3年烧掉270亿美元！改名Meta一整年后，扎克伯格的元宇宙怎么样了？（附视频&演讲稿）

I'm excited about what comes next. 

It's a future that is beyond any one company  that will be made by all of us. 

Hey, everyone, and welcome to Connect. 

Last year, we shared our vision for the metaverse,  a future where you can be present together with the people you care about,  where you can teleport into any experience from anywhere,  where your devices just get out of the way  and you can focus on the people you're with,  and the experiences you're having. 

I think that this is some of the most amazing technology of our generation. 

It's going to open up opportunities to build incredible things. 

We believe in this vision so deeply  that we renamed our whole company after it. 

And we're in a moment now  when a lot of the technologies that will power the metaverse  are starting to take off. 

There are more people in VR than ever before,  more creators building worlds,  more developers building apps,  more brands getting into virtual goods,  and more companies getting into the metaverse. 

This is great to see. 

It's a sign that the future isn't so far away. 

I know a lot of you are excited about this future. 

You're already living it,  building new worlds, hanging out in VR, exploring what's possible,  and we've been with you since the start. 

Look at what we've announced at Connect over the years. 

The first modern VR device. 

The first standalone headset. No wires, no external sensors. 

The first developers to make millions of dollars in revenue. 

The first hands in virtual reality. 

And today, we're gonna take another big step forward. 

So, this one is for you, the believers,  the people who always thought that this was where technology should go,  but who know the future doesn't just happen,  you have to build it with your bare hands. 

The people who'd rather be early than fashionably late. 

We've got something to share with you today,  and I think you're gonna be really excited. 

But before we get to that,  let's take a look at the progress we're seeing across the ecosystem. 

To do that, here's Boz, Meta's CTO and the head of Reality Labs. 

-Hey, Boz. -Pretend you didn't see that. 

Yeah. Now, Quest 2... 

Let's talk about the progress we're seeing across the ecosystem. 

Quest 2 is the first virtual reality device to go mainstream. 

And it's opened up a lot of opportunities for people to build. 

Yeah. The ecosystem is growing nicely. 

About one in three apps in the Quest Store are making revenues in the millions. 

33 titles have made more than $10 million in gross revenue,  and that's up from 22 just this February. 

The number of apps making over $5 million has doubled since last year. 

This is what it looks like when a whole new platform takes off. 

Yeah, and it shows there's real demand for high-quality VR experiences. 

Those experiences are gonna keep getting better  with the new things we're announcing today. 

Developers have been pushing the boundaries on Quest 2,  using tools like hand tracking and Presence Platform. 

Yeah, and the creativity that you're all bringing to this is pretty awesome. 

As the platform grows,  we're focused on making it even easier to develop for,  and philosophically, we're focused on making the ecosystem more open. 

This means giving developers options for reaching audiences beyond Quest Store. 

So people can stream apps over Link from PC, or sideload them. 

Some of the best apps on Quest 2 today  started in our App Lab, our open-distribution channel. 

Great titles like Smash Drums, Ancient Dungeon, Puzzling Places and more. 

We expect the opportunities here will just keep growing  as more devices come on the market and more people get into VR. 

And we're gonna keep pushing  to make the next computing platform more open. 

In terms of what people are actually building,  beyond games, a lot of the most interesting work we're seeing  is around social experiences. 

This has been a big change. 

At first glance, many people assume that virtual reality  is a fundamentally single-player experience. 

Something you do on your own, away from the world. 

But we've never looked at it that way. 

A decade ago, when we first started this journey,  we believed it would be a great social platform. 

It's why we got into it. 

When we started working on this, we believed that, over time,  social experiences would become the main way that people would use VR. 

And that's coming true. 

Today, the top apps in the Quest Store are social metaverse apps,  and this is the same thing that we've seen with every other computing platform. 

A lot of the most compelling use cases for new technology  come when you build things that help people connect. 

That's the whole reason why we're in this space. 

This has been the story of every computing platform we've seen. 

Whether that's email and desktop, instant messaging and laptops,  or video calls and the phone. 

Every technology platform has brought great value to my life. 

But what I value most is how they keep me more connected with people I care about. 

And I think this will be especially true for VR, and eventually AR,  because they deliver a deep feeling of presence,  that sensation that you're actually with another person or in another place. 

That's what's so powerful about this platform  compared to everything else that's come before. 

Every other computing platform is built around apps. 

And now we have the chance to change that. 

For the first time, we can build technology centered around people  and how we actually experience the world. 

That's because the metaverse is first-person,  you feel like you're in it,  and should be able to teleport anywhere with the people you want to engage with  and bring your stuff with you. 

It should be less siloed than a traditional app model  and fundamentally more about feeling present with other people. 

We have Vishal here to talk more about that. 

-Hey. You guys take it from here. -Sounds good. Thanks. 

-See ya, Mark. -See ya. 

Hey, Vishal. 

Hey, Boz. Yeah, this social shift has been  one of the biggest changes we've seen over the last couple years. 

When Quest 2 first launched,  the vast majority of time spent in VR was spent alone. 

Today, the majority of time spent is in multiplayer apps. 

And the most popular apps on Quest are social. That's a huge deal. 

Apps like VR Chat have established new places  for people to spend time in virtual reality, and they're thriving. 

That's right. And people are doing all sorts of things together. 

Playing games, hanging out, learning new hobbies,  showing up as avatars who represent who they are,  and maybe who they wanna be. 

There are so many new things to do  beyond the limitations of the physical space that we live in. 

This social shift is happening everywhere. 

YouTube VR is a great example. 

It's one of the most popular apps on the Meta Quest 2,  and the YouTube team's working to make it even more social. 

So in the future, when you're with friends in Horizon Home,  you can watch and share YouTube videos, just like in the physical world. 

Watch videos together, share content from your favorite creators,  or experience something completely new. 

Like an underwater manta ray adventure off a private island in Southeast Asia. 

When you look at the Internet,  there's a big move towards creation and shared experiences. 

We're seeing the impulse to build and explore in VR. 

Absolutely. Some of the best experiences in Horizon Worlds right now  are hanging out with your friends in Haywood Ranch,  or recording a podcast on Rooftop 42. 

There are worlds to celebrate Lunar New Year,  to make music together,  worlds to roast marshmallows in, or just to get a party started. 

All sorts of people are building worlds like these,  from first-time creators to world-class entertainers. 

And today, we're announcing a multi-year collaboration  to bring NBCUniversal's iconic content to life  through experiences in the metaverse. 

Starting next year, Meta and NBCU will co-create experiences  around The Office, Universal Monsters,  DreamWorks, Blumhouse, Halloween Horror Nights, and so much more. 

Fans will be able to engage in these experiences in Horizon Worlds  at Universal Studios theme parks and customize their avatars. 

Last but not least, the Peacock app is coming to Quest. 

There are so many worlds out there to see. 

More than we could ever show at an event like this. 

What's more important is what's in those worlds,  and the feeling you get when you're with other people. 

That's why we're excited about building Horizon Worlds  as a next-generation social platform where the connection happens in real time. 

It always comes back to wanting to feel connected. 

And if we really want the metaverse to feel social,  we need to open these worlds and experiences to everyone. 

They can't be limited to VR. 

Yeah, the metaverse should be accessible across all kinds of screens and devices,  and you should be able to join your friends from anywhere. 

That's why we're developing Horizon Worlds on the web,  so that you can access it from a computer or any mobile device. 

If you're watching a comedy show, send the link to your friends  and they can join without a headset no matter where they are. 

It's just more fun when the gang's all together. 

Making these virtual worlds accessible through any device  takes their ability to connect people to another level. 

This will be the first way  a lot of people around the world experience a virtual world. 

For sure. And while the web doesn't give the full VR experience,  it opens it to an entirely new population of developers, creators and people. 

Absolutely. We want everyone to be able to have the most immersive experience,  but it'll be a while before there are enough headsets out there. 

It's a huge step to help people experience it for themselves. 

Especially when we think about creators. 

For people and businesses building virtual worlds,  this means your potential audience will become so much bigger. 

