Meta launches Hyperscape, technology to turn real-world spaces into VR

Curious if Meta will ever recoup its investment into VR/AR? A quick Google search indicates Meta has invested north of $100 billion into this tech. The public just doesn't seem that interested in VR/AR. A very small percentage of my family and friends even own a VR headset. Most people are busy and don't have time to strap on a headset when they get home. If gaming / "the metaverse" is the cornerstone of VR, why are almost all gamers playing on a PC or console? And on the AR front, has anyone actually seen anyone out-and-about wearing those Meta AR glasses? Anyone remember Google glass? What happened to Magic Leap?

It's unsual, if you would have asked me 15 years ago- I would have told you _absolutely_ VR/AR would be huge. It just hasn't been the case. People don't want to wear headsets and there's nothing that the AR glasses can do that my phone can't. The whole thing has become a money blackhole.

This is the first feature which makes me kind of excited for VR. I live away from my country and my parents for over 20 years and I’d love to be able to sit in my parents’ living room, or have them sit in mine and share a moment together. FaceTime is already great, but I can imagine this will feel more intimate.

I'm sort of embarrassed to ask this, but what is the point of this (and I'm genuinely asking)?

I get that it can scan a physical space and then I can see a digital reproduction of that space on VR goggles...but then what? Do I just stand there looking around the space?

I don't want Meta knowing about every object in my home, seems creepy to me

VRML was one of my early computing interests. I’m actually excited for more ways to share 3D spaces with folks!

This one is actually quite interesting: there's direct uses for any ability to rapidly extract digital representations of physical spaces.

I have confidence that Meta will find a way to make this user experience horrible and exploitative.

Semi related, is horizon worlds still a thing? Is it being developed? Are there active users?

Even if this fails, Meta will end up with quite a substantial stash of real-world spatial data. Tailwind for their AI training initiatives.

Initially read this as hyper escapism but then realised it wasn’t about AI, just 3D.

Strange how all the major technologies atm are concerned - at least partly - with escaping reality.

This would be much more interesting if it didn't just capture one "dumb" point cloud, but actually discerned the separate and unique objects -- eg, giving the user the ability to interact with them in VR as one would IRL.

On one hand, meta has a bad reputation for being a toxic pip factory where employees can be laid off any time. On the other hand, they are consistently coming out with innovations in VR/glasses at a time when the industry is going crazy over openai funny money. Are toxic work practices actually good for innovation?

Remains to be seen if Meta's new VR technology has legs.

The article misses that people have been doing this sort of thing for years at this point. The innovative part is making it easier to scan the room: https://scaniverse.com/quest

VirtuGood Technologies has been selling this technology for decades. Nothing new to see here.

Somewhat related is 3D / LIDAR scanning tech of overlapping photo captures using Matterport: https://matterport.com/

It's popular with real estate agents. Not quite "virtual reality" but it also doesn't need expensive glasses. It does seem like future smartphones with AI may be a decent cheaper substitute for $6000 Matterport cameras.

WOOO, I can make a VR copy of my messy apartment! Come check out the peeling paint and the mysterious stain on the ceiling!

I'm eager to see this become more widely available, at least once such spaces can be shared. Not yet available to me, but hopefully soon.

Its hilarious to me how people in these comments still give Meta the benefit of the doubt and think the core feature of this is anything other than blatant data harvesting.

The Zuck really doesn't want to let go of the MetaVerse does he?

so that is why they werent giving access to the color cameras in oculus 3 to apps

i want my point cloud scanner dammit

I just hope we’ll be able to download and keep our files, rather than have them hold hostage… it would be nice to use this as a personal archival of houses and pass them down like a family album.

Now there’s a sad sad thought - imagine if Kodak required monthly subscription to vote your photos

A fundamental problem with Metaverse is that their parent companies (Facebook, Insta, and as far as Whatsapp it's a clear antitrust case) don't work

People don't see posts from friends. The site spams you to death. They hijacked your email address, and replaced it with a facebook.com address. They've lied rather a lot about things generally

And that company is now the one presenting a Metaverse/VR/AR/whatever

It should be DOA just based on reputation, never mind the technical merits

Imagine scanning a cooking courses and be able to move in the space to watch cooking technique in any angles, would be awesome

I can just see it now - Trump, Netanyahu and Zuckerborg teaming up to provide Gazans with VR headsets running videos of virtually reconstructed Palestine. Genocide, what genocide?

Meta is the Yahoo of current platforms. It happens to all of them eventually...

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Rendering takes a few hours means humans are building it at least partially.

Hmm I swear I saw something like this demoed. I think it was an independent thing but also think Apple has it too with their VR headset.