A key function from Meta’s $1,499.99 Quest Professional headset will make an look — in some type — in a extra reasonably priced consumer-focused headset coming later this 12 months, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated within the firm’s newest earnings launch. That key function is help for Meta Actuality, the expertise that’s designed to permit digital actuality headsets to even be used for augmented actuality, leading to a so-called blended actuality headset.

Meta confirmed in a earlier earnings name that the headset, prone to be known as the Meta Quest 3, is deliberate for launch in late 2023. Zuckerberg expects it to price between $300 and $500, round a 3rd of the enterprise-focused Quest Professional. 

“The MR [mixed reality] ecosystem is comparatively new, however I believe it’s going to develop lots within the subsequent few years,” Zuckerberg stated on this week’s earnings name in feedback pulled out by UploadVR. “Later this 12 months, we’re going to launch our subsequent era shopper headset, which can function Meta Actuality as effectively, and I anticipate that that is going to ascertain this expertise because the baseline for all headsets going ahead, and finally in fact for AR glasses as effectively.”

What’s unclear in the mean time is precisely what type the Meta Actuality function will tackle a extra reasonably priced headset. On the Quest Professional it combines two digicam views to reconstruct a 3D view of the true world round you to make it simpler to work together with, however who is aware of if the expertise will work the identical means on the Quest 3. The present-gen Quest 2, in the meantime, presents extra primary video passthrough that exhibits a low-resolution monochromatic view of the world exterior the headset. A earlier report steered the Quest 3 might have a depth sensor to measure the area in entrance of you or probably enable for hand-tracking. 

It’s price noting that regardless of Meta’s advertising and marketing, Meta Actuality actually wasn’t that spectacular on the Quest Professional. “Meta’s shade passthrough doesn’t look remotely like the true world,” my colleague Adi wrote in her damning Quest Professional evaluation. “Video footage is fuzzy within the Quest Professional’s grainy show. The feed is murky in low gentle, washed-out or flickery in brilliant gentle, and typically luridly saturated in between. Studying real-world cellphone or laptop screens by it’s nearly inconceivable. It’s a tremendous system for dipping into the bodily world when you have a dialog or get a cup of espresso, however it’s not vastly extra helpful (or nice) than the Quest 2’s black-and-white passthrough.” Ouch.

UploadVR experiences that different rumored options of the Quest 3 embody using pancake lenses, which might enable for smaller show panels and a extra compact headset total, and be unpinned by a extra highly effective Qualcomm processor.