What We Learned from Meta Connect 2024

Quest 3S: the New Standard

Quest 3S was the expected big reveal at this year’s Meta Connect, and true to our coverage of leaked information, it features a bevy of appealing components and capabilities. With 128GB and 256GB models priced at $299.99 and $399.99, respectively, Quest 3S comes in fairly affordable packages that bring its powerful tech to a wider market.

In With The New, Out With the Old

Quest 2 and Quest Pro will be discontinued when stock runs out or by the end of 2024, whichever occurs first. The 128GB model Quest 3 will also be retired with the 512GB Quest 3 dropping in price to $500. This leaves the active Quest lineup focused on the Quest 3 family: Quest 3 (512GB), Quest 3S (128GB), and Quest 3S (256GB).

Quest 2 was undoubtedly the first VR headset to really break through into a mainstream market, with between 20-30 million units sold.

Quest Pro may have broken new ground technologically, but when it came to sales, it fell flat. Pancake lenses, eye tracking, face tracking, and self-tracking controllers were all innovative features of the device. Still, consumer adoption was middling, partly due to news leaking of the imminent arrival of Quest 3.

Quest Pro was such a tough sell that John Carmack, former Oculus Chief Technical Officer, has said he tried to “kill the Pro completely,” believing it would fail and distract Meta’s development teams from their true mission: “doing more valuable work on mass market products.”

Orion Has Landed

Meta’s long-awaited AR glasses have arrived. Meet Orion. The focus on wearable AR has clearly brought Meta to a profound breakthrough device. Orion combines glasses, a wristband, and a wireless compute puck to create a wearable AR ecosystem that feels more like Tony Stark’s E.D.I.T.H. AI glasses than anything else we’ve yet seen in the AR space. VRPorn.com will cover Orion in much more detail in a separate article but, for now, here are the main items of note.

Orion features a lightweight magnesium frame, miniaturized sensors and cameras, innovative thermal management, Micro LED projectors, and a ~70° FOV. Tracking comes in the form of voice, eye, and hand tracking capabilities as well as an electromyographic (EMG) wristband for gestural inputs and control. Haptic feedback is also provided by the elastic-fit, magnetic-close wristband.

Obviously, a wearable device such as Orion will struggle to offer much computing power in such a small form factor without an additional peripheral handling the heavier processing. Meta’s solution is a pocket-sized low latency wireless dual-processor puck that looks to be about the size of a small remote control or smart phone. Guiding and aiding the user is Meta AI.

Perhaps most notable, however, is that Orion is not heading to the consumer market anytime soon. Meta is adamant that Orion is not a research prototype, instead labeling it a “polished product prototype.” Orion (or a successor) could reach consumers, however, if Meta can conquer three issues: improving AR display quality, optimizing form factor, and building units at an affordable scale.

The Promise for Porn

VR porn fans, especially those with a keen interest in the AR porn arena, will no doubt be pleased with Quest 3S bringing high quality passthrough to market under $300. Orion, too, bodes well for further developments in AR porn, and for the future of VR and AR entertainment more generally. Now, it’s up to content creators to utilize this impressive and increasingly accessible tech to really rock our worlds.