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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you might have seen the latest news that Facebook has rebranded itself to Meta, whois now expanding their VR business into a premium headset with Project Cambria, also known as an Oculus Quest Pro unofficially. The investment into VR by Meta is a clear play into a mixture of combining two of their existing businesses, Facebook; the social network, and Oculus, their VR business which they acquired in 2014. However, seven years on since the acquisition in 2021, the entire business has been folded in and rebranded as Meta. This means that moving forward there will be no more products named Oculus, or using the Oculus logo, it’s just going to be Meta from here on out.
The Metaverse is a concept that combines digital worlds, people, and places altogether, meaning that’s right now it’s a pretty wishy-washy buzzword that is still pretty up in the air. If you’ve seen the movie Ready Player One, then you probably know what a Metaverse might actually entail. Regardless, Meta believes that a Metaverse is going to be the way forward for the future, and VR is going to be an enormous part of that, too. Enter Project Cambria.
Project Cambria was announced at Facebook Connect 2021, where we saw some initial details start to come out about Meta’s newest headset. But, doesn’t Meta already have an incredibly popular headset in the form of the Quest 2 and upcoming Quest 3? Well, yeah, but they are not packed with the incredibly high-end features that we’re expecting to see from this particular headset, which is also poised to be a standalone offering, unlike the ones from Valve.
Meta’s Project Cambria is a high-powered standalone VR headset that’s often unofficially referred to as the Oculus Quest Pro. Meta is looking to expand on its existing lineup of all-in-one VR headsets, as it’s had proven success in doing so with the Quest line of VR headsets. Now, Project Cambria looks to expand further, with better specs to bring users a desktop VR-like experience to a standalone headset, which would be a huge undertaking in itself as PC VR is where you’re going to find truly high-end visuals and experiences, since it’s being powered by a discrete system, instead of a smaller SoC chip. If you have a cursory glance at the Quest 2’s SoC and cooling in this teardown by iFixit, you can see how rudimentary the silicon actually is, since it’s a mobile Snapdragon XR2 chip. Now, the XR2 is several generations old, meaning that there could be room to pump more power into a mobile SoC for a truly high-end experience. So, we know that Project Cambria will be extremely high-end, have a powerful SoC, and is itself almost like an upgraded version of the Quest 2.
However, this product will not be targeted to the mass market as the Quest line has been in the past, but instead focussed on a more hardcore user, which means that it’s likely to be significantly pricier than the wallet-friendly Quest line. Meta has stated that the Cambria is not a follow-up to the Quest line, nor does it sit in the same category. Therefore, in our current line of thinking, the Project Cambria isn’t going to be sitting in the Quest line of products, meaning that we’re unlikely to see it being branded under the ‘Quest‘ name. Instead, maybe Meta will really drive it home by naming the higher-end line something like the Meta ‘Verse’. Meta, if you’re reading this, you can have that one for free, yeah?
It is easy to think of the Quest as an entry-level line, like an Apple iPad, whereas Project Cambria will be using as much cutting-edge gear that you can shake a stick at, meaning that it’ll instead be positioned as something more like an iPad Pro by comparison. The same overall product category, but a very different focus and target market.
Right now, Meta’s Project Cambria headset often referred to as an Oculus Rift Pro will be released at some time in 2022. With no further information about the headset released by the company, that’s all we’ve got to go in in terms of the release timing. However, it could be likey that Meta is going to proposition this in September at their annual Connects event, and ready for the Holiday Season. With that said, it could also slide into 2023 if we’re unlucky, luckily, the company seems pretty adamant that it is coming in 2022.
Industry analyst Brad Lynch has alluded to the Cambria release in Q2 2022, which would pip it far earlier in the year than expected.
Regardless of if it’s Q2, or more towards Fall or Winter, you can expect that Project Cambria will be Meta’s flagship headset for this year, and the one that they will be focussing on. With a premium slant, while retaining the appeal of being a standalone headset, you should expect any of the shiny new games being debuted on Meta’s platform to be shown off with their best headset, which is now going to be Project Cambria, especially with all the features that the headset is poised to deliver.
Meta’s Project Cambria VR headset, often known as the Oculus Quest Pro is poised to be packed to the gills with features that you’ll not want to miss, that look to upgrade the standalone VR experience to a whole new level that users have never seen before. Of course, with this being a premium standalone headset that you do not need to hook up to an external We’ve summarised them for you below.
Eye tracking
Eye-tracking is a feature that many people in the VR space have clamored for, and is also featured in the HTC Vive Pro, and also poised to be in the upcoming PSVR 2 headset. This means that we could see eye-tracking finally come to a standalone headset. One company creating eye-tracking technology named Tobii claims that eye tracking will assist with applications in VR that are not necessarily poised to be directly marketed to gamers. Things like testing how long people will look at a certain new product on a shelf, or applications in the medical field could help doctors identify parts of the body in an MR-like experience. Eye tracking is an incredibly advanced technology and one that could bring with it endless amounts of innovation in the VR/MR spaces.
