There’s been a torrent of leaks that over the months have given us a pretty comprehensive look at Quest Pro, Meta’s next high-end VR headset likely seeing a big reveal at Connect next month. Now it appears a new device is being subject to the same leaky treatment, with a supposed consumer-focused ‘Quest 3’ headset now surfacing.

Hardware analyst and YouTuber Brad Lynch (aka ‘SadlyItsBradley’) has been a driving force behind many of the Quest Pro leaks in the past, and now Lynch has revealed in a new video what he believes to be CAD files related to a ‘lower-end’ consumer headset that follows in the footsteps of Quest 2, ostensibly called Quest 3.

Lynch maintains the device in question is codenamed ‘Stinson’, saying it is slated to release at some point in 2023. Furthermore, he reports the headset will be somewhat of a step between Quest 2 and the upcoming Quest Pro, the latter of which focuses more on augmented reality tasks thanks to the inclusion of a color passthrough camera and depth sensor.

Here’s a quick rundown of Lynch’s main points:

  • Soft strap like Quest 2 and no back-mounted battery
  • 2 cameras for 6DOF tracking
  • 4-camera array: 2 BW + 2 RGB
  • Depth sensor
  • 2 LCD displays
  • mechanical IPD adjustments
  • Pancake lenses
  • No eye or face tracking
  • Single fan design
  • Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 (second gen) SoC
  • Pogo pin connector for dock charging

And here’s a look at the CAD files of the alleged Quest 3 (Stinson), showing off the exterior, and internals from under the faceplate and facial interface:

1 of 3
Image courtesy Bradley Lynch
Image courtesy Bradley Lynch
Image courtesy Bradley Lynch

The headset is said to be a cheaper, consumer-focused device that will release sometime after Quest Pro. Provided the leak is genuine and represents a near-final product, it actually makes a great deal of sense considering Meta may employ its $800+ Quest Pro as a sort of high-end developer kit designed to kick off the development of a new rash of mixed reality games and experiences, likely with the end goal of capitalizing on that new spate of content with a more commercially accessible product.

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To be clear, all leaks should be taken with a grain of salt. Lynch is however well known for his accuracy in past reporting on unannounced software features and physical hardware, touching upon Quest 2, Quest Pro (aka Project Cambria), Pico 4, and Pimax 12K to name a few. In short, Lynch being involved probably suggests we’re dealing with something nearing the final stages of production.

Again, provided this is true, it could be Quest 3 is also looking to duke it out with its biggest rival as of late, ByteDance’s Pico Interactive, which is getting ready to launch the consumer-focused Pico 4 in Europe and parts of Asia in October—a strong competitor to Quest 2. We’ll be watching to see how both companies mature their respective mixed reality content libraries in what may be the very near future though.

For a more in-depth explanation on the alleged Quest 3, make sure to check out Lynch’s full video below:

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • xyzs

    Still no OLED back, unforgivable…

    • Gabe Zuckerwell

      Thankfully we have valve with never ending lack of support for anything vr other than accepting every shovelware on their store

      • Sven Viking

        Was ViRGiN banned or something?

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          No, ViRGiN just created an Alt account to upvote himself and fly under the radar of those that had already banned him themselves.

          • Jonathan Winters III

            If only these forums were moderated, we wouldn’t have trash like ViRGiN muddling up our conversations.

          • Jistuce

            I actually suspect he WAS banned at some point. If not here, than somewhere else he comments regularly.
            His posts started evading my blocklist at some point, and it turned out he’d started a second account with an identical name. So now two of the three entries in said blocklist are ViRGiN, and the discourse is a lot more civil.

    • Doug Fany

      I agree with the eye tracking. It could make the rendering optimized; by focusing it on what you’re looking at, while rendering less the peripheral stuff, since you can’t see the details properly anyway.
      And there’s some missing features right now that I wish to see in the next versions, but that’s more a personal preference.

    • Blaexe

      Bosworth explained months ago that as of right now, DFR is not really feasible on mobile hardware, yet people keep thinking “if it has eye tracking it will have DFR.”

      That’s just not accurate.

      • alxslr

        Hard to understand. Once you already have eye tracking it’d seem that the gain of DFR should be greater than the cost :-(

        • Blaexe

          You need performance to get it to work in the first place. The PS5 is FAR more powerful than the XR2, so while it may take 2% of the PS5s “performance budget” to get it to work, it may take 20% of the XR2, which is massive. Good news is, that Quest Pro seems to support DFR. However the net performance boost remains to be seen.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          Eye tracking means several things:

          1. Detecting the position of both pupils and deriving the gaze direction. That is pretty easy with simple image processing and can be done even on some micro-controller, so it wouldn’t be a challenge for the Quest. There are some difficulties with different eyes, glasses, vision disorders etc., but gaze detection is already very fast and precise, down to about half the width of your thumb at arm’s length, allowing to select objects by looking at them or proper eye contact in social VR.

