Meta announced a big change for the XR industry yesterday when the company revealed it was rebranding and making Quest OS open-source. Andrew Bosworth – CTO at Meta – then held an AMA (ask me anything) event on Instagram to explain Meta’s strategy regarding this move.
Bosworth talked about how the Quest headsets, like the latest Meta Quest 3, are general purpose devices. They’re made to cater to all sorts of different VR use cases. This includes gaming, work and fitness. Even aspects like displays, weight distribution and comfort are made to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible.
Image credit — Meta
Publicizing Meta Horizon OS – which is the rebranded name of Quest OS – means other manufacturers can make specialized headsets. We’re already seeing this begin to happen. Meta has announced Asus, Lenovo and Xbox are all working on headsets that will run on Meta Horizon OS.
These headsets, Bosworth explains, will be fully compatible with Quest apps and games. Any other device in the future that runs on Horizon OS will also be compatible with Quest apps.
If you go back to Quest 1 launch, when I was onstage, I said we're not launching a device here, we're launching an ecosystem.
— Andrew Bosworth (CTO at Meta), Instagram, April 2024
And this does seem to be the case in my opinion. In my coverage of Meta making Horizon OS open-source, I mentioned how it was akin to when Android was made public. It’s still wishful thinking for now, but I really hope this move by Meta leads to a renaissance era for the XR industry.
The founder of Oculus, Palmer Luckey, says that Meta’s recent move is what Oculus set out to do when it was founded in 2012.
I always strongly believed that Oculus should endeavor to build a technology platform that powered/supported every headset, even competitors like [HTC] Vive. […] this was always the correct strategy. Hopefully it isn’t too late.
Oculus was the company that pioneered the first modern PC VR headset: the Oculus Rift DK1. The startup was quickly acquired by Meta – then known as Facebook – which kickstarted competition in the XR industry.
Though Meta is now vying for the spot of “Android of XR”, Luckey says it initially restricted Oculus from doing the same. I’m pleased to see that Meta has changed its views since then. Not only will more competition mean more candidates for our list of the best VR headsets, it’ll also mean more interest in the XR industry as a whole.
And I, for one, cannot wait for the day when VR is not a niche market anymore.
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Abdullah is an ardent believer in the future of VR, and can't wait to see what more it brings to the table as technology improves. He enjoys covering new software releases in the XR industry, as well as major news about hardware and companies focused on VR.
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