In recent weeks, Meta’s focus has been more on efficiency — to the detriment of thousands of employees — and artificial intelligence, rather than the metaverse and related technologies. A new strategy which is quite easily explained, but which does not mean that Meta has completely denied its ambitions in terms of the virtual world.
Context : a few weeks ago Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the demonstration of the great novelty of the next Quest software update, intended for home virtual reality headsets.
- A rather impressive demonstration that foreshadowed a real revolution in the VR experience offered by Meta via its Quest headsets, but also in the metaverse.
- Meta indeed seeks to remove the constraint of using controllers to interact in a virtual environment, thanks to a new technology.
The detail : this new technology, dubbed Direct Touch, makes it possible to interact in a VR or AR environment without a controller, thanks to hand tracking.
- In concrete terms, the outward-facing cameras of Meta’s VR headsets track hand movements and retransmit them to the user’s screens in virtual or augmented reality. The latter can then interact with a menu or a window to scroll it by calculating approximately where the virtual interface is located in space.
- The feature also allows finger typing, although the lack of physical support or haptic feedback, for example, is hugely disruptive, reports journalist Jay Peters of The Verge who was able to test the functionality.
- Direct Touch might therefore greatly simplify the VR/AR experienceeven interactivity in the metaverse, despite the limitations it still suffers from.
- The latter still suffers from approximations, both in terms of hand tracking and interactivity, but is already very “cool”.
An upcoming launch: the feature will be included in the upcoming Quest v50 software update which will be rolling out in the coming weeks.
To note : Direct Touch is qualified as an experience by Meta, so we will forgive its few hiccups, but the experience offered seems in any case already encouraging for VR and the metaverse, more generally.
To remember : the first feedback remains rather positive as this technology initiates a revolution in terms of the VR experience. And this is a great thing for Meta, it shows on the one hand that his ambitions are coming to fruition, and on the other hand, that he has – to some extent – reason to continue on this path. Of course, everything is not over yet and Mark Zuckerberg’s company will still have to persevere for a long time to prove that it was right to bet on the metaverse.
- Its new ambitions in terms of generative AI – new darling of the tech giants – might also finally help it take its time to offer something convincing in terms of VR experience and metaverses.
