Meta unveils its much-hyped Quest Pro mixed reality headset
Meta Platforms unveiled its Quest Pro virtual and mixed reality headset on Tuesday, marking a milestone for Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg's break into the higher-end market for extended reality computing devices.
The new headset, unveiled at Meta's annual Connect conference, will hit shelves on Oct 25 at a price of $1,500 and will offer consumers a way to interact with virtual creations overlaid onto a full-colour view of the physical world around them.
The launch is an important step for Zuckerberg, who last year announced plans for the device - then called Project Cambria - at the same time that he changed his company's name from Facebook to Meta to signal his intention to refocus the social media giant into a company that operates a shared immersive computing experience known as the metaverse.
Zuckerberg has since poured billions of dollars into that vision. Reality Labs, the Meta unit responsible for bringing the metaverse to life, lost $10.2 billion in 2021 and has lost nearly $6 billion so far this year.
The Quest Pro features several upgrades over Meta's existing Quest 2 headset, which overwhelmingly dominates the consumer virtual reality market.
Most strikingly, it has outward-facing cameras that capture a sort of 3D Livestream of the physical environment around a wearer, enabling mixed-reality novelties like the ability to hang a virtual painting on a real-world wall or have a virtual ball bounce off a real table.
The Quest 2, by contrast, offers a more rudimentary grayscale version of this technology, called passthrough.
The Quest Pro is lighter and slimmer than its predecessors, with thin pancake lenses and a relocated battery that sits at the back of the headset, distributing its weight more evenly while reducing overall bulk.
For fully immersive virtual reality, Meta has added tracking sensors to the Quest Pro that can replicate users' eye movements and facial expressions, creating a sense that avatars are making eye contact.
