Facebook parent Meta has opened its first physical store — in Burlingame, Calif. — to show off its hardware, such as virtual and augmented reality glasses and goggles.

The store, which is open to the public until Monday, is designed for those looking to test out Portal video-calling gadgets and Oculus virtual reality headsets as well as products like Ray-Ban Stories, Meta’s AR glasses, and sunglasses. want.

Customers must still order glasses from Ray-Ban, but they can buy other items in the store.

“It’s a pretty solid step away from social media and advertisements that are physical representations of people, elections, snooping and data, and all that stuff in a clean, classy way.”, ​​well designed, good hardware that Goes you, ah,” said Umar Akhtar, director of research at Altimeter, a technology investment firm.

Akhtar admitted that he “didn’t believe in virtual reality” until he tried it on an Oculus headset, and expects that others will feel the same way. don’t want to wear goggles and use it. able to try. Apple pioneered physical retail stores in Silicon Valley and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, hopes it will at least repeat that success.

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“The truth of it is that material things never go away and they are never going to go,” Akhtar said. “Everyone knows that even if we’re going to step into the virtual world, we’re going to need to access it with hardware.”

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