Meta isn't giving up on creating a potential rival to the Apple Vision Pro, with its CTO warning that reports of the Quest Pro 2's demise are greatly exaggerated.
Meta Quest Pro
A July 19 report about the development of displays for a future Meta headset included a detail that the social giant has stopped acquiring more components for the Quest Pro. The report also alleged that the Pro line of headsets has also been suspended, effectively killing the prospect of a Quest Pro 2.
In a now-expired response via Instagram Stories as spotted by Road to VR, Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth insists that there's a lot more to the story. Bosworth further implies that the claims of the ending of the Quest Pro 2 may have been sourced from an employee affected after a project was cut.
"I have to explain this every year. There is no Quest Pro 2 headset until we decide there is," explains Bosworth.
"What I mean by that is there are lots of prototype headsets - lots of them - all in development in parallel. Some of them, we say that's not the right one,' and we shut it down. Some of them, we say that's the right one,' and we spin it up."
He continues by saying that no headset gets the name until it goes out the door, before acting coy about its existence.
"There might be a Quest Pro 2, there might not be. I'm not really telling you, but I will say don't believe everything you read about what's been stopped or started," he declares. "A lot of times it comes from someone who's unhappy their particular project got cut when there are other projects that did not get cut."
Reporting from July 19 wrote that Meta's expectations for a new high-grade headset would involve an internal-only demonstration AR headset codenamed Orion, due in 2024. A public AR headset due in 2027 going by "Artemis" is apparently receiving cutbacks on components, such as a switch to glass instead of silicon carbide.
The change would apparently reduce the field of view of the headset to around 50 degrees for the glass version, rather than 70 degrees for silicon carbide-based editions. Meanwhile, main Quest Pro competitor Apple Vision Pro has a field of view of 120 degrees.