          2. Detecting where the eyes are currently moving, which of course requires that you have already determined the pupil position. This is a much harder problem, because the eyes are very fast and make a lot of seemingly erratic movement, the purpose of which we only partly understand. For example there are sudden jerks to the side and back, taking only around 10ms, that we believe help with depth perception. Eye tracking for movement has to correctly predict if the eye is actually changing direction or not, and this is much harder. On the HTC Vive Pro Eye with Tobii eye tracking modules the prediction phase adds 50ms or more, making it pretty much unusable for DFR, as your gaze would constantly end up into areas with very visibly reduced resolution for several frames. And that is with a fast PC.

          We don’t know yet why it seemingly works so well for the PSVR 2, also using Tobii eye tracking. It may be the raw power of the PS5 or the money a large company like Sony could throw at the problem. It may also be something completely different, like Sony not using the tracking to reduce render resolution, which leads to very visible artifacts if the tracking is too slow, but instead reducing geometry complexity like described in one of their patents a few months ago.

          This could mean that the eye tracking still comes with a lot of latency, but the artifacts created with their approach just aren’t that noticeable. The whole subject is very complex, as our vision relies on a lot of tricks, for example the brain actually blanks the image during rapid eye movement. A test for this is looking into a mirror, first focusing on one eye, then on the other. Even though you move the eyes, you will see a static image, never the movement, the eye positions just seem to jump due to the blanking. In the end being able to track the pupil position is just the easy part, a lot more has to be done to get performance benefits from DFR or other optimizations that could be possible.

          • xyzs

            First of all, it’s not the eye tracking itself that is hard to compute.
            If Quest 1 can do hand tracking with its 6yo SOC and low end VGA tracking cams, then Quest 3 SOC + modern hardware can achieve eye tracking with zero latency easy. Quest pro has eye tracking with a lesser SOC…

            The problem is more about how efficient can be the DFR algo on very weak hardware like XR2. They may also work on implementing it at the driver level to avoid begging every developer to implement the feature and recompile all their apps, and this might be way harder this way.

            Second point, I and many Quest customers use the quest for standalone AND PCVR.
            So I would like to get the benefit of eye tracking also for games like Flight simulator and co!

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            As mentioned, the HTC Vive Pro Eye with a fast PC doesn’t achieve anywhere zero latency tracking for moving eyes, it only works well for detecting static gaze. I haven’t tested it myself, I only dug through the HTC developer forums, finding posts describing the problem and demonstrating the very obvious latency on video, without anyone having a solution. That may be of course due to particularly bad Tobii tracking software, but then the question remains how they did it on the PSVR 2.

            The hand tracking doesn’t have to deal with anything near zero latency or the speed with which our eyes move, and frankly it is still very imprecise and unreliable on Quest. Just because both are some kind of tracking doesn’t mean that the computational requirements are comparable. I already mentioned that tracking the pupil position is the easy part that even a much slower processor can handle, but you have do a lot more. So I don’t know from where you take the insight that an XR2 could handle eye tracking suitable for DFR, let alone with zero latency easy.

            All this has to happen before you even start to apply DFR, but actually DFR isn’t really special, it is just like FFR, only with a different center and going further inwards, dynamically determined by user gaze. We already have FFR on Quest 1 and 2, giving about 25% performance boost. If all that was needed was the gaze direction as indicated by the current pupils position, DFR on Quest 2 would be trivial and Meta would have started talking about it a year ago instead of flooding us with social VR videos showing avatars looking in the right direction. Tobii, HTC and Pico would have started bragging too, as all these have already offered eye tracking for HMDs, with Tobii working on it for 20 years.

            And second point, you will gain benefits from eye tracking on PCVR if a) there will be a way to get the information to the PC (which is likely), b) the software you use on PC allows selecting items with eye tracking or any type of external pointer like a mouse, c) (for DFR) if as described above the XR2 cannot do the motion prediction, you need extra software like the one from Tobii on your PC that can take the reported pupil position and do the motion prediction itself. And of course both your GPU and software has to support foveated rendering and needs to accept a gaze position. If the XR2 is too slow to benefit from DFR in actual games, but still experimentally implements the motion prediction, you don’t need the eye tracking software for motion prediction on your PC.

