Quest 3? Quest 2 Pro? Project Cambria? Whatever its name, the next virtual reality headset from Meta (ex-Facebook/Oculus) would be quite close. The essential analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expects a launch in the second half of 2022.
Meta does not hide that it has been hard at work on its next virtual/mixed reality headset for a long time, whether it is a successor to the very popular Quest 2 or a complementary product intended to coexist with the latter on displays. These discussions culminated in October 2021 during the Facebook Connect conference, with the evocation of a very mysterious next-generation headset codenamed Project Cambria.
Is it the culmination of this project that we will be able to find in stores from the second half of 2022? This is what seems most likely in view of the latest predictions of the very famous analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who says he is certain, based on information obtained from his sources close to the supply chains, that Meta is working to the launch of a new standalone headset by the end of this year.
On the specs side, Kuo says the headset will feature two 2.48-inch displays at 2160 x 2160 pixels per eye (up significantly from the Quest 2’s 1832 x 1920 px) with mini-LED backlighting. The rest of the characteristics reported by the analyst only confirm what Meta had already mentioned in its notes of intentions about Cambria. The displays will thus be associated with optical pancakes two-element, instead of the traditional Fresnel lenses used by all-comers VR headsets. This would significantly reduce the weight and thickness of the optical assembly, without compromising the width of the field of view. Finally, the helmet will be equipped with a facial expression sensor, which would admittedly be beneficial in the context of the social uses of virtual reality — we were obviously not going to get to the end of such an article without writing at least once the term “metavers”, of which Meta wants to be the great champion.
Quest or not Quest, that is the question
Last thorny question: that of the name and positioning of the helmet. Kuo ventures to assume that the final product could adopt the Quest 2 Pro moniker. But this would be a strategic reversal on the part of Meta, which initially claimed that the Cambria project would mark the advent of an entirely new product line, entirely separate from the Quest range.
The original intention was perhaps to prepare the public for a significantly higher selling price than the Quest 2. The fact is, however, that the need to bring the Quest line into a new generation of technology, while maintaining it in prices that are not too elitist, risks becoming urgent in the coming months. The Quest 2 could indeed suffer the full force of competition from PlayStation VR2, the materialization of which is increasingly close – and which will certainly attract a large audience for whom, whatever the self-proclaimed apostles of the metaverse, virtual reality remains inseparable from video games today.