Facebook has declared a new name for its AR/VR group as it moves to the next stage for digitally connective social networks and platforms.
“Today, we’re introducing a new name for Facebook’s AR/VR team – Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) – to encompass the expansive work being done at Facebook as we build the next computing platform to help people feel more present with each other even when we’re apart.”
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AR and VR tools are becoming a huge part of the Facebook experience at a fast pace and look to become bigger than ever moving forward. The sale of Facebook’s Oculus VR headsets has overcome the expected demand amind the COVID-19 lockdown, with Facebook even facing a hard time to keep up with the orders. Facebook also received huge demand for its Portal in-home video chat device, which particularly does not comply with the AR/VR usage, but does have AR functionality through the video calls.
“Together, AR and VR will change how we work, interact and play, with novel use cases we haven’t even begun to imagine. Many of the technologies needed to deliver on the promise of AR glasses don’t exist yet – and our team is hard at work to make them a reality. That’s why we’ve decided to expand the FRL brand beyond research to be inclusive of all the teams that are building, iterating and shipping today’s hardware and software on the road to the next computing platform.”
Facebook showed its AR glasses at its F8 Developer Conference back in 2018 but gave less detail at that time about where they are in the development stage.
Facebook signed a patent last year which gave details about Facebook’s AR device plans, also Facebook this year bought microLED provider Plessey, which provides key parts required to make AR glasses. All of this hints at that Facebook is moving towards functional AR glasses and tools to provide connection within these digital realms.
Facebook Connect conference
Facebook announced that its annual Facebook Connect conference (earlier called as Oculus Connect) will take place on September 16th and it will be free for everyone to join. In this conference, Facebook will show its latest technologies and it might give a wide perspective on what the Facebook Reality Labs working on.
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