A Decade on the Road to the Next Computing Platform

This year marks the 10-year anniversary of Reality Labs. We’re continuing the celebration with a new five-week series that shines a spotlight on the developers who make the magic possible.

• Jesse Schell On the History of VR, the Rise of MR, & the Potential of Digital Worlds
• Tam Armstrong On the Nuances of XR & the Pillars of Immersive Gaming
• Maureen Fan On Medium-Agnostic IP, the Magic of XR Interaction, & Making You Matter
• Tommy Palm On Mobile, MR, & the Magic of Multiplayer
• Denny Unger On VR Mechanics, Multi-Modality, & the Inevitability of AR Glasses

TL;DR: We’re standing on the edge of the next computing platform—one that finally focuses on people over products. We’ve been building toward this moment for the past decade, investing in some serious R&D in both AI and the metaverse to help usher in the next great wave of human-oriented computing. And our products including Meta Quest 3 and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are already changing the way millions of people experience the world.

• We brought your hands into VR—both with controllers and without.
• We invented inside-out tracking, so people could explore new worlds sans wires.
• We gave you eye tracking and Natural Facial Expressions at a sub-$2,000 price point.
• We let you seamlessly blend the virtual and physical worlds for about the price of a game console.
• And we did it all with a community of developers, creators, and dreamers whose collective passion and perseverance put the reality in virtual, augmented, and mixed reality.

Today, we’re celebrating the last 10 years of metaverse and AI work at Reality Labs—and looking ahead toward what the future holds.

It’s now been 10 years since Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition of Oculus and began pushing forward his vision of the metaverse in earnest. That’s a decade of investment in Reality Labs, including futuristic research, continuous product development, and a whole lotta prototypes.

If you’ve been following Reality Labs for some time, odds are you’re familiar with Chief Scientist Michael Abrash. It’s always been clear to him that MR and AR would be the successor to the personal computer—a vision he shares with Zuckerberg.

“Instead of being separated by distance, people could be physically present with each other no matter where in the world they happened to be,” Abrash says. “Instead of me working on my one screen, I could have lots of screens that I could then share with you from any number of perspectives, I could switch workspaces with a click, and our avatars could collaborate as if we were in the same room, using tools like virtual whiteboards that are better than their physical-world equivalents. I joined Meta because it was clear that XR was going to change the world and that Mark Zuckerberg saw the same thing and had the commitment so the resources were going to be there—that this was really going to happen.”

Today, we’re taking a step back to celebrate a decade of innovation, the people who had faith in this space long before it became mainstream, and the community that’s made it all possible.

Step Into Rift

It all started with a dev kit and a dream... and a healthy amount of duct tape. Over 9,000 enthusiasts pledged a combined $2.4 million to help make the dream a reality. From DK1 to DK2, the Oculus team transported people from their living rooms to stand on top of a skyscraper and look a Tyrannosaurus rex in the eye—and they were just getting started.

Rift kicked off the modern VR era in March 2016, followed by our first-generation Touch controllers in December of that year. Featuring an ergonomic design that encouraged natural hand poses and interactions, Touch opened up a new world of possibilities, like scaling a cliff face with your own hands in The Climb and gesturing to cast spells in The Mage’s Tale.

This was an era of dedicated VR rooms and often complex sensor setups—until Rift S shipped in May 2019, incorporating the inside-out tracking technology first introduced by Quest to eliminate the need for external sensors. We’re investing in PC VR now more than ever with Air Link, remote desktop, and more. But we saw the freedom that wireless, standalone headsets could offer, so we cut the cord and went all-in on all-in-one.

VR on the Go

Designed to be the easiest way to jump into VR, Go was our first standalone VR product, shipping in 2018. Starting at $199 USD, it offered dramatically improved visual clarity while also reducing the screen door effect seen on Rift.

An early predecessor for the media and entertainment experiences people have come to know and love on Quest, Go gave people a front-row seat to concerts, movies, sporting events, and more while also letting them hang out with friends in ways that simply aren’t possible with today’s smartphones. And after we built on the 3DOF foundation of Go with Quest’s 6DOF tracking and improved optics and display, the experience has only gotten better.

