Meta Quest Pro finally unveiled, but it'll cost you £1500
They say it's for business, but it'll run games, too
Meta have announced their much-teased new VR headset, the Meta Quest Pro. It promises a swankier virtual reality experience over the Meta Quest 2, with higher resolution displays, a lighter headset, and new Quest Touch Pro controllers included. It's also launching imminently, on October 25th, with pre-orders open now.
The downside: it'll cost you £1500/$1500 versus the Quest 2's £400, with Meta saying the headset is designed for business and not gaming.
Meta - formerly Facebook - revealed the headset today during the keynote at Meta Connect 2022, a one-day virtual event focused on augmented and virtual reality, and "the metaverse", Mark Zuckerberg's chosen name for Second Life.
The Quest Pro's tech specs apparently include a resolution that's 4x higher than the Quest 2. In real terms, an official blog post says that means 37% more pixels per inch and 10% more pixels per degree than its VR predecessor.
Meta say that new lenses in the headset will produce better contrast in images, while the new Quest Pro Touch controllers will offer a fuller range of motion via cameras included in each controller.
While the price is a stumbling block and Meta say that the headset is designed for business use, the Quest Pro is fully backwards compatible with all Meta Quest 2 games and apps. There doesn't seem to be any reason why you couldn't use it to play Beat Saber, in other words, which seems like a better use of a VR headset than using it for doing calls over Microsoft Teams or whatever.
Meanwhile, a job posting from Valve suggests they've got plans for future VR products. They're looking for a software engineer who can help "prototype, ship, and support consumer gaming products leveraging visual-inertial tracking", including head-mounted displays and controllers.
