Oct 11 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms ( META.O ) unveiled its Quest Pro virtual and mixed reality headset on Tuesday, marking a milestone for CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s entry into the high-end computing device market of extended reality.
The headset, unveiled at Meta’s annual Connect conference, will hit shelves on October 25 for $1,500 and will offer consumers a way to interact with virtual creations overlaid on a full-color view of the physical world that surrounds them
The launch is a major step for Zuckerberg, who last year announced plans for the device – then called Project Cambria – while also changing the name of his company from Facebook to Meta to signal his intention to reorient the giant of social networks in a company. which operates a shared immersive computing experience known as the metaverse.
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Zuckerberg has invested billions of dollars in this vision. Reality Labs, the Meta unit responsible for bringing the metaverse to life, lost $10.2 billion in 2021 and nearly $6 billion so far this year.
In a speech at the event, Zuckerberg, recorded partly on video and partly as an avatar, said he hopes the blending of the physical and digital worlds will lead to new uses for computing.
“You’re going to see whole new categories of things being built,” he said.
The Quest Pro features several upgrades over Meta’s existing Quest 2 headset, which overwhelmingly dominates the consumer VR market.
Most amazingly, it has outward-facing cameras that capture a sort of live 3D feed of the physical environment around a user, enabling mixed-reality novelties like the ability to hang a painting virtual to a real-world wall or make a virtual ball bounce off a real table.
The Quest 2, on the other hand, offers a more rudimentary grayscale version of this technology, called passthrough.
The Quest Pro feels lighter and slimmer than its predecessors, with thin pancake lenses and a relocated battery that sits on 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 the feeling that the avatars are making eye contact.
PITCHING PRODUCTIVITY
Meta presents the Quest Pro as a productivity device, aimed at designers, architects and other creative professionals.
In addition to offering its own Horizon social and workspace platforms, the company has also made available virtual versions of Microsoft Corp’s ( MSFT.O ) work products such as Word, Outlook and Teams, a partnership CEO of Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, who joined Zuckerberg to announce.
Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist whose writings on the metaverse have drawn praise from Zuckerberg, said he saw such partnerships as important because they suggested the companies’ commitment to interoperability, or the idea that disparate systems should connect between them.
“There is a lot of skepticism in the market about whether an interoperable and open metaverse is possible, much less likely,” he said, noting that Microsoft and Meta compete on several products in the augmented reality space.
In a preview of Quest Pro days before its launch, Meta gave reporters a glimpse of the type of user it had in mind for its productivity pitch by showing off apps like Tribe XR, a virtual training environment for DJs .
Tribe XR is already available in virtual reality, but a demo showed how streaming technology can allow DJs to use the app to play real-world gigs, meaning they can look beyond their virtual gear to real-life attendees.
Meta plans to sell the Quest Pro in consumer channels to begin with, while adding enterprise-level capabilities such as mobile device management, authentication and premium support services next year, executives said at the press
They said the device is meant to complement rather than replace the entry-level Quest 2, which retails for $399.99.
For now, that means the Quest Pro doesn’t allow for the complex commercial applications that Meta has suggested it wants to support with its metaverse technology.
The company is still working on a mixed reality experience for its Horizon Workrooms app that would make a person’s avatar appear to be in a real-world conference room with other users, which it calls Magic Rooms.
It also plans to add legs to its avatars, which are currently displayed from the waist up, Zuckerberg said.
Still, the Quest Pro’s price puts it well below the cost of existing enterprise-focused devices like Microsoft’s Hololens 2, which was released for commercial use in 2019 and is already in operating rooms and the factories.
An entry-level Hololens 2 sells for $3,500.
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Reporting by Katie Paul in Palo Alto, California. Edited by Kenneth Li, Jonathan Oatis and Matthew Lewis
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