            Anyway, these are a lot of ifs before you will benefit from eye tracking. The OpenXR API has added support for eye tracking in 2020, so in the future we will see more apps supporting it, but so far this comes in the form of vendor specific extensions and is not yet part of the official specification.

          • XRC

            Yes used Vive Pro Eye, developer demoed some eye tracking stuff. Could see potential but early yet.

            Saccadic movements? Human 3D environment scanning in operation, peak speed of 700°/s

            Technology will need to catch up some

    • Sven Viking

      Maybe it’ll have MiniLED backlighting like Quest Pro or something? Not sure how it compares to OLED though.

    • JanO

      Reactive technologies will ALWAYS come with added latency… DFR on low-end hardware would feel like playing the RAGE PC game that had texture streaming issues on slower hardware… Do you remember how detail would appear slightly AFTER you actually looked at anything… Same here.

      Sony gets away with it on PSVR2 because they are still using fresnel lenses that blurs whatever is off-center anyway… We’ll have to wait & see how this is actually used… BTW the current FFR allows for about 75% of the gains achieved by DFR, makes me wonder if it’s worth pursuing DFR at all…

      I do know pancake lenses will allow for a clearer optical path in its off-center area, but I still feel bigger gains can be made with less effort in other areas…

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        The combination of FFR and Fresnel lenses works well, because both make the image more coarse/less clear towards the edge of the display/lenses, but the same isn’t true for DFR. DFR is basically the same as FSR, but it moves the center where the image is rendered in full resolution with the eye, so if the tracking is fast enough, you never look at the coarser rendered areas, only at the hires center. The problem of the Fresnel lenses getting a lot less clear when not looking straight forward remains on PSVR 2.

        The effect isn’t as bad as one might expect, because our retinas also have a much lower resolution when looking anywhere but straight forward. The only region where you see the full resolution is when light hits the fovea, a very tiny area with a lower than 1°FoV, after which foveated rendering was (somewhat incorrectly) named.

        • JanO

          While I do agree with you on most of the above, the big IF is the tracking… Given the variety of conditions this would have to work in, I don’t see it happening just yet. But given the fact that this tech is actually the best way to get to track YOU, I wouldn’t be surprised we consumers end-up paying for its development, with little if no gain in content quality, but boy oh boy, the data Meta will gather on people….

    • Jonathan Winters III

      Hopefully they utilize a much better implementation so the milky “blacks” issue is no longer as bad.

    • michael b

      If it’s using the same screens as the Pro, then it’s quantum dot LCD, with 500 dimming zones… more zones than an 85″ TV. Watch any video review of quantum dot LCD TVs, and the blacks are pretty deep. Why? Because they literally turn the backlights off in the areas where it’s supposed to be black. I’d rather have the QDLCDs over OLEDs any day. OLEDS can’t achieve the same brightness… Rift CV1 and Quest 1 are actually quite dim compared to the Quest 2, and the newer pancake lenses don’t allow light to pass through as easily, so OLEDs would be even dimmer. They’re also more expensive, and have the potential issue of burn-in. They also run hotter as they consume more energy than LCDs.

      I agree about no eye tracking though, but that’s an expensive tech, and the consumer Quest line is cheaper than the Pro line, with Meta subsidizing much of the cost. The Pro itself has an $800 bill of materials, not including the actual cost of production, shipping, and whatever amount of R&D they poured into it. I was going to wait for the Quest 3, but without eye tracking and the battery now back in front making it heavy on the face again, I’m getting the Pro instead.

  • Till Eulenspiegel

    Quest 3 = Pico 4

    I am sure Pico 4 is poking Meta in the butt – urging them to release Quest 3 as soon as possible.

    • Steve R

      This says Quest 3 will have the 2nd generation XR2 chip. Pico 4 still has 1st generation.
      And the addition of a depth sensor and 2nd color camera could make a big difference for mixed reality apps.

      • Till Eulenspiegel

        The XR3 is the real next gen chip that will launch in Dec 2023 at the earliest. This is just an incremental upgrade.

        I think the Quest 3 will have a short life span as Meta will no doubt be putting the XR3 into the Quest 4 – which they are already working on.

        The Quest 3 is just a temporary headset to counter the competition.

        • I personally wouldn’t mind waiting until Spring 2024
          for a XR3-powered Quest 3 ….
          Releasing a XR2v2.0-powered Quest 3 then a
          XR3-powered Quest 4 soon afterwards will piss-off many Meta loyalists ….
          Just sayin’, is all.

