Former Google Augmented Reality Engineering Lead Takes Over Facebook’s Portal Hardware Team
On Wednesday, Facebook's Rafa Carmargo (also a former Google product engineering leader) announced on Twitter that he will take over Facebook's AR and VR hardware team, with Ryan Cairns, formerly the senior director of engineering for AR and VR at Google, assuming leadership of the team working on the Portal video calling product line.
According to TechCrunch, Carmargo took over the Portal team last month as part of a reorganization of Facebook's Building 8 advanced technology research team. Meanwhile, NR30 member Michael Abrash continues to oversee the Facebook Reality Labs research team.
"We're also incorporating augmented reality (AR) effects — powered by our Spark AR platform — to make calls even more fun and interactive," the company's website announced during Portal's launch. "Story Time brings stories to life with custom sound effects and visuals. Smart Camera helps you read a fun story via a simple teleprompter, perfectly framed, while your loved ones on the other side watch as your face and voice transform into the story's characters."
In recent times, Cairn has demonstrated that he can deliver AR products for public release and iterate quickly, as evidenced by multiple ARCore releases throughout 2018, so it's likely Portal will quickly gain new AR features. Moreover, Portal serves as a trojan horse for introducing mainstream consumers to its overall AR platform in the coming months.
See the full story here: https://next.reality.news/news/former-google-augmented-reality-engineering-lead-takes-over-facebooks-portal-hardware-team-0192727/