Quest 3’s Augments feature is being rebuilt from scratch as the original approach “wasn’t good enough”, Meta’s CTO has confirmed.
Augments were announced at Meta Connect 2023 by Mark Zuckerberg when launching Quest 3. In a library screenshot, you can see a clock, music player and portals to your favorite games. Examples shown in a library screenshot included a clock, music player, and portals to your favorite games.
Videos leaked in January revealed that Augments can even have interactive elements, such as a playable miniature pinball game, an interactive calendar, and a pet-like virtual plant that can be watered.
But in an ask-me-anything (AMA) session on Instagram yesterday, Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth said the originally planned technical architecture “wasn’t good enough”, so Meta went “back to the drawing” board to rebuild it “from scratch”.
Here’s Bosworth’s full statement:
“The thing we announced at Connect, we were playing with it in January and we decided it wasn’t good enough. The system was held back due to limitations in the architecture. It felt more like a “toy” and didn’t have the power we thought it would need to fulfill its promise. I think we made the right decision. It did reset the clock. This is taking longer than expected. That’s exactly what happened. The leaked videos of January showed that the original architecture for Augments would have used Meta Spark Studio. This application is available for Windows, macOS, and iOS and can be used to create AR experiences and filters for Instagram, Facebook and Messenger. But it seems this wasn’t suitable to deliver compelling Augments. But it seems this wasn’t suitable to deliver compelling Augments.
The “much deeper set of changes to the system” Bosworth refers to is likely referencing the “reworking” UI infrastructure he [do a] back in February.
Meta’s goal for Augments is likely to deliver on mixed reality apps that can run alongside each other and 2D apps like Apple Vision Pro apps can in the visionOS Shared Space. Currently 3D apps on Quest are fully siloed and cannot run alongside others, and this severely limits the platform’s multitasking potential.
The new Augments approach could be related to the new “spatial app framework”
. It is not clear what it’s going to be. The company did say that “developers can use their existing tools to port mobile apps from Meta Horizon OS to Meta Horizon OS, or create new mixed reality applications”.