a break, but if I have time later on today, I will add more.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in unveiling the new AI chatbots, said the company wanted to create AIs that have distinct personalities, opinions and interests. “This isn’t just gonna be about answering queries,” he said. “This is about entertainment and about helping you do things to connect with the people around you.”
For now, the celebrity chatbots respond in text — their avatars don’t actually speak their responses. Zuckerberg said voice for the AIs will come probably early next year.
The line-up of Meta AI celebrity chatbots includes Kendall Jenner of the Kardashian clan
UPDATE 5:44 p.m.: Wow, I thought I had been sarcastic in my remarks about these AI chatbots, but the people over at the celebrity subreddit r/Fauxmoi, are savage! Here’s just a sample of their comments (source):
Ah yes, all the people you’d regret starting a conversation with.
Lmao I hate this.
Also: “Kendall Jenner as Billie, no-BS, ride-or-die companion” 😂 So funny, coming from someone with even less personality than a robot.
It’s giving Black Mirror.
Sounds horrifying. Hopefully it flops hard enough to discourage more companies from doing shit like this.
What the hell is this? Like what is it supposed to be/do? Paris Hilton is ‘Amber’ who is your detective friend to help you solve whodunnits. So they’ve taken real people and turned them into avatars but then also they aren’t really THAT person, they’re someone else brand new who has a completely different personality? What’s even the point? Please can someone explain??
Meta is embarrassingly out of touch with the world, in a very “hello, fellow teenagers!” kind of way…
So, as you can clearly see, I’m not the only one who thinks this is just weird. I’m left wondering how much of that $21 billion Meta Reality Labs spent this past year went to pay for all these celebrities to agree to be the faces of their chatbots. And I wonder how they’re going to feel when (as is almost inevitable) their chatbot starts to act up and spit out unacceptable or incorrect responses to user questions? What will Paris Hilton do when the chatbot who wears her face goes rogue? I’m quite sure she did not think through all the potential implications of signing away her likeness on the contract Meta dangled in front of her! It really is very Black Mirror.
UPDATE Sept. 28th, 2023 2:54 p.m.: I have gotten busy with my full-time paying job as a university librarian, so I haven’t had much of a chance to watch the rest of yesterday’s virtual event. Once I do, I expect that I will have more to comment on!
Well, in the middle of a relatively routine day in the life of an academic librarian, a couple of cardboard boxes arrived at my office door. Carefully cutting them open with my trusty Swiss army knife, I was face-to-face with two shrink-wrapped boxes from Meta: my new Meta Quest 2 wireless VR headset, plus an Elite Strap with Battery add-on:
As I wrote earlier this month, because of some unusual circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic, I still had some unused professional travel and expense funds which I had to spend—or lose—by the end of this June, so I decided to spend some of them on a test unit for the virtual reality lab project I am currently working on.
And—as it just so happens—today was also the day that I picked up my brand new work cellphone, an iPhone SE running iOS 16. (The university where I work is slowly replacing its voice-over-IP office telephones with cellphones, because it’s actually cheaper to do that now!) So, not only do I have a shiny new Meta Quest 2, I also have a shiny new cellphone to use to set it up!
Which means, of course, that I am not tainting my personal cellphone by installing the Oculus/Meta/whatever-the-hell-they-are-calling-it-this-year app on it! In my personal life, I am still enacting a personal boycott of Meta hardware and software but, as I said in an earlier blogpost, I am willing to give the company’s hardware a shake, to see how well it would fit into an educational environment, i.e. a virtual reality lab for faculty, staff, and student use in teaching, learning, and research. (Also, the Meta Quest 2 represents a sizeable chunk of the current virtual reality market, and there are many apps which are exclusive to the device, and not available on Steam.)
Because I plan to load many different apps, I opted for the model with 256 gigabytes of memory, as well as the more comfortable elite strap with a battery pack, located on the back of the head to redistribute the unit’s weight a little better (I hope!). With these two upgrades to the base model, I guess you could call this the “deluxe” Quest 2.
So, I am writing up something I had never thought I would: a hands-on review of the Meta Quest 2 wireless virtual reality headset! (While I am, to put it mildly, absolutely not a fan of Meta’s surveillance capitalism business model, I do think that the company’s VR hardware is good. I have previously been an owner of an Oculus Rift, now quietly gathering dust in its box in a corner of my Red-Cross-disaster-area apartment, plus an original-version Oculus Quest 1, since donated to my brother’s family in Alberta where, as far I am aware, they are not using it, either.)
First, I tackled the box with the Meta Quest 2 headset package, which includes the hand controllers:
The headset comes with a standard foam faceplate, as well as a silicone cover for the foam faceplate, which makes it easier to sanitize between users (you can request a free, completely-silicone faceplate here). There’s also a glasses spacer to insert if, like me, you wear spectacles in order to see properly. The lenses themselves have three positions; you can move the lenses left or right to get the clearest view.