Right now, there's a growing metaverse economy  that only VR users can access. 

That's about to change. 

And when you see something amazing in a virtual world,  you'll be able to capture and share it, just like in the physical world. 

This is actually a place where Meta's apps will play a huge role. 

We have deep ecosystems for creators  to connect with audiences and share their work,  and virtual worlds will become another place  where great content can be made. 

We're now testing a way for you to take a video in Horizon Worlds  and easily share it straight to Instagram as a Reel,  a very early connection between Meta's apps and Horizon Worlds. 

And there'll be a lot more to come. 

We're also connecting some of the best creators on Instagram  with great builders in Horizon Worlds to see what they can make together. 

So keep your eyes on the feed for that. 

So, the ways people can experience these virtual spaces are evolving fast,  but the tools you need to actually build them also matter. 

We've got some great news for creators here too. 

This is another big expansion in what's possible. 

It used to be that you had to build everything in headset. 

Now we're seeing incredible worlds  being built by everyday users outside of VR, in Crayta,  a game and world-building platform available on Facebook. 

We're expanding the creative toolkit beyond VR too. 

You'll be able to use TypeScript, a powerful scripting language  to make more dynamic and interactive worlds. 

We're making it so you can import tri-mesh items into Horizon Worlds  and build parts of your world using 3D content creation tools  like Maya, Blender, and Adobe Substance 3D. 

These are high-quality tools that professionals use to build in 3D. 

One of the main benefits of supporting them  is the graphics quality they produce. 

It'll take a while to integrate all these tools,  but the result will be things looking a lot better. 

It's one of the most important pieces. 

We started with simple graphics  and we're doing a ton of work to meaningfully improve  how Horizon will look and feel over the next year. 

The metaverse needs to feel inspiring. 

There's some really awesome stuff coming here. 

We're working with Epic Games to bring Creative Commons licensed content  from the Sketchfab library to Horizon Worlds. 

Our ultimate goal is for the metaverse  to feel just like any other social experience, big or small. 

So the virtual spaces you build and share  don't always need to be huge worlds that are open to everyone. 

And one thing we're thinking about a lot is your home in the metaverse. 

Right. There are public spaces for everyone,  but it's just as important to think about the personal spaces that are yours. 

Your home in the metaverse should be accessible  no matter what device you're using,  should be a social space where you can invite your friends  no matter what devices they're using. 

You should feel the same level of comfort and ownership  as you do in your home in the physical world. 

That's right. And this means nobody should enter without your permission. 

You're in control of who stays and leaves,  and what's said in these spaces is personal. 

But you can also share them if you want. 

Here's what this personal space looks like right now. 

So, ideally, it's like the physical world. 

Your personal space is where you should feel most like you. 

This is all great stuff. Thanks, Vishal. 

And I can't wait to see what's next. 

The social platform of VR is still taking shape. 

At the other end of the spectrum,  you have the most established part of the ecosystem, gaming. 

Let's talk about the incredible things happening in that space. 

Here's Melissa Brown, head of Developer Relations. 

-Hi, Melissa. -Hi, Boz. 

And hi to everyone joining us for Connect. 

This part of the VR ecosystem is truly thriving. 

It feels like every week, developers ship another amazing game for Quest 2. 

Titles like Little Cities, GOLF+ or Red Matter 2,  which look beautiful and are so much fun to play. 

If you want an example of just how fast this platform is growing,  take a look at The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners  from Skydance Interactive. 

It's now surpassed $50 million in revenue on Quest alone,  nearly double its revenue from all other platforms. 

Or look at Zenith The Last City from Ramen VR. 

It took only 24 hours  for it to make its first million in revenue on the Quest Store. 

And Resident Evil 4,  from Capcom and Armature Studios, made $2 million its first day. 

Blade & Sorcery: Nomad from WarpFrog made its first million in just two days. 

A number of other devs have also done so in as little as three days. 

This kind of velocity is why I'm so optimistic  about the future for VR developers. 

To date, $1.5 billion has been spent on games and apps in the Quest Store. 

And it's hard to believe when you see what's already dropped this year,  but there's so many more still to come. 

Today we're gonna share a few of them with you. 

What are you excited about, Melissa?  How about we start with a trailer  from the latest team to join Oculus Studios. 

Your past has caught up with you. 

Why did you stop selling weapons, Tony?  -You can't change the past. -I wanna change the world. 

All systems back online. 

Look alive out there, Stark. 

The world needs you, Tony. 

The world needs Iron Man. 

Marvel's Iron Man VR has been one of those dream projects for us. 

We've been fans since it launched, and we could not be more excited  for the talented teams at Camouflaj and Endeavor One  to bring the game to Meta Quest 2 this November,  along with our partners  at Sony Interactive Entertainment and Marvel Entertainment. 

Next is the multiplayer phenomenon, Population: One,  which is evolving in a big way this December. 

With the debut of Population: One Sandbox,  a robust, user-generated map creator,  you can take the action anywhere, limited only by your imagination. 

A moon base, a Viking village, or a fight with swords in zero-G. 

If you're not a creator, no worries,  you can discover and play  through new or featured community maps with your friends. 

The team at BigBox VR is excited to bring endless replayability to Population: One. 

That looks awesome, but I'm pumped for the next title though. 

Yes. Calling all Crewmates. 

You know you've been waiting for an Among Us VR release date  ever since it was announced at the Game Awards. 

Well, wait no longer. 

InnerSloth, Robot Teddy, and Schell Games will release Among US VR for ages 13-plus  on Meta Quest 2 on November 10th,  and preorders open today. 

Soon, you'll be betraying friends from a first-person perspective. 

This next title is also fun, but in a more terrifying way. 

It's time to check the itinerary for our upcoming trip to New Orleans. 

Now, we promised folks  the next installment in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners series  would be out later this year. 

Let's take a look at Skydance Interactive's  Chapter 2: Retribution. 

Well, look at you, Tourist. 

The living gettin' more desperate. 

Guess you ain't the only one who thrives on creating hell. 

Gonna take nothing short of a miracle to survive what's coming. 

Where ever the Tourist goes, death ain't far behind. 

It's two years in the making,  and new faces, places, weapons, gear and loot await you  as you head towards a final showdown that will decide the fate of New Orleans. 

All right. And we have one more to show, right?  Right. Our friends at Skydance have also been working on something new. 

Here's your first sneak peek. 

This is only possible because of the developers on this journey with us. 

It's a testament to the things you've built  and the people you've delighted and inspired with your work. 

You continue to push the boundaries of what's possible time and again,  and you show us that there's a lot more ground to break. 

When we launched the original Quest in 2019,  we could not have imagined that just a few years later  we'd have games like Red Matter 2 and Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond  running on a mobile chipset, but you've made it happen. 

The Passthrough modes in apps showed us the early promise of mixed reality,  and we're so excited to see how you will revolutionize this space  the way that you did with VR. 

Totally. And the best experiences  also incorporate some kind of unique movement,  which brings a really different dimension compared to our other gaming platforms. 

That's been the key to fitness apps, which have turned out to be  some of the best experiences you can have in virtual reality. 

Developers have hit on the winning combination  of a physical workout and the virtual immersion of a headset  to make something completely new, and people love it. 

Come on. Lift that leg. 

Users globally return to Quest 2 for fitness every month. 

And VR fitness apps can be just as intense as a regular workout. 

They're great for when you can't get outside  or want to get in a quick session in between activities. 

Some of the stories coming out of the fitness community are just awesome. 

One of my favorites is Linda, a grandmother of seven. 

When my son came home with a Quest,  I fell in love with it the moment I put the headset on. 

When I first opened the app, for Supernatural,  the scenery is just so beautiful. 

You are just moving to the music. 

I was having fun. I was hooked. 

Dodging those lasers and feeling good. 

Moving with a purpose gave me purpose to move. 

Deliberate fitness apps enjoy remarkable retention. 

I think it's because they're fun,  and you have the support of real communities out there,  cheering each other on. 

There are a lot of VR titles that bring the burn,  such as Les Mills Bodycombat, FitXR, and Supernatural. 

