SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Meron Gribetz, CEO and founder of Augmented Reality (AR) pioneer Meta, introduced today at Augmented World Expo (AWE) a new AR operating environment: Meta WorkspaceTM. Gribetz unveiled and demonstrated the Workspace during his keynote address, explaining the origins of the platform and walking the audience through some of its key features.
Gribetz demonstrated on-stage a few hallmarks of the Meta Workspace, which was created using Meta’s Spatial Design Guidelines:
- AirgrabTM: reach out and grab it. Airgrab is the only thing one needs to learn to work in Meta AR, which is the beauty of this medium
- Affordance-based user interface (UI): the Meta Workspace “launcher” is more physical than a traditional computing environment. “Shelves” give the brain depth cues to work with when storing and retrieving content. The UI is made up of three key things: 2D content, 3D content and tools
- Spatial content layouts: place virtual “monitors” – as many as one wants – throughout the space, moving and placing them wherever it’s useful for the worker
“Our customers want to do more than chase digital critters and monsters: 80 percent of them are coming from industry, only 5 percent entertainment,” Gribetz elaborated. “They want to take their work to new heights. Design products in life-sized 3D, view holographic multiple monitors to free their traders and engineers from their screens, visualize data in ways that are far more relatable. To enable all of this, we decided our top priority was going to be creating the most intuitive AR experience possible, and gear it toward getting real world work done in ways never achievable before.”
The Meta Workspace was inspired in part by feedback gleaned from Meta 1 Developer Kit customers. Workspace delivers on what customers said they wanted:
- Holographic multi-monitor environment: take current 2D workflow from Windows and browsers and spatialize it any way they like
- Flexible 3D content: photorealistic, immersive, available in a huge range of formats
- Finally, and most importantly, a totally natural way of interacting with all of it, consistently, without a manual or a steep learning curve
In December 2016 Meta began shipping to select individual and enterprise developers its Meta 2 Development Kit, which delivers a totally immersive experience unlike any other AR product to date. Meta 2 enables people to use their hands to interact with holograms so they can touch, grab, create, and share digital content. The technology holds promise in application to numerous markets, including product and building design, education, workplace productivity, manufacturing, and medicine. The company anticipates mass shipping its product in summer 2017. To order a Meta 2 Development Kit, visit buy.metavision.com.
About Meta
Born in NYC and raised in Silicon Valley, Meta has been defining the field of AR since the company’s inception in 2012. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Meta was selected by Y Combinator (YC13) for seed funding. Meta entered the marketplace with the first see-through glasses that allowed wearers to move and manipulate 3D content intuitively, using natural hand interactions. With the introduction of the groundbreaking Meta 2 product at TED 2016, Meta is once again redefining the market and delivering a new generation of Natural Machines™ that will become a healthy, vital extension of who we are. For more information visit www.metavision.com.
