By Keita Funakawa
What a year this has been! If 2020 - 2021 were the pandemic lockdown years and 2022 was the transition year, 2023 definitely felt like the first “normal” year when it came to lockdowns, travel, and other things we took for granted before the lockdowns in 2020. With the national emergency for COVID-19 ending in April, this was the first year that I was able to look back at the pandemic and think that it was a “past” event.
2023: The first full year of MR and LLMs
The changing landscape of XR:
This was also the first full year in which a prosumer-grade passthrough mixed reality headset, the Quest Pro, was commercially sold. At Nanome, we were excited to participate in the launch with Meta. Although, admittedly, press reviews of the device were mixed, it marked a key transition year from purely VR-focused to Mixed Reality. With the introduction of the first consumer-graded Mixed Reality headset with the Meta Quest 3 and the seemingly opposite reaction from the press (excellent reviews), mixed reality is here to stay.
Of course, it’s impossible to mention mixed reality and 2023 without the announcement of the Apple Vision Pro. Apple, the largest company ever to exist, is getting into the XR space in a serious way. I’m thrilled when the device arrives in users' hands in 2024.
As a large language model…
2023 also marked the first full year in which large language models such as chatGPT and Stable Diffusion were readily accessible to anyone. At Nanome, we’ve always been passionate about building the ultimate interface for science and have been huge believers that AI will help make this happen (hence the nanome.ai domain name since 2015). We’ve always had a few R&D projects that we’ve experimented with, and one of them evolved into MARA. If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out our landing page and webinar!
Looking forward to 2024
At Nanome, we’re looking forward to three main things in 2024:
1) Early Access Testing for Nanome 2.0
(Concept Design)
In the past two years, we’ve been hard at work on Nanome 2.0. We have an exciting vision for Nanome 2.0, and we can’t wait to get this into more users for feedback and testing. Let us know if you’d like to participate in the early access testing.
2) Launch of Apple Vision Pro
Whenever there’s a groundbreaking new headset, we get excited about how we can delight our users with the latest tech available in these headsets. Whether it’s eye-tracking-based input, seamless integration with other Apple devices and the rest of the Apple ecosystem, or incredibly high-resolution displays, we’re thrilled that Apple is finally entering the XR industry. This is the moment that the entire XR industry has been waiting for, and it’s happening in 2024!!
3) Rolling out MARA to more users
We’re currently in early alpha testing with select users for MARA. We aim to add many features and prepare MARA for a broader audience in 2024. With advances in LLMs showing no signs of slowing down, we’re thrilled about what’s in store for MARA in 2024!
Of course, it’s not just these three things that excite us for 2024; it's the fact that all three are coming in 2024, and the Nanome experience will be completely redefined with the combination of these three things that are coming together. It’s always been a part of our vision to bring real-life JARVIS to actual scientists, and 2024 feels like a pivotal year to bring all of this to life. Thank you to our users, our team, and our community. We appreciate your continued trust in our company and look forward to realizing our mission of pushing humanity forward with more scientific breakthroughs.