And they're always getting better,  bringing on new instructors, classes and moves. 

Speaking of which,  at the end of this month, Supernatural is launching knee strikes  to better activate your core and work your lower body. 

That's right. People are going to be pumped for that one. 

Now, we've got one more fitness experience that's making the move from App Lab. 

Get your jump shot ready,  because Gym Class is coming to the Quest Store later this fall. 

-Let's go! -I'm open. 

Shoot. 

-Damn! -Let's go. 

Let's run it back. 

My jump shot is most definitely not ready, but I can't wait to try. 

In fact, I think I've tried pretty much every fitness app out there. 

And one thing you'll learn is that when you work out in VR,  you're gonna work up a sweat. 

So to help people stay active with confidence  while keeping their headsets clean,  later this month, we're releasing the Meta Quest 2 Active Pack. 

Available online in the Meta Store on October 25th. 

This is our fitness accessory bundle  with a wipeable facial interface, wrist straps,  and adjustable knuckle straps  to provide the perfect combination of comfort and control. 

People have also been building some neat fitness accessories for Quest,  like extension grips and custom handles. 

It's great to see this secondary market emerging,  and this is just the beginning. 

As part of the Made for Meta program, formerly Oculus Ready,  we're working with leading hardware makers  to bring more accessories to Quest, starting next year. 

Yes. There's more we can do  to unlock the power of the platform for fitness overall. 

This year, we shipped one of the features a lot of you were asking for:  fitness tracking on the Meta Quest companion app  and the Health app on iOS. 

We've seen how important these kinds of foundations are for developers. 

And we know fitness is a space with a ton of opportunity right now. 

So this fall, we're releasing the Fitness API Beta  for select developers. 

It lets people share real-time fitness data and unlock things,  like custom stats or new levels based on the progress they're making. 

And in case you're the kind of person who needs some external motivation,  next year, we're also releasing a new way  to share your fitness progress with selected friends,  so they can support you along the way. 

Sweet!  Do you think Real VR Fishing counts as an upper body workout?  Yeah, good luck with that. 

But it's so exciting to watch fitness find its footing on Quest. 

When you can tie physical interaction and digital objects together,  the possibilities are really endless. 

They extend way beyond fitness. This is only the first step. 

-It sure is. Thanks, Melissa. -Thanks, Boz. 

As you've seen so far, you can have a lot of fun in VR. 

You can hang out with friends, do a workout, play a game,  sometimes you can do all three at once. 

But you can also get work done. 

And while games, social and fitness are already here,  work is really the next major category of experiences  that we wanna unlock to bring VR to the next level. 

If we're talking about work, let's get my boss back in the picture. 

-Hey, Mark. -Hey!  You know, the potential here is pretty huge. 

Like a lot of companies,  we're planning for a future where work is more distributed. 

But as in-person work ramps up,  we want everyone to have the ability to feel like they're present,  even if they're not physically there. 

And there are definitely things that could improve the way  that distributed teams actually work together. 

No doubt. There are parts of being around other people  that you just can't replace with video calls. 

It's true for hanging out with friends, too. 

And it's true for work. 

Yeah. The feeling of presence that you get from VR, even today,  can already be better than video chat. 

The clearest benefit is for communication itself. 

But it's also great for creative work that's best done in a shared space. 

Companies are already discovering that VR's uniquely good for this type of stuff. 

It's amazing what's already being done. 

For example, companies are using VR to plan large-scale in-person events. 

At Logitech, they used ShapesXR, a collaborative creation app on Quest,  to explore different kinds of layouts  and different designs together, in real time. 

This is where VR just lets you do things that aren't even possible on a 2D screen. 

It's a whole new kind of creative tool. 

Puma and New Balance have been designing shoes in VR  using Gravity Sketch, one of my favorite 3D design apps on Quest 2. 

Novartis uses Nanome,  a VR molecular design and collaboration app,  in their drug-discovery workflow. 

And ITC, a part of the United Nations,  are running trainings and workshops in Arthur,  a virtual office space on Quest 2. 

You can really collaborate at a distance in a completely new way here. 

And there's a lot more that we can do  to unlock this for teams across all kinds of industries. 

We build Horizon Workrooms as a first step towards a virtual office in the metaverse. 

And it feels more like being there than any video call. 

You see more of people's body language,  and the spatial audio gives you a sense of each person's place in the room. 

You can have side conversations with the people sitting next to you  or gesture without physically being there together. 

It's hard to fully wrap your head around this until you experience it. 

We've been holding team meetings in Workrooms the last year,  and it's amazing how much better it can be. 

There's something magical about creating that feeling of being around people. 

Once you've experienced it, you know it's the future. 

We're continuing to improve the Workrooms experience. 

Starting early next year,  you'll be able to join Workrooms through Zoom, too. 

We're also introducing breakout groups,  so your team can shift from a big group presentation  into smaller discussions in the same room. 

And with sticky notes for whiteboarding,  you can have group discussions and brainstorm  in ways that you just can't do on video alone. 

We're also working on a new feature  to import and review 3D models in a workroom,  which is gonna be really helpful for design and architecture  and other kinds of creative work. 

We want this to be more than virtual meeting rooms. 

It's about the beginning of a virtual office in the metaverse. 

That's why we're launching your personal office in Workrooms today. 

So this is where you can focus and get things done. 

One of the best things about VR is that you can create environments  that go beyond what's possible in the physical world,  and that goes for productivity setups too. 

You have instant access to your perfect workspace  that's set up just how you want, no matter where you are. 

You might only have a 13-inch laptop in your physical space,  but in your virtual office, you can line up three huge monitors. 

This is great at home or at work. And even better when you're travelling. 

Eventually, the Quest could be the only monitor you'll need. 

That'll be awesome. 

We're still early in the shift to working in the metaverse,  but the way people can collaborate in Workrooms  shows that there's an opportunity for a VR headset  designed from the ground up to be great for work  as well as playing games and hanging out. 

All right, Boz. It's time, what do you think?  It's definitely time. 

-Take it from here, Mark. -All right. 

All right. 

So this is an important moment. 

Virtual reality isn't some obscure hobby anymore. 

Millions of people use it to play games, work out, collaborate, or just have fun. 

Everyone from the newest indie developers to the most established tech companies  are getting into this space. 

But for virtual reality to really reach its full potential,  we need to get to the point where the 200 million people  who buy new PCs each year for work  can do some or all of their work even better in the metaverse. 

At Meta, we're focused on building the fundamental technology  that will help bring the metaverse to life. 

Whether that's in virtual reality, augmented reality,  or the social presence layer across both. 

What if you could collaborate with colleagues  as if you were right there together, even if you were far apart?  What if you have that perfect work setup and tools to design new things  integrated right into the world around you?  What if you could overlay your work and the people you're interacting with  right on top of the physical world?  This device would help you be more present, more productive, more you. 

So, to deliver this, you'd need better quality graphics,  and tech that seamlessly works in both virtual and physical worlds. 

You can interact with people around you, be fully immersed when you want,  and flow between states effortlessly. 

You'd need something comfortable with much richer ways to communicate. 

Technology that lets you do things that aren't possible with a laptop  and go far beyond what you can do on a phone. 

And you'd need to be able to really express yourself. 

React to things naturally,  show up in a way that feels authentic to you. 

I think this is one of the most exciting technical challenges of our generation:  building technology to deliver that feeling  of really being present with people, really being in another place. 

So, we've taken everything we've learned from Quest 2,  and designed an all-new headset to do just that. 

This is Meta Quest Pro. 

Quest Pro is the first in our new line of advanced headsets,  built to expand what's possible in VR. 

It takes what people love about Quest 2  and adds a bunch of new technologies to help you do more in the metaverse. 

It's made for collaboration and creativity. 

It delivers more expression and a deeper feeling of connection  than any other technology. 

With mixed reality built in,  it lets you do things that just haven't even been possible before. 

It's all in a beautiful design that's comfortable to wear. 

So whether you're looking to work in a new way,  or if you just want the very best experience that's available today,  Quest Pro sets the standard. 

So, to get into the details, let's check in with Angela Chang,  who leads our Quest product team. 