          • MosBen

            My guess is that with the Quest 2 being a relative success in terms of user base Meta wants developers to be able to support both the Quest 3 and 2 with their games/experiences without too much hassle. They’re still in the “build the userbase” mode while also trying to make VR profitable, so that wouldn’t be surprising. My guess is that we won’t see an XR3 Quest until 2025, when they won’t feel the need to continue supporting the Quest 2 and will be able to release an XR3 powered HMD without subsidizing it too much.

          • Till Eulenspiegel

            You are wrong. Meta is pushing full steam ahead with 4 headsets in the next 2 years.

            http://www.roadtovr dot com/meta-vr-headset-roadmap-quest-3-4-project-cambria-release-date/

          • MosBen

            I mean, I could certainly be wrong, but I feel like a third party report is maybe not quite enough to jump to that conclusion just yet. It’s also possible that some of these “new” HMDs could be revisions of existing models. Like, they release a Quest 3 in 2023 and then a version that uses the same hardware but is thinner, lighter, has more storage, etc. What we know now is that thus far Meta has been focused on building their base of VR users. It’s possible that their approach could change and they could release a flurry of headsets with increasing hardware capabilities in a relatively short amount of time. But I’m going to wait until we have something a bit more concrete before I believe it.

          • Till Eulenspiegel

            Meta did said they will be releasing 4 headsets by 2024:

            http://www.roadtovr dot com/meta-vr-headset-roadmap-quest-3-4-project-cambria-release-date/

        • MeowMix

          The XR3 is the real next gen chip that will launch in Dec 2023 at the earliest.

          This is the XR3 chip (XR2Gen2)

        • Adrian Meredith

          There is no xr3 it’s the gen 2 just like their next phone soc is snapdragon 8 gen 2

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            We don’t know that. Qualcomm only recently changed their numbering scheme because they were running out of 8XX numbers, before that we got SD 800, 810, 820, 835, 845, 855, 865 and 888, followed by SD 8 Gen 1.

            So there is nothing indicating that we have to see a succession of XR1, XR2, later renamed to XR2 Gen 1, XR2 Gen 2, XR 2 Gen 3 ….. It might just as well be XR1, XR2, XR3 …, with the Gen 2 in between being a slight bump, not a new design. We have seen this before, there was an SD 801, the Oculus Go used an SD 821, and to add to the strange naming schemes, there is now also an SD 8+ Gen 1, with a 10% GPU increase and 30% GPU power reduction over the SD 8 Gen 1.

            I’d strongly recommend not to draw too many conclusions from a perceived inherent logic behind Qualcomm SoC naming, because there is no such thing.

          • Blaexe

            > So there is nothing indicating that

            Except a statement straight from the horses mouth*:

            “Will we ever need an XR3? I don’t know. Right now, I see the two tiers as enough for where we are in the market. […] Those future chips, Bhinde said, would more likely be Gen 2 and Gen 3 versions of the XR2 than an XR3.”

            They see the XR2 as a tier, a potential XR3 would not be a successor but something completely differen

            *as always, the comments section doesn’t let me post links.

      • MeowMix

        And the addition of a depth sensor and 2nd color camera could make a big difference for mixed reality apps.

        Yes ! the depth sensor will make Passthrough actually usable for XR applications, instead of just being a tool to see your surroundings.

        Depth sensor should lead to auto floor leveling and perhaps even auto-guardian generation (as an option)

        • Steve R

          I assume occlusion will be much better as well. That could be huge.

          • Sven Viking

            With the new placement of the cameras it seems like there’d be new occluded areas if anything. If so I wonder if that means they could be using inside-out self-tracked controllers like Quest Pro?

          • JanO

            The controllers will probably be self tracked because the tracking volume from the HMD’s cameras just isn’t big enough for over head and side movement…

  • JanO

    Fugly… Meta needs better designers. Pico 4 looks much better and has its battery in the back for better weight distribution… Still not perfect though as the battery should be hot swappable…

    • MeowMix

      these are CAD files ….

      • JanO

        I’m familiar with CAD files…

        They actually EXPOSE bad designs way more than marketing images ever will. You may prefer the battery in front, I prefer better weight distribution and better battery life &or performance afforded by easy hot-swapping with more space for better cooling… You do know that the battery is also a heat concern, right?

        • Lucidfeuer

          Don’t forget a lot of the accounts you reply to are fake astroturfing account (because if they’re not they’re those weird absolutely degenerate shill we should stop tolerating)

        • Arctic Husky

          They are counting with accessories for the original design, for that the battery on the face, obviously they will sell external battery with some Elite Strap. BoboVR and other 3rd parties fill this place as well.

