Zuckerberg swings for the fences with Meta Quest Pro VR/AR headset

In Meta's ongoing quest to make the nebulous "metaverse" a virtual reality, it has already released two of the most amazing all-in-one, untethered VR headsets we've ever seen. Now, meet the Meta Quest Pro, a next-level headset with no expense spared.

Unconfirmed rumors are rife that Apple, the world's richest company, is planning a full-frontal assault on the consumer VR/AR market with a set of extremely expensive Apple Glasses expected to surface in 2023. But for the moment, the space belongs to one man, who has more or less tried to Leeroy Jenkins virtual reality into the lounge rooms of the unwashed masses. Mark Zuckerberg, through his acquisition of Oculus, has had impressive standalone VR headsets on the market for several years now, alongside a growing – if still somewhat underwhelming – library of content and experiences.

The Meta (nee Oculus) Quest 2 is still a super-neat all-in-one untethered VR experience on a budget, even after recent price hikes. But Zuckerberg has pushed most of his Facebook nest egg into the center of the table, reorienting and even renaming the company around his metaverse aspirations. Meta has been working tirelessly to maintain its position at the tip of the spear, as evidenced by all the VR headset prototypes it showed off earlier this year.

And now, it's released its next product: the Meta Quest Pro. At nearly four times the price of the Quest 2, this thing incorporates many of the innovations we saw on those prototypes back in June. The "holocake" pancake optics system makes a huge difference to the overall size of the headset, making it slimmer and sleeker than ever before. The Quest Pro isn't much bigger than a set of ski goggles, although the back strap is bulkier, as that's where the battery pack now lives to keep the thing balanced on your noggin.

Meta says the visuals are notably sharper, clearer and more colorful, with a 37% increase in pixel density resulting in 1800 x 1920 (3.5-megapixel) displays for each eye. The field of view is reportedly substantially wider both vertically and horizontally, at 106° H x 96° V, up from the Quest 2's ~89° H x 93° V, and that'll make it a considerably more immersive headset.

The external cameras get an enormous 4X jump in resolution, because Meta is committing to making the Quest Pro a full-color, high-res augmented reality headset incorporating vision from the real world. Having felt how natural it is to walk around the house in the chunky, black and white camera vision delivered by the Quest and Quest 2, I have no doubt this will work beautifully. The new headset also leaves your outer visual periphery open to the outside world, which will help stop you from standing on your dog's tail as you saber some serious beat. You can block this off with a magnetic snap-on screen if Rover's asking for trouble.

The cameras also point back at you; one new system will track your eye movement to enable foveated rendering, which will render things toward the center of your vision with higher accuracy, and drop off toward the periphery to cut down on processing power without making a noticeable visual difference. Another will track your facial expressions with high accuracy, so your metaverse avatar can be much more animated and lifelike. These features will be turned off by default – after all, the amount of highly personal information that can be derived from your eye movements is absolutely staggering. Meta swears it has no interest in using this or your facial images against you, and the data for these features, when switched on, will be processed locally on the headset, deleted straight away and never sent in to the company or any other third party.

In order to run all this upgraded gear, the Quest 2 gets a processor upgrade in the form of the new Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+, which promises to deal with heat better, while delivering more than 50% more processing power. RAM is bumped up to 12 GB, and onboard storage to 256 GB. Even the hand controllers get an upgrade as well; they're notably chunkier, with their own on-board Snapdragon processors and independent visual systems so they can track themselves in 3D space regardless of which way you're looking. That's if you're using them; the Quest 2 is already capable of some incredibly impressive hand-tracking for controller-free use.

As you can see in the video above, Meta is pushing hard to have the Quest Pro used in collaborative business and productivity applications, and its advanced AR capabilities will certainly bring the idea of virtual desktop screens closer to reality, since you'll be able to see your real surroundings, and even the keys on a real keyboard as you work. But it'll also play anything that'll run on a Quest 2.

Meta says the regular Quest series headsets aren't going anywhere, and will remain the company's consumer-level line, while the Pro headsets will give early adopters access to new features that'll eventually filter down to the cheaper gear if people use them enough.

At US$1,499, it's a pretty hefty investment in what are still the early days of VR/AR, but it looks like a pretty huge upgrade. Either way, rumor has it Apple's going to charge even more, and that would certainly appear to be the Apple way. The Meta Quest Pro will be available from October 25. Check out a video below.

Source: Meta