And since this is a big day, let's go somewhere a bit special. 

This is the new Quest Pro home environment. 

When you put on your headset for the first time,  this is where you'll be. 

-Hey, Angela. -Hey, Mark. 

You get to show everyone what was in that briefcase at last year's Connect. 

Finally. I am so thrilled we get to bring Quest Pro to everyone. 

We have completely re-imagined the VR headset as a powerful device  for productivity, creative work, and multitasking. 

Quest Pro is our sleekest form factor yet. 

With a super-thin set of lenses at the front,  and our first-ever curved-cell battery at the back  to give it a perfect balance. 

Yeah, it feels great from the moment that you put it on. 

Right! We wanted to ensure a seamless transition  from the physical world to the virtual. 

So our new headset design with its open periphery  lets you see the physical room you're in. 

You can quickly jot down a note, grab something on your desk,  or just be aware of what's happening around you. 

But you can also use Quest Pro's magnetic light blockers  for a more immersive experience whenever you like. 

We've also redesigned the whole optical stack  to make it better than anything we've shipped before. 

The new pancake lenses work by folding light over several times  and let us make the display 40% thinner compared to Quest 2. 

The new lenses aren't just thinner. 

They also put more pixels in the center, giving you sharper, clearer visuals,  which makes reading text a whole lot easier. 

Yeah, and the LCD displays have 37% more pixels per inch than Quest 2. 

And thanks to our new local dimming technology,  75% more contrast, with richer and more vibrant colors  that just make VR even more engaging. 

This is also our first device to use the new Snapdragon XR2+ processor  that we worked on with Qualcomm. 

It's optimized for VR,  so Quest Pro runs at 50% more power with better thermal dissipation  which gets a significantly better performance. 

And this is the first new chip from our deep partnership with Qualcomm. 

And don't forget, the touch controllers are also new. 

Yeah, the controllers are now basically their own computers,  which is a bit ridiculous. 

We've re-engineered them to track themselves  and also work a bit more like extensions of your hands. 

Yeah, the new sensors track their positioning in 3D space  all on their own without using the headset. 

So you can get a full 360-degree range of motion. 

And they include our new TruTouch Haptics,  which give a wider and more precise range of feedback effects. 

When picked up, they feel a lot more balanced  and natural in your hands without that LED ring. 

You can even add a stylus tip on the controllers,  turning them into tools for writing or sketching. 

You can try this on the whiteboard in your workrooms,  or you just flip them around and write directly against your own physical desk. 

It's a good example of how this device unlocks entirely new things. 

Like much better collaborative and creative virtual meetings. 

Speaking of meetings, we also thought a lot about  how to help you keep the headset charged and ready to go  the moment you get an incoming call, or you just wanna get something done. 

So we're including an all-new charging dock  that fits great on your workspace  and keeps both the headset and controllers charged at the same time. 

Another key technology for enabling collaborative meetings virtually  is mixed reality,  where we have to account for both  the physical and digital elements in the environment. 

Yeah, being able to blend the world around you with the virtual world  and bring all the creative and expressive power of digital  to your physical surroundings, this is a big step forward. 

Mixed reality is going to power some of the most interesting experiences  you can have with Quest Pro. 

It's the next major step for VR,  and an important milestone in the path to building the metaverse. 

We began the journey to mixed reality when we released Presence Platform,  our family of AI-powered tools that help developers build VR experiences  that incorporate the physical world. 

We built mixed reality into our SDKs for Quest 2  to make it easy for developers to start experimenting. 

But these experiences are so compelling that you really want a device  that's designed from the ground up with them in mind. 

Absolutely. Quest Pro uses high-resolution cameras  that capture four times as many pixels as Quest 2,  and an additional RGB camera to turn passthrough into full color,  along with a depth system made to understand your environment  and work with it. 

You can see the people around you, and with scene understanding and anchoring  objects in your room can become part of the virtual experience. 

This is gonna unlock some really interesting new uses. 

And this is just the beginning for mixed reality. 

As more developers explore the capabilities in Presence Platform,  you're going to see entirely new categories of things getting built. 

Definitely. Another big part of Quest Pro is how much more expressive you can be. 

You can see here how people's avatars reflect their expressions and reactions. 

This makes your shared social experiences so much stronger. 

It's powered by our Movement SDK, our newest addition to Presence Platform. 

What're you doing?  I'm just eating toast. I'm really hungry. 

Movement SDK enables avatars to mimic expressions in real time  using Quest Pro's inward-facing cameras. 

And this is really important for that feeling of social presence. 

When we communicate,  all our non-verbal expressions and gestures  are often even more important than what we say. 

And the way we connect virtually needs to reflect that too. 

Think about the little things you pick up when you're with people. 

Like the moment that they begin to break into a smile,  or when they raise their eyebrow as someone says something interesting. 

Your avatar should be able to express all of that and more. 

Today, our avatars rely on spatial audio and immersive graphics  to help create a sense of social presence. 

But facial expressions and body language will be total game-changers  for remote meetings and virtual performances in the metaverse. 

This is another reason why Quest Pro is a big step forward for communication. 

Including for work. 

More people work in distributed teams now. 

And being able to share a space with their co-workers  and feel like you're really together is something that's still missing. 

We spoke a bit before  about how Workrooms on Quest 2 is already unique for virtual meetings. 

It's going to be even more powerful when people's avatars  can show more of their facial expressions and body language. 

Yeah, one of the challenges for distributed work  is how to bring people together to interact in a shared space. 

If a few people are in a conference room and a few more are dialing in,  the experience is just never really that great. 

So, we're building a better way  using everything Quest Pro brings to the table. 

And we call it Magic Room. 

It lets you meet in mixed reality and share the same space. 

You can use a whiteboard, bring in 3D objects. 

Everyone is present and has the same tools,  whether they're in full-VR or in mixed reality. 

We think that this will help hybrid teams collaborate. 

And we're hoping to ship this next year. 

Now, these are just some of the things that are gonna be possible with Quest Pro. 

This is a high-end device designed for work  and for people who want the best experience that we can build today. 

We're really excited to get this into your hands,  and it's available for pre-order starting today for $1,499,  and it ships on October 25th. 

Now, we built Quest Pro  to be the best device we could make for getting things done,  and our hope is to use this product to introduce some of this new technology  so we can get it into our consumer devices over the coming years. 

But what you can see here  is the start of a whole new way of working in the metaverse. 

This will go beyond VR,  because people work on all sorts of devices,  and you should be able to collaborate and feel present with anyone  no matter where they are or what device they're using. 

We've updated Workrooms  so you can join a virtual office from whatever supported device you're on  and still get some of that feeling of social presence in a shared space. 

It's also going to work with Meta's other main work products,  Workplace and Portal,  to create a unified digital office  that we think can make distributed work so much better. 

And we're not the only ones  who are optimistic about the future of work in the metaverse. 

Over the last year,  we've been working with dozens of partners to create new experiences  for people who are looking to get things done in VR and beyond. 

At Connect last year,  we spoke about the potential for creative people to work in true 3D,  and next year, we're gonna have a great option for that. 

Autodesk is updating their collaborative design review app  to take advantage of the new possibilities unlocked by the Quest Pro. 

And Adobe is also working to help people get more done in VR. 

Next year, they'll begin releasing a suite of apps  for professional 3D creators, designers and artists,  from collaborative design reviews to Substance 3D Modeler  using Quest Pro's controllers. 

And there's one more partnership that I want to highlight today  that is gonna be really important to the future of the metaverse. 

Yeah. I know you've got a special guest lined up to talk about this one,  so I'll leave you to it. Have fun. 

All right. Yeah. I'm excited for this. Thanks, Angela. 

Microsoft has been at the heart of work and computing since the earliest days  and they are one of the many companies across our industry  that are now building the future of the metaverse. 

And as Quest Pro makes new kinds of work possible in VR,  I'm really excited to be able to work with them. 

So, to talk more about this,  I'm here with Microsoft's chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella. 

Hi, Satya. 

Hi, Mark. It's great to be here with you, and congrats on the Meta Quest Pro. 

