Leaks, rumors, and what we all know

Due to a mixture of fascinating {hardware} and an actual willingness to burn cash, Meta is on the forefront of virtual reality. The corporate is the go-to alternative 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 may quickly deal with.

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

Providing a few of these options at a cheaper price is a pure subsequent step, and based mostly on what’s been reported about Meta’s street map of future merchandise, there ought to be a less expensive model of the Quest 3 launching within the second half of 2024. Here is what we learn about to this point.

Its title might be the Meta Quest 3S

Because the launch of the Quest Professional, Meta has maintained two traces of Quest headsets: The Quest Professional, with extra experimental options and higher-end specs, and the conventional Quest, designed to provide the ideally suited digital actuality and combined actuality expertise for an inexpensive worth. The Quest 2 hung round after the Quest 3 launched to catch anybody who wasn’t keen to spend $499 on the most recent 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 worth,” in keeping with Meta’s vp of VR Mark Rabkin. On the time, the extra “accessible” Quest 3 was codenamed Ventura, and now, because of what seems to be a mistakenly revealed Quest Retailer web page that lists the “Quest 3S” as a appropriate machine, and what appears to be like like leaked slides from a market analysis research, it is seemingly 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. Reasonably than a clean curve from the entrance of the headset to the edges, in these photos of the Quest 3S, there is a exhausting angle the place the entrance and sides meet. The headset additionally seems to be thicker, nearer to the scale of the unique Quest 2.

On prime of that, as an alternative of three horizontal cutouts for the Quest 3’s digicam and sensors, there are clusters of three cutouts on the correct 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 skin world that makes combined actuality potential), nevertheless it’s not clear what else Meta would need to embrace. A depth sensor, just like the Quest 3? Eradicating it’d save on prices. Infrared illuminator, to make organising headsets simpler in the dead of night? It is actually a chance.

r/LuffySanKira / Pocket-lint

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

With higher efficiency, however worse lenses

One key instance of these inner modifications 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 can be “cheaper than these utilized in [Meta’s] most up-to-date mannequin, the Quest 3.”

Basically, 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 costlier 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 minimize down on manufacturing prices.

These financial savings may 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 potential, one Chinese analyst writes. And to take care of app compatibility going ahead, it will make sense Meta would need to preserve the chip within the Quest 3S the identical. For what it is price, The Wall Road Journal writes that the cheaper Quest headset would seemingly 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 solely and making them a separate, optionally available buy. Meta’s hand monitoring has drastically improved over time, however are there actually sufficient issues to do on a Quest with out a controller? That is still to be seen.

A less expensive Quest is on the best way

Compared to the Apple Vision Pro, Meta gives one of the best deal in digital actuality. However to succeed in the size that the corporate clearly desires — the billions of customers it is social platforms have — a less expensive possibility is important. Primarily based on what we learn about what Meta has deliberate, the Quest 3S may very well be what anybody nonetheless on the fence about VR is in search of.

We’ll seemingly 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 will be there.