Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Zuckerberg’s Folly: The Quest Pro”.
Imagine a future where your workplace is virtual. You don’t need a big screen display because you can put virtual monitors anywhere instead of a set of Zoom squares. You can meet your colleagues in a virtual Beachside Resort where your avatars will reflect your real face. It can feel just like coming into the office, but from the comfort of your home um and I’ve lost my hands again. Hey.
I got my hands back. I hate this. I hate it more than anything I feel so beaten down by the software. The metaquest pro is supposed to be a big leap forward for the company, formerly known as Facebook. Meta has lost 9.4 billion dollars this year on Virtual and augmented reality or the so-called metaverse, and since we started recording this video Meadows laid off 11 000 employees or 13 of its Workforce.
But in his address to the company, Zuckerberg said he’s still focusing on high priority growth areas like the metaverse, it’s betting, everything right down to its name. This is where meta’s VR goes from fun and games to a serious business tool. Eventually, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants something like the quest Pro to be your next laptop.
The quest Pro is like a very fancy version of the quest 2., the all-in-one headset that meta released in 2020. like the Quest 2. The quest Pro is a self-contained system with built-in cameras and tracking it supports Quest 2 apps and games, and it uses the same app store.
You still need a meta account to start using it unless your workplace sets up its own login system. Most of its internal specs have gotten a slight bump, though it uses a new Qualcomm, xr2 plus chipset instead of the quest 2’s xr2, and it’s got 12 gigabytes of memory. Instead of six gigabytes.
The Quest 2 controllers featured LED bands that the headsets built-in cameras could track now the controllers have their own tracking camera. I haven’t noticed a huge Improvement in their accuracy, mostly because the Quest 2 was already quite good, but they’re more Compact and they finally charge on a little plastic dock with the headset. Instead of burning through double a batteries with a Quest 2 blocked out.
Most of the light around your face, the quest Pro offers more options by default. It lets in a lot of light, so people can’t say sneak up on you and surprise. You in VR you’d be surprised how often that happens, but it comes with rubber wings that you can magnetically snap on to block your peripheral vision and you can buy a separate full face mask that shuts out almost all light.
The default option here is okay. If you’re sitting still at a desk, which is how meta imagines many people using it, but it made me motion sick for anything else, even typically comfortable games like beat saber. So I appreciate the flexibility, but I spent almost all my time with those wings on the main difference. Here, though, is the headset’s cameras.
The Quest 2 has four tracking cameras, one on each corner and they capture black and white video. The Quest pro has a total of 10 sensors, including outward facing color cameras and internal ones, that capture your eyes and face all these cameras enable the quest Pro’s, two big selling points. The first is color pass-through mixed reality, a midpoint between full immersive VR and AR glasses, where virtual items are overlaid on a live, video feed we couldn’t directly film, Pastor video meta, says: support to capture it is coming in future software updates. The second is face and eye tracking, which lets an avatar mirror facial expressions like smiling and raising an eyebrow. You look like you’re sleeping all the time yeah. No, it doesn’t recognize that my eyes are open, which is weird. Okay, there’s there’s something to be said about this experience.
Eye tracking also allows phobiated rendering where software can render the pixels right, where you’re looking at more sharply saving on computing power. These are interesting, new features, but so far there isn’t a lot to do with them. Foviated rendering could make more demanding games render with more detail, but the quest Pro isn’t meant for games right now, so most VR developers will be building for the quest too. The color feed is a step up from the quest 2’s, black and white, but it’s still washed out and flickery a long way from looking like the real world. There are some mixed reality apps, but the mixed reality component often remains pretty basic. Meanwhile, meta’s main use for iron face tracking is its own social platforms, particularly Horizon workrooms work rooms is at the heart of meta’s new strategy. It’S an app that you can sync with a desktop computer to use as an office for personal work.
You can project big screens in front of your face on top of either a full VR environment or a pass-through video feed for collaboration. You can invite other people to a virtual meeting room but work rooms. It has some problems, so this is the first time we’ve been able to make Horizon workrooms work. We’Ve tried it many times it doesn’t mostly failed out, but here we are together. I would like to caveat that they’re supposed to be a third person here with us. So I’m not sure I would say worked true, Alex Heath is not was unable to join us.
The face tracking is somewhat working. Uh, it Addy looks very sleepy all the time he’s tracking is also better than I expected, even though it’s not great in a lot of ways. Yeah it’s, but it’s like it’s on the curve. So it’s not good enough that you are not talking with your hands. Like I’m over, compensating with my hands, yes, I cannot tell what your face is actually doing, because you keep winking and squinting at me. Yes uh, I don’t know, maybe this just exaggerates all of our normal Expressions.
So we can see how weird we look all the time I don’t know it. These are thoughts that I feel like would be weird for a work meeting, so there is zero chance that I would ever make a serious decision. It is bizarre that I have bizarre that I have, for years been connecting my meta headset to things related to Facebook, so that I can have a seamless social experience so that I can have like. Oh, isn’t it great that you can take advantage of the social graph? I have to go to a website log in through an Arcane like authentication system, that even I don’t understand where my account is I get on the web. I create a meeting room. I invite people to the meeting room through.
Similarly, I have no idea how or where or where these accounts are and then maybe maybe they get a link and then they can click on the link and then they launch themselves into the headset, and maybe it works. As I said before, the quest Pro’s focus is business collaboration, so we’re spending most of our time in meta’s workrooms app, but the social app Horizon worlds is a big part of meta’s metaverse strategy, a free VR platform for Games, events and social Hangouts, and my experience So far is less than Stellar Addie. Where are you yeah buddy? Where are you oh yeah? Sorry, I have to go but uh. It’S nice meeting you uh addy is talking to people who are not us Alex. You have turned into just some sort of a coin.
