On September 27, Eastern time, Meta's developer conference, Zuckerberg released the latest Quest 3 headset, smart glasses and MetaAI chatbot, the most important of which is undoubtedly the Quest 3 headset.
You know, Quest 2 has sold more than 18 million units, can be said to be the most successful product in the field of VR headsets, but Quest 2 itself still has poor display effect, content ecology is not rich and other problems, many users put it aside after trying to eat ash. It seems that VR is not yet a market that can be opened up quickly.
However, in order to open up the market, the Quest 3 or do a huge upgrade, if in a word, the Quest 3 is equivalent to the Apple Vision Pro affordable reduced version, why say so?
When the Apple Vision Pro was released in June, it was widely praised by digital bloggers at home and abroad. Compared to other VR headsets, the Vision Pro has ultra-high resolution, resolution up to 3400PPI, they use a customized R1 chip to achieve ultra-low latency, but also use 12 cameras, 5 sensors, achieve seamless AR interaction between virtual and real, and provide high-precision gesture control.
At the time, I suggested that many of the features of the Vision Pro would become industry standards and slowly appear in various MR Devices.
In fact, Quest 3 is the closest one. The Quest 3 features a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip with twice the processing power of the Quest 2, a resolution of 2064 x 2208 pixels in one eye, a nearly 30% increase over the previous generation, and Pancake lenses, which are 30% thinner than the previous generation's Fresnel mirror set.
Although the clarity is 1218PPI, not as good as the Vision Pro, but also has a good display effect. Meta compared the game screen of Quest 2 and Quest 3 at the press conference, simply put, Quest 2 is like a layer of yarn in front of your eyes, you can not only see obvious serrated, the picture is also foggy, and Quest 3 is like removing this layer of yarn, the serrated is not obvious, the picture is more refined and clear. The playability has been greatly improved.
More importantly, the Quest 3 is also equipped with two full-color cameras on the front to provide better color perspective, with an average perspective delay of just 12 milliseconds, about the same level as the Vision Pro, and like the Vision Pro, you can wear the headset to use the phone, which is not possible on the Quest 2.
Specifically, in addition to the absence of an external display and 3D photo function, the Quest 3 is moving closer to the Vision Pro in terms of clarity, delay, perspective and other basic aspects.
The key is that the Vision Pro is priced at $3,499, while the Quest 3 is priced at just $499, or one-seventh. In the face of such a large price gap, Quest 3 even if the performance is slightly weak, but also has a strong attraction, Quest 2 in front of the pearl jade, experience greatly improved Quest 3 has the potential to occupy a small market share.
So, in addition to Meta's own development, what impact will this have from the perspective of MR Industry evolution?
It can be predicted that in the future, more VR manufacturers will take the path of Quest 3, using low-cost accessories and relatively few hardware configurations to emulate the Vision Pro to make various MR Innovations.
In other words, the Apple Vision Pro set the industry benchmark, has a very good performance, is likely to bring the spring of the MR Industry, but the market share may be divided by friends who take the "affordable reduction" route. Now it seems Meta may be the first to benefit, but it won't be the last.
Just like the iPhone, although it leads the boom of smart phones, it will not monopolize the smart phone market, there will be more and more followers.
Of course, some hardware costs of the Vision Pro also have room to reduce, for example, the Vision Pro uses SONY's 13-inch silicon OLED screen cost as much as $700, which is already higher than the Quest 3 price, do not rule out the possibility of Apple's own lower version.
More importantly, the competition between MR Manufacturers has brought another very positive industry impact, that is, a new round of hardware and software performance growth led by MR!
Initially, the main driving force for hardware and software performance growth was computers, and every time a new product was released, everyone was concerned about how much Intel chips had improved; After computers, and then smartphones, everyone began to track how much Apple and Qualcomm mobile phone chips have improved.
Nowadays, the performance of smart phones has been able to meet the vast majority of mobile application needs, and the new products released by various mobile phone manufacturers have been less and less surprising, and Apple's mobile phone conference has been criticized for lack of innovation for many years!
The interaction mode of MR Hardware is different from that of mobile phones, and there are more new hardware requirements. For example, the chip needs to have stronger graphics processing and multi-sensor data processing capabilities; The VR display is closer to the eye, which requires a clearer screen than a mobile phone; It also needs the cooperation of a variety of sensors to achieve somatosensory interaction and the combination of virtual and real.
In other words, there are not only higher requirements in performance improvement, but also further expansion in the types of parts, and there is more room for performance improvement.
Now, Apple's Vision Pro and Meta's Quest 3 have set the tone for the MR Hardware platform, and according to Moore's Law, which cuts prices in half every 18 months, more and more affordable alternatives will appear in the future.
This means that the maturity of MR Hardware paves the way for software application innovation, and the application innovation space for MR Platform will continue to expand, which is a big opportunity for application entrepreneurs in the MR Field.
As we have seen before, mobile phones have accelerated the evolution of related technologies and spilled over into other areas; Something similar is happening today with electric vehicles; In the future, the technology platform that allows technology to accelerate change and spillover may be MR.