      • JanO

        What I meant was that you may prefer a smaller, more integrated unit and that is a perfectly valid point of view too..!

    • Andrew Jakobs

      I agree with the hot swappable. Third parties gave shown how excellent it can be, they should just outsource the (deluxe) headstrap to them.

    • wontonVR

      You won’t look at it when you are wearing it…

      • JanO

        So true! But just look at what gaming PCs have become… Seems some people care about looks… Rumor has it that a big part of why Apple still hasn’t released an HMD is more about the fashion statement than the tech…

        So while I don’t care much, I feel a better look would drive better sales… Won’t make the specs more appealing though…

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        You will, but only from the inside …

  • Hahahaha!! The great Sadly, It’s Bradley strikes yet again!!
    Kinda disappointed no eyetracking, facetracking I couldn’t care less about.
    The XR2 v2.0: who knows …? Maybe the XR3’ll release by then.

    • Sven Viking

      Apparently (and potentially confusingly) the XR2 line will continue to be named XR2 Gen2, XR2 Gen3 etc. rather than increasing to XR3. This is said to be using the next generation XR2 chip.

      • Wow, that IS — ….
        confusing. lol

      • Jistuce

        I guess this is just the new normal for product names. First Apple, then USB, now the world.

      • BananaBreadBoy

        So apparently the way they’re doing naming is that XR1 and XR2 are distinct FAMILIES of chips, with XR1 focused on light AR/smartglasses and XR2 focused on high end mixed reality and VR headsets.

        Which is…dumb. They could’ve at least not named it like they were sequential. :V

  • david vincent

    And still no decent integrated headphones, apparently.

  • Sofian

    Save $5 on a strap then talk about user retention…

  • Ross

    So basically a Quest 2 with pancake lenses, RGB cameras and a very minor performance upgrade? Not too bad if it’s the same price as the current models.

    • Heaney

      The performance upgrade is likely to be much more than minor – XR2 Gen 1 will soon be 3 years old.

      • Ross

        You would think so, but Qualcomm is the same company that released the SD 3100 and 4100 5 years apart and are basically the same chip.

        • MeowMix

          are you sure about those product lines ?
          SD 3100 and SD 4100 are chips for wearables (ex: smart watch).

          and Notebookcheck lists the 4100 improvements are pretty vast:

          According to Qualcomm, the Wear 4100 offers a 85% higher CPU and memory performance and the integrated GPU is 2.5x faster than the older Wear 3100.

          the Snapdragon Wear 4100 is manufactured in 12nm, compared to the 28nm produced Wear 3100.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            That was sort of the problem. Qualcomm pretty much killed Android smart watches by first releasing a chip that was already based on an older design and then not updating it for five years, while Apple was releasing faster designs every year. And when they finally provided an update, it was still the same, now ancient design, only manufactured on a newer process.

            Faster, yes, but in no way enough to close the gap to Apple. Unfortunately nobody else was creating any freely available SoCs for smart watches, partly due to the ever shrinking market and number of companies even trying to sell Android smart watches. Apple and Samsung only offered their much better chips in their own, non-Android devices. Google finally ditched Qualcomm and went into an exclusive partnership with Samsung for their new Android Smartwatches.

          • Ross

            And Samsung is killing it on their smartwatch chips, the Exynos W920 is fantastic and a slap in the face to QC.

      • JanO

        Yeah, but if you look at what’s happening on the PC side, better chips come with higher power requirements as we have reached a point where everyone seems to agree that Moore’s law is dead… I wonder how much more we can extract from mobile hardware before hitting the same wall. Still, I hope it is a big improvement and that it maintains compatibility with the Q2 library.

  • MosBen

    I mean, this can’t be a huge surprise, right? The Quest 2 came out about a year and a half after the Quest 1, and if this releases in 2023 it will come out 2.5-3 years after the Quest 2 launched. Honestly it’d be more surprising if there wasn’t a Quest 3 in 2023. Granted, I don’t know how much additional performance gain the second gen XR2 has over the first gen XR2, but it seems like after 2.5-3 years there should be a bigger jump in hardware. My guess is that though this is supposed to be a product that lands between the Quest 2 and the Quest Pro it’s intentionally just a bit better than the Quest 2 so that games/experiences can target both platforms comfortably.

    • Jonathan Winters III

      I posted in these forums a while back, that Zuck said in a video interview they’re releasing a new Quest in 2023. Quest 3 is that headset.

  • DarkCSS

    I only care about display quality. Better colors, higher refresh rate and higher resolution. That’s what I want.

