Meta Founder Demonstrates Meta Vision at TED 2016
Meta Company, the Portola Valley, California startup behind the kickstarter-funded Meta Spaceglasses project in summer 2013 which then grew into a well-funded technology provider, was invited to the TED 2016 stage. The company’s founder, Meron Gribetz, spent his 20 minutes to demonstrate the next generation product, the Meta Vision.
The latest device, slated to officially launch on March 2, 2016, builds upon the company’s Meta 1 developer kit. In the 15-month interval between the two generations of hardware, the company has grown rapidly (it has raised $23M from Silicon Valley luminaries) and also acquired a lot of insights for the Meta Vision from its 1000 developer-strong global Meta Pioneers ecosystem.
From the videos the company has released, Meta Vision is neither 100% Augmented Reality nor Virtual Reality. The focus of the new product is on a gesture-based platform for interaction with screens and holographically projected objects. Similar to Microsoft when describing and showing the features of HoloLens and use cases, Meta focuses on adding 3D holographic objects without obstructing the real world. Another way that it is similar to HoloLens is the form factor: the Meta Vision uses a band and strap system over the skull to reduce the device’s weight on the user’s ears and nose. Unlike HoloLens, the Meta Vision display is currently tethered (i.e., uses a cable) to accessories and, thus, not likely to serve in many use cases where the user must move about freely.
The system, which runs interactive, graphic-rich applications generated with the Unity game engine, also permits the user to view information on screens. The screen shots published on this Business Insider blog post show access to Gmail and Spotify. Explaining that this could be valuable for information workers, Gribetz is repeatedly quoted stating that engineers at Meta will be able to replace their desktop and laptop computers with the Meta Vision glasses for their day-to-day work.