Meta is installing new tracking software on U.S.-based employees’ computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes for use in training its artificial intelligence models, part of a broad initiative to build AI agents that can perform work tasks autonomously, the company told staffers in internal memos seen by Reuters.
This is exactly why I never bought one of their headsets and why their VR division was doomed to fail. They want to do this kind of stuff with your head tracking data.
VR could have been something cool, but I’m steering clear of it…
Also, the lack of standards doesn’t help. I won’t buy a VR until they have a common standard the way that monitors do. Yes, I know it might be a very long wait.
I guess it’s not technically a standard but Steam VR runs on every client OS and streams to any VR headset money can buy over USB or network.
And, to add to this, Valve is about to launch their next gen VR headset.
VR’s major barrier is that to do good, AAA game level, VR you need a pretty beefy PC on top of an expensive headset AND a large enough room to take advantage of the roomscale stuff. That isn’t to say that there isn’t fun games that have low requirements, like Beat Saber and Superhot but for games like Half Life: Alyx you’re looking at several thousand USD in hardware.
I think VR will eventually get there, it offers experiences that you can’t get from a monitor, but right now it’s a niche hobby with a pretty limited library of good titles.
Walkabout Mini Golf from Mighty Coconut is the only VR game I play anymore. Most of the courses demonstrate that you don’t need fancy graphics if you have good aesthetics!
The newer headsets can do eye tracking/gaze estimation. Useful for some VR things (foveated rendering) but I wouldn’t trust Meta to leave the data on the headset.