Meta is full of metaphors, from the recent announcement of the latest VR/AR headset, Mission Meta 3to launch its social media platform to compete with Twitter, topic. The company is said to be cutting back on several of its projects, including its highest-end, mixed reality headset, Mission Meta Proby ending the project and stopping working on Quest Pro 2.
Report from Information claims that Goertek, the maker of the Quest Pro, will only build the headset as long as the available material supply allows. At the beginning of the year, Meta told its suppliers that they would not need any new components for Quest Pro.
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The company is also stopping development of the second-generation Quest Pro. With the upcoming launch of Meta Quest 3, it looks like Meta may want to focus on more affordable headsets.
Meta Quest Pro is available Just released in October, after much expectation from fans of the mixed reality community. After its release, Meta marketed it as a VR/AR headset geared towards professionals rather than a gaming device.
The Quest Pro was quickly criticized for a design that was full of undesirables, thanks to its heavy weight and tight forehead, cheap feel, and underwhelming software platform. When Quest Pro’s price was announced to be $1,500, many people were outraged by the expensive price tag — Meta eventually reduced the price to $1,500. $1,000.
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Meta is preparing to launch Mission 3 after nearly three years since the release of its predecessor, mission 2. The Quest 3 is said to offer a superior XR experience over the Quest Pro, as it will have a higher resolution, depth sensor, and two 4MP cameras instead of one.
The new Meta AR glasses also won’t have the new high-end display as originally intended. The same report from Info says Meta’s AR glasses, called Artemis, will instead feature Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS), an older glass lens and display technology. The biggest problem with this technology is that it lacks brightness, a feature required for AR glasses to render graphics on objects in bright environments.
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Meta’s Artemis AR glasses will also only have a 50-degree field of view, compared to the originally planned 70-degree FOV. An Artemis wireless puck top-cap sensor, which comes with the glass to offload the computer’s components, has also been removed to cut costs. It will help detect the device surroundings and better incorporate them into the digital world.
Whether Meta will return to the professional audience remains to be seen. The company may return to high-end VR/AR production if Apple’s Professional Vision do well and the market takes off. However, Meta’s software platform still has a long way to go to meet the high-end mixed reality market that Quest Pro targets.
