Meta’s plans for virtual reality in the next four years have been leaked
The Verge technical website obtained the details of the Mita company’s plan for the next four years, after it was reported by thousands of employees in the augmented virtual reality department within Mita last Tuesday, during a presentation of a roadmap for the department’s efforts. This map shows how the company plans to continue investing in consumer devices despite setbacks.
According to the same source, Mita plans to release the first smart glasses with a display in 2025, along with a smart watch, in addition to offering augmented reality glasses in 2027.
Quest 3 is coming in 2023
According to the leaked data, Meta’s flagship Quest 3 helmet, coming later this year, will offer mixed reality experiences that don’t fully immerse the wearer. The Quest 3 will be twice as thin, with twice the power, and will cost $400 more than the current Quest 2.
Meta has sold nearly 20 million Quest headsets to date, company vice president of virtual reality Mark Rapkin told employees during the presentation.
There will be 41 new apps and games for Quest 3, Rabkin said, including new mixed reality experiences to take advantage of the updated hardware.
Meta plan until 2027
During a presentation last Tuesday, the company’s vice president of augmented reality, Alex Himmel, laid out a plan for a handful of devices through 2027.
The first launch will come this fall with the second generation of Meta smart glasses equipped with a camera, which was released in 2021 with the parent company of Ray-Ban.
And in 2025, Hemel said, the third generation of smart glasses will come with a screen to display incoming text messages, scan QR codes, and translate text from another language in real time.
The glasses will come with a strap that allows the wearer to control the glasses through hand movements, such as running fingers on an imaginary pad. It will allow the wearer to use a virtual keyboard and type words at the same speed as mobile phones.
The smartwatch will integrate with Meta’s social media apps and offer health and fitness features.
And while Meta has reworked its plans for a smartwatch with a detachable screen and cameras, it’s still working on another smartwatch to accompany the 2025 glasses, Himmel confirmed.
Meta is working on more technically advanced and expensive augmented reality glasses designed to display high-quality 3D images of avatars in the real world.
There will be an “internal release” for employees to test these glasses in 2024, but a public version won’t be released until 2027.
Meta will continue to make money from ads
Himmel said the company believes it can generate higher average income per user than it currently makes on social media, thanks to a combination of selling virtual goods and optional extras such as cloud backups and augmented reality ads.
“We must be able to manage a very good activity,” he stressed, adding, “It is easy to imagine how ads appear in space when you have augmented reality glasses.”
“Meta” and virtual reality… a crisis of persuasion
But Meta will first have to convince consumers to pay “a little more” than the current Quest 2 costs for the Quest 3.
“We have to get the enthusiasts excited about it,” Rabkin told employees Tuesday. “We have to prove to people that all of this power, all of these new features are worth it.”
Even for those who bought the helmet, Rabkin acknowledged that the company struggled to keep them engaged. “Right now, we’re in our third year of Quest 2, and unfortunately the people who bought it last Christmas aren’t as interested in it as previous subscribers.” .
Rabkin pushed employees to make it easy to share VR content to other platforms, redesigned the Quest store to make it more “dynamic”, and gave developers the ability to do things like automated upgrades.