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Meta Quest 3 firmware leak reveals big depth mapping upgrade

August 30, 2023
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All the signs are that Meta is going to fully unveil the Meta Quest 3, and give us an on sale date, at its special event on September 27. Until then, we're learning more about the device through leaks – such as the latest one that reveals its depth mapping capabilities.

In a clip dug out of the Meta Quest 3 firmware and posted to Reddit (via user Samulia and UploadVR), we see a short animation visualizing how the depth mapping is going to work. In short, it looks pretty advanced, and way ahead of the Oculus Quest 2.

We see a detailed mesh covering all of the objects in the room, and there seems to be some kind of object identification going on here as well – the couch is labeled with a couch icon, for example, so the Meta Quest 3 clearly knows what it is.

The player avatar is then shown chasing a digital character around the room, as it jumps on and behind furniture. This is an example of mixed reality occlusion, where digital elements appear to be in the same world as physical elements, and it hints at some of the experiences that will be possible on the new headset.

Meta Quest 3 room mapping visualization found in the firmware. from r/OculusQuest

A room with a view

On the current Oculus Quest 2, you're required to manually map out a free space inside a room. You can also mark out rectangular cuboids for pieces of furniture and walls, but it takes a while – and these maps aren't fully used by developers anyway.

This looks like a much more slick and comprehensive solution, and it matches up with another clip revealed in June. Meta has made noises about the Meta Quest 3 “intelligently understanding” what's inside a room, but that's all that's been made official so far.

The depth mapping and the way that mapping is used would appear to even go beyond the latest Meta Quest Pro headset. That device does have some automatic room mapping capabilities, but it doesn't have a dedicated depth sensor inside it.

Meta has another of its Connect showcases scheduled for September 27, and all should be revealed by then. While you're waiting, you can check out the latest teaser trailer for the device, and everything we know about it so far.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

August 23, 2023
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Meta might have arrived late to the AI party, but the Facebook owner is showing no signs of giving up. This week, the social media giant unveiled yet another AI tool: this time, it’s an ‘all-in-one’ translation model capable of understanding close to 100 different languages.

The new AI model, named SeamlessMT4, was detailed in a blog post from Meta, which referenced the famed ‘universal translator’ trope prevalent in a great deal of sci-fi media; in this case, the Babel Fish from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a snippet of technology that has long remained out of reach within the bounds of fiction, but Meta considers this to be a vital step in making universal translators a reality.

SeamlessM4T is differentiated from existing translation AI tools since it uses a single large language model, as opposed to multiple models working in conjunction. Meta claims this improves the “efficiency and quality of the translation process”.

The new AI can read, write, listen, and talk – capable of parsing and producing both speech and text. While text and speech recognition covers almost 100 languages, SeamlessM4T is currently only able to generate its own speech in 36 output languages (including English). It was built on SeamlessAlign, which Meta calls “the biggest open multimodal translation dataset to date”, containing a whopping 270,000 hours of speech and text training data.

Speaking to machines

Logo Meta

(Image credit: Artapixel / Pixabay)

Meta has been going pretty hard on AI recently, producing multiple new AI models and even committing to developing its own AI chip. SeamlessM4T is the latest step in a push for language-focused AI use, following on from speech-generating AI Voicebox, which Meta (probably wisely) judged was too dangerous to release to the public right now.

SeamlessM4T (and the SeamlessAlign metadata) will be made publicly available under a research license, as part of Meta’s ongoing commitment to transparency in AI development. It’s a canny move from the tech titan, allowing it to both claim openness and fairness within the AI arena while also ensuring that it can take partial credit for future work done using its tools.

Anyone who follows my work closely will be well aware that I’ve been pretty darn critical of AI since the rise of the seemingly omnipresent ChatGPT. But, as I’ve said before, my qualms are mostly focused on the human uses of AI; I personally struggle to see the value in cramming AI into every corner of Windows, but even an AI skeptic like myself has to acknowledge the huge potential of tools such as SeamlessM4T.

I’ll be honest: despite being a writer by trade, I’m rubbish at learning other languages. That wretched Duolingo owl haunts my dreams, taunting me for my inability to properly conjugate in Spanish. But with SeamlessM4T, I’m envisaging a beautiful utopian future where I can visit any country and speak to any local in any native tongue, with their words translated in real-time by a nifty little earpiece loaded with AI tech.

I’m not crazy about the idea of needing to buy that earpiece from Mark Zuckerberg, but hey – one step at a time.

TechRadar – All the latest technology news

April 12, 2022
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Accounting materials from the Italy-based luxury fashion house were leaked online by RansomExx because the company refused to pay.
Threatpost

January 20, 2022
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The Fortune 500 integrated services company confirmed a ‘systems intrusion’ that occurred in late December and is still under investigation in an SEC filing.
Threatpost

May 27, 2020
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Arm has unveiled its next generation mobile CPU the Cortex-A78 and GPU the Mali-G78 which will be used to power the flagship smartphones of 2021.

The UK-based company provides the chip designs that Qualcomm, Huawei, Samsung and other chipmakers license and then use to to create their own customized system-on-a-chip designs that are found in high-end Android smartphones, tablets and now even laptops such as Microsoft's Surface Pro X.

The new Arm Cortex-A78 CPU will provide increased performance gains as well as greater power efficiency. According to Arm, the new CPU is its most efficient Cortex-A CPU ever designed for mobile devices. The Cortex-A78 will also be able to deliver more immersive 5G experiences as the result of a 20 percent increase in sustained performance over Cortex-A77-based devices with a 1-watt power budget.

Arm is offering free access to some of its most popular kit
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ARM’s original operating system goes open source

The performance-per-watt of the chip will make it better suited for the greater overall computing needs of foldable devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Fold and devices with multiple screens like the LG V60.

Cortex-X Custom program and Mali-G78

Arm also announced a new engagement program called the Cortex-X Custom program which will give its partners the option of having more flexibility and scalability to increase performance. This will allow its partners to develop solutions for providing the ultimate performance for specific use cases.

The Arm-Cortex-X1 is the program's first CPU as well as the most powerful Cortex CPU to date. It features a 30 percent peak performance increase over the Cortex-A77 and offers an even more competitive solution for flagship smartphones as well as large-screen devices.

Last year Arm introduced the Mali-G77 GPU based on its new Valhall architecture and the company's new Mali-G78 builds on the advancements it made to deliver a 25 percent increase in graphics performance over its predecessor. The new GPU supports up to 24 cores and will help extend the battery life of mobile devices.

Finally, based on demand from partners, Arm made the decision to introduce a new sub-premium tier of GPUs. The first GPU in this new tier is the Arm Mali-G68 which supports up to 6 cores and has all the latest features from the Mali-G78.

It will still be some time before the Arm's partners begin to release chips based on its new designs but based on the information the company released, flagship smartphones in 2021 will likely have improved battery life, graphics and 5G performance.