The big message from Meta in the Connect opening keynote was that social apps are popular in the Quest store. An interesting emphasis for a company that is pivoting from social media to VR as its main thrust. We also got announcements around VR software across the Quest line and of course, Project Cambria is officially launched and called the Meta Quest Pro.
Let's start with some of the cross-platform stuff.
The Horizon Worlds chat platform will be coming to the Web in order to build up usage among people who don't have the headset. Also, you'll be able to share from Horizon Worlds to Instagram Reels. Yay?
Horizon Workrooms for meetings will integrate Zoom starting in Early 2023. So again folks without a headset can still join a meeting and vice verse. Microsoft Teams will be doing the same thing at some point.
Microsoft 365 is also coming to Quest headsets which means you can do a slightly fuzzy version of work on Word, Excel and PowerPoint in VR. And
Xbox Cloud Gaming is coming to the Quest store. For now it's 2D games and virtually huge screens but Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hinted it might be more someday.
And if you were wondering where the Quest 2 Active Pack that was announced last year was, well, it's here. Coming out Oct. 25th. That's the pack that gives you a sweat resistant face mask and controller straps. No price yet though.
But let's get to the star of the show. The Meta Quest Pro's big advantage is comfort. It has a curved battery at the back and a comfy strap to give you good balance, even if it weighs 722 grams, a couple hundred more than the Quest 2.
The other big feature is full full color video pass through so you can see the world around you and do some fun mixed reality stuff. You can, of course, also block out light for an immersive VR experience.
The lenses are 40% thinner and can slide to adjust width between your eyes, the way the old Oculus Rift did. It has 1800 × 1920 per-eye LCD displays with a 90 HZ refresh rate. It runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ chip, with 12 GB memory, and 256 GB of storage.
The two controllers are a new design and include sensors to track your hand position without needing the headset to do it. And it can still just track your hands if you don’t want to use a controller. You can also pop an optional stylus tip on the end of a controller for writing and sketching.
The controllers now have rechargeable batteries and there's a flat charging dock for the controllers and the headset.
So you don't forget this is a pro device Meta made sure to promote the fact that Autodesk and Adobe are working on apps for Quest Pro platform. And Microsoft can among the Quest Pro in Azure Active Directory and Microsoft Intone. Meta also brought on the CEO of Accenture to talk about how they're planning to use the Quest Pro.
Here's the bad news. Meta is saying it has a 1-2 hour battery life, though it can be plugged in by USB-C. So I guess if you're using it as a big monitor replacement you can keep it plugged in.
You can preorder now for $1499, Shipping Oct. 25 And if you want, you can buy the controllers separately to use with the Quest 2, for $299.
Meta also spent some time talking about Neural Interface Hardware that uses electromyogprahy which reads the muscles in your wrists to control software. Meta is using machine learning to adapt control to each user's movements.
They also showed off using neural radiance fields to scan and turn physical objects into finely detailed virtual objects and inverse rendering to make objects that can respond dynamically to lighting and motion, like bring dropped. Finally they mentioned their realistic human avatars. In the lab they can do photorealistic 3D head and shoulders avatars with a scan from a phone.