Industry giants compete fiercely in the VR market: Meta VR, Apple MR, Microsoft hesitates, Alphabet-C withdraws.

Compared to the hot and crowded AI concept, the head-mounted display track seems particularly deserted, and Alphabet-C has terminated the company's AR project.

According to Business Insider on Tuesday, Alphabet-C terminated the augmented reality (AR) head-mounted display project codenamed Iris and turned to building an AR software platform.

Currently, the head-mounted display giants are beginning to "go their separate ways". Microsoft criticized the VR and AR markets as too small, and the XR business department was disbanded at the beginning of the year.

However, Apple and Meta are still insisting on MR. Earlier this month, Apple released its first head-mounted display "Vision Pro" and officially entered the MR track. Meta, which was once All in the Metaverse, continues to invest heavily, but has shifted its focus from the Metaverse to AI.

Alphabet-C terminates AR head-mounted display project

Alphabet-C has terminated the project to manufacture augmented reality (AR) head-mounted displays and turned to building an AR software platform.

According to Business Insider, three sources revealed that the glasses, codenamed Iris, were put on hold earlier this year due to layoffs, restructuring, and the departure of Alphabet-C's AR/VR CEO Clay Bavor.

The Verge first reported the existence of the Iris project in January 2022, stating that the device looks like a pair of ski goggles. Some Alphabet-C employees pointed out that ski goggles are actually a separate AR project, while Iris is a series of more glasses-like devices.

Since the suspension of the Iris glasses, Alphabet-C has been focusing on building an AR software platform. Employees are developing software using a prototype platform called "Betty," and some employees describe Alphabet-C's ambition as "Android for AR."

Microsoft criticizes the market size as too small

Microsoft recently criticized the XR market as too small, and the XR business department was disbanded at the beginning of the year.

Recently, Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, a subsidiary of Microsoft, pointed out in an interview that the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) markets are currently too small to support Xbox's gaming platform.

In January of this year, Microsoft disbanded its XR business departments, including HoloLens, AltSpaceVR, MRTK, and MWR, which were involved in the Metaverse. The industrial Metaverse team was also disbanded in February.

Meta Plans to Empower Metaverse with AI

Meta, which once went all-in on the metaverse, is still heavily investing in it and plans to integrate AI technology into it in the future.

Previously, Meta beat Apple to the punch by releasing the next-generation virtual reality headset, Quest 3, which uses a GPU chip and has double the processing power of Quest 2.

At a company-wide meeting, Zuckerberg shifted the focus from the metaverse to AI, outlining the company's development strategy and stating that AI technology will be integrated with products such as the metaverse and Instagram in the future.

Apple Releases Heavyweight MR Headset

In early June, Apple released its first headset, Vision Pro, at the WWDC conference, marking its official entry into the MR market.

Vision Pro supports gesture recognition, eye tracking, and other interaction methods, with a starting price of $3,499. At the same time, Apple also released a new operating system, VisionOS, at WWDC, which is designed for spatial computing and can support various applications running on Apple and ipadOS.

It is worth mentioning that, compared to the virtual world created by Meta VR, Vision Pro seeks to integrate reality and virtuality, allowing users to use it without being completely isolated from their surroundings, greatly expanding its usage scenarios.

Apple CEO Cook positioned this product as a revolutionary spatial computing device that allows users to operate apps, games, and movies on digital devices in real space, seamlessly integrating digital content with the physical world.