After months of rumors of a Quest Pro, Meta announced a new “high end” standalone VR headset codenamed Project Cambria will launch in 2022.
Cambria isn’t Quest 3 and will not replace Quest 2. Mark Zuckerberg described it as a new product line separate to the Quest line – “a completely new advanced and high end product” which will be “at the higher end of the price spectrum”.
As hinted by Zuckerberg and firmware findings earlier this year, Cambria will include eye tracking and face tracking to drive avatars in social VR.
It will also have high resolution color passthrough for compelling mixed reality experiences.
Multi-element pancake lenses used instead of fresnel lenses will let Cambria achieve a more compact form factor than any previous Oculus headset.
The reveal comes after months of speculation, rumors and leaks about a device that’s been commonly referred to as Oculus Quest Pro. Meta executives confirmed its existence earlier in the year and this week we saw leaked tutorial videos that seemed to confirm the device was nearing reveal.
Quest 2 itself is now a year old and, although Facebook has never revealed official sales figures, it’s thought to have been incredibly successful compared to other VR headsets, outselling all previous Quest and Rift headsets combined. Developers have reported huge software sales on the platform and a recent recall document suggested Facebook may have sold in the region of four million headsets in the US and Canada alone.
Consulting CTO John Carmack said in April that while he’s “happy to have some Pro version” he worries it will “wind up with 1/10th of the users on there and we should be about kind of maximizing the user base.”
Meta says more information will be shared next year, and the company is now working with developers on apps that take advantage of the new capabilities.