Just pull the tabs on the hand controllers, press down on the side button on the headset for 2-3 seconds, and adjust the straps to fit the headset over your head. (My glasses, which fit into both my Valve Index headset at home and my HTC Vive Pro 2 headset at work, just barely fit into the Meta Quest 2—if my glasses were any wider, I would have had to get new glasses!). You are directed to plug in the headset to charge it using the included cable, and you are given a code which you can use to pair the device to your Meta Quest app on your cellphone.
On first try, the Meta Quest 2 with the basic headstrap feels very front-heavy (I will be unpacking the elite head strap with the battery pack later). The charging cable is waaay too short for my liking, but that’s a minor quibble. You are, of course, supposed to avoid getting direct sunlight on the lenses of the Meta Quest 2, and clean them carefully with a microfibre cloth (not included, unlike other headsets I have purchased in the past). No matter, I have quite a few already! The hand controllers already come with starter batteries (AA alkaline disposable batteries; unfortunately, there’s no charging cable, charging dock, or rechargeable battery system for the controllers included in the box).
Like most VR devices you buy nowadays, the paper documentation is sparse (essentially a reference guide leaflet and a safety and warranty guide), but you are referred to a website to help you get your Quest 2 set up. You will require an iPhone (Apple iOS 12.4 or higher) or an Android phone (Android 5.0 or higher) to set up the Meta Quest 2, using apps which are available from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store, respectively. Your phone must be connected to WiFi and have Bluetooth turned on, in order to use the Meta Quest mobile app to set up your Quest 2 headset. Because the Meta Quest app was the first-ever purchase on my new work iPhone, I had to first accept the Apple Store terms and conditions, and add a payment method (in this case, my work travel Visa card), even though the Meta Quest app itself is free.
The Meta Quest app now gives you three options to set up an account: through Facebook (oh, HELL no!), Instagram (also, HELL no!), or with an email address (all the better to spam you with promo offers, my dear!). The login screen on the Meta Quest app also mentions the former Oculus accounts, if you happen to have one of those from a previous VR device (I had deleted mine when I enacted my personal boycott of all things Meta). So many options make things a little complicated, so there’s more info on the Meta website here and here. I opted to set up a new Meta account using an email address I had not used before. Please note that according to the terms of service, you must be at least 13 years of age to set up a Meta account (14 if you live in South Korea or Spain).
Once you jump through all the rigmarole with setting up a Meta account itself, you are asked to go through more steps to set up a unique username, a display name, and my profile picture (I skipped the last one for now). You are also asked to create a Meta Quest PIN, used to authorize purchases in the Meta Quest Store. Then you are prompted to enter a credit card or PayPal information, which I also skipped for now.
Finally, you are asked to select your device from a menu in the Meta Quest app on your cellphone (Quest Pro, Quest 2, Quest 1, Rift/Rift S, or Go), and then you put on your headset and go through the rest of the set-up process, such as connecting to your local WiFi. You will likely have to let the device automatically download and install several updates, so be sure to plug it in so it is fully charged! The headset will make a sound when its software has been completely updated, and it is ready for you to put back on, and complete the setup process (setting floor depth and play boundaries, practice recentering your view using the Meta button on your controllers, etc.).
All in all, the entire setup process took me about an hour. Then, I spent about fifteen minutes perusing the wide variety of avatar customization options, putting together my first avatar look, when I then saved. After that, I browsed the Meta Quest store.
The first app I downloaded was the free Felix & Paul Studios app, which includes a number of immersive experiences that I have, in the past, found very useful as an introduction to virtual reality for newbies. I suspect that I will probably be using the Meta Quest 2 more often for this sort of VR orientation, as opposed to my tethered HTC Vive Pro 2 setup, since there are no cables for the user to get entangled with! Sometimes simplest is best.
I found the display to be clean, crisp, and clear, a marked improvement over the original Oculus/Meta Quest (version 1). Instead of a dial, the Meta Quest 2 features three presets for IPD adjustment: preset 1 is 58mm, preset 2 is 63mm, and preset 3 is 68mm. While I would have preferred a dial, preset 2 seems to work well for me.
Another app I was very curious to try out was Meta Horizon Worlds (or just Horizon Worlds), about which I have heard much from other people, but have not actually experienced it for myself! I will write up my impressions on Horizon Worlds in a separate, later review. I will also write up a separate review of the elite headstrap with battery, after I have played around with the base unit for a while, and can compare the two. Stay tuned for more!
