The Information reports that Meta, formerly Facebook, has stopped production of a custom operating system expected to power its upcoming virtual and augmented reality sets, although the exact rationale and future plans are still unclear; He claimed that the project, named XROS, named after XR, an umbrella term for AR / VR (Virtual Reality), was suspended in November.
If this development were true, it would mean that Meta would depend on the Android-based operating system used in Quest (formerly Oculus) VR devices, and hence another company. However, Meta denied this news by The Information in an email to The Verge.
“We are not stopping our reality OS creation operations”
XROS, which started to be developed with a team of more than 300 people in 2017; apparently it also means the same as the “reality operating system” that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CTO Andrew Bosworth mentioned earlier. In June 2021, Zuckerberg told Meta about his plans to create a “microkernel-based operating system” that would give tight control over every layer of its hardware.
The Informaiton reported that development of XROS was allegedly halted shortly after team leader Mark Lucovsky, formerly from Microsoft, announced that he was leaving to work on a similar AR OS project at Google. Speaking to The Information, Lucovsky noted that former Facebook employee Frances Haugen left the company because the company began to adopt a metaverse-focused approach, in addition to accusations made about harmful commercial practices.
However, Meta officially denied The Information’s report in a statement emailed to The Verge by communications manager Sheeva Slovan. “We are not stopping or downsizing our reality OS creation operations,” said Slovan, “The team continues to move forward and we continue to invest in future computing platforms such as AR glasses and wearables to help realize our metaverse vision.”
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