Mark Zuckerberg's vision for the metaverse was intended to redefine the way in which we interact with one another and the world, providing us with an immersive world where we are able to seamlessly mix digital and physical information.
The parent company, which over time was renamed Meta, had begun introducing headsets and redesigned on a regular basis computing with its Project Orion augmented reality glasses.
Now, nonetheless, Meta is making significant budget cuts to its Reality Labs division, which could lead to around 10% of the 15,000 employees working on the Metaverse and related projects losing their jobs. Meta's Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth confirmed the staff cuts in a Jan. 13 memo.
But my years of research with colleagues suggest that this apparent about-face is much from the tip of the technology. However, as we search for industrial applications beyond gaming, that is more likely to mean a shift away from virtual reality (VR) towards less immersive ways of merging the digital and real worlds.
This augmented reality approach has already been implemented through products comparable to Microsoft HoloLens, which display virtual information on an optical, transparent display.
Such augmented reality devices give the illusion that virtual information appears in physical 3D space. Integrated hand and eye tracking technology also allows users to interact through gestures and gaze.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explains the Metaverse in 2021. Video: Skarredghost.
The problem with virtual reality
After a long time of research and development, VR technology is undoubtedly an actual product that meets real needs. State-of-the-art headsets offer users immersive 3D immersive environments in addition to built-in robust hand and eye tracking. Beyond gaming, virtual reality is used to coach doctors, engineers, pilots and plenty of others.
However, in additional general, on a regular basis applications there’s a conflict. I and plenty of others imagine that with the appearance of AI, latest interfaces will probably be needed beyond the cell phone to manage and profit from applications at work and at home. At the identical time, our research shows that many individuals find VR headsets just too immersive, unsettling and inconvenient to make use of.
In a two-week user study in 2022, we compared working in virtual reality for a full workweek – five days in a row, eight hours per day – with the baseline of doing the identical work using a regular setup with a standard display, external keyboard and mouse.
In this study, we asked 16 volunteers to do their usual paperwork, e.g. E.g., word processing, programming, creating spreadsheets, etc. The headline result was that users were in a position to work in virtual reality for a whole work week – but there have been many problems with this.
Study participants who used VR experienced higher perceived workload, in addition to lower ease of use, lower perceived productivity, higher frustration, lower well-being, higher anxiety, greater experience of simulator sickness, and better visual fatigue. In short, VR performed worse on all key metrics.
Despite these results, participants within the interviews expressed that they might imagine using VR if the headsets were lighter and exposure to virtual reality was limited to a couple of hours at most.
In follow-up research in 2024, we examined the video evidence we collected within the study intimately. It showed what participants did while wearing the headset – adjusting it, managing the cable when it got in the way in which, eating and drinking by lifting the headset halfway, answering calls and rubbing their face.
Our evaluation showed that individuals were step by step getting used to the VR headsets. Overall, participants adjusted their headsets about 40% less often and removed their headsets about 30% less often toward the tip of the work week.
This shows us that it is feasible to work in virtual reality since we often work with a physical desktop, keyboard and mouse. But once we arrange it in order that the VR setup replicates our normal setup, VR, unsurprisingly, performs worse. We require a virtual environment to perfectly replicate our physical work environment, which is unimaginable.
More importantly, it tells us something about compromise. Virtual Reality provides a completely immersive virtual environment that transports users to completely different virtual worlds. However, this have to be weighed against negative qualities comparable to poor ergonomics, nausea and fatigue.
Superhuman powers
For any type of augmented reality – from augmented reality smart glasses to something far more ambitious – to attain mainstream success, it must offer more positives than negatives in relation to devices we’re already accustomed to, comparable to laptops, tablets and phones.
I imagine the answer is to be daring and reimagine augmented reality – not as a transplant or extension of devices we already use in our day by day lives, but as a medium that provides us superhuman powers. In particular, it will possibly allow us to seamlessly interact with computer systems within the 3D space around us.
In physical reality, you have got to decide on a tool to make use of it: you decide up a twig can after which press a button to spray paint. In a desktop interface, you click on the spray can icon and may then spray paint with the mouse. But in augmented reality, it's not crucial to pick out the tool first to make use of it – you may simply do that with hand gestures.
Augmented reality “hot gestures” might be used to manage digital tools. Video: University of Cambridge.
By simply shaping your hand as when you were holding a twig can and pressing your index finger right down to spray, the system can mechanically detect that you desire to use the spray can tool. You can then spray paint the digital items by pressing a virtual spray can button along with your index finger.
Augmented reality can be a medium for interacting with personal robotics, for instance by showing the robot's future movements in 3D space in front of us. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in our physical reality, this can turn into increasingly vital.
Ultimately, any vision of a metaverse (not only Zuckerberg's version) will only achieve success if it goes beyond current user interfaces. Augmented reality must consider the indisputable fact that it enables a seamless fusion of virtual and physical information in our 3D world.
