Facebook: Almost 10,000 employees work on VR and AR

Those are big numbers: Almost a fifth of the workforce is working on the computer platforms of the future. We are talking about Facebook. Hardly any other company is investing so much in VR and AR.

According to tech leakers from The Information, almost 10,000 Facebook employees are currently developing VR and AR devices. At the end of 2020, the company said it employed more than 58,000 full-time professionals. This means that around 17 per cent of Facebook employees are working on XR technologies.

It is not known how much money flows into the research and development of hardware and software. However, the revenue is likely to be greatly disproportionate to the investments. Revenue from virtual reality accounted for around three per cent of Facebook's total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020. The remaining 97 per cent is attributable to the traditional advertising business.

A new computer platform will conquer the world

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, defends the big XR bet to investors every quarter, emphasising that VR and AR are a top priority. Zuckerberg recently announced that the "Occulus Quest 2", which belongs to the Facebook Group, will soon be the first VR headset to become a mass product. Zuckerberg estimates that 10 million users on a single platform are needed for the breakthrough. The Facebook CEO sees a new computer platform on the horizon and wants to bring it under his control at all costs. The aim is to break out of the dominant smartphone ecosystems of Google and Apple.

Facebook is working on these XR projects

To achieve this goal, Facebook, Facebook Reality Labs, which is responsible for XR, and its research department FRL Research are working on a wide range of projects that encompass hardware and software development and cover a broad spectrum. Some projects, such as the development of slim but powerful AR glasses, are scheduled to run for five to ten years.

The following products and research projects, among others, are well known:

• the VR glasses Oculus Quest,
• Game development by first-party studios (Beat Games, Ready at Dawn, Sanzaru Games),
• the Facebook Metaverse Horizon,
• research into next-gen VR technology (see Half-Dome),
• the smartphone AR platform SparkAR
• the AR-compatible video chat devices Portal,
• the AR research project Project Aria,
• smart Facebook glasses in cooperation with Ray Ban, which will be released in 2021,
• advanced AR glasses with the code name Orion,
• a smartwatch that is due to be released in 2022 and could offer a neural interface and haptic simulation,
• haptic gloves for VR and AR,
• a Facebook Assistant similar to Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa,
• an operating system specifically for VR and AR devices,
• a chip specially developed for AR glasses and
• Live Maps, a 3D mapping service for the AR cloud infrastructure.

The length of the list shows the huge potential that is still somewhat neglected.

The fact that Facebook is planning for the long term is demonstrated by the construction of an office complex and campus specifically for employees of Facebook Reality Labs. The construction project cost half a billion US dollars and offers more than 70,000 square metres of space for around 4,000 employees. The complex is located in Burlingame, close to the Facebook headquarters.

Source: Mixed / RoadtoVR