Hasta La Gadget!

“Yeah! Well of course we’re working on it,” Facebook’s head of augmented reality Ficus Kirkpatrick told me when I asked him at TechCrunch’s AR/VR event in LA if Facebook was building AR glasses. “We are building hardware products. We’re going forward on this . . . We want to see those glasses come into reality, and I think we want to play our part in helping to bring them there.”

This is the clearest confirmation we’ve received yet from Facebook about its plans for AR glasses. The product could be Facebook’s opportunity to own a mainstream computing device on which its software could run after a decade of being beholden to smartphones built, controlled and taxed by Apple and Google.

This month, Facebook launched its first self-branded gadget out of its Building 8 lab, the Portal smart display, and now it’s revving up hardware efforts. For AR, Kirkpatrick told me, “We have no product to announce right now. But we have a lot of very talented people doing really, really compelling cutting-edge research that we hope plays a part in the future of headsets.”

There’s a war brewing here. AR startups like Magic Leap and Thalmic Labs are starting to release their first headsets and glasses. Microsoft is considered a leader thanks to its early HoloLens product, while Google Glass is still being developed for the enterprise. And Apple has acquired AR hardware developers like Akonia Holographics and Vrvana to accelerate development of its own headsets.

Mark Zuckerberg said at F8 2017 that AR glasses were 5 to 7 years away

Technological progress and competition seems to have sped up Facebook’s timetable. Back in April 2017, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “We all know where we want this to get eventually, we want glasses,” but explained that “we do not have the science or technology today to build the AR glasses that we want. We may in five years, or seven years.” He explained that “We can’t build the AR product that we want today, so building VR is the path to getting to those AR glasses.” The company’s Oculus division had talked extensively about the potential of AR glasses, yet similarly characterized them as far off.

But a few months later, a Facebook patent application for AR glasses was spotted by Business Insider that detailed using “waveguide display with two-dimensional scanner” to project media onto the lenses. Cheddar’s Alex Heath reports that Facebook is working on Project Sequoia that uses projectors to display AR experiences on top of physical objects like a chess board on a table or a person’s likeness on something for teleconferencing. These indicate Facebook was moving past AR research.

Facebook AR glasses patent application

Last month, The Information spotted four Facebook job listings seeking engineers with experience building custom AR computer chips to join the Facebook Reality Lab (formerly known as Oculus research). And a week later, Oculus’ Chief Scientist Michael Abrash briefly mentioned amidst a half-hour technical keynote at the company’s VR conference that “No off the shelf display technology is good enough for AR, so we had no choice but to develop a new display system. And that system also has the potential to bring VR to a different level.”

But Kirkpatrick clarified that he sees Facebook’s AR efforts not just as a mixed reality feature of VR headsets. “I don’t think we converge to one single device . . . I don’t think we’re going to end up in a Ready Player One future where everyone is just hanging out in VR all the time,” he tells me. “I think we’re still going to have the lives that we have today where you stay at home and you have maybe an escapist, immersive experience or you use VR to transport yourself somewhere else. But I think those things like the people you connect with, the things you’re doing, the state of your apps and everything needs to be carried and portable on-the-go with you as well, and I think that’s going to look more like how we think about AR.”

Oculus Chief Scientist Michael Abrash makes predictions about the future of AR and VR at the Oculus Connect 5 conference

Oculus virtual reality headsets and Facebook augmented reality glasses could share an underlying software layer, though, which might speed up engineering efforts while making the interface more familiar for users. “I think that all this stuff will converge in some way maybe at the software level,” Kirkpatrick said.

The problem for Facebook AR is that it may run into the same privacy concerns that people had about putting a Portal camera inside their homes. While VR headsets generate a fictional world, AR must collect data about your real-world surroundings. That could raise fears about Facebook surveilling not just our homes but everything we do, and using that data to power ad targeting and content recommendations. This brand tax haunts Facebook’s every move.

Startups with a cleaner slate like Magic Leap and giants with a better track record on privacy like Apple could have an easier time getting users to put a camera on their heads. Facebook would likely need a best-in-class gadget that does much that others can’t in order to convince people it deserves to augment their reality.

You can watch our full interview with Facebook’s director of camera and head of augmented reality engineering Ficus Kirkpatrick from our TechCrunch Sessions: AR/VR event in LA:

The president urged all sides to come together, but didn’t mention his own attacks on the free press.

Super Veloce is a German company that coffee machines inspired by aviation and motorsport. Among their luxurious, functional art pieces are a series of Formula 1 V12 engine espresso machines. This one is the deluxe model called the Espresso Veloce Royale 01.

The 62 pound metal machine is inspired by the V12 engine of Formula 1 race cars from the 1990s, and is made from a variety of metals including aerospace-grade aluminum, surgical stainless steel, silver, and titanium, but what really sets this edition apart are its much pricier materials. This over-the-top espresso maker also contains real 18-carat white gold, diamonds, amethyst gems, and thermoset carbon fiber, impregnated with gold leaf.

Each of these limited-edition machines comes with four matching espresso cups that are just as luxurious as the coffee maker itself. It’s perfect for wealthy automobile and caffeine lovers. Although we don’t know the exact price right now, you know what they say: “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

[via Luxury Launches via Mike Shouts]

Tesla has revealed its Q3 2018 financial results, reporting a GAAP net income of $312 million and a non-GAAP income of $516 million. This was a “truly historic quarter” for the company, according to Tesla, which says its Model 3 was the US’s bestselling car based on revenue and fifth bestselling based on volume. Tesla experienced a GAAP Model 3 … Continue reading

Sony’s PlayStation 4 console has done very well ever since it was launched and it continues to do well, aided partly by new titles such as Marvel’s Spider-Man which may have driven people on the fence to purchase the new console. A new report from industry-tracking firm The NPD Group reveals that the PlayStation 4 was the best selling gaming console in the United States last month.

The report mentions that the new Spider-Man game was also the best-selling game in September. Sony had a bundle on offer in which the console was adorned with a limited edition Spider-Man inspired color scheme. There’s no doubt that it sold quite a few of those bundles.

“PlayStation 4 hardware achieved the highest September unit sell-through for a non plug-n-play console since the PS4 in 2014,” said NPD’s Mat Piscatella.

Sony has thus been able to extend the PS4’s lead this year even further. It’s already the best-selling console in the United States so far this year and September has been yet another good month for the console.

Microsoft’s Xbox One is doing well too. “Xbox One hardware dollar sales in September grew more than 30 percent when compared to a year ago and are now up more than 60 percent year to date,” Piscatella said.

PS4 Was The Best Selling Console In The U.S. Last Month , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.