    • Cragheart

      If you want to connect it to a PC. Because for mobile use, it also needs more processing speed, memory and storage.

    • johann jensson

      I see HMDs as only periphery as well.

  • MeowMix

    Just want to bring up and remind others that the leaks from May 2022 from ‘The Information’ article said that Meta is working on TWO gaming headsets – Stinson and Cardiff, with Stinson being the cheaper of the 2 (Brad’s leaks are of Stinson). Perhaps there’s still a ‘Quest3+’ headset that will launch with features/price between the entry Quest3 and QuestPro.

    • poltevo

      Yes, I agree. I think Quest 3 will get a premium option and/or a refresh. This would also cover the extra headset (of the 4 headsets by 2024).

      Cambria(2022), Q3(2022/3), Q3+(2023/4) & Q4(2024)

      The Q3 specs are not surprising, especially if it comes out this year or early 2023. Eye tracking, in particular, would add too much cost and Meta won’t want to increase the cost over Q2 by a significant amount. I don’t think its a huge deal, however, unless your doing social and it certainly helps with the User experience. (Yes I’m aware of potential performance improvements, but if you read the current research the gains are not transformative.) Its more important to increase clarity (higher resolution & pancake optics), and decrease weight.

      As always we need to temper expectations in line with price.

      • MeowMix

        Yup. Just want to point out that ‘The Information’ article has the successor to Cambria being the Funston prototype, which is slated for 2024. So your Q4 above is most likely Funston (Cambria 2).

        Cambria(2022), Q3(2022/3), Q3+(2023/4), Funston(2024)

        • Precisely.
          Even Meta wouldn’t release a Quest 3,
          a Quest 3+ & a Quest 4 all in the space of a year. lol

        • poltevo

          That does make more sense thanks.

    • JanO

      If I remember correctly, Cardiff was presented as cheaper/more affordable hmd most probably geared toward cloud gaming subscriptions…

    • JanO

      Now that I think of it, it makes sense that Cardiff would be the HMD that brings the faceeye tracking features to the masses… A slighly more expensive Q3+ or something along those lines… Because no dev would invest in Cambria’s features if Meta doesn’t quickly follow-up with a consumer hmd that includes those same features… It would also allow for a quick response from Meta to an eventual Apple hmd…

  • Tommy

    Completely lost me at XR2 and LCD.

    • Gabe Zuckerwell

      Only valve does it right with 1440p lcd and no upgrades ever

      • Tommy

        Valve stuff is too expensive.

    • Sven Viking

      Apparently (and potentially confusingly) the XR2 line will continue to be named XR2 2nd Gen, XR2 3rd Gen etc. rather than increasing to XR3. This is said to be using the next-generation XR2 chip (what people might have intuitively expected to be named XR3).

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        That doesn’t even scratch the surface level of confusion in Qualcomm’s SoC numbering. It started somewhat sane, with SD 800, 810, 820, then jumped to 835, 845, 855, 865, then again to 888. Running out of 8XX numbers, they went for SD8 Gen 1. All their SoCs got mid-generation speed bumps, first indicated by increasing the number like SD 821, then adding a plus like SD855+.

        Now they have a weird mix of both, leading to the SD 8 Gen 1 being followed by both an SD 8+ Gen 1 and an SD 8 Gen 2. Ignoring any previous knowledge about Qualcomm’s SoCs, which of the following would you assume indicates the faster chip:

        – SD 8 Gen 2
        – SD 8+ Gen 1

    • kontis

      XR2 is NOT a new generation of XR1. It’s a higher TIER.

      It’s like RTX 3050 and RTX 3090.

      Their naming is horrible, so don’t get confused.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        The XR1 is based on the SD820, the XR2 on the SD865, clearly a new generation of the same architecture and design, they only skipped three smartphone SoC generations/years for the XR. Both the SD820 and the SD865 were top tier when launched.

        They were intended for different devices, XR1 for 3DoF and XR2 for 6DoF, but compared to the Nvidia RTX 3050/3090, Qualcomm didn’t create different tier chips of the same generation. Instead they based the XR1 on a previous top tier already 2.5 years old and the XR2 18 months later on the current top tier. Qualcomm actually provides multiple technically different tier SoCs for smartphones within the same generation, but so far not for XR SoCs.

  • JS

    What kind of a leak doesn’t mention the thing that matters most — image fidelity/resolution.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Expect it to be 2160*2160.

  • Kraken

    No thank you, i wont buy mobile VR ever again

    • Valerio Brinato

      Why?

