Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has decided to suspend the development of an internal operating system for augmented and virtual reality products, according to the information. The break has been a reality since November.
Take a break in the Meta for AR and VR
Work on the operating system has been ongoing since 2017 and has involved more than 300 Meta employees. It has not been determined what happened to them after the project was discontinued.
Current Oculus devices, such as the Quest 2, run on a modified version of Android called VROS. But Meta wants to design a new operating system from scratch to support its ambitions in augmented reality and virtual reality. The project is codenamed XROS. It’s unclear why the project was abandoned, but the company may continue to revive some aspects of the operating system at a later date.
Meta intends to focus on modifying an open source version of Android rather than developing its own operating system in the near future. The move is expected to save the group’s money and engineering resources, but it ties the augmented reality and virtual reality aspirations of Meta tightly to Google.
The move appears to be a major setback for Meta’s long-term goal of being more independent and developing its own material. In particular, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has been concerned for more than a decade about the level of control of Apple and Google over the hardware necessary to the Meta business model.
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