Enlarge / Artist's conception of Carmack's VR avatar waving goodbye to Meta.

After nearly ten years , John Carmack's time helping to guide VR hardware efforts at Meta (and at Facebook/Oculus before that) have come to a close. The id Software co-founder and Doom co-creator officially left Meta on Friday night, according to an internal company memo obtained by Insider and confirmed by the New York Times .

Carmack's departure message serves as a scathing indictment of crippling inefficiency at Meta that he said he was "offended by" and which he compared to a GPU with a measly five percent utilization rate. "We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this," he wrote. "I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy."

More personally, Carmack complained that it has been a "struggle" for him to influence Meta's overall direction and that he's "wearied of the fight." Despite his high-ranking "consulting CTO / executive advisor" title, Carmack complained that he is "evidently not persuasive enough" to change Meta's VR efforts for the better.

Enlarge / Honda started using VR in car design in 2017, which came in handy once coronavirus made collaborating in person impossible. (credit: Honda)

After March 2020, every automaker on the planet had to rethink how it leveraged technology. Everything from design and engineering to key partnerships needed to be rethought to keep businesses running. While Honda may not be the automaker you think of as pushing the automotive tech envelope, its long-time presence in Silicon Valley and its forward-thinking made it relatively early to the advanced tech-design game when the pandemic hit.

To that end, Honda has been using virtual reality design systems, and its long-time relationship with Google, to bring better products to Honda customers. We got an exclusive peek inside the VR studio and a brief look at Honda’s new "Google Built-In" experience coming to the 2023 Honda Accord, and perhaps a few hints at what could be coming for Honda owners and drivers alike.

Inside the Honda VR studio and a virtual Honda Prologue EV

Honda has built a completely digital design studio that helps designers and engineers on opposite sides of the world collaborate on future designs, including one of Honda’s first consumer battery-electric vehicles.

Enlarge / An early augmented reality demo by Apple, using a smartphone instead of a headset. (credit: Apple )

Apple's mixed-reality headset is still on track for an unveiling sometime next year, and its future operating system has a new name, according to a report published Thursday.

Bloomberg claims the name of the operating system has changed from the previously leaked "realityOS" to "xrOS." XR stands for extended reality—sometimes also called mixed reality—a commonly used catch-all term for both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), as well as experiences that combine aspects of both.

In reports and leaks to date, Apple's next upcoming headset has been said to be an XR one, not strictly a VR or AR one—though there are also rumors of an AR-focused device that would launch later. The headset is set for a launch sometime next year, though it has been delayed many times before and may be yet again.

Enlarge / The "Sword of Damocles" head-mounted display, the original augmented reality headset, circa 1968. (credit: Ivan Sutherland)

Apple is wrapping up development of its long-rumored, long-delayed mixed reality headset, and is gearing up for a launch as soon as early next year, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman's weekly newsletter.

Recent job listings posted by Apple suggest that the company is looking to fill content creation roles for the device, suggesting that the core technology is set enough that developers, producers, artists, and the like work confidently with it. That's in contrast to the product's state not that long ago , when differing opinions about the product's feature set, specs, and design led to shifting goalposts that would have been a headache for content creators.

Among those content creation roles is at least one that would focus on "the development of a 3D mixed-reality world," not dissimilar in some respects to Meta's Horizon Worlds. But while Horizon Worlds' spaces exist entirely in VR, an Apple job listing describes "connected experiences in a 3D mixed-reality world," suggesting that augmented reality may also play a part.

Enlarge / Looks comfortable... (credit: Palmer Luckey )

The idea that dying in a video game or simulation could cause your death in real life is a common trope that has appeared in dozens of fictional works in recent decades. Now, though, Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey has made the concept real.

On his personal blog, Luckey writes of a new VR headset he has designed that uses three embedded explosive charges, planted above the forehead, that can "instantly destroy the brain of the user." The lethal explosion is triggered via "a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency," Luckey writes, making it easy to set off during a "Game Over" screen.

Enlarge / Say so long to the original PSVR's glowing blue lights. (credit: PlayStation Blog )

Sony's PlayStation VR2 headset will cost $550 in the US when it launches on February 22, 2023, almost exactly two years after the headset was first announced .

The $550 package will come bundled with two tracked, handheld "PS VR2 Sense" controllers and stereo headphones, Sony announced in a blog post Wednesday morning . A $600 bundle will include the VR-exclusive Horizon Call of the Mountain .

On the surface, $550 seems like a sizable increase over the $400 asking price for the original PlayStation VR back in late 2016. But that comparison is a bit misleading. First, $400 in October of 2016 is worth the same as about $490 in today's dollars when accounting for inflation. Second, the original PlayStation VR required a tracking camera and two PlayStation Move controllers to control many games.

Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images/Getty )

Investors wiped more than $65 billion from Meta’s market capitalization on Wednesday after the Facebook owner reported another quarter of declining revenues and failed to convince investors that big bets on the metaverse and artificial intelligence were paying off.

Shares in Meta dropped 19 percent in after-hours trading as the world’s largest social media platform joined other Big Tech groups in warning that an economic slowdown was hammering its advertising businesses as brands spend less on marketing.

On top of the wider macroeconomic woes, Meta faces a confluence of challenges, including rising competition for its Instagram platform from rivals such as short-form video app TikTok and difficulties in targeting and measuring advertising because of Apple’s privacy policy changes.

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Even virtual reality's biggest boosters may hesitate at the idea of spending nearly $1,500 for the Meta Quest Pro without trying it first. Fortunately, a retail partnership means that people can try the upcoming Quest Pro at select Best Buy locations during weekend demos.

After checking out one of those demos, though, we came away largely unimpressed with our first experience. Even if the Quest Pro's new features end up justifying its massive price (and more time with a retail unit later this week should help answer that question fully), our retail demo did not put Meta's best foot forward.

Where do I go?

Upon entering Best Buy in Columbia, Maryland, on Sunday, I didn't find any signage suggesting that there was any special VR demo going on inside the store. Instead, I had to search the aisles until I found a lonely Quest display in an unloved back corner of the store, complete with a Quest 2 and Quest Pro under glass. Nearby, a demo staffer leaned on a counter playing with his phone next to a demo unit in a charging stand. When I approached, he said I was the first person all weekend who had expressed any interest in a demo (though one more came to see what it was about while I was in the headset).

Enlarge / The report discusses how Apple's upcoming headset will be different from the Meta Quest Pro pictured here. (credit: Kyle Orland )

A new report in The Information revealed some new tidbits about Apple's upcoming augmented and virtual reality headset.

Among other things, the report details features that differentiate Apple's headset from Meta's just-announced Quest Pro , which is likely to be the biggest competitor to Apple's device.

Matching prior reports, The Information's article says that the headset will look like a pair of ski goggles. It will be made of "mesh fabrics, aluminum, and glass" and it will be thinner and weigh less than the Quest Pro. The Information's sources didn't specify a weight, but the Quest Pro weighs 722 grams.