Facebook’s Vice President of Augmented and Virtual Reality, Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, made some comments related to reports that Apple is producing a VR headset, stating that it would be ‘good for consumers’ but also giving some skepticism about what the content of the headset would be.
Last week, a new report from Bloomberg indicated that Apple is working on a high-end standalone headset that is “mostly virtual reality” with some limited AR features. The report indicated that the device is still in the prototype phase but could be far more expensive than Facebook’s $299 Oculus Quest and would use the company’s latest chips and feature a “much higher-resolution” display than current headsets. You can read more here.
In his latest Instagram AMA, one user asked Bosworth what his thoughts were on the Apple VR/AR standalone headset. Here’s his full response:
“Not really, and I don’t meant to be glib about it, I’d love to have more people putting more VR headsets out there, it’s good for consumers. I’m a little skeptical if that’s really what Apple is going to do, given I don’t know where their content is going to come from, but you know, they’re great so I hope they do.
I will say, I just don’t run my team based on what competition is doing, my team will tell you that. They ask about stuff and I say listen, the number one thing that’s going to cause us to fail is us not executing well, so we try to focus on what we think we can do, and what’s out there and learn and iterate.”
Someone also asked Bosworth whether he could give any “juicy details” on the feature set of Facebook’s upcoming smart glasses, produced in partnership with Ray-Ban, to which he simply responded, “Nice try.”
In regards to a question about whether the “ideal form factor” of a VR headset might be impossible to achieve, Bosworth said he thinks it’s still “workable on some timeline” and that “candidly, right now we’re in a tight trade off between cost, weight, power, brightness, resolution, field of view, but over time we are going to continue to find ways to ease that.”
One question also asked what people who are “bearish on VR are missing or misunderstanding.” Bosworth said he wants “to go easy on people here.”
“VR hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, articles that say that are accurate right now,” he said. “We think it’s about to, we think the technology is there, but we gotta prove that, so I’m not impatient with that. We’ll get to them.”