  • Andrew Jakobs

    I think they should really rethink their Quest 3, maybe just ditch the current design and use the Cambria and strip the eyetracking and maybe use the original controllers (as I’ll bet those are much cheaper than the Pro controllers with the own inside-out tracking.
    So a bit like Pico did. I still wonder why Pico even has the 128GB version, I think it would have been smarter to only have the 256GB at 449 or 459. Having only 1 sku would seem cheaper to produce as having 2 amd therefore needing to reset the productionline a couple of times.

    • JanO

      I hope Q3’s controllers are more reliable than Q2’s. Both have given me so much problems that I can’t use my Q2 anymore… And I had built a generous game library… Sigh…

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      Changing the amount fo flash is probably one of the least invasive changes for production. If the 128/256/512 GB are realized with up to four chips of 128GB each, all they have to do is to do runs where two or three of these are not added to the PCB by the pick and place robot. If it is realized with just one chip with different capacities, all they have to do is put in another tape feeding the SMD components to the robot. In both cases the PCB would be the same and the only difference would be a software configuration or external supply reel swap.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        It’s also packaging and distribution. As you have different pallets going into stores/warehouses. Don’t underestimate the costs of different SKU’s, that’s why I never understand why a lot of times there are so many SKU’s even though the difference isn’t that much, and IMHO in most cases having just one SKU is also much easier to understand for customers.

  • I’m pretty sure that Meta is going to release the Quest 3 quite soon because Pico 4 forces them to react fast. But this device doesn’t seem to have the design we were looking for…

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      They only have very limited overlap regarding sales areas, so they will barely have to compete, meaning Meta doesn’t necessarily have to react anytime soon.

      – Both the Quest 2 and Pico 4 are sold in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, South Korea and UK, with a total population of 494mn.
      – The Quest 2 is also sold in Australia, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Poland and of course the US, with a total population of 452mn.
      – And only the Pico 4 is sold in China, Germany, Malaysia and Singapore, with a total population of 1,549mn.

      Compared to the 8bn population of the world, 12%/0.94bn can even buy a Quest 2, 26%/2.04bn can get a Pico 4 and only 6% can get either. Add that according to last years Quest 2 facepad recall about 80% of all Quest 2 were sold in the US, the two headsets will provide very little competition to one another, Meta will continue to mostly sell to the US and Pico to China, and customers there will have to take whatever they can get.

  • Rupert Jung

    >Soft strap like Quest 2 and no back-mounted battery
    Sometimes, it’s like they’ll never learn. Comfort is right now in fact the biggest issue for non-enthusiasts.

    • MeowMix

      the path for upgradable straps seems like a good thing.

      • Jonathan Winters III

        meow meow

      • Lucidfeuer

        Shill harder you might get one for free.

  • poltevo

    One consideration worth mentioning: accessory compatibility with Q2. If Q3 is compatible with the same head straps, gun stocks, batteries etc.. then it would be a much more attractive upgrade. If that’s not the case then people might stick with Q2 until further iterations.

    • ViRGiN

      So, let’s withhold progress for the tiny market of accessories with even more niche reception.
      If it’s anything more than a headstrap, you don’t need it.

      • Alexander Sears

        In principle, I’d say Meta is making a choice that is more convenient to expanding the VR market than not by shipping the Quest 3 with an elastic strap (assuming it ends up looking like the CAD models). Although my preference will almost always be a rigid strap, that is if headsets continue to keep the same form factor they have know (bricks on the face). Assuming this headset will be lighter, the elastic strap should be less of an issue. Nonetheless, I will be replacing it with my BOBOVR M2 strap if Quest 2 3rd party straps are still supported.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      I have clip-on correction lenses, so I can play without glasses. I would love to be able to keep those!

  • GeraldT

    Spending money on AR that is pretty much just a gimmick, but not going with eye tracking that really can make a difference in how we interact with the virtual world, is a bad move. I suspect it was made for cool marketing videos over actual base utility of the device. I am quite curious if the Q3 will even be a worthwhile upgrade.

    • Manochang

      It probably won’t be, but you will want it anyway. I will hate myself for buying it.

      It will be the best way to play GTA SA for some reason.

  • Jonathan Winters III

    FOV has not been mentioned – however, the display area is 10% wider on the Quest Pro (a single 5.46″ vs Quest 2’s 2.48″x2), so hopefully that means 10% wider fov on the Pro and the Quest 3. Guess we’ll see how it’s implemented – fingers crossed.

  • Jonathan Winters III

    But….FOV?

    • Bob

      FOV is a department that cannot be noticeably improved unless the form factor is enlarged to accompany larger lenses and/or the display is curved to an extent which doesn’t seem to be the case at all here.

