Meta Debuts Quest Pro Headset Featuring Mixed Reality Capabilities
After over a year of teases, Meta has finally debuted the Meta Quest Pro, a new high-end virtual reality (VR) headset that features mixed reality capabilities.
The Quest Pro touts a number of upgrades over the existing Quest 2, including a more capable processor, slightly improved displays, a new design for the body and controllers, inward-facing cameras for eye and face tracking and colour video feed for mixed reality applications.
Pre-orders are now open, with the headset hitting stores on 25 October for US$1,499.99. The package includes the headset itself, Meta Quest Touch Pro controllers, stylus tips, partial light blockers and a charging dock.
The Quest Pro is essentially a beefier version of the Quest 2, which will continue to be sold for US$399. The former is supposedly being marketed towards businesses and VR enthusiasts, while the latter is for gamers and fitness buffs.
Apart from the changes in the design, there are two key features that differentiate the Quest Pro from the Quest 2: the inward-facing cameras and the full-colour passthrough video.
The inward-facing cameras track your eyes and face, allowing your Meta avatars to copy your facial expressions and reactions. Your avatars can, for instance, now smile, wink or raise an eyebrow as you do. What's more, the cameras enable foveated rendering, which is a technique that leverages eye tracking to reduce the rendering workload in your peripheral vision.
Meanwhile, the passthrough video powers holographic augmented reality to create new experiences. You can, for example, pin a virtual picture to an actual wall and see how it looks like from your headset before you do it in-person. This is possible thanks to how the outward-facing cameras capture high-resolution images of your surroundings and renders them to your headset.
Under the hood, the Quest Pro houses the new Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Plus chipset, along with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. The XR2 Plus, as Meta claims, delivers up to 50% more power than the Quest 2's XR2. The LCD panels feature the same 1800x1920 pixels per eye of the Quest 2, but Meta says the Quest Pro boasts up to 75% more contrast and 10% more pixels per degree of sight.
As for the new controllers, they ditch the tracking rings in favour of new built-in cameras that track movement, similar to the headset. You also won't need AA batteries for them anymore as they now ship with rechargeable packs inside.
Meta at its Connect 2022 conference also detailed future updates to its metaverse-esque video game Horizon Worlds and announced the launch of the Avatar Store later this year.
Meta at its Connect 2022 conference debuted the Meta Quest Pro, a new high-end virtual reality (VR) headset that features mixed reality capabilities.
The Quest Pro touts a number of upgrades over the existing Quest 2, including a more capable processor, inward-facing cameras for eye and face tracking and colour video feed for mixed reality applications, among others.
Pre-orders are now open, with the headset hitting store shelves on 25 October for US$1,499.99.
Meta will continue to sell the Quest 2 for US$399.