In another one of his increasingly-frequent Instagram AMAs, Facebook’s Vice President of Augmented and Virtual Reality Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth hinted at the potential of a new Quest Pro model and discussed other upcoming features.
One user posed a question to Bosworth that read “Why can’t Oculus make a 600$ headset and put the best specs like Quest Pro 3 etc plz.” Bosworth then said “Quest Pro, huh… Interesting…” and gave a wink to the camera.
While Quest Pro is an interesting prospect and clearly a teasing response, it shouldn’t be seen as confirmation of the idea. Nonetheless, Facebook claims that Quest 2 is heading toward mainstream acceptance while aggressively targeting a low price for a gaming product that people desire. It is certainly possible now that the market is proven Facebook could consider differentiating the line with a higher specification model.
Bosworth also responded to a question asking if there were “any plans for implementing eye tracking on Oculus Quest.” He said that eye tracking is a “super interesting” area that Facebook has been researching for a long time, and that “it’s something we will fit into some future headset.” He then pointed out one of the major benefits of eye tracking technology is that you can “dramatically improve performance by only rendering things that are in the field of view of the fovea.”
“I’m certainly glad they’re making one,” said Bosworth in regards Sony’s confirmation of a next generation headset. “PSVR was such a tremendous hit and was a huge place for our developers to make cash and I hope PSVR 2 is as well.”
Bosworth also touched on app sharing, a new Quest feature, and why it isn’t currently available for Beat Saber. “One thing that is very tricky, as it relates to Beat Saber and other music-oriented software, is licensing and how that licensing model works. So we are still looking at this and we will let you know more when we have it.”
In regards to Virtual Desktop’s PC VR streaming returning to the official Oculus Store earlier this week, Bosworth said that after being “super conservative” about quality control of store content when Quest first launched, they’re now “putting more and more control into the hands of consumers.” He also noted that “so many people” were sideloading the alternate version of Virtual Desktop through SideQuest that bringing it back to the official store was now “kind of a no-brainer.”
You can participate in future AMAs over on Bosworth’s Instagram account, @boztank.
