Meta advisor (and former Oculus chief technology officer) John Carmack has expressed his frustration over the state of the company's virtual reality capabilities.
As reported by Ars Technica, Carmack said during the Meta Connect 2022 showcase that "there's a bunch that I'm grumpy about".
He was delivering his usual presentation but as a metaverse avatar, a far cry from his hopes made last year that he'd be speaking to thousands of people in a virtual space. "This here, this isn't really what I meant," he said. "Me being an avatar on-screen on a video for you is basically the same thing as being on a video."
Speaking of avatars, Carmack appeared frustrated with Meta's current direction of their design, commenting that the ridicule the company faced after it shared Mark Zuckerberg's Mii-looking avatar in August (above) has led them to push for incredibly realistic designs instead.
"We've got a finite amount of resources on our headsets here, and cloud rendering won't save us in many cases," he said. "I definitely lean towards optimizing for quantity and not quality."
Carmack's also not a fan of the Quest Pro VR headset - the official version of Project Cambria that will retail for $1,499 - as he said he's always advocated for accessible technology, "and Quest Pro is definitely not that".
Even Meta's current headset, the Quest 2, brings him frustration though, as Carmack doesn't believe it provides a good user experience due to its frequent updates. These either require it to be always switched on and plugged in or force users into what he called "update hell" every time they go to use the headset.
"The basic usability of Quest really does need to get better," he said. "Our app start-up times are slow, our transitions are glitchy. We need to make it a whole lot better: much, much faster to get into."
The rest of Meta Connect 2022 was a little more upbeat, as the company announced a ton of new games coming to its Meta Quest 2 headset including Among Us VR and Iron Man VR this November.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/john-carmack-on-meta-vr-theres-a-bunch-that-im-grumpy-about