Looking at the Public Test Channel for the Upcoming Quest Update 43 there’s quite a pleasant surprise that I think we all can get excited about.

To help try and cushion the blow of the quest price increase the next quest firmware update is coming with a bunch of desired features like of course replacing the facebook account requirements with new meta accounts and now new video capture options for all of you vr content creators out there.

Reddit user delicious potato2 spotted new video options that seem to nearly mirror the video recording options that came to the oculus developer hub last month with one additional feature that in my opinion is king here. Image stabilization. Usually watching back VR video especially in widescreen the footage can be jarring and even induce motion sickness for some due to head movements that feel natural when you are in headset but tend to be hard to keep up with on flat screen video recordings.

Meta does preface that increasing image stabilization will decrease field of view which makes sense, but nonetheless this is a great feature for anyone who likes to make VR content.

Along with stabilization you can choose the default aspect ratio for photos and videos, frame rate options, a choice of recording the left or right eye and my 2nd favorite feature choosing the video bit rate for better overall video recording quality. Just for reference the default recording bit rate before was 5 mbps, which is kinda blehhh.

Delicious potato 2 also found a permission selector for allowing eye tracking inside the menuss which I would think seems to hint that the quest pro / project cambria is nearing a public launch. 

Anyone wanna take bets? Throw down in the comments what month you think the pricey quest pro is going to be released. I’m thinking october.

One more quest bit to leave you with here if you haven’t yet, go check out the new hand tracking demo meta released called first hand to show off the new presence platform’s interaction sdk for developers. It’s currently in the app lab but feel free to like this video and expand the description for the link to find it and add to your quest library. It’s actually quite an impressive experience for a possible future of controller-less VR.

Well thanks for watching here to the end, I just wanted to say hey I appreciate you, I hope you my fellow Virtual Reality lover have a solid day.

Meta announced today that they are changing the pricing on their wildly successful and affordable Quest 2 headset. Starting in august so in less than a week the 128 gig quest 2 will go from 299 to 399 and the 256 gig will be 499 instead of 399. But don’t worry for a limited time from August 1st to December 31st 2022  you’ll get beat saber for free, that is if you buy the quest 2 brand new, the beat saber deal is not available for renewed headsets which oh yea those are going to be getting a price hike along with first party quest  accessories. Meta didn’t specify but from the current pricing of the refurb headsets they will more than likely be 350 and 450 respectively for the 2 models. Basically beat saber now costs $100 rather than $30 when you buy a new quest 2 I guess?

We all have known that oculus now meta have been selling these headsets at a loss so maybe this was a forgone conclusion but I assumed a price increase would have come for the next product in the quest lineup aka the quest 3. Not a product that has been out for nearly 2 years. And as a gamer being used to seeing xbox and playstation put out a redesign mid life cycle for less than the launch prices makes this feel a bit unfair. This does make me think project cambria is definitely going to be expensive and probably over the $1,000 dollar mark like we’ve seen reported.

Meta justifies the price increase by stating that the costs to make and ship our products have been on the rise. By adjusting the price of Quest 2, we can continue to grow our investment in groundbreaking research and new product development that pushes the VR industry to new heights.

We have an ambitious VR hardware roadmap, beginning with the launch of our high-end headset, Project Cambria, later this year. And we plan to ship new generations of Meta Quest after that. 

Even with these pricing changes, Meta Quest 2 continues to be the most affordable VR headset with a comparable feature set on the market. And each headset keeps getting better after you buy. From hand tracking improvements and Air Link to Meta Horizon Home, we’re constantly adding new features to make VR more social, intuitive, and immersive than ever before. We’ll continue shipping exciting new software updates to improve our products on a regular basis.

Now’s the right time for us to double down on our efforts to push the state of the art forward. We’ll continue working alongside the developers, early adopters, and die-hard fans who play and build for VR every day, and we can’t wait to keep sharing the work we’re doing at Reality Labs on the road to the metaverse.

These changes coming out right before the move from no longer requiring a facebook account to use the quest seems like a concerted effort but I guess it is what it is. If you are watching this now and want a quest I would go ahead and get it now before august 1st when the price increase goes live. 

