The id Software co-founder and lead programmer on classic games including Doom and Wolfenstein published a letter describing his decision, stating that he had mixed feelings and despite a successful product, the problem was performance. This message was posted on his Facebook page:

“Quest 2 [Meta’s VR headset] is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning — mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k (ish) screen, cost effective. Despite all the complaints I have about our software, millions of people are still getting value out of it. We have a good product. It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place. It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing.

The issue is our efficiency…. We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort….

It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.

This was admittedly self-inflicted — I could have moved to Menlo Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.

Enough complaining. I wearied of the fight and have my own startup to run, but the fight is still winnable! VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it actually is possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement. Make better decisions and fill your products with “Give a Damn”!”

But you know, he’s not the only one criticizing Meta. Brad Gerstner, the founder of Meta’s shareholder Altimeter Capital, wrote a letter in October urging Meta to reduce its investment in the metaverse and “solidify the company’s position” as one of the world leaders in artificial intelligence.

The metaverse is likely to be powered by decentralized technologies. Perceived abuses of power by centralized web2 companies like Meta have stimulated an appetite for a return to decentralized web1 principles.

AR is increasingly perceived as the next big “disruptor” that could revolutionize our daily lives. Forecasts indicate that Apple is expected to replace the iPhone with its upcoming AR glasses in about 10 years.

While the anticipated headsets from companies like Apple, Sony and HTC are likely to reduce the company’s market share, Meta currently holds about 90% of the VR headset market.

Meta is best positioned to capitalize on the interest in VR, but investors fear the company is betting too much on the metaverse becoming its primary revenue driver in the coming years, according to Developer.

Right now, the tasks outlined above cannot be achieved reliably by any AI system, and Facebook stresses that this is a research project rather than a commercial development. However, it’s clear that the company sees functionality like these as the future of AR computing. Facebook AI research scientist Kristen Grauman commented:

“Definitely, thinking about augmented reality and what we’d like to be able to do with it, there are possibilities down the road that we’d be leveraging this kind of research.”

Privacy experts are already worried about how Facebook’s AR glasses allow wearers to covertly record members of the public. Such concerns will only be exacerbated if future versions of the hardware not only record footage but analyze and transcribe it, turning wearers into walking surveillance machines.

The name of Facebook’s research project is Ego4D, which refers to the analysis of first-person, or “egocentric,” video. It consists of two major components: an open dataset of egocentric video and a series of benchmarks that Facebook thinks AI systems should be able to tackle in the future.

Facebook partnered with 13 universities around the world to collect the data. In total, some 3,205 hours of footage were recorded by 855 participants living in nine different countries. The universities, rather than Facebook, were responsible for collecting the data. Participants, some of whom were paid, wore GoPro cameras and AR glasses to record videos of the unscripted activity. This ranges from construction work to baking to playing with pets and socializing with friends. All footage was de-identified by the universities, which included blurring the faces of bystanders and removing any personally identifiable information

Grauman says the dataset is the “first of its kind in both scale and diversity.” The nearest comparable project, she says, contains 100 hours of first-person footage shot entirely in kitchens.

“We’ve open up the eyes of these AI systems to more than just kitchens in the UK and Sicily, but to footage from Saudi Arabia, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Colombia.”

The second component of Ego4D is a series of benchmarks, or tasks, that Facebook wants researchers around the world to try and solve using AI systems trained on its dataset. The company describes these as:

Episodic memory: What happened when (e.g., “Where did I leave my keys?”)?

Forecasting: What am I likely to do next (e.g., “Wait, you’ve already added salt to this recipe”)?

Hand and object manipulation: What am I doing (e.g., “Teach me how to play the drums”)?

Audio-visual diarization: Who said what when (e.g., “What was the main topic during class?”)?

Social interaction: Who is interacting with whom (“Help me better hear the person talking to me at this noisy restaurant”)?

Photo Credits: Facebook

Right now, AI systems would find tackling any of these problems incredibly difficult, but creating datasets and benchmarks are tried-and-tested methods to spur development in the field of AI.

Indeed, the creation of one particular dataset and associated annual competition, known as ImageNet, is often credited with kickstarting the recent AI boom. The ImagetNet datasets consist of pictures of a huge variety of objects which researchers trained AI systems to identify. In 2012, the winning entry in the competition used a particular method of deep learning to blast past rivals, inaugurating the current era of research.

Facebook is hoping its Ego4D project will have similar effects on the world of augmented reality. The company says systems trained on Ego4D might one day not only be used in wearable cameras but also home assistant robots, which also rely on first-person cameras to navigate the world around them.

Apple is known to be working hard on a set of augmented reality glasses that look like regular glasses, but which feature lenses with built-in displays that can be interacted with using gestures. The current prototype is said to resemble high-end sunglasses with thick frames that house the battery and chips.

It has been said that Apple was about to enter the second phase of development of the glasses, with a focus on improving the device’s weight and battery life, suggesting they could move into volume production as early as the first quarter of 2022.

A new report claims that P2 testing has yet to begin, therefore the chance of volume production in Q1 2022 is now unlikely.

The sources pointed out that after P2, the AR glasses prototype may still need to go through P3 testing, followed by another 2-3 phases of engineering testing before standing a chance of entering volume production.

The supply chain originally estimated that the Apple wearable could start volume production as early as first-quarter 2022, the sources said. But as the P2 testing has yet to begin, the chance of volume production in first-quarter 2022 is looking unlikely, the sources added.

A report in January described the glasses as “several years away,” though Apple had initially been planning to release them as early as 2023. A previous report suggested that the AR glasses will launch in 2021, and Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expects a 2022 launch at the earliest.