Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has abandoned its ongoing efforts to develop an operating system for AR and VR devices, according to The Information.
The project, internally known as XROS, was said to have been underway for years and “involved hundreds of employees.”Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about its potential just a few months ago. The reasons for the Meta’s decision to go offline are not publicly known at this time.
From the outside, this decision appears to be a major setback in the brewing mixed reality war between Meta, Apple, and possibly other tech giants. Apple’s upcoming VR or AR headsets will no doubt run a custom operating system that is designed to be tightly integrated with hardware to ensure high performance and stability.
It can be difficult for Facebook to compete with this without their own software from the ground up. However, Facebook and Apple may end up targeting very different use cases for AR and VR; their ultimate strategies remain a mystery to most.
Facebook has been rebranded as “Meta”as part of the company’s overall turn towards developing more immersive experiences, a (somewhat off-target) name that alludes to the science fiction metaverse. This change suggests that the Meta sees mixed reality, or XR (the catch-all term for AR and VR technologies), as the company’s future.
It is therefore surprising that Meta has reportedly decided to stop its work on XROS, but it is also possible that the project will be revived in a different form in the future.
Analysts and reporters are publishing reports suggesting that Apple’s first mixed reality headset could hit the market as early as this year, though it’s unlikely to be a mainstream device. Meta is already on the market thanks to the Oculus acquisition and the notable success of the Oculus Quest. But this apparent setback suggests that Apple may be ahead in some aspects of technology.
However, there have also been reports of Apple siphoning talent from its AR division to other companies, including Meta, for reasons that are not yet clear.
If there is one clear conclusion from these developments, perhaps the much-predicted mixed reality revolution is still in its unsettling infancy.