Recently, Meta was exposed to cancel a 300-person VR/AR operating system project, but Meta's two executives have issued articles denying this news.
It is understood that The Information recently reported that Meta suspended the development of a project called XROS in November, which is named after XR, which is a general term for AR/VR. This allows Meta to use only the Android-based operating system found in Quest VR devices, which makes It dependent on another company's operating system while providing convenience.
According to the article, the development of XROS began in 2017, and more than 300 people worked for it. It's clearly synonymous with the "real operating system" that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CTO Andrew Bosworth have publicly discussed earlier.
In June 2021, Zuckerberg described it as a "microkernel-based operating system" that would give Meta tight control over every layer of its hardware, saying it would be implemented in the near future. There is currently no indication that the cancellation of the XROS project will have an impact on Meta's production of new AR headsets, but this could clearly mean that they will still have to use the Android-based operating system.
Development of XROS reportedly stopped shortly after mark Lucovsky, a former Microsoft team leader, announced his resignation. Lucovsky told The Information that he left because former Meta employee Frances Haugen publicly denounced Meta's harmful business practices in a 60-minute interview, and because the company would grow around metaversity.
Zuckerberg, however, sees VR and AR as a way to get rid of Apple and Google's dominance in the mobile space. Meta is reportedly still interested in building its own operating system, possibly including a revived version of XROS.
A statement emailed to The Verge by Meta Communications Manager Sheeva Slovan refuted The Information's report. "We will not stop or scale back the business of building real-world operating systems, the team continues to make progress, and we will continue to invest in building future computing platforms, such as AR headsets and wearables, to help realize our metaversic vision," the statement read. ”
Gabriel Aul, vice president of Meta, also posted a denial of the report: "In the process of building @RealityLabs operating system, we are pursuing multiple technical directions, we are still developing a highly specialized operating system for our devices, and we are making a lot of investments, and we are growing this team, not shrinking it." ”