Earlier this month, we learned that Microsoft was canceling development of its HoloLens 3 virtual and augmented reality glasses, and that, going forward, his commitment to mixed reality and the metaverse went through software. However, we now know that those who bet long ago on software development in this field have also begun to back down…
According to The Information, Meta, the company that owns Facebook and a great promoter in recent months of the concept of the ‘metaverse’, has just dissolved the development team of its ‘XROS project’ — the codename for its fledgling unified operating system for AR/VR glasses — made up of 300 employees.
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The Project Cambria are left for now without an operating system
Currently, Meta headsets such as the Oculus Quest 2 uses a custom operating system based on Android. Its successor device, known for now as “Project Cambria”, was expected to inaugurate the new XROS system, but everything indicates that this will no longer be possible.
XROS took its name from ‘XR’, the abbreviation for ‘mixed reality’ (virtual + augmented)
Information to this effect had already come out in January, and at that time the vice president of Facebook’s Reality Labs, Gabriel Aul, not only denied that they were canceling the XROS projectbut stated that the development team was expanding:
“[En Meta] we continue to work on a highly specialized operating system for our devices [de realidad mixta]”.
According to statements made yesterday by Sheeva Slovan, spokesperson for Meta, to the US media outlet The Verge, although she did not confirm the dissolution of the team, it does make clear the company’s change of focus:
“We will accelerate the development of hyper-adjusted solutions for each product line […] bringing more OS engineers directly into the AR and VR teams.”
In short, goodbye to the unified software platform that XROS was going to represent: the new destiny of its engineers will be to provide specific software for the different virtual and augmented reality devices (from Quest VR headsets to hand and eye tracking devices, through augmented reality glasses) that Meta prepares.
In any case, according to The Information it is not clear that all 300 XROS engineers will end up in these teamsso the final destination of all of them is still unknown.