Meta had an intense two weeks. First:
Quest Update v64 Improves Space Setup and Controllers
Quest Platform OS v64, released April 8, came with two undocumented features:
- Automatic detection and labeling of furniture objects during Space Setup
- Detection and tracking of both hands and Meta brand controllers
It is interesting that this automatic detection and labeling of objects made it into a regular release of the Quest OS firmware:
- Without documentation nor announcement
- Within a month after first appearing in a video of a research paper from Reality Labs
My theory is that someone else at Meta may have seen the SceneScript video and thought that the automatic detection and labeling would be a good feature to try adding separately to Quest OS, but as both an Easter egg as well as an experimental option, and are anticipating user feedback on how well this implementation is performing without making it obvious.
To compare it to SceneScript below:
It is slower and not as complete as the SceneScript videos, but it definitely seems to save time when adding furniture during Scene Setup. This definitely moves the Quest Platform further in the direction of frictionless setup and operation.
In fact, this is such an undocumented feature that it was only found and confirmed by Twitter users and publicized by one YouTuber, The Mysticle, and the AndroidCentral blog at the time of writing. So this is very new.
Also, I don’t know if the Vision Pro has automatic labeling of furniture yet, although it has automatic room scanning with the sheer number of cameras built in.
What may be coming in v65
Currently reading about changes in the code of v65 PTC, some things stand out as possibilities:
- Removal and scaling back of augments, perhaps in favor of pinned app windows
- Flight/Travel Mode for Quest
- Placing the passcode login screen in passthrough.
- “Custom Skybox View” feature using Meta Generative AI integration, including custom sounds.
I guess we’ll find out in early May.
Rebrand and Third-Party Licensing of OS and App Store for Meta Quest
The news from Meta’s April 22 announcement:
- Meta announced that they’re renaming the OS for Quest devices to Horizon OS, as well as the Quest Store to Horizon Store.
- Also: Horizon OS will be licensed to third party OEMs, starting with Asus and Lenovo.
- App Lab will be merged into Horizon Store, App Lab name will be retired, Horizon Store will have more lax threshold for accepting app/game submissions.
- A spatial software framework will be released for mobile app developers to port their apps to Horizon OS.
My thoughts:
- This is the first time that the operating system for Quest 3 and its predecessors has had an actual brand name.
- They’re really wanting to distinguish their software and services stack from their hardware.
- Surprised they didn’t rename the Quest Browser as Horizon Browser. Maybe that will come later?
- This may be the cementing phase of XR headsets as a computing form factor, a maturation from just an expensive magical toy/paperweight to play games with.
- Two drawbacks: more hardware to design the OS for, and probably a slower update cycle than the current monthly.
- We will probably need an FOSS “third thing” as an alternative to both visionOS and Horizon OS.
- XR hardware may flourish and advance by using Horizon OS instead of their own embedded software. Pico, Pimax and HTC a come to mind as potential beneficiaries of this.
- Meta may use this as a launchpad for extending Horizon OS into other form factors, like something that can straddle the gap between XR hardware on one end and the Meta Ray-Ban Glasses on the other end.
- In terms of software feature parity, Meta has been trying to play catch-up with Apple’s Vision Pro since February, and have made it plain that Apple is their real opponent in this market. Google is merely a bothersome boomer at this point.
Harry's Blog 