This year's Meta Connect was all about the Quest Pro, but the company shared a handful of products and updates that also deserve attention. Beyond introducing a new virtual reality device, Meta detailed all the ways it was trying to expand the metaverse: Through partnerships with other tech companies, licensing deals with media conglomerates, and by adding new body parts to avatars.
Here's everything you need to know from Meta Connect 2022:
Meta Quest Pro
The Meta Quest Pro, Meta's highly-anticipated workplace offering, is a major upgrade over the existing Quest 2. It has a $1,499 price tag to match. In addition to cutting-edge pancake optics that offer 75 percent more contrast than Meta Quest 2, the physical device is smaller and lighter than the Quest 2. That's partly thanks to those flat pancake lenses, but also to the battery which has been moved from the front to the back of the device, where it curves to rest against your head.
Full-color mixed reality, which means it'll overlap graphics over the physical world around you. A virtual workspace looks like screens in front of you, with your living room just beyond. The device also has optional light-blocking gaskets. The magnets that attach them make them easy to remove, so you can see the surrounding environment as you wander through a virtual one.
New inward-facing sensors will enable eye tracking as well as more natural facial expressions on avatars, which Meta hopes will make for authentic, lifelike interactions in the metaverse.
The Pro comes with new controllers, shipped with a detachable stylus tip for writing and sketching in virtual reality. New sensors enable a 360-degree range of motion and new haptics make the virtual world feel even more real.
Work, business, and productivity in the Metaverse (feat. a Microsoft cameo)
A lot of Zuckerberg's keynote focused on how VR devices may be used in the workplace. He detailed Meta's collaborations with Autodesk, Adobe, and Accenture, companies that brought the metaverse to their remote workers.
Then Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella joined Zuckerberg to discuss a new partnership between the two tech giants that they hope will cement VR as the future of work. Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Windows 365, Microsoft Intune, and Azure Active Directory will be available in Quest 2 and Pro. You'll also be able to use your Meta Avatar in Teams.
Meta's existing Workroom product will add a breakout group feature, sticky notes for virtual whiteboards already available in the program, and integration with Zoom. There will also be four types of "personal environments" on top of which you can overlay three virtual screens to create a virtual reality workspace.
Avatars
Meta introduced new avatars that are a step up from the floating eggs we currently wander around Horizon Worlds in. As we mentioned above, the Meta Quest Pro’s inward-facing sensors will allow for eye tracking and facial expressions that will be reflected in your digital avatar. "Because avatars can now show non-verbal cues like eye contact and facial expressions, meetings in Workrooms will give you a much greater sense of 'being there' than traditional video calls," says a company blog post.
Zuckerberg showed off his own avatar, which indeed seemed more lifelike, communicative, and emotional than the current design. The team later showed us an even more advanced and truly impressive "codec" avatar currently in progress at Reality Labs.
Zuckerberg detailed the work that his team has put in to creating a diverse selection of skin tones, facial features, abilities, and personal styles for avatars. Plus, they'll be getting legs!
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Media and Gaming
Meta is partnering with NBCUniversal to bring the Peacock app to the metaverse, and to integrate virtual spaces from The Office, Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights, certain Dreamworks content, and others. “Fans will be able to engage in these experiences in Horizon Worlds, at Universal Studios theme parks, and customize their avatars,” said Vishal Shah, VP of the Metaverse at Meta.
As part of Meta's partnership with Microsoft, Xbox Cloud Gaming will be available soon at the Meta Quest Store, though no release date has been set.
Other gaming announcements include the arrival of Marvel’s Iron Man VR, previously only available on PlayStation VR, which will be playable on Meta Quest 2 on Nov. 3.
Among Us VR will launch on Meta Quest 2 on Nov. 10 and promises "all the tension and excitement of the original, but built from the ground up for VR." The original top-down view of the gameplay will switch to a first-person perspective, which ups the difficulty and the ante. Pre-orders are open now.
Skydance Interactive’s The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners - Chapter 2: Retribution would be out in December while another game from the studio, Behemoth, is being developed specifically for VR.
For particularly sweaty sessions, Meta will introduce a new Quest 2 Active Pack. This will be a sweat-resistant facial interface and a set of safety straps. This is a package of features that, as The Verge notes, was actually first announced a full year ago.
Future tech
Exploratory tech we saw last year made a comeback in at this year's Connect, but it still in development. Michael Abrash, chief scientist of Reality Labs, showed off a prototype of a wrist-worn device that reads electrical signals within your muscles to control actions on a screen. This has huge potential for VR, since controllers are clunky, but it's unclear how Meta plans to use the tech in the future, if at all.
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