John Carmack, legendary programmer and developer of innovative game engines for groundbreaking video games, has commented on the prospects of Meta Quest Pro’s success in the Mixed Reality space.
Carmack recently attended the virtual conference Meta Connect 2022 as a virtual avatar. In his typically refreshing way, he didn’t mince his words and spoke openly about how he sees the current progress. Watch the video here.
Too Expensive And Missing Value Proposition Of Mixed Reality
From John Carmack’s point of view, the Meta Quest Pro is too expensive. To advance the metaverse, it needs a mass-market device at a much lower price. Note: In the US the Meta Quest Pro costs $1,500 and even €1,800 in Europe.
However, an even stronger criticism is that John Carmack does not yet see any added value from Mixed Reality. This puts Carmack’s opinion in stark contrast to that of Microsoft CEO Nadella, who aligns Mixed Reality as one of the three very big pillars of the company.
And even though Microsoft is struggling with the U.S. military on its biggest Mixed Reality project (see tweet), I, too, see Augmented and Mixed Reality as a door opener for the Metaverse.
„The devices would have brought us death“
— Homo Digitalis (@DigitalisHomo) October 13, 2022
Microsoft HoloLens for US Military failed in four out of six evaluation scenarios#MixedReality #HoloLens #AR pic.twitter.com/gVMmtL5F6K
The Case For Mixed Reality
Nevertheless, John Carmack’s openness is noteworthy, as he is still Consulting CTO for Reality Labs / Oculus under the Meta umbrella. He also found some praising words about it in the discussion. The comfort of the Quest Pro is significantly improved, as well as the performance and image quality.
And in the essential point he is off the mark from my point of view. As already mentioned, I see Mixed Reality as a door opener for the metaverse. What is true is that killer use cases are not yet widely available.
But here’s an example from my imagination: training of unskilled personnel.
It is becoming more and more the trend for large companies such as Amazon to cover peak periods with temporary, often unskilled workers. For example, Amazon hires 100,000 employees over the pre-Christmas period.
In an increasingly automated and digitalized working world, however, complexity is also on the rise. Mixed reality brings with it completely new possibilities for training, for example, which companies are sure to find very advantageous.
How do they rate mixed reality? Feel free to share your opinion here in the comments or on Twitter.
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