philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

4Apr/21Off

Almost 10,000 Facebook Employees Working on AR and VR

Internal organizational data seen by The Information shows that about one-fifth of Facebook’s total global workforce or close to some 10,000 employees are currently working in the development of its AR and VR devices.

According to Facebook‘s own information, the company employed 58,000 full-time specialists at the end of 2020 and about 17% of these employees are working on its XR technologies. This represents close to a fifth of its workforce working on the computing platforms of the future.

... Facebook Reality Labs is working on a number of XR projects that include both hardware and software development. Some of Facebook’s projects such as the development of ultra-slim and powerful Augmented Reality glasses are a long-term goal and will be ready in 5 to 10 years.

Some of Facebook’s known XR products and research projects include the following: –

  • Oculus Quest VR Headsets: A next-generation product is already under development.
  • VR game development by the first-party studios Beat Games, Ready at Dawn, and Sanzaru Games all of which have been acquired by Facebook in the past year or so.
  • The Facebook metaverse Horizon
  • Research on next-generation VR technology such as the Half-Dome
  • The smartphone AR platform SparkAR
  • The AR-compatible video chat device Portal
  • The AR research project Project Aria
  • New smart Facebook data glasses in collaboration with Ray-Ban set to appear in 2021
  • Advanced augmented reality glasses which have been codenamed, Orion
  • A smartwatch set to be released in 2022 combined with a neural interface and haptic simulation
  • Haptic gloves for AR and VR
  • A Facebook Assistant that is similar to the Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa
  • An operating system specifically for VR and AR devices
  • A chip specially developed for AR glasses
  • Live Maps, a 3D mapping service for the Augmented Reality cloud infrastructure.

See the full story here: https://virtualrealitytimes.com/2021/04/03/almost-10000-facebook-employees-working-on-ar-and-vr/

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