This week in XR: The Quest Pro and all in Metaverse

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Connect developer conference keynote on Tuesday unveiled the new $1,499 Meta Quest Pro, which caters to first-time adopters/prosumers and enterprise users. It received great reviews from the press, especially from CNet and RoadtoVR. Pre-orders are being accepted for an October 25th shipping date.

The Quest Pro is smaller, thinner and sleeker than the Quest 2 thanks to the pancake look, resulting in a 40% smaller size. The battery has been moved to the back of the headset, improving ergonomics. There are also new self-tracking haptic controllers. Outward-facing color cameras enable new mixed reality experiences. The device and controllers go well together in a desktop charging pad. Face tracking will make avatars more expressive. This is also the first device to use the new Snapdragon XR2+ processor, optimized for VR to run at 50% more power than Quest 2.

Meta emphasized that the Quest Pro is made for business. It has a pen to improve writing in workrooms. The new lenses also make reading much easier. Meta’s CEO was met (virtually) by Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella to announce the integration of Horizon Workrooms with Microsoft Teams. It is also integrated with Zoom.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet stopped by to emphasize her commitment to the role of VR in the future of work. Over the past two years, Accenture has provided 60,000 Quest 2 headsets to onboard new employees through a virtual campus called Nth Floor. Accenture’s virtual world, co-developed with Microsoft on AltspaceVR, has already welcomed 150,000 people.

This year’s keynote was more understated than last year’s dramatic metaverse visualizations and culminated with Facebook’s name change. On Tuesday, the serious, super-sincere founder and CEO takes us on a two-hour tour of his Metaverse. He will be joined by his version of the Disney Imagineers, led by his sideman CTO Andrew “Boz” Bosworth. They presented every piece of the hardware and software puzzle that Meta says is necessary to create the Metaverse. Topics included work and productivity, deals with Adobe and Autodesk, avatar updates including much-requested legs, photorealistic avatars, fitness, entertainment, AR, capture technologies, game engines, developers and future technologies. Meta will soon start selling Avatar clothing in Horizon. This could be Connect’s sleep bomb. Epic Games makes an estimated $5 billion a year selling avatar “skins” in Fortnite.

The Meta Quest App Store has generated over $1.5 billion. Every third of its 400 titles has grossed more than a million dollars. 33 titles have grossed over $10 million. The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners has surpassed $50 million in revenue on Quest alone, nearly double all other platforms. In the first 24 hours Resident Evil 4 made $2 million. With games making that kind of dough, Meta notably revealed that it had bought three more of its top game developers.

The meta haters were at work before Connect. Last Friday (October 6), the NY Times published This Is Life in the Metaverse. Author Kashmir Hill acknowledged Meta’s challenges, but admitted that she had a pretty good time entertaining people in Horizon and attending a comedy club, despite encountering trolls and teenage kids who shouldn’t be there. On the same day, Alex Heath’s story Meta’s flagship Metaverse app is too buggy and employees hardly ever use it, says the manager in charge at The Verge. On Monday, The Times published this notably negative article Skepticism, Confusion, Frustration: Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Struggle. Within an hour of Connect, Bloomberg fired this dart: A $1499 headset won’t help Meta. Wired is already speculating about how face tracking data could be used to violate our privacy.

there was other news this week in XR:

Didimo raises $7.1 million for Serie A The Portuguese company makes realistic 3D avatars from 2D photos. Armilar Venture Partners led the round, which included investments from Bright Pixel Capital, Portugal Ventures and Techstars.

ORamaVR raises $2.4 million for VR Medical training tools Founded in 2020, the Swiss start-up provided medical institutions with a low/no-code platform to create training modules with increased speed and efficiency. The round was led by the European Union’s NextGenerationEU and Horizon Europe programmes, as well as the Geneva Foundation for Technology Innovation (Fongit) and FORTH-ICS.

Microsoft US Army HoloLens goggles (MSFT) caused nausea and headaches in soldiers According to a summary of the exercise prepared by the Pentagon Testing Office, U.S. soldiers using new HoloLens-based glasses suffered “deployment-impairing physical impairments.” Soldier acceptance of the goggles “remains low” and “does not contribute to their ability to accomplish their mission.”

Epson announces the launch of the new intelligent augmented reality glasses Moverio The company says its Moverio BT-45C and BT-45CS AR headsets are designed to support remote collaboration, troubleshooting, maintenance, inspection and training. The headset will be unveiled at the Augmented Enterprise Summit in San Diego next week.

Upcoming conferences:

AWE EuropeLisbon, Portugal (October 20 & 21)

Augmented Enterprise SummitSan Diego (October 17-19)

Ericsson’s Imagine PossibleSan Jose (18 & 19 Oct)

TechCrunch glitchSan Francisco (October 18-20)

This week in XR is also a podcast hosted by the author of this column and Ted Schilowitz, Head of Future Technologies at Paramount Global. This week our guest is Lucas Martell, CEO of Mighty Coconut, developer of the hit VR game, Tour of miniature golfwhich recently launched new courses based on the classic film labyrinth and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. We can be found here Spotify, iTunesand youtube.

what we read

Epic interview with FXG about Pico’s massive VR concerts in China (Tony Vitillo/Skarred Ghost blog)

Apple’s wearable AR or VR device is now even closer to release (Adario Strange/Quartz)