You know whose prices aren’t increasing though? This video's sponsor.

Let me know in the comments how this makes you feel because for me I don't’ love it, but maybe I’m just being cynical.

New month, new quest update here’s what’s going down in the new firmware version 42 dropping this week.

Oculus or I guess one day it will be meta move? Is getting an update to 2.0. You can now earn move achievements attached to your fitness goals. Gamify your workout even more by trying to burn 150,000 calories for the ultimate achievement. The internet tells me that's like playing ping pong for 23 days straigh. Also you can check out the new trends tab to see your fitness progress compared to last week. As you can see I don’t really use my quest for working out so much. I really need to get metaverse ripped.

Next up Airlink is becoming official and now going steady with your headset moving from the experimental settings panel to the system settings. To commemorate this beautiful union the devs added a connection benchmarking tool to help understand and improve the quality of your wireless PCVR connection. Setting up airlink will now have less steps and it will finally be fully compatible with windows 11.

A contrast slider will also be added in the accessibility menu under settings to help with viewing text or just making your headset display tailored to your liking 

And lastly Parental controls are getting another round of features. Parents will be able to block teens from social features like creating and joining parties or watching VR content in horizon home, send and received messages in messenger or create posts from their headset to facebook. But note this won’t prevent them from access social feature inside a game.

Nothing huge but next month we get the big one with new meta accounts removing the facebook requirement. Thanks for watching to the end and I hope you have a solid day!

No More facebook accounts tied to your Quest!

The day has finally come, well almost, starting in August you will no longer need a facebook account to use a quest VR device.

Zuckerberg and Meta announced today they will begin rolling out Meta accounts, a new way for people to log in to their headset that doesn’t require a facebook account. Once you make a meta account you’ll also need to create a Meta Horizon profile aka a social profile in VR. THis sorta sounds like a facebook account right? Well I’ll get to that in a minute along with the new privacy settings that will be implemented.

For those of us that already have accounts that are tied to a facebook or have an old school oculus account that you had to merge with facebook you can choose to remove your facebook account during the setup process. But do know you will still need to create both a meta account and a horizon profile before being forced to on January 1st 2023 to continue using your Quest. So Happy early New Years!

As stated on meta’s blog your meta account is not a social media profile. Its a little confusing but just remember your meta Account is separate from your meta Horizon profile. The meta account is specifically for logging into your VR devices, and viewing and managing your purchases inside Meta the app store. Meta does have plans in the future to extend the account function so you can use it to login to other furter meta devices. Hmm I wonder what those could be…

Of course you can connect your meta account to your instagram or if you don’t care facebook to gain access to connected experiences like finding your friends on those platforms to play vr games with. Again this connection is optional.

Now on to your Meta horizon profile. Once you finish setting up your meta account you’ll be asked to set one of these up which is a social profile that can be accessed not only in vr but also on the web. #metaverse here we come. Inside your profile you can customize your appearance and username which thankfully doesn’t have to be your real name which will be displayed to others while you are VR. From here your oculus friends then become your followers like instagram with meta claiming this provides more ways of being social and connecting with others. You can then choose to share activity updates, achievements etc with your followers. By default if you already own a quest headset your oculus friends will automatically become your followers and you’ll be following them back. But you can choose to unfollow or remove anyone at anytime.

Looking to the privacy settings, meta accounts will give you the options of your profile being open to everyone, friends and family which gives you control to connect only with people you know, and where only the people that now follow you can see your activity and active status, or go Solo where people cannot see your activity or status and you’ll be asked to approve every follower requests. But even choosing the private solo option your profile picture, avatar, username, display name, follower count and number of people you follow will be publicly visible.

With these new meta horizon profiles we have seen what seems to be confirmation of new avatar images inside the past few meta quest firmware updates And believe it or not… they have legs!!

Lastly I’ll leave you with this bit of Project Cambria news. It seems Meta is going to take the apple approach and has decided to name project cambria the Quest Pro. Mac Rumor writer and iOS code digger Steve