We partnered with Xiaomi for the global launch of Go and on the Mi VR Standalone headset exclusively for the Chinese market. Go also marked the beginning of our years-long partnership with Qualcomm to meet the computing demands of the standalone VR—and ultimately MR—product category, as part of our ongoing strategy of working with others in the industry to bring the technology to everyone.

Embarking on an Epic Quest

Alongside Rift S, we introduced Quest—the world’s first 6DOF standalone VR headset, shipping in 2019. For the first time, people could freely explore virtual worlds, no wires required. And we let them explore and interact with the virtual world using their own hands, thanks to AI breakthroughs in hand tracking. In October 2020, we launched Quest 2, welcoming even more people into the fold. And 2021 brought with it a number of technological developments like the original Passthrough and Air Link, which lets people stream their PC VR games wirelessly to Quest over WiFi. We continue pushing out new software updates at a steady clip, increasing the value of people’s headsets over time.

With Quest Pro in October 2022, we introduced the world to compelling mixed reality, complete with eye tracking and Natural Facial Expressions. And just a year later, October 2023 ushered in Meta Quest 3 as the world’s first mass-market MR headset—letting people around the globe seamlessly blend the virtual and physical worlds.

From multitasking your way through the mundane (YouTube on a massive screen while doing the dishes, anyone?) to courtside seats during the NBA season, from summer blockbuster concerts in Meta Horizon Worlds to Hollywood hits in your own personal theater, from fully immersive worlds to some of your favorite Xbox games, Quest 3 has established itself as the ultimate home entertainment system. A wide range of fitness and wellness apps makes Quest 3 a great way to get those gains. Super Rumble delivers battle royale action with friends in and out of headset. And with new partnerships, games, and experiences being announced at seemingly every turn, it’s only getting better from here.

A Portal Into New Forms of Connection

Building 8 made waves in 2017 with its research into brain-computer interfaces and new modes of hands-free communication, but it was a video calling device that established its legacy.

Meta’s answer to the smart speaker, Portal served up ambient information, entertainment, and more with a screen and AI-powered Smart Camera to keep people in the frame during video calls. An award-winning playwright used Portal to collaborate with actors and a director from 3,000 miles away. Military families used Portal to stay connected and enjoy Story Time during deployment. A Bay Area couple got engaged over Portal, and a family used it to spend coast-to-coast quality time during the pandemic.

Of course, the path to innovation isn’t always linear. While it eventually went the way of the buffalo, people loved Portal. It gave them new ways to connect across the miles, and it was just plain fun. From grandkids sharing their latest craft projects with far-flung family to never having to miss a birthday party (or even Sunday dinner), Portal helped people defy distance in an important way. A smart home device ahead of its time... and one of the first to integrate screens for video calling.

Smart Phones Meet Smart Glasses

Imagine a world where you could tap into all the utility and benefits of a computer or smartphone in a more human-centric, simplified way. You’d be able to accomplish everything you set out to do and empowered like never before. Contextually-aware AI could help you explore and learn about the world around you, and you’d have access to rich 3D virtual information at a glance. You’d also be better able to connect with friends and family—no matter where in the world they happened to be.

Now imagine if you could do it all with a pair of lightweight, stylish glasses—a first-of-its-kind, convenient, easy-to-use device that wouldn’t force you to choose between the physical world and the digital world, but would instead bring them together in a seamless, intuitive way. These glasses would let you look up and stay present in the world around you rather than pulling your attention away to the periphery in the palm of your hand.

That’s our long-term vision for AR glasses, and we’re building toward it now. Today’s smart glasses are an important stepping stone—taking a stylish, all-day wearable form factor and loading it with smart tech, sensors, and more. That’s why we partnered with EssilorLuxottica and started with the iconic fashion people love before reimagining what it could be.