Thanks. I'm glad we can finally share this with the world. 

Now, we knew early on  that we wanted this to be a great device for getting work done,  and working with Microsoft is a big part of making that happen. 

Do you wanna share more about what we're working on?  Sure. As you said,  at Microsoft, we're incredibly excited about the metaverse,  and how digital and physical worlds are coming together  and transforming everything  from telehealth to remote maintenance to gaming,  and, of course, the way we do work. 

We are taking an approach to ensure that our software can benefit users  on all their favorite devices,  and that's why I'm so thrilled about what we're announcing today  and how we are bringing together  the power of many of our most popular productivity tools  with the new VR devices you're announcing. 

So, the main reason that we're in this space  is that we think that VR can be very powerful for social connection,  and with the Quest Pro,  we wanna bring more of that into the work context as well,  where Microsoft already has  some incredibly successful products in the market. 

-So, why don't we start there? -Absolutely, Mark. 

Microsoft Teams is the most ubiquitous advanced platform for work today,  and it's becoming essential to how hundreds of millions of people  meet, call, chat, collaborate, and do business. 

And so we're clearly going through a once-in-a-lifetime change in how we work  and every organization today  is looking for new ways to reconnect, re-energize their workforce  at home, in the office, and everywhere in between. 

That's why we are bringing  Microsoft Teams immersive meeting experience to Meta Quest  in order to give people new ways to connect with each other. 

You can connect, share, collaborate as though you were together in person. 

And, in the future, you'll be able to use other avatars including Meta avatars  in immersive experiences in Teams meetings too. 

Just think about how powerful whiteboarding or brainstorming  or even Teams meetups can be in this space. 

Another piece of this  is that we're working on enabling Horizon Workrooms for Teams. 

So people will be able to join a Teams meeting directly from Workrooms,  and we think that this kind of cross-device, cross-screen experience  will be the foundation of the virtual office of the future. 

But this goes beyond Teams. 

Another big piece of your work platform is coming to Quest, right?  That's absolutely right. We've been thinking about  how to bring the power of Microsoft 365 and Windows 365 to 3D spaces  to really help drive productivity  and enable you to create, communicate and collaborate in completely new ways. 

So, with Microsoft 365 coming to Quest,  you'll be able to interact with content from all your favorite productivity apps,  whether it's Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook,  giving you even more flexibility in how you collaborate and get work done. 

And with Windows 365 coming to Quest,  you'll have a new way to securely stream the entire Windows experience,  including all the personalized apps, content, settings, to your VR device  with the full power of Windows and Windows applications. 

So this is gonna be great  for anyone who wants to build out their virtual office on Quest Pro. 

You'll have a great Microsoft Teams experience through VR,  a way to join Teams meetings in Workrooms,  and you'll have the whole Microsoft 365 suite available, too. 

And for bigger companies who want to roll out VR devices to their employees,  we've also got some great news. 

Yes, absolutely. 

Being able to manage and secure all devices connecting to your network  is absolutely crucial for any business,  and that's just as true for a VR headset as it is for a smartphone or a laptop. 

Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Intune in combination  will support Meta Quest and Meta Quest Pro. 

This means companies that want to provision these devices  can be confident that all security and management options  they expect from PCs and mobile devices will carry over to VR. 

Now, there's one final aspect of our partnership that I wanna talk about,  and that's gaming. 

That's right, Mark. I'm really excited about gaming. 

When you step back,  one thing we have learned is how immersive experiences in gaming  can help create real community and connection. 

In fact, many people are already playing our most popular games,  like Flight Simulator and Minecraft in VR today,  and with X Cloud Gaming,  you can stream hundreds of games to any device,  allowing you to connect with gamers in all-new ways,  whether they're right next to you or sitting on the other side of the world. 

And we are partnering to bring this service to Meta Quest Store. 

You'll be able to play 2D games  with your Xbox controller projected on a massive screen on Quest. 

It's early days, but we're excited for what's to come. 

Who knows, the next time we talk,  maybe we'll be playing Flight Simulator together in VR. 

I'm down for that. 

All right. Thanks so much for joining us today, Satya,  and thanks for the partnership. 

Thank you, Mark. 

And there's another element of this relationship  that we wanna talk about today  that's gonna play a big part in how businesses begin deploying VR. 

Accenture has spent the past few years changing how they work. 

They've been rolling out new technologies, like virtual reality, to their workforce  to accelerate this shift. 

And they're helping other businesses make this change too. 

In fact, they work with three-quarters of the companies  in the Fortune Global 500,  so they have a pretty big impact on how many businesses work. 

And now, Accenture's chair and CEO Julie Sweet  is going to join me to talk more about what's coming next. 

-Hey, Julie. -Hi, Mark. 

It's great to be here. 

It's great to have you. 

Accenture is one of the world's biggest employers,  and you've been growing rapidly over the last few years. 

It's been a transformative period for us. 

We now have more than 700,000 people around the world. 

Even prior to the pandemic,  we were probably the largest global company  with a truly remote workforce,  and we saw the potential for new technology to support the way we work. 

So, in 2019, we started working with Microsoft  to imagine a virtual space where our people could get together. 

Obviously, this became even more important in 2020,  and since then, we've deployed 60,000 Quest 2 headsets,  and we have transformed our onboarding process,  welcoming over 150,000 people onto our virtual campus  that we call the Nth Floor,  which we believe is the largest enterprise use of the metaverse. 

This provides a more dynamic immersion for our new team members,  and, our research shows, a far more memorable one. 

People retain up to a third more information  when it's within an immersive experience. 

Watching what you've been doing at your scale has been impressive. 

We think working in the metaverse will let you do things  that aren't possible with distributed teams today,  and bringing together hardware, software and services is gonna be the first step. 

Absolutely, Mark. 

We believe that the metaverse will not only change how people work,  it will also profoundly change every part of every business,  reinventing how you interact with customers,  what products and services you offer,  how you make and distribute them,  and how you engage with your people,  from employee onboarding and training  to collaboration and personal productivity,  and VR will play a huge role. 

Yeah. VR has been especially useful for training,  and that's gonna get even better with mixed reality. 

We're excited to work with you on more use cases  and to talk about the next stage of our partnership. 

We're excited too. 

After what we've learned,  we know there's a huge opportunity for our clients. 

Now we'll be partnering with Meta and Microsoft  to help businesses create new experiences in the metaverse at scale. 

This is a perfect trifecta. 

The advances in Meta's visionary hardware and software,  coupled with the integration with Microsoft's market-leading technology  and Accenture's unmatched expertise, bringing the best of tech to industry  to create practical, real-world uses and unlock tangible value. 

This will be game-changing for scaling the metaverse in the enterprise. 

The future of work is starting now. 

Yeah. We want our devices to be easy for companies of all sizes  to buy, deploy and use. 

Next year, we'll launch Quest for Business,  which is currently in beta. 

It's a subscription bundle for Quest 2, and now Quest Pro,  that includes a suite of features like work accounts,  device and application management, premium support, and more. 

Quest for Business will also unlock access to integrations  like we just announced with Microsoft, as well as others in the future. 

It's gonna be priced to suit the needs of different businesses,  and we'll be sharing more details over the coming months. 

This is exactly what companies want and need  to make the metaverse and VR for work a reality. 

As one of the largest users of Microsoft technologies  and Quest 2 headsets for business,  we've seen firsthand  the impact on how they can change the way you do business,  and we're looking forward to further integrating and shaping  the many ways enterprises adopt them at scale. 

This collaboration is a very exciting opportunity for our three companies  to bring the future to life for enterprises, businesses and our customers. 

And this is just the start. 

This has the potential to accelerate the future of work  for so many enterprises. 

Thanks so much for joining us, Julie. 

Thanks, Mark. 

We've spoken a lot about how Quest Pro opens up new possibilities for work. 

But that's far from the only thing it's going to enable. 

And we can't wait to see what kind of experiences  developers will be able to build with mixed reality. 

Take Beat Saber. 

It's already one of the most popular VR games of all time. 

And now imagine what it will be like when you can turn wherever you are  into a Beat Saber arena. 

