Meta is launching its subsequent VR headset this October on the firm’s Join convention. CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement late Thursday, fittingly, in an equally surreal atmosphere: the Joe Rogan Expertise podcast on Spotify.
He mentioned that the brand new VR headset, a sequel to the favored Oculus 2, will give attention to “social presence,” with options like eye-tracking and face-tracking. Zuckerberg mentioned that the headset is designed to seize customers’ facial expressions and have them replicated on their avatars in actual time to reinforce non-verbal communication. He additionally famous that whereas Meta’s AR glasses are a couple of years away, the headset launching in October may have some combined actuality options.
Finally yr’s Join convention, Meta teased a high-end headset codenamed “Undertaking Cambria,” and going by Zuckerberg’s description, the headset launching in October is the ultimate shopper model of it. A report from Bloomberg final month famous that code in Meta’s companion iPhone app for VR headsets instructed that the upcoming headset shall be named Meta Quest Professional.
Undertaking Cambria idea photograph Picture Credit: Fb
On the Joe Rogan podcast, Zuckerberg repeatedly confused the truth that VR can”unlock” a way of being within the presence of one other particular person.
“Whenever you’re on a video name you don’t really really feel such as you’re there with the particular person. To me, what digital actuality unlocks is that it actually convinces your mind that you simply’re there [in person],” he mentioned.
Since Fb was rebranded to Meta, the corporate has been recasting the entire firm as a “metaverse” enterprise relatively than a social media one, pitching its technique as one in every of constructing a universe of a number of, digital worlds for all customers. Some could also be skeptical of the premise and the motivation behind the messaging pivot, however the firm has marched onwards and has made efforts to higher knit collectively the completely different sorts of experiences it’s creating. Horizon Worlds, for instance, is a social platform tailor-made for VR headsets accessible in choose nations. It’s been criticized for hacky graphics, nevertheless, so claims of the subsequent VR headset capturing facial expressions shall be put to check.
Meta’s announcement comes weeks after the corporate raised the worth of Oculus 2 from $299 to $399. Whereas there’s no value details about the upcoming headset, Zuckerberg described it as a “fairly huge step above Oculus 2,” so will probably be considerably costlier than $400.