Not over a team, oh amazing, all right, yeah, I’m not over 18. That’S for sure um! I’M literally watching people try to find Addie to a harass. Her wait.
Really. I’M listening to people saying there’s, I’m literally listening the kids today they’re like they found a girl and they’re like chasing. You too, are you kidding? Wait we got ta, go see this. I didn’t hear that run, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go! Wait! You! Don’T hear the gaggle of Bros for like she’s the only girl on the server.
Let’S go talk to her. Oh no. I didn’t hear that.
I was hearing the other there’s the woman who said that it looked just like her uh I’m gon na leave now yeah. I’M gon na go to okay, I don’t know. Is that Alex that’s Alex okay, yeah and Alex again I haven’t seen Addie okay. Where do I do? Oh? How do I do that? How do I do any of this? This is me, send it again, send it again, hi Escape. How do I get up here? Okay, so I don’t know where you were at that time, but where Alex and I were standing all of the dudes around us started, saying: there’s a girl and then they said this is true, ask if she’s over 18.
and then somehow. I believe you told them that you were over 18 and they were like not tell them that I didn’t know where they were. This must have been some other girl. Well, that’s not great, either and in many ways, worse finally able to get Alex Heath to join us and chat about our time so far, not in work rooms, but in Horizon worlds Alex was this worth 10 billion dollars? This is worth negative, 10 billion.
I would I would pay 10 billion dollars to never use this again. I I wanted to have hope that we could like do this and it would be fun, but I mean you guys agree. This is like one of the most buggy software experiences ever right. I mean I have not experienced software this bad in a long time yeah.
I think it was unfairly nice. I think bug implies that there was a working version of this, that this is somehow not living up to this is just so unintuitive. No, no, I mean I just like when I tried to join the workroom with you guys. It just took me into this empty blue expanse, and I couldn’t even like get to the menu to restart. I had to force restart the headset from the button I mean, even as like a reviewer, you barely want to go through it um I just while you guys were in work rooms. I went into a Creator World by myself and it was literally just two like 10 year olds, trying to figure out how to get out of the wall. They were stuck in on either side of the world talking to each other and me in a vast world, and I’m like this is this: is it this? Is it what I keep saying is they should just put this back in the Shelf and not let talk about the metaverse until something is a hundred times better than this.
Is that your read of this? That’S my read: I almost wonder if they should scrap this and just start over. I mean I don’t I don’t know what’s salvageable in this experience I mean this is just such a bad. Like experience, I hate to say it, but that way this is the Savage I’ve been about a product, but I really don’t understand why this exists like what why this is like out for people to be able to use and the fact that work rooms was even Worse and more buggy and that’s the whole purpose of this Pro headset is to like spend time in work rooms and, like I just want to acknowledge, you cannot schedule a meeting in work rooms in the headset yeah like how did that ship? I just I I don’t really understand, and so it does not surprise me that the people building it don’t use it because, like I cannot even figure it out myself and I write about this stuff for a living.
It’S easy to see why medical workrooms it wants to own the future of not just video games but Computing in general. It has to if it wants a business big enough to compete with its original social networking Behemoth. But the quest Pro Hardware isn’t ready to be your next computer. The headset weighs around 200 grams more than the Quest 2 or around 100 more than the Quest 2 with its added Elite.
Strap it balances that weight by moving its battery to the back of the headset, but the design focus is heavy pressure right at my hairline to the point that, after wearing it for a few hours, I’ve sometimes got a painfully numb strip. On my forehead, the battery lasts one to two hours compared to the quest 2’s two to three hours, which isn’t great either. The quest Pro screen is roughly the same resolution as the quest 2s at 1800 by 1920 pixels per eye.
That’S pretty good for a VR headset right now, but it’s way too grainy to comfortably stare at a bunch of text all day. I might take the quest Pro’s virtual screens over a tiny laptop screen, but not for very long. The software, meanwhile, is even worse.
Work rooms is a huge mess that requires toggling between a web and VR app interface, to set up meetings that load incredibly slowly if participants can get into them at all. It’S even clumsier than your average video conferencing setup, which is already the software version of hell and the whole Quest user interface is fine for launching games, but it’s still limited as a full-fledged operating system. Companies have been using VR for decades, mostly for specialized work.
Like simulation and 3D design, the this pro has potential for places that are already doing this. It’S a relatively high powered Standalone headset with good controllers, and it’s not that expensive compared to other business, focused VR headsets, but meta needs more than that. It needs new people to adopt VR for work.
People like well us for most people. The Quest 2 is still a better option for meta VR. It’S lighter and vastly cheaper, it’s not as powerful, but most game developers will still be targeting its specs. The quest Pro’s special features don’t do much for the average user yet, and if you really love those more compact controllers, you can even buy them for the quest too, although they cost 299 dollars.
We know there’s a quest 3 coming out next year as well, and who knows what upgrades that will include the quest pro has some good ideas. I hope its upgrades appear in more of Venice headsets, but right now everyone is looking to meta for a giant leap to save the company and at best the quest Pro was a medium-sized step in the right direction. Like I don’t know three and a half three three and a half, okay, three and a half. I can do that my hands my hands. Don’T do this thanks everybody for watching and let me know, would you rather have one metaquest pro headset or three and a half Quest twos .