Meta's secret weapon

Good morning. Here’s what’s leading each section today 👇

  • Above the Fold: Developers worked in VR for two hours per day for an entire week

  • Headlines: Meta hopes to redefine mixed-reality experiences with its upcoming Flamera headset

  • Research: Generate high quality 3D scenes from 2D source in realtime

  • Quick Bytes: Magic Leap AR headset will ‘cease to function’

Above the fold

Read Apple’s patent for car AR screen. Zuck demos Meta’s Reality Labs latest research that turns any flat surface into a virtual keyboard with touch typing. Audi’s new Augmented Reality HUD. Augmented reality and spatial computing will be the future of retail.

Headlines

Meta is about to redefine mixed-reality experiences with its upcoming Flamera headset, which promises unprecedented realism through a groundbreaking "Light Field Passthrough" technology.

🔑 Key takeaways:

  • The Flamera headset aims to perfect "passthrough", a feature that enables the simulation of physical surroundings directly within the headset, a technology not yet fully mastered by existing headsets including Apple's Vision Pro.

  • The headset utilizes a unique "Light Field Passthrough" system, which assembles a grid of apertures between the camera lens arrays and sensors, capturing optimal light and rendering the motion and distance of objects in your surroundings more naturally.

  • Flamera was recently showcased at Siggraph 2023, where it received praise for its high-quality augmented reality passthrough, although there were concerns about its smaller field of view.

📢 Why it matters: Flamera's technology has the potential to revolutionize the mixed-reality experience, offering an enhanced level of realism and immersion. As we are on the cusp of several new mixed-reality headset releases, including Apple's Vision Pro early next year, developments from Meta's DSR team are certainly ones to keep an eye on. The Flamera could be a game-changer in the burgeoning augmented reality space, raising the bar for realistic simulation and interactive learning applications.

Research

3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering

Researchers introduce Gaussian Splatting, a method for achieving the real-time creation of high-quality 3D scenes from 2D images The method seemingly bypassing the traditional trade-off between speed and quality witnessed in previous techniques.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

  • Gaussian Splatting utilizes Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs), a machine learning application that can synthesize intricate scenes from input images in a fraction of the time and with less source material than conventional photogrammetry methods.

  • The novel method introduces three pivotal elements that enable real-time (≥ 30 fps) novel-view synthesis at 1080p resolution, delivering state-of-the-art visual quality while retaining reasonable training times.

  • The process begins with sparse points obtained during camera calibration, which then employs 3D Gaussians to maintain the beneficial properties of continuous volumetric radiance fields for scene optimization, thus avoiding unnecessary computations in empty spaces. Further advancements involve an interleaved optimization/density control of the 3D Gaussians, including optimizing anisotropic covariance for a precise scene representation, and a fast, visibility-aware rendering algorithm that facilitates real-time rendering.

📢 Why it matters: This development is a significant leap in the field of 3D rendering, offering a promising approach to achieving high-quality real-time novel-view synthesis, which has been a long-standing challenge in the industry. The advancements brought by this method can potentially revolutionize scene rendering, opening doors to more realistic and immersive virtual environments, thus being a substantial development to watch in the evolving landscape of computer graphics and digital artistry.

Tools

Wannathis

Wannathis is a 3d store that aims to help designers to save their time searching for fresh illustrations for their projects. We create high quality 3d assets with attention to style and details.

Convert3D

Convert 3D converts 3D models from a wide range of formats. No need to buy expensive software or install anything. Convert 3D converts between popular formats like FBX and OBJ, but also the lesser known formats you might have received from a coworker or supplier.

AI Reality

AI Reality uses Stable Diffusion and Open AI technologies to generate augmented reality. These models will be updated to improve their processing and understanding.

Quick bytes

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