Roger Fingas
Apple has hired Valve and Xbox veteran Nat Brown to work on unspecified graphics technology, according to Twitter posts.
The engineer started with the company on Monday. While avoiding specifics, he proclaimed that he's "looking forward to continuing to work on my obsessions by focusing on all applications of graphics, and working with any of you using graphics on Apple platforms."
Brown was one of the first engineers assigned to Microsoft's original Xbox. His most recent stints have concentrated on VR, including Valve's now-defunct internal VR team, and advising VREAL, a streaming and discovery platform.
Apple has been concentrating mostly on the related field of AR. 2020 iPhones could include time-of-flight sensors, and the company may even be prepared to ship its rumored AR headset around the same time. That device may depend on a paired iPhone for processing.
While not always as demanding as VR, AR is still graphically intensive, not the least because it has to match surrounding environments and avoid making people motion sick. At WWDC 2019 Apple revealed ARKit 3, an update to its developer platform meant to simplify and expand the creation of AR-ready iOS apps.
Brown could be tasked with helping on ARKit, and/or bringing some version of it to the upcoming headset. Alternately he might simply be supporting non-AR frameworks like Metal.
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5 Comments
Vague. Knowing Apple, this guy may be sent to work on something he's never done before.
Eventually Apple may reveal whatever it is they’re pouring billions of R&D dollars into. Autonomous vehicles? Headset computers? Mindreading peppermint lozenges? Who knows.
I’m cautiously optimistic. Apple’s AR efforts (Apple Arcade) have underwhelmed from what I’ve seen. I’ve predicted trouble bringing an mainstream AR headset to market. My prediction is Nate Brown will we working on that challenge.
Lets face it, iPhones and iPads are ridiculously overpowered for what they’re used for. AR on an idevice screen just isn’t going to cut it. Apple needs an AR headset to make this pay off.
Don’t get me wrong, Apple has created a solid foundation for AR, but they need the headset to bring it together. I do think there is HUGE potential in AR/VR but we’re still years away. This has become a battle of the titans to make it work, Google, Apple, Microsoft... someone will develop the “next big thing”.
Valves VR team is any thing but defunct. The team is still there. They did a bunch of layoffs/fires months ago, Gabe said as much.
The just released their own VR HMD last month and SteamVR is still going strong with daily updates (in the beta branch) and they have 3 VR games in the works.
So no VR is not dead at Valve, its just getting started.