So the Beat Games team put together a little demo. 

Look out, Beat Saber!  Now, this gives you a glimpse of what's possible. 

And because we want everyone to be able to create things for the metaverse,  not just professional developers,  we're working on creator tools as well. 

Hundreds of thousands of creators already use Spark AR  to build AR effects on Facebook and Instagram. 

They have years of experience blending the physical and digital worlds,  which is a core part of the metaverse. 

So starting today, we're giving creators the ability  to build interactive 3D objects in Spark Studio  and begin testing them in mixed reality with the Spark Player. 

With virtual worlds becoming accessible across all your devices,  with Quest Pro bringing mixed reality to the world,  and with the future of work emerging in the metaverse,  we have a lot to build in the coming years. 

Now, to find out what's next on the roadmap,  we're gonna need to shift gears. 

So if you're joining us in VR, hold tight and I'll see you in a sec. 

Hey. 

We're here together in Horizon,  and this is the first time that we've done this at Connect. 

And this is a preview of our next generation of avatars. 

They're so much more expressive and detailed than anything else today,  and they have this unique Meta style to them. 

Now, it's a lot of work to build AI  to autogenerate these for billions of people  and then give everyone the tools to make sure  that your avatar feels like your own. 

But I'm excited to start rolling these out  later next year, on phones, VR headsets, and more. 

So, while I'm excited for this next generation of avatars,  we are also seeing a lot of developers and partners  building great experiences with our current generation of avatars as well. 

So now let's meet up with Aigerim who leads our avatars work,  to discuss the latest on our avatars and what you can do with them. 

-Hey, Aigerim. -Hey, Mark. 

Hey, wanna update everyone on the latest with the avatars ecosystem?  Yes, we have so many exciting things going on. 

Our first milestone  is making it so you could use your avatar across all of our apps and in VR. 

The new Meta Accounts Center,  it already allows you to have one or multiple avatars. 

So you could show up however you want. 

And if you have one avatar you really like,  you can now easily sync it across all the apps and in Horizon. 

Nice. All right, let's talk a bit more about the integrations  that we're building for the apps. 

You can already see avatars showing up in stickers, stories, comments and more,  across Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and in the future, WhatsApp. 

And we're working on bringing them more to life through animation  and to more places, for example Reels. 

We want you to be able to use avatars anywhere you want to express yourself. 

And we're also bringing avatars to video chat. 

That's right. Starting with Messenger and WhatsApp,  if you want, you'll be able to show up as an avatar. 

It's going to add a whole new dimension to video chat. 

Yeah, I think avatars and video chat are gonna be like this third mode  between video on and video off. 

You can still express yourself and react, but you're not on camera. 

So, it's kind of like a better camera-off mode. 

Yeah, we're working on this now, and expect to launch it next year. 

And in virtual reality, there's already head and hand position,  so your avatar moves and sounds like you. 

And now we wanna bring that to phones and computers too,  using cameras and microphones. 

So, if you wink at your phone, your avatar on your phone should wink too. 

Making your avatar work across all kinds of devices and apps  truly creates continuity across experiences. 

You should be able to take your avatar and virtual goods everywhere that you go. 

Absolutely. There are already dozens of apps on Quest  that support Meta avatars. 

And we're building partnerships,  so you can use your avatar across lots of different experiences. 

And in fact, today, we're announcing partnership with Zoom,  that will let you show up as your avatar on Zoom calls. 

So, to make this easier,  we're extending the Meta Avatar's SDK to iOS and Android on Unity. 

And I'm also excited to share that the Meta Avatar SDK  will soon support Unreal Engine and virtual reality too. 

These expansions will make it a lot easier  for more developers to start building Meta avatars into your apps. 

Yes, we're testing this with a small group of partners now,  and plan to release this more broadly next year. 

So, right now, a lot of developers are building their own avatar system  since the tools that you can import are pretty basic. 

Over the next year or two,  as all these new tools and styles become available,  and as the hundreds of people that we have working on avatars  keep improving the system,  I just think that more and more developers  are going to find building with our interoperable avatars stack  will offer a much simpler and better experience. 

And speaking of making it easy to add new styles,  we have some news about the Avatars Store, too. 

The Avatars Store is launching in VR later this year. 

So, you'll be able to shop for virtual clothing in VR!  We're joining with a bunch of partners across sports, entertainment, and more. 

You're gonna start seeing a lot more of your favorite familiar brands. 

These integrations, they're gonna be pretty awesome. 

And later this year, keep a look out in the Avatars Store  for new outfit releases from Netflix. 

Giving people more ways to express themselves through digital clothing  will help kick-start the marketplace for interoperable digital goods. 

So, if you buy a sweater, you'd wanna wear that on your avatar  no matter what app you're using. 

So we're gonna see more creators, developers and brands  experimenting with this. 

And beyond clothes,  we're also improving the core avatars themselves  across the whole family of apps. 

Mark, I'm sure you've seen the new face shapes  we introduced earlier this year. 

As well as cochlear implants, over-the-ear hearing aids and wheelchairs. 

Yeah, and we have some big improvements to representation coming too. 

With more options for body types,  as well as shaders for more realistic skin. 

There's one more feature coming soon  that's probably the most requested feature on our road map. 

Legs. 

Legs! I know you've been waiting for this. 

I think everyone has been waiting for this. 

But, seriously, legs are hard. 

Which is why other virtual reality systems don't have them, either. 

And the perceptual science behind this is actually quite interesting. 

We discovered early on  that your brain is a lot more willing to accept a rendering of a part of you  as long as it's accurately positioned. 

But if it's rendered in the wrong place, it feels terrible,  and it breaks the whole feeling of presence and immersion. 

So, that's why we started off showing just controllers,  but not your whole arms. 

Yeah, if the system showed my elbow in the wrong place,  it would feel like my arm was broken. 

Yeah, but as we got better at tracking and predicting your arm position,  then we can add your whole arms  to the avatar stack in addition to your hands. 

And now we're doing the same with legs. 

And now we're getting ready to launch the first full-body avatars. 

Yeah, so, with standalone virtual reality headsets,  understanding your leg position is surprisingly difficult  because of occlusion. 

So if your legs are under a desk, or if your arms block your view of them,  then your headset can't see them directly and you need to build an AI model  to predict your whole body position. 

And this really needs to work reliably, so it just feels natural. 

Yeah, so, that's why we're gonna bring legs to Horizon first. 

We're gonna keep bringing them to more and more experiences over time  as we improve our technology stack. 

And we will bring new tech that lets developers implement  custom avatar actions and behaviors for the experiences they want to create. 

That's coming next year, too. 

And I'm looking forward to seeing what all of you will build. 

All right, thanks for stopping by, Aigerim. 

We've a lot to do. See you in the next review. 

Great. See ya. 

Avatars are gonna be central to how we express ourselves in the future. 

And this is a unique opportunity to build some really interesting things  at the intersection of expression, social interaction, creation and commerce. 

With Horizon Worlds and Workrooms, we're already starting to see  early glimpses of what this social metaverse could look like. 

Check out some of the things that are happening already. 

Creators are building social spaces, like the Soapstone Comedy Club,  the Stu, a hip hop recording studio,  NOPE World,  and a whole lot more. 

And as this social-first platform takes shape,  we're thinking about the virtual space that you will call home. 

When you first put on your VR headset or open Horizon,  you're gonna land in your own personal space. 

Somewhere that you can design and decorate and make your own,  invite your friends to hang out, get work done,  or just relax and use it to jump into any experience. 

All right, now let's take a look at what's next. 

With Quest Pro, our next-generation avatars and Horizon Worlds,  we're making good progress  on two of the most powerful windows into the metaverse. 

Virtual reality for full immersion,  and mixed reality for blending physical and virtual worlds. 

Looking towards the future,  the last set of experiences that need to get built  is augmented reality,  where you see digital objects overlay perfectly on the world around you. 

The fundamental technologies across the stack  to build full-augmented-reality glasses are coming together. 

Waveguide displays, sensors, silicon, AI, and more. 

I've seen a lot of these pieces working in the lab, and it's awesome. 

