Meta Dissolves Team Of “Hundreds” Of Employees Working On An In-House AR/VR Operating System

We’re not quite sure Meta understands the whole point of pivoting into the “metaverse” business means.

That’s because the artist formerly known as Facebook has officially dissolved its team developing a new augmented reality and virtual reality operating system, according to a report from The Information on Friday. 

There were more than 300 employees formerly working on the project, three people with knowledge of the situation said. Its intentions were to vertically integrate all of the necessities Meta would use to forge forward in the world of AR/VR. 

The company had been working on an operating system that it was developing from scratch, called XROS, that would have been used in its VR headsets and the company’s forthcoming AR glasses, the report said. 

The Information had previously reported that the project “had been underway for several years” and that the project’s disbanding “marked a setback for the company’s attempt to own the underlying software behind its Oculus VR headset and future augmented or mixed reality devices”.

Meta claimed back in January that it did not plan on stopping work on developing operating systems internally. But if there was any remaining doubt, the disbanding of the team working on XROS seems to formally mark the end of Meta’s internal efforts – at least for the time being.  

Currently, Meta uses an open-source version of Android to help power its Oculus Quest VR devices. And it looks like, for now, the company may still be reliant on Google’s operating system. 

Going forward, Meta plans to continue to modify an open source version of Android that Google originally developed for smartphones. This modified OS is referred to internally at Meta as VROS.