Face tracking
Face Tracking is something that the Cambria headset is also going to feature, meaning that you could also see the headset have fully-featured facial movements in your VR space, meaning that you could have many more realistic interactions with people. When speaking about future VR headsets, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented in an interview with The Information the following:
“One of the things that I’m really excited about for future versions is getting eye tracking and face tracking in, because if you’re really excited about social presence, you want to make sure that the device has all the sensors to really kind of animate realistic avatars so you can communicate well like that,”
Upgraded lenses and display
The upcoming Cambria headset has also been shown to have an upgraded lens array by comparison to the Quest and Quest 2. The Cambria looks to be using pancake lenses, which are thinner than what we’ve seen in their other headsets. This means that we could potentially see the Project Cambria VR headset as shaving a bit of the bulk off of the already relatively lightweight form-factor, which is no doubt bound to be one of the things that you are going to need to save on, especially if the chip is going to be more powerful than what we’re already seeing in the Quest 2 and beyond.
Project Cambria specifications
There are no indications of specs for Project Cambria at the time of writing, however just from what has been alluded to in the features that we know are included in the chip, in addition to its positioning in the market, we can ascertain that the headset will need to dedicate a fair amount of its room on the headset itself to cooling. all of the cameras need to be cooled, in addition to whatever SoC that Meta chooses to put in the Cambria, also known as the Oculus Quest Pro itself. Take one look at the Oculus Quest 2 teardown and you’ll find that the headset needs a fair amount of passive cooling, in addition to potentially requiring active cooling too, therefore the creators need to shave down the weight of the device as much as possible in order to still make for a balanced and comfortable experience.
We expect the per-eye resolution to be fairly beefy if this headset is being positioned to be a premium headset. The PSVR 2 is touting 2000 x 2040 per eye, but it’s unlikely that games will be able to actively render and run on a standalone headset such as the Project Cambria. Regardless, we can’t wait to see where this headset ends up, and how it ends up performing,
It’s speculated that Meta is working on their own new silicon, but these details are incredibly light and cannot be corroborated aside from Brad Lynch, the industry expert. But, it makes no mention of Project Cambria’s silicon and only alludes to the true Quest 2 successor, which you can assume will be priced in accordance with its premium nature.
Project Cambria: new, lighter controllers revealed
Project Cambria is poised to have slightly different controllers to the ones that we have previously seen on the Quest and Quest 2. This is based on the leaked imagery that we’ve found, in addition,n to renders that data miners have found in the depths of Meta’s datasets. Based on these two things, you can assume that Project Cambria will be ditching the now-iconic tracking ring, and now have a series of cameras on them that will be able to ascertain your location, instead. It still remains to be seen as to whether or not you will also be able to get them up and running on previous Meta headsets such as the Quest 2 or otherwise.
These look to make the weight slightly lighter, making for a VR experience that ultimately will feel much more natural than having to deal with heavy and lumbering controllers that give you fatigue after a few simple hours while in VR. It’s one of those things that we’ve wanted to see for a long time when it comes to VR controllers. However, we think that the cameras would have to be relatively low-powered in order to ensure that battery life is good. Speaking of which, Meta, can you please make these controllers actually chargeable? It’s incredibly frustrating to have to scurry around to find new batteries whenever our Quest 2 runs out.
Project Cambria backwards compatibility
You can expect to have backward compatibility with Project Cambria, as you’d want to assume that Meta does not want to abandon the software ecosystem that they’ve been building up over the years, which has now exceeded over 10 million. It’d be a pretty silly move if they did not give you access to the same users and library. Also, we’d expect the PC VR functionality to also be fully retained here, meaning that you can expect to be able to use Oculus Link or a new app to give your headset a bit more functionality. However, again, it remains to be seen if you are able to use something like Sidequest with the headset to sideload community applications that are not in the store right now. Regardless, it looks to be an incredibly versatile headset, which cannot be said for many of the other, more restrictive out on the market.
Project Cambria price: expect to pay a pretty penny
Project Cambria, also known as the Oculus Quest Pro has a price that is estimated to be more than $500, this is our own estimate, based on the price of current VR headsets, and the specifications that we’ve gone through above. Considering that this is poised to be a more premium headset, it could easily push into the $700 plus mark, too. Remember, this is not a part of Meta’s entry-level proposition and is more poised towards those looking for the best possible VR experience when playing games, or using apps. The Quest 3 will be the next ‘value’ headset Meta release, so if you are looking for something slightly cheaper, and still cutting-edge, you might want to check that out instead. We will be sure to update the pricing on this page when we get official confirmation or further leaks that could point to Project Cambria’s potential pricing.
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