UPDATE 2:28 p.m.: Well, I unpacked the elite headstrap with battery pack and replaced the basic head strap with it. The elite headstrap plugs into the power socket of the Meta Quest 2 headset itself, and then you connect the entire apparatus to a power outlet to charge it. I was also expecting it to be a major hassle to replace the head strap, and it turned out to be an extremely simple process!
I’m letting it charge now, and then I will test it out later today or perhaps tomorrow, once it’s fully charged (it takes between 3 and 4 hours, according to my internet research). Just by hefting the unit in my hand, I can already tell that it has a much more even weight distribution now!
Why they didn’t just include this in the basic model is beyond me. I guess Meta really wanted to cut wherever they could to have a base unit at as low a price as possible to entice consumers (which would also explain why the charging cable is so short!).
UPDATE 4:27 p.m.: The device still isn’t fully charged, but I did try it on for size, and it takes a bit of adjusting and fidgeting (especially with my glasses!), but one I hit that sweet spot, it’s great! Think is a very nice piece of hardware. I also spent a bit of time visiting Horizon Worlds, but for some annoying reason, I cannot seem to transfer the camera pictures I took there to my cellphone (and I am NOT setting up accounts on Facebook or Instagram again, just to transfer in-world photos out!). Once I figure out that particular problem, and perhaps spend a little more time in Horizon Worlds over the next week or so, I will write up a review of that.
So, in summary: the Meta Quest 2 is a very nice piece of VR hardware, but definitely buy the elite head strap with the battery, it does make a big difference in overall comfort and wearability!
I will soon be the owner of a shiny new Meta Quest 2, as shown here in this screen capture from the Meta website
Longtime readers of this blog will know that I have, over the years, developed a well-founded aversion to Meta (the company formerly known as Facebook), its business practices based on surveillance capitalism, and its products and services.
So, it might come as a surprise to some people, to learn that I have decided to purchase a shiny new Meta Quest 2 wireless virtual reality headset. Why did I do this? Several points, which I will take one at a time.
Well, first and foremost, Meta blinked and backtracked after much criticism; you no longer need to set up a Facebook account to use the Meta Quest 2 (although you still have the option to link your Facebook or Instagram account to your Meta account, if you so wish). Instead, you set up a new Meta account for your device, as explained in the following YouTube video from six months ago:
Second, as you may remember, I am still working on a project to set up a virtual reality lab within the University of Manitoba Libraries. While my original proposal was to purchase and install four high-end PCVR workstations using HTC Vive Pro 2 tethered headsets, we are now looking at offering faculty, staff, and students a wider variety of headsets for use in their teaching, learning, and research activities.
It’s probably not wise to purchase only one kind of VR hardware, which leaves you vulnerable if a company decides to shut down (although this is highly unlikely in the case of both HTC and Meta!). Best not to put all our eggs into one basket; life tends to throw all kinds of unexpected curveballs at you!
One unintended consequence of the coronavirus pandemic is that I had several successive years’ worth of travel and expense funds carried over and built up, some of which had to be spent by a certain deadline, or I would lose the money. So part of that funding went towards a brand-new work PC with a good graphics card, and an HTC Vive Pro 2 Office Kit, which of course is one of the models we are looking at purchasing for the virtual reality lab. However, I still had some money left over that I had to spend soon, and I decided to also buy a Meta Quest 2 as another testing unit, since we are considering also using that device in the virtual reality lab.
Third: while hunting around for easy-to-use, introductory demonstrations of virtual reality for those coworkers who have never experienced VR before, like Felix & Paul Studio’s excellent Introduction to Virtual Reality, I discovered to my great dismay that many apps were only available for Meta devices, and not available on SteamVR at all!
Unfortunately, some VR apps are exclusive to Meta VR headsets
In other words, some of the programs which students might want to use force us to purchase headsets on which they can run. This “walled garden” approach is antithetical to setting up an academic VR lab, where ideally we should be able to run any app on any headset. However, we have little choice, given the way the marketplace is currently structured (and especially given Meta’s outsized influence, with a little under 20 million Quests of various kinds sold, which makes it by far the most popular VR headset).
The University of Manitoba’s School of Nursing recently opened the first virtual reality lab on campus, and they are only using Meta Quest 2 headsets. This lab is currently training nursing students using UbiSim software, with plans to expand its offerings over time (more info here on Mastodon). And the U of M’s Computer Science department is also planning to use Meta Quest 2s in its planned VR lab.
The VR lab at the University of Manitoba School of Nursing
In other words, you can choose not to dance with the 900-pound gorilla in the room (i.e., Meta), but it will severely limit your choice of dance partners! And that is why, despite my lingering antipathy towards Mark Zuckerberg and his company’s business practices, we will likely be buying a number of Meta Quest 2 headsets to add to our planned virtual reality laboratory at the University of Manitoba Libraries, starting with a single test unit purchased on my travel and expense funds for work.