      Expect very similar FOV to all previous Facebook headsets; Rift S, Quest, Quest 2. It’s disappointing but unfortunately physics is an obstacle to any meaningful advancement to FOV with smaller form factor devices.

      • Lucidfeuer

        Not true at all.

    • JanO

      Big companies are simply NOT pursuing a larger FOV as of now, because a major part of VR discomfort stems from peripheral vision. We enthousiasts would love it, but it would probably make most first timers throw up with the current tech… And it’s not exeactly the best way to drive adoption…

  • Jistuce

    No, because he is an antagonistic jerk who is incapable of holding a civil discussion and moves immediately to petty namecalling like a schoolyard bully. He brings no value to any discussion he is a part of.

    • Manochang

      I leki your name. Also — you are correct.

  • gothicvillas

    Imo going forward all hmds must have eye tracking. I hope the leaks are incorrect.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      Especially for stand-alone applications, where the graphics performance becomes a bottleneck.

    • JanO

      I think you overestimate what DFR will actually give YOU, especially given the current/upcoming gen. It’s simply not there yet and given the fact that this will allow Facebook/Meta to track you like never before, rest assured, you will have it in an hmd as soon as it makes sense… For them…

  • Cragheart

    If they really, actually want 1 billion people using VR on a daily basis, they are going to have to release new devices yearly, without increasing prices.

  • Molmir

    What is the reason cambria is rumoured to have multiple black and white cameras but only one colour camera?

    Why not use 2 colour cameras for stereoscopic view instead of multiple black and white cameras that they “colourize” with a single colour camera?

    Seems to me like they are making things harder than they have to be, I mean high quality colour cameras are used in every smartphone and the cameras on their own are very affordable? Is it because black and white cameras have lower latency than colour cameras?

    • dk

      Brad’s guess was because the xr2 is limited in the number of cameras it can use ….and it already has a seprate chip I think it was for the internal cameras for face tracking ….basically because the platform is is old although it’s tweaked to be much better

  • Lucidfeuer

    Why do they insist with the horrendously unergonomic headstrap? How mediocre can you be for so long?

  • Manochang

    saving my money for PSVR — I have zero interest in AR.

    I just want better blacks and more comfort.

  • Why why WHY isn’t Eye-Tracking an Industry Standard at this point?! I am really looking forward to what PSVR2 does, as it will be the first really mainstream demonstration of what eye-tracking can do for VR.

    Eye tracking isn’t expensive. A competitor to Tobii pointed out they could add eye-tracking for $5 a unit back in 2018. It isn’t computationally hard either, as I’ve seen it done with ESP32 chips.

    It’s just been an “easy skip” for companies keen on reducing hardware complications. One less thing to go wrong, one less complication for programmers. Also it’s likely they felt it was hard enough for software companies to deal with VR itself, much less another feature on top of it, so they just left it out.

    (Just to make sure I am not “talking out my *ss”, I looked up what John Carmark has said about eye tracking. Sure enough, he said he hasn’t seen it done in a useful way and he feels the Quest does enough as it is. Just as I said, VR Hardware developers feel VR is enough as it is. They don’t see any reason to try new tech when the old isn’t exactly flying off store shelves.)

    Graphics companies like Nvidia said they would integrate Foveated Rendering into their GPU’s…. up until they realized this would only reduce need for high-end graphics cards. There isn’t any financially justifiable reason for GPU companies to help reduce demand for their higher-end cards. Nvidia is running out of reasons to sell SUPER-HIGH-END cards, when most people still game in 1080p. VR is a fat cash cow and more important then ever now that Crypto has been sinking.

    The only company who has a serious reason to push the envelope for eye-tracking, right now, is Sony. They can’t compete against the endless power of PCVR with their console.

    Also Sony’s upper management has dreams of someday being the “Full Dive” VR gear from anime like in Sword Art Online. This has been their company goal since the PS2. Those guys are now old and in charge! So they have the internal drive to make eye-tracking work and the external-financial reason of trying to keep up with PCVR.

    Sony is the make-or-break future of eye tracking in consumer VR. Carmack will change his tune if it goes well. If not… it’s going to remain an experimental feature for high-end commercial headsets for the next decade. Another setback for VR. :p

  • timothytripp

    Skipping mouth tracking isn’t a big deal, but I really hope the leak is wrong about missing eye tracking. That’s an essential feature for foveated rendering and will be a game changer when it’s in a consumer Quest headset and would be a shame if it’s still years out. It would let the current SnapDragon XR2 do so much more…