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Mystery company buys Meta's augmented reality tech
After a promising start, AR startup Meta's assets have been sold to an unknown buyer, reports TechCrunch and other sites. Meta fell on hard times in September after a promised $20 million investment from a Chinese company fell through over trade tensions between the US and China. The company has promised that its current products, mainly its latest Meta 2 AR headset, will continue to be supported.
A closer look at the Meta 2 AR headset
We were impressed with the Meta 2 augmented reality headset last year, even though we were just looking at prototype hardware. Now, the company is shipping out the final version of the Meta 2 to developers, which includes some useful upgrades. Most importantly, it now sports memory foam around the headset to make it easier to wear for hours at a time.
Meta's new AR headset lets you treat virtual objects like real ones
Meta's augmented reality headset originally launched on Kickstarter, but the company has managed to avoid the flash-in-the-pan fate that befalls so many crowdfunded projects. The company has learned plenty from the developer-focused Meta 1 headset and is now ready to take the wraps off a much-improved version. The Meta 2 is the company's latest augmented reality headset, and it's available to pre-order now for $949. It'll ship to buyers in Q3 of this year. The most notable things about my brief time trying out the Meta 2 were that the augmented reality "objects" that popped into my field of view behaved in some ways like things in the real world. They stayed in place, so I could walk around a giant globe and see the earth from any angle I wanted; the closer I put my face to the planet, the more detail I could see. The other notable aspect of Meta 2 is that you can actually "pick up" and move these virtual objects, just as you would with real-world, physical ones.
