Meta’s next headset will release in October, Mark Zuckerberg revealed on The Joe Rogan Experience.
Rogan spoke of trying the new headset before the interview, describing a demo with an alien in front of him. “When I moved my mouth, she moved her mouth. When I moved my eyes left and right, it’s tracking my eyes. When I make an angry face, it makes an angry face. It’s incredible.”
At Connect 2021 Meta announced a new “high end” headset would launch in 2022, codenamed Project Cambria. The company said it will have built-in eye & face tracking to drive avatars in social experiences like Workrooms, matching Rogan’s description.
An internal Meta memo leaked in late June listed Cambria as the hardware “laser focus” for H2 2022. In July, a dataminer discovered the product name ‘Quest Pro’ was recently added to the Oculus iOS app — a name Zuckerberg also used in a CNET interview last year. Given this and the statement it will be sold alongside Quest 2, Project Cambria is almost certainly Quest Pro.
Meta has confirmed Cambria will be priced “significantly” higher than $800, aimed at remote workers and mixed reality early adopters – though it will also run existing Quest content. It looks to have a better balanced design than Quest 2, with a slimmer visor. Meta has confirmed it uses pancake lenses, which support smaller displays with a narrower gap between the panels and lenses.
The company also revealed it has much higher resolution cameras with color passthrough and a depth sensor for mixed reality.
In April a prominent supply chain analyst claimed the headset will have dual 2160×2160 Mini-LED LCD panels, up from the less than 1832×1920 pixels per eye of Quest 2’s regular LCDs. Import logs for apparent development kits suggest it will have 12 GB RAM, up from Quest 2’s 6 GB.
Zuckerberg told Rogan Meta will share more details at Connect 2022, but the date for this event has yet to be announced.