I think that this is some of the most amazing technology in existence right now. 

It's gonna be neat to see it come together into products over the next few years. 

Other pieces are coming along nicely, too, like our Spark software  that's already being used by creators to build AR experiences  that more than 750 million people engage with monthly in our mobile apps. 

And developers are gonna be able to start building  a lot more mixed-reality experiences on the path to full-AR using Quest Pro. 

Now, one thing that makes AR so hard  is that the form factor needs to be something that you'd wear outside,  around other people and, potentially, all day long. 

And that's different from where VR is today. 

Glasses need to be relatively small to look and feel good. 

So, we're approaching building augmented-reality glasses  from two different angles. 

The first is  building on all the technology we need for full-AR glasses,  and then working to fit it into the best glasses form factor we can. 

The second approach is starting with the ideal form factor  and working to fit more and more technology into it over time. 

And we took our first step forward on this last year  when we partnered with Essilor Luxottica to introduce Ray-Ban Stories. 

Ray-Ban Stories are our first-ever smart glasses. 

You can take photos and videos, share them to Instagram,  listen to music, or even take phone calls. 

But what sets them apart  is the design of these glasses that people already know and love. 

Now, this is just the first product to come from our partnership. 

And to talk more about what's coming, let's catch up with Rocco Basilico,  the Chief Wearables Officer at Essilor Luxottica. 

Hey, Rocco, great to see you again. 

Great to be back, Mark. 

Ray-Ban Stories had a fantastic first year. 

With Meta, we introduced some beautiful pairs of glasses with superpowers. 

And we keep launching new software updates to make the product even better. 

Soon, we are launching the ability to call or text on Ray-Ban Stories  with your existing phone number. 

So you can stay connected and stay in the moment, hands-free. 

We are also rolling out Spotify Tap playback  so you can listen to music on your glasses more easily. 

You can tap and hold on the side of your glasses to play Spotify. 

And if you want to hear something else, tap and hold again,  and Spotify will recommend something new. 

-And you also keep launching new designs. -Yes. 

We have added more style, lens and color combinations. 

Including transition lenses for all-day use  that go from clear to dark in seconds. 

So, this is the first product that we built together,  but we've got bigger plans. Wanna give a hint of where we're going?  Well, we are working together on a new set of glasses  to build a portal to the metaverse. 

It's an exciting multi-year project. 

And this is different from what we're already doing with Project Nazare. 

We view our partnership with Meta as a deep long-term partnership. 

Together, we will help bring  augmented reality to life with beautiful design. 

All right, thanks, Rocco. I'm really grateful for our partnership. 

A lot of the underlying technology for the future of computing  is still in the research phase. 

But we have working demos of this stuff, and it's pretty mind-blowing. 

And it wouldn't be Connect if we didn't share some of that with you. 

So let's start with one of the technologies  that we think is gonna be really important for the future. 

I've talked a lot about neural interfaces and our research on EMG before,  and we now have a working demo that lets you control an AR or VR device  with motor neuron signals. 

I'll not show you the headset this year,  but here's what I'm seeing while I'm using this. 

Just the gentlest flick of my thumb to check my messages  and with another quick movement, I can answer while I'm on the move. 

Or I can even take a photo. 

Now the goal here is to make these interfaces faster,  higher bandwidth, and a lot more natural. 

All right. So to close us out today,  let's check in with Michael to talk about our progress here  -and what still needs to get solved. Hey! -Hi, Mark. 

The future that all that new technology is creating  is one that will change the world  every bit as much as personal computing and mobile did. 

Yeah, and a big part of this is gonna be building next-generation interfaces. 

Like the neural interface EMG demo that we just showed. 

That's right. 

And there's an important lesson to be learned from personal computing. 

What we saw there was that the interface to the digital world,  the Graphical User Interface,  was what defined the user experience and opened up new possibilities. 

Our challenge is that GUIs just can't do the job  for glasses that have to work in all the situations we encounter  in the course of the day, so we need something radically new. 

In addition to new interfaces, we're also going to need a whole layer  that can sense and reconstruct the world around you,  understand the context in which you're using these devices,  and also help you get things done,  when you have these digital capabilities mixed with the physical world. 

-And this is really the job for AI. -Yes. 

In the long run, I'm confident that the most powerful way  to interact with the metaverse will be through personalized AI. 

Thanks to the glasses, AI will be able to understand your context  and will use that to help you proactively. 

Ideally, so seamlessly that you won't even notice. 

Now, combine that with electromyography technology, EMG,  which uses the neuro-muscular signals through your wrists directly as inputs,  and you have an intuitive, almost frictionless interface. 

This will be the first truly human-centered interface. 

And a big part of that  is that you won't have to learn how to use a rigid control scheme. 

Instead, the machine will learn and adapt to you as you use it. 

In neuroscience, this concept is known as co-adaptation. 

And what that means to all of us is that  by combining machine learning with neuroscience,  this future interface will work with each user  to adapt to their unique differences  in physiologies, sizes, preferences and expectations. 

Here, you can see two people playing an arcade game with EMG. 

They're both using the same gesture,  but because no two people are exactly alike,  they do it in slightly different ways. 

The neural interface continuously gets better over time  at understanding each person. 

The potential for co-adaptation extends beyond normal gestures  into some truly novel territory. 

Here, the algorithm is learning in real time  how to respond to the EMG signals the person is sending  with only the slightest of hand movements. 

The system is recognizing the actions the person has decided to perform  by decoding those signals at their wrist  and translating them into digital commands. 

And now, the person is able to communicate their intended actions to the computer  with almost no hand movement. 

This is a genuine transformation  in the way we interact with the digital world. 

Yeah, this has the potential to redefine a lot of how we interact with computers. 

And if you think about the step change in capability  that came with the mouse and Graphical User Interface,  this should be another big step beyond that  in speed and the bandwidth of our interfaces. 

This is one of the wildest projects, I think, that we're working on. 

These future interfaces will be truly life-changing. 

An example that I love is  Carnegie Mellon University's NavCog project  to help the visually impaired. 

Our Project Aria research glasses can 3D-map their surroundings,  so CMU used them to build phone maps  that enabled the visually impaired to navigate more confidently indoors  where GPS signals often don't reach. 

Here's a look at how this works. 

For years, I've gotten around with the assistance of my guide dog, Flirt. 

I love and depend on her dearly,  but a guide dog is not a navigation system. 

Juice bar is on your right. 

NavCog can change that. 

There is a ramp. 140 feet. 

What we're working on is a turn-by-turn assistive technology  that we developed at Carnegie Mellon University. 

We teamed up with Reality Labs and Meta,  and started using their Project Aria research glasses  to build a 3D map of the Pittsburgh International Airport. 

The maps help the user figure out where they are  without having to rely so heavily on external beacons. 

This is huge, because it makes NavCog scalable. 

NavCog gives me the freedom to go where I need to go. 

You have arrived. 

It really helps me regain my independence. 

All right. So, this is a great example of how,  when you're building systems that are oriented around people,  how we experience the world,  it opens up all of these new avenues to help us do more. 

Because it turns out that the things that you need to do to model reality,  like being able to sense the world,  and understand the context for how it all fits together,  that's the same thing you need to augment human capabilities, too. 

Macular degeneration runs in my family. 

So I may actually be using the fruits of this research myself one day. 

Helping the hearing impaired is also on the horizon. 

And that's another thing that runs in my family. 

I didn't set out to build glasses for my future self,  but it does seem to be working out that way. 

There's so much more that the interface of the future will bring us. 

Like the ability to right-click on a real object  to find out information about it,  control our devices without looking down,  and get proactive assistance from a personalized digital assistant. 

We will one day be using this interface to do everything we do now. 

But more easily,  plus a ton of things we haven't even thought of  that we'll consider indispensable. 

Yeah, so one example is being able to build and manipulate complex 3D objects,  and this is central to the metaverse. 

But it's hard to build 3D objects from scratch. 

It's much quicker and easier to just use physical objects as templates. 

Today, there's no easy way to do that. 

So we're researching two different technologies  to solve that problem. 

