Meta Disbands Team of VR/AR Specialists

A few days ago, it became known that Meta is suspending work on the XROS project and disbanding a team of 300 specialists. As far as we knew, they were supposed to be creating VR/AR headsets and OS, combining the experience of augmented and virtual reality into a single product.

The team dissolution was reported by The Information, although before that, Meta representatives denied rumors that work on the project was frozen. The first reports that XROS was temporarily canceled appeared back in January of this year. After that, the vice president of Reality Labs, which develops AR/VR technologies, said that the company was still engaged in this project and was expanding the staff and not dismissing it. As another Meta spokesperson said in a post, the tech giant planned to speed up the development of augmented and virtual reality products and therefore included additional OS developers.

Now, this official information seems unreliable, given the rumors. According to them, the company redistributes specialists from the XROS team to other projects. That is, some engineers will focus on Quest VR headsets, others will be developing AR glasses, and still, others will work on technologies that track the movements of users’ hands and eyes. At the time of writing, it is unclear where exactly each developer will end up and whether Meta will leave all the employees involved in XROS or someone will have to be fired.

We assume that such a restructuring occurs within the framework of the new metaverse concept that Meta develops (hence the name change). As part of this approach, the company plans to actively use AR and VR technologies based on its own OS. At the moment, their devices utilize Android development. How do you feel about the combination of virtual and augmented reality? Do you think Meta’s work in this direction will be successful?