In September 2021, we launched Ray-Ban Stories, our first-generation smart glasses. With impressive open-air audio, they were ideal for listening to music, catching up on podcasts, and taking calls on the go. But more importantly, Ray-Ban Stories gave people a new way to capture the moment while staying fully present in it, thanks to hands-free capture of high-quality photos and videos.

October 2023 saw the debut of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses collection, which doubled down and improved upon everything that made the first generation great. We integrated Meta AI on Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses (currently only in the US) and optimized it for a hands-free, on-the-go experience. By saying, “Hey Meta,” people can spark creativity, get information, and control their glasses—just by using their voice. And thanks to AI, the glasses will keep getting better and smarter over time. New AI experiences are coming soon including multimodal AI, so the glasses can understand what you’re seeing to provide helpful answers.

Let’s say it’s dinnertime and you’re out of ideas. You’ll be able to lay out some ingredients on the counter and ask Meta AI to give you recipe suggestions. Or say you’re traveling and come across a sign in German. You’ll be able to look at the text and ask Meta AI to translate it for you on the fly.

Relentless Research

Last but not least, we turn the spotlight to Reality Labs Research (RL-R). Much like Meta’s Fundamental AI Research team (FAIR), RL-R was founded with an understanding of the importance of making big bets on extended time horizons. RL-R has a rich legacy of long-tail research dedicated to pushing the state of the art forward, from display systems to haptics and beyond. And we regularly publish our work, sharing it with the broader research community so they have an opportunity to extend it.

But it’s not all moonshots and research prototypes. RL-R is home to a number of successful tech transfers, including hand tracking on Quest and audio enhancements in our smart glasses products. And it was RL-R working in concert with our product team that made the pancake lenses and polarization optics that shipped in Quest Pro and later in Quest 3 a viable reality.

Far from content to rest on their laurels, the teams within RL-R (and product teams throughout the company) continue to explore new lines of inquiry that could well become industry standard in the years to come, including EMG, hyper-realistic Codec Avatars, and contextualized AI—all of which are exciting new technologies that we believe will help people seamlessly interact with their devices and each other as the next great paradigm shift in computing takes hold.

& Speaking of AI...

For those keeping score at home, AI has always played a key role in our long-term metaverse vision and the work we’re doing to get there—from computer vision to machine learning and beyond. And recent breakthroughs like those in the field of large language models (LLMs) are accelerating our progress.

This is where our two big bets as a company come together. While Quest 3 offers compelling MR experiences, from fully immersive to those that let you interact with the physical world and digital content in tandem, and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses give you access to the utility and entertainment of Meta AI, AR glasses will deliver the best of both worlds as these two technological paths converge. Just like the smartphone didn’t eliminate the laptop or desktop computer, AR glasses won’t be the end of MR headsets. Rather, we see a constellation of devices forming the fabric of the future. And thanks to the rapid breakthroughs in AI models over the last 18 months, we now think that the smart glasses we have on the road to full AR glasses are going to have much broader appeal and be more useful than we previously thought—even in the absence of displays.

Building for the Future

We’re building a new kind of computing platform that will help you better connect with the people and things you care about in a way that’s much more natural and intuitive than what’s possible with today’s 2D screens. That means experiences that help you sync up with friends and family to work, learn, play, shop, and create—as well as completely new experiences that don’t easily fit into the mold of how we use computers and smartphones today.

Technology—especially technology that connects people—should be available to as many people as possible. That’s the foundation of what we do, and it’s core to our DNA. Innovation is all about delivering new breakthroughs—and to truly do that, you need to bring those breakthroughs to the masses.

“What we’re working on can literally only happen in a few places in the world,” Abrash notes. “Mark has invested in building a remarkable critical mass of expertise, mission, and resources in Reality Labs, creating a once-in-50-years opportunity to change the way the world works, plays, and connects, in the same way that personal computing did—but even more so. That next evolution in computing will happen. But how it happens really depends on who does it. And if you want to be part of that, then this is a good place to be.”

It’s been an honor to spend the last decade working alongside a community of builders to make the next computing platform a reality. We’re committed to continuing to build out in the open and with partners who help pave the way. And we can’t wait to see what the next 10 years have in store.