Meta Metaverse Weekly: A $150M Foray Onto Campuses

Meta appears to be planning to unveil the high-end virtual reality headset next month.

While it isn’t exactly official, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is planning to release its “next device” in October. Speaking on Joe Rogan’s podcast last month, he described several “big features” including the ability to make eye contact in virtual reality and face tracking, so that your avatar is “not just this still thing, but if you smile or if you frown or if you pout, or whatever your expression is, have that translate in real time to your avatar.”

Which are the technologies Zuckerberg revealed in June in a video that the new Oculus VR headset will feature, along with being “light and thinner than anything that exists.”

See also: Zuckerberg Shows off Meta’s VR Progress

Given the trouble that Zuckerberg’s metaverse plans have suffered since posting an expressionless “selfie” of his avatar featuring graphic quality 10 to 15 years out of date for video games, there’s a little more riding on this reveal than there might have been.

The “dead-eyed” image has been used by quite a few commentators to say Meta won’t be able to build the metaverse, so wowing them with truly next-generation technology would be a big win for the company and the CEO.

What it won’t be is cheap. Estimates generally favor a $1,000-plus price tag.

Into the Metaversity

Meanwhile, a Meta-funded metaverse education project will be rolled out at 10 U.S. colleges this fall as part of a $150 million project to explore and popularize immersive, in-metaverse classes and education.

Meta is funding of construction of 10 virtual replica campuses and providing Oculus 2 VR headsets according to VIctoryXR, the firm that is building them out on its EngageVR platform.

Calling the participating schools “metaverse pioneers,” VictoryXR CEO Steve Grubbs said,  “Remote learning is growing, and these schools have decided to look for something better than a Zoom class.”

One of the first “metaversities” in the program is Morehouse College, which used metaverse classrooms for an inorganic chemistry class taught by professor Muhsinah Morris last year.

“We were able to take things that were flat, two-dimensional images and put them in a three-dimensional space where students were able to then analyze them in a way that they never had been able to do before,” Morris said, according to Protocol. “A lot of my students came away from this saying, ‘Wow, if I had this my first year, I would have been a better chemist, I would have been a little bit stronger as a student.”

Morehouse offered nine VR classes, ranging from journalism to biology to history, to 400 students and plans to expand it to 15 courses.

Suggesting that students will be able to do anything from practicing surgery to taking an astronomy class in the middle of a virtual planetarium, Grubbs added “unlike the real world, they will be able to shrink to the size of Ant-Man and tour the human body.”

Promising better retention of information, he added, “just like the real world, students will be able to break into small groups and work on projects together, no matter their physical distance.”

The firm cited research from accounting giant PwC that showing that 40% of learners were more confident about being able to apply their knowledge and 150% more engaged than real-world-only counterparts.

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