Did you miss this year’s Connect conference? Well don’t worry — from Facebook to Meta to Project Cambria, we have a summary of everything announced at Connect 2021.

If you want to watch an abridged version of the main keynote presentation, we’ve cut it down to around 20 minutes highlighting the biggest and most important announcements, entirely cringe-free. That’s embedded above, otherwise you can check out a summary of each topic below.

Facebook Goes Meta

meta quest facebook zuckerberg

At the very end of the keynote, Mark Zuckerberg dropped an impactful ‘one last thing’ announcement.

Facebook is rebranding its corporate name to Meta. Facebook, Instagram and other services and apps will keep their existing names, but fall under the umbrella company now called Meta.

Read more here.

RIP Oculus, Quest Becomes Meta Quest

OculusRiftLogo

After the keynote, current VP of VR/AR and incoming Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth announced that the Oculus brand will be retired from existing and future hardware releases. The Oculus branding will live on in some software departments but for the most part, Oculus is no more.

This also means that Oculus Quest 2 will be renamed next year to Meta Quest 2.

Read more here.

Facebook-Free Quest Login From 2022

Zuckerberg Quest 2

We don’t have an exact date or many specific details yet, but Meta is getting rid of its mandatory Facebook-login for Quest headsets.

The change is being made in light of community feedback and will be available sometime next year.

Read more here. 

High-End VR: Project Cambria Revealed

Hot off the leaks that circulated last week, Meta revealed that a new ‘high end’ standalone headset codenamed Project Cambria will launch in 2022.

It will feature eye tracking, face tracking, high resolution color passthrough and multi-element pancake lenses, and will be on the higher end of the price spectrum.

Read more here

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on Quest 2

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas Oculus Quest 2

A port of Rockstar Games’ huge hit Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is in development for Oculus Quest 2.

Read more here.

First Fully-Fledged AR: Project Nazare Revealed

Project Nazare AR Meta

Meta revealed the codename of its first pair of consumer AR glasses — Project Nazare.

A demo video gave us a peek at a little of what to expect, but the glasses are “still a few years out” from release.

Read more here.

Horizon Home Sweet Home

Horizon Home Oculus Quest

Move over Quest Home — Horizon Home is here to stay.

This overhaul turns your Quest’s home environment into a social space, with the ability invite friends over and host watch parties. Building and customizing your own home space is coming too, but is a bit further down the pipeline.

Read more here.

Quest Goes 2D

2D apps in Home oculus quest

Quest will also get support for new 2D apps, available in the Oculus Store, which use a new framework based on the progressive web app industry standard. There’s a few apps expected to launch soon, like Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox and Slack, with others arriving further down the line.

Read more here.

Broken Cloud Gets Fixed

oculus quest content

The broken cloud storage system for save files on Quest is being replaced by a new service called Cloud Backup, which will be turned on by default for all apps.

Read more here.

Oculus Avatars in Unity

Unity developers will be able to integrate the new Oculus Avatars 2.0 from December, with Unreal Engine support coming next year.

Read more here.

Mixed Reality On Quest Store Apps

After being available as an experimental API, Quest developers will soon be able to ship apps or updates that use the mixed reality functionality on Quest, starting from the next SDK version.

More features are being added as well, to make up what Meta calls the Insight SDK.

Read more here.

Speech Recognition, Tracked Keyboards and Hand Interaction Library

The next SDK release will give Quest developers access to speech recognition capabilities, while tracked keyboard support and a Unity hand interaction library are planned for next year.

Read more here.

Blade and Sorcery on Quest

Blade And Sorcery Oculus Quest

The physics-driven VR combat simulator Blade And Sorcery is coming to Oculus Quest 2 next month.

Read more here.

Horizon Workrooms Customization

Workrooms customization_Still1

Later this year, Workrooms users will be able to add custom logos and posters to their rooms, and switch between “a wider variety of environments.”

Read more here.

Beat Saber Passes $100 Million

Beat Saber OST 4

Meta announced that Beat Saber has made over $100 million in revenue on the Quest platform alone.

Read more here.


What was your favorite Connect 2021 announcement? Let us know in the comments.

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