Leaks, rumors, and what we all know

Due to a mixture of attention-grabbing {hardware} and an actual willingness to burn cash, Meta is on the forefront of virtual reality. The corporate is the go-to selection in the event you’re trying to purchase a standalone VR headset, and the Meta Quest 3 launched final 12 months has solely made that extra sure. However the firm’s headsets aren’t as low-cost as they was, one thing Meta might quickly tackle.

After choosing up the items from the tepid response to the Quest Pro, the Quest 3 takes the perfect elements of that early, costly blended actuality expertise and makes them extra approachable. The headset is thinner and lighter due to slimmer pancake lenses, its efficiency is healthier due to the brand new Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 inside, and the addition of colour passthrough makes every kind of latest blended actuality experiences doable. All of these new options meant Meta launched the headset at $500 versus the Quest 2‘s authentic $299 value.

Providing a few of these options at a lower cost is a pure subsequent step, and based mostly on what’s been reported about Meta’s highway map of future merchandise, there needs to be a less expensive model of the Quest 3 launching within the second half of 2024. This is what we learn about thus far.

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Its title might be the Meta Quest 3S

Because the launch of the Quest Professional, Meta has maintained two strains of Quest headsets: The Quest Professional, with extra experimental options and higher-end specs, and the traditional Quest, designed to provide the splendid digital actuality and blended actuality expertise for an affordable value. The Quest 2 hung round after the Quest 3 launched to catch anybody who wasn’t prepared to spend $499 on the latest headset, and now the Quest 3S is primed to exchange it.

The Verge reported in 2023 that Meta was engaged on a extra “accessible” model of the Quest 3 to be launched in 2024, designed to “pack the largest punch on the most tasty value,” in keeping with Meta’s vp of VR Mark Rabkin. On the time, the extra “accessible” Quest 3 was codenamed Ventura, and now, due to what seems to be a mistakenly printed Quest Retailer web page that lists the “Quest 3S” as a suitable machine, and what appears like leaked slides from a market analysis examine, it is doubtless that the Quest 3S is the official title Meta goes with.

It has a boxier design

r/LuffySanKira / Pocket-lint

Apart from the brand new title, the leaked market analysis slides additionally prominently characteristic a headset with a distinctly completely different design than the unique Quest 3. Slightly than a clean curve from the entrance of the headset to the edges, in these photos of the Quest 3S, there is a onerous angle the place the entrance and sides meet. The headset additionally seems to be thicker, nearer to the dimensions of the unique Quest 2.

On high of that, as an alternative of three horizontal cutouts for the Quest 3’s digital camera and sensors, there are clusters of three cutouts on the appropriate and left sides of the headset, nearly like eyes. These will presumably home cameras for inside-out monitoring and passthrough (the video view of the surface world that makes blended actuality doable), nevertheless it’s not clear what else Meta would need to embrace. A depth sensor, just like the Quest 3? Eradicating it would save on prices. Infrared illuminator, to make organising headsets simpler at midnight? It is actually a chance.

r/LuffySanKira / Pocket-lint

These renders are doubtless not the ultimate model of what the Quest 3S will appear like, nevertheless it does a minimum of make sense that Meta would need to draw extra of a transparent line between its headsets. A special design helps create that distinction, and certain displays the variations in inside elements Meta is utilizing too.

With higher efficiency, however worse lenses

One key instance of these inside adjustments that is been reported? A swap again from slimmer pancake lenses used to the bigger Fresnel lenses that have been used on the Quest and Quest 2. The Wall Street Journal writes that Meta’s cheaper headset will use lenses which might be “cheaper than these utilized in [Meta’s] most up-to-date mannequin, the Quest 3.”

Usually, pancake lenses are thinner and lighter, and will be positioned nearer to the show (or shows), permitting for an general extra compact headset. Fresnel lenses are thicker and heavier and wish more room between the lens and show. The broad development is in the direction of pancake lenses, however they’re dearer to supply and require brighter shows due to how a lot mild will get misplaced throughout refraction. Switching again to Fresnel lenses, and based mostly on these market analysis slides, a 1,832 x 1,920 decision LCD, would let Meta lower down on manufacturing prices.

These financial savings might go in the direction of together with the newer Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip that made the Quest 3’s improved graphics and general efficiency doable, one Chinese analyst writes. And to take care of app compatibility going ahead, it might make sense Meta would need to maintain the chip within the Quest 3S the identical. For what it is value, The Wall Road Journal writes that the cheaper Quest headset would doubtless have a “a extra superior graphic processing unit than utilized in [Meta’s] Quest 2,” so there is a rising consensus that that is the transfer.

It’d ship with out controllers

The Quest 3 and Quest Professional have been each launched as being simply as helpful with controllers as they have been used with hand-tracking alone, however together with controllers within the field does introduce an additional price. Most of the best virtual reality apps and games — like Beat Saber or Supernatural — depend on controllers to work, however as Meta pushes into productiveness and leisure use-cases and even cheaper headsets, that may change.

Bloomberg writes that to supply a less expensive Quest 3 at an much more approachable price, the corporate is contemplating leaving controllers out of the field completely and making them a separate, non-compulsory buy. Meta’s hand monitoring has drastically improved over time, however are there actually sufficient issues to do on a Quest with no controller? That continues to be to be seen.

A less expensive Quest is on the way in which

Compared to the Apple Vision Pro, Meta provides the perfect deal in digital actuality. However to achieve the dimensions that the corporate clearly needs — the billions of customers it is social platforms have — a less expensive choice is critical. Based mostly on what we learn about what Meta has deliberate, the Quest 3S could possibly be what anybody nonetheless on the fence about VR is in search of.

We’ll doubtless know for sure later this 12 months. Meta Connect, the corporate’s annual developer convention, is scheduled for Sept. twenty fifth and twenty sixth. If there was any time they’d need to announce a brand new headset, it might be there.