Meta Platforms on Tuesday unveiled its Quest Pro virtual and mixed reality headsets, marking a milestone for chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s break into the high-end market for expanded reality computing devices.
The headset, introduced at META’s annual Connect conference, will hit shelves on October 25 for a price of $1,500, and will offer consumers a way to interact with virtual creations overlaid over a full-color view of the physical world around them.
The launch is a significant step for Zuckerberg, who last year announced plans for the device — then called Project Cambria — at the same time he changed his company name from Facebook to Meta to help the social media giant become a one-stop destination. To indicate its intention to convert to the company. which operates a shared immersive computing experience called the metaverse.
Zuckerberg has poured billions of dollars into that vision since then. Reality Labs, responsible for bringing the Metaverse to life, lost $10.2 billion in 2021 and has lost nearly $6 billion so far this year.
In a speech at the event, recorded partly in video and partly as an avatar, Zuckerberg said he hopes the blending of the physical and digital worlds will lead to new uses for computing.
“You’re going to see the creation of completely new categories of things,” he said.
The Quest Pro features several upgrades over Meta’s existing Quest 2 headset, which heavily dominates the consumer virtual reality market.
Most amazingly, it has external cameras that capture 3D livestreams of the wearer’s surrounding physical environment, creating mixed-reality features like the ability to hang a virtual painting on a real-world wall or bounce a virtual ball. Enables innovation. a real table.
Quest 2, in contrast, offers a more rudimentary grayscale version of this technology, called passthrough.
The Quest Pro feels lighter and thinner than its predecessors, distributing its weight more evenly while reducing overall bulk, with thinner pancake lenses and a relocated battery that sits on the back of the headset.
For fully immersive virtual reality, Meta has added tracking sensors to the Quest Pro that can replicate users’ eye movements and facial expressions, giving the sense that avatars are making eye contact.
pitching productivity
MetaQuest is offering Pro as a productivity tool aimed at designers, architects and other creative professionals.
In addition to offering its own Horizon Social and Workspace platforms, the company also provides virtual versions of Microsoft Corp. Work products such as Word, Outlook and Teams, a partnership Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joined Zuckerberg to announce. .
Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist whose writings about the Metaverse has praised Zuckerberg, said he views such partnerships as important because he suggests companies’ commitment to interoperability, or the idea that different systems should connect with each other.
“There is likely to be a lot of doubt in the market as to whether an interoperable and open metaverse is even possible, let alone that,” he said, noting that Microsoft and Meta compete over many products in the expanded reality space.
In a preview of Quest Pro a few days before launch, Meta gave journalists a glimpse of the type of user to its productivity pitch by demonstrating an app like Tribe XR, a virtual training environment for DJs.
The Tribe XR is already available in virtual reality, but a demonstration showed how passthrough technology could enable DJs to use the app to play real-world gigs, as it means they can play their virtual reality party at a real party. can see the devices.
Meta plans to sell the Quest Pro across consumer channels next year, along with adding enterprise-level capabilities such as mobile device management, authentication and premium support services, executives said at the press event.
He said the device is intended to complement rather than replace the entry-level Quest 2, which sells for $399.99.
For now, that means Quest Pro stops short of enabling complex business applications. Meta has suggested it wants to support its Metaverse technology.
The company is still working on a mixed reality experience for its Horizon Workroom app that will feature an avatar of a person with other users in a real-world conference room it’s calling the Magic Room.
Zuckerberg said it also plans to add legs to its avatars, which currently display waist-high.
Still, the Quest Pro’s price point puts it well under the cost of existing enterprise-focused devices like Microsoft’s HoloLens 2, which was released for commercial use in 2019 and is already available on operating rooms and factory floors. is present on.
An entry-level Hololens 2 sells for $3,500.
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