Links 🔗

Detecting Intrusions in Virtual Reality Patent

Wrist Tracking and Gestur Detection Device Patent

Shared Artificial Reality Environment

So Mark Zuckerberg has announced to change the name of his company, from Facebook to Meta. I bet everyone has already seen all the Meta memes by now, here's one of my favourites 👇

Very meta right! But jokes aside, whether you like it or not, think Zuck's evil or he's a God, I think that the Metaverse is inevitable. And here are three patents Facebook has filed that will give you a glimpse of this so-called Metaverse.

1. Detecting Intrusions in Virtual Reality

• If you're worried about somebody kicking your nuts while you're in the virtual world, then worry not because Facebook has already thought of it
• Facebook is filing a patent on how to detect potential hazards in their physical space when a user is wearing a headset device
• They're doing this by asking users to draw out a physical boundary so that the user can safely move when using it
• Facebook's VR system will then create virtual walls around that boundary and if an object or person enters the boundary, Facebook will alert the user of a potential safety hazard

2. Wrist Tracking and Gesture Detection Device

• In the introductory video, Facebook emphasized the importance of "realistic presence" and the difficulty of bringing out physical hands into the metaverse
• Most VR devices in the market tend to use hand controllers, which allows the users to manipulate virtual objects but these controllers end up limiting users' ability to make small gestures and give precise commands
• With this filing, Facebook is looking at wrist tracking and gesture detection by measuring the round-trip time of pulses emitted on the user's wrist. 
• In layman's terms, users can make exact gestures and angles without using a bulky controller

3. Shared Artificial Reality Environment

• Now this is interesting because Facebook hasn't mentioned anything about having multiple VR users interacting in the same room
• With this filing, multiple VR headsets in a shared space will cooperate to share data on the body positions of each of the participants and it will be used to render the positions of all of the other participants 
• A shared VR experience could work without the need for external cameras or sensors 
• In the video, Facebook said that they will be focusing on providing an inclusive environment from the start. This filing hints at Mark's ambition for an enjoyable virtual reality experience while addressing people's fear of getting shut out of the world

Here's a great thread by Shaan Puri on his thought about the Metaverse. To quote him, "Is this a good or a bad thing? Like anything, it's neither good nor bad. It's just a thing. A very different thing."

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