Meta VR Glasses were just officially announced. Priced at $1300, they have 2.4K micro-OLED displays, weigh 100 grams, and are powered by a tethered puck with Qualcomm's Snapdragon Reality Elite chipset.

The puck runs the same operating system as Quest 3, and supports all the same content, rendered at notably higher resolution thanks to a combination of the more powerful chipset (essentially an XR2 Gen 3 by a different name) and eye-tracked foveated rendering. It features 12GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, and there's a microSD slot in the puck to expand it.

The caveat to the content compatibility is that Meta VR Glasses do not come with controllers by default, but you can buy Touch Plus controllers separately (available in a new all-black color), or pair the controllers from your existing Quest 3 or Quest 3S, and there'll be a bundle with controllers "in some retail channels".

The stark difference between Meta VR Glasses and any Quest, however, is the split architecture, and the dramatic reduction in weight and bulk this enables.

Meta VR Glasses have no onboard computing, not even a tracking coprocessor, and thus entirely rely on the puck, which provides both power and data over a thin and flexible fiber optic cable.

The visor has an open-periphery design, so you naturally see the real world to your sides and below you. It's built with a magnesium alloy that minimizes weight while also enabling a fanless, passively cooled design that weighs "around" 100 grams.

Source link