Quest Pro: Even in Meta’s best headset, the metaverse feels far
Washington PostOct 12, 2022
On Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled his company's new $1,499 Oculus Quest Pro virtual reality (VR) headset during the live-streamed Connect 2022 conference.
Unlike its Quest 2 predecessor, the Quest Pro headset — available starting Oct. 25 — has outward-facing cameras that capture a 3D live stream of the surrounding physical world, creating a mixed reality for the wearer.
Just because Zuckerberg changed Facebook's name to Meta and poured billions of dollars into his VR dreams doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing. Besides the obvious issues of the new Quest VR being an overpriced and unimpressive gadget, the bigger concern is one of privacy: Is drawing on a mediocre virtual whiteboard really worth allowing Meta to collect data on the most minute details of your face?
With the business world already shifting to at least a partial work-from-home model, we should embrace the possibilities created by Meta's Quest VR in the workplace. With graphics and eye-scanning technology quickly improving, we'll soon be able to transport ourselves into a personable, realistic office setting with our peers without the hassle of a commute. This is an exciting device.
There's a 23% chance that Meta will report 1B active users by the end of 2031, according to the Metaculus prediction community.