The first one uses machine learning-based neural radiance fields  to reconstruct the appearance of a 3D object  from multiple 2D images taken at different angles. 

This method can reproduce even the finest details of an object. 

All right. So, we're gonna scan Teddy,  not just because he's super-cute,  but also because he's got the right dimensions and level of detail  for what we're trying to replicate. 

So here's how it works: we just scan him on the phone... 

and that's about it. 

This takes some processing time,  so we got it ready beforehand so we could check it out. 

The level of detail in this is impressive. 

You can kinda see all these fine elements of it,  like each individual strand of its hair. 

And you can even see through the semi-transparent bowtie he has on. 

It's pretty awesome. 

Yeah, it's just a beautiful reproduction. 

The second technology captures geometry and appearance directly. 

So, here we used a different technique called inverse rendering  to scan an object into its digital twin  and then bring into augmented and virtual reality. 

And it responds dynamically to the lighting in the VR environment,  and when you throw it in the air, against a wall,  or bounce it off the ground,  it'll respond the same way that the physical object would. 

So we use Spark to put the virtual object next to the physical one here. 

They're almost identical. 

Neither approach is real time yet, and each has its limitations. 

But the goal is to let you quickly and easily make physical objects  a part of your virtual world. 

Of course, the most interesting virtual elements of all  are other people, in the form of avatars. 

And as you mentioned earlier, avatars will come in a variety of styles,  but one thing I know for sure  is that avatars that are photorealistic representations of users  would be the most powerful remote connection technology  that has ever existed. 

They would create genuine social presence in the sense of making you feel,  at a gut level, like you are literally with other people,  and would span personal distances in a way video conferencing can only dream of. 

This is one reason we believe the metaverse is going to be  by far the most social computing platform. 

It's fundamentally about people and about being with people. 

We're gonna be able to teleport anywhere and be with anyone,  no matter how far apart we physically are. 

And I think that this is the ultimate goal of social technology. 

And you're right. 

One of the keys that will unlock this is avatars that truly represent us. 

So, last year, we showed you early progress on full-body Codec Avatars. 

And what sets Codec Avatars apart from other high-quality avatars  that you might have seen, is that they're fully drivable. 

So that means that they're not limited to preset movements or expressions. 

This is an avatar that you can control live in real time  with no need to render or export video. 

So it can photo-realistically reproduce individual people  rather than just generic characters that artists design. 

Of course, securing your avatar will be critical. 

We're already thinking about things like encryption  and tying your avatar to an authenticated account. 

But beyond privacy,  we've continued to develop this technology. 

For example, it's now possible to change your virtual outfit whenever you want. 

Cool as that is, it's the face,  expressions, eye contact, slight motions, that is most quintessentially human. 

We're putting a lot of research into making the faces of our Codec Avatars  truer to our physical forms. 

Mark, do you wanna show us the latest of Codec faces?  Yeah, definitely. 

You know, last year during our visit to the lab at Redmond,  I saw the second generation of our Codec Avatars. 

So these second-generation avatars are pretty amazing. 

They're much closer to how you might wanna show up  in a setting like a work meeting. 

So, I made one of myself. 

Now, we've made them a lot more expressive. 

Not just simple things like looking left, right, up, down. 

But also the non-verbal cues that we rely on  to communicate with each other and understand tone. 

Things like raising an eyebrow, squinting, widening my eyes,  or scrunching my nose. 

These avatars are way better at capturing those subtleties  that define physical interactions. 

They're just much more natural. 

And being able to control the lighting on the avatars  adds another dimension of life to them. 

When we move the light around, you can see how it interacts with my hair,  reflects on my skin, and you can even see it in my eyes. 

Now, these are awesome,  but they also take a really long time to generate. 

So we're working on something that's a lot quicker for people to use. 

And we made a lot of progress with what we call instant avatars. 

So here's Autumn from our RL labs team  doing a demo of the process to show exactly what goes into this. 

These are much quicker and easier to make. 

All you need for the scan is your phone,  and you can pretty much do this anywhere with reasonable lighting. 

She scans her face from different angles  with a neutral expression for about 30 seconds,  then spends another minute and a half making a variety of expressions. 

And that's really all there is to it. 

Hi, guys. My 3D avatar is ready for use in my phone or VR. 

It just took a few hours to generate after my scan,  and the team's working on making that processing a whole lot faster. 

Now, obviously, this isn't the same quality as you just saw,  with the 2.0 Codec Avatars. 

However, they're still pretty expressive and realistic. 

We're putting a whole lot of effort into developing these,  so anyone can easily create  their own high-quality realistic avatar for themselves. 

All right. Thanks, Autumn. 

This is some of the most inspiring stuff that I feel like we get to work on. 

So it's great that we're at the stage now  where the research foundations that we've laid over the past years  are really starting to show up in real products. 

For sure. There's still plenty left to do,  and everything we've just talked about is still research. 

It may or may not end up in our products,  but it's definitely a glimpse of where technology's headed. 

Thanks, Mark. 

All right. So, that just about wraps Connect 2022. 

Last year, we laid out our vision for the future. 

And this year, we're taking another big step  on the path to get there. 

What we shared today is the first move  towards the 200 million people who get new PCs every year  one day working in the metaverse. 

We're still early in this journey. 

The products that we showed today  are part of a roadmap that extends far into the future. 

Quest for consumers, Quest Pro for work,  and people who want the best VR experience that we can build today,  and Ray-Ban Stories for smart glasses. 

And there are gonna be more releases in each of these lines  in the years to come,  as well as whole new categories of products  built for augmented reality and neural interfaces. 

This is an exciting time to be working on the metaverse. 

We're investing in this because we believe that there's massive potential here. 

And we wanna bring the best engineers, developers, artists,  and like-minded partners together to help build this future. 

We're at the beginning of a new era in computing. 

Major shifts like this don't come around that often. 

But we're starting to see one now,  and it's gonna shape how people connect for decades to come. 

I wanna discuss two values that we believe in deeply  that you can expect us to bring to this work. 

The first is putting people at the center of everything we build. 

We believe that the next computing platform  has the potential to be more social and more human  than anything that's come before, if we build it correctly. 

That's why so much of what we've shown today  is about improving how we connect and interact. 

Building out Horizon as social infrastructure for the metaverse,  prioritizing hardware that supports facial expressions and eye contact,  creating new ways for people to meet and collaborate at work,  designing new avatars and photorealistic avatars. 

These are things that you prioritize  if you're focused on helping people connect. 

So, while the underlying technology is pretty inspiring by itself,  the reason that we're in this  is because it can bring you closer to other people. 

This is our company's DNA. 

It's in every service we build. 

Your friends on Facebook, your followers on Instagram,  your family on WhatsApp. 

It's always about people. 

And that's how we hope to build the metaverse too. 

The second value is openness. 

In every generation of computing,  there's been an open ecosystem and a closed ecosystem. 

There was Windows and Mac,  then Android and iOS. 

Closed ecosystems focus on tight control and integration  to create unique experiences and lock-in. 

Although most of that value ends up flowing to the platform over time. 

Open ecosystems create value and grow through many companies working together,  developers having lots of choices,  and ultimately, more people sharing in the upside of what is created. 

An interesting thing about the history of computing  is that different models have won out in different periods. 

It's not predetermined which will be the primary one this time around. 

But as someone who has experience building under both models,  I strongly believe that an open, interoperable metaverse  built by many different developers and companies  is going to be better for everyone. 

As you can see today,  from all of the different partners that we're working with,  I see our role as not just helping to build this open ecosystem,  but making sure that the open ecosystem wins out  in this next generation of the Internet. 

Philosophically, we've always been about building in the open. 

We'd rather show the progress we're making  and talk about the challenges we're still working through. 

We don't have all the answers, because some of them just don't exist yet. 

We're all on this journey together. 

So if you care about technology and how it can help us connect,  if you wanna help build a world where we can all experience things  that haven't been possible before,  if you believe in a future where we can all do more  and be more present,  then I hope that you're just as excited as I am. 

So thank you for being a part of this journey,  and we'll see you again soon.