Apple’s highly anticipated mixed reality headset may now have a name, according to a Bloomberg report earlier this week. The outlet spotted trademarks in the U.S. and global markets related to the device that were filed by Apple-affiliated firms. Names like “Reality One,” “Reality Pro” and “Reality Processor” were filed by a supposed shell corporation…
Meta is launching its next VR headset this October at the company’s Connect conference. CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement late Thursday, fittingly, in an equally surreal environment: the Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Spotify. He said that the new VR headset, a sequel to the popular Oculus 2, will focus on “social presence,” with…
Meta, formerly Facebook, has officially rolled out what it’s calling Meta accounts and Meta Horizon Profiles. The global launch will be gradual, but both “accounts” are to be used in place of the personal social media account logins — Facebook and Instagram — once used to log in to the company’s virtual reality (VR) system. …
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg was roundly mocked for the bad graphics in his preview of a new expansion of Horizon Worlds, Meta’s metaverse effort. His quick response promising better avatars for the actual launch speaks to just how much appearances do matter in these situations. Now, in a spot of perfect timing, a startup out…
To mark the expansion of Meta’s bland virtual reality platform, Horizon Worlds, into France and Spain, Mark Zuckerberg recently shared a selfie. The graphic, featuring the boyish CEO in front of a low-res model of the Eiffel tower, quickly struck a nerve, sparking sneers, jeers and sighs from quippy social media users. And honestly, can…
In an effort to expand its social platform for virtual reality, Horizon Worlds, Meta is launching it in France and Spain today — building on the existing three markets including the U.S., Canada, and the UK where it was already available. In a Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch with an unappealing photo and…
Despite Zuckerberg & Co. spending billions of dollars on virtual reality tech every fiscal quarter, the wider VR startup ecosystem has been having a tough few years coming down from the highs of 2016, when investors dumped money into the sector expecting Oculus-sized returns only to see most of their investments slowly wilt away. This…
For an industry that rarely has major news anymore, this was an awfully big week for virtual reality. Unsurprisingly, all of the important data points are related to the industry’s sole benefactor these days, Meta, which managed to raise the cost of entry to its VR ecosystem, find itself in a new battle with the…
The FTC filed an injunction today to block Meta’s acquisition of the virtual reality studio Within, which is best known more recently for its subscription VR workout app Supernatural. The regulatory body has had plenty of skirmishes with Facebook, now Meta, in recent years, but this is a pretty aggressive signal from the agency that…
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. What is up, you delightful beings. Today, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Instagram. Devin wrote about how the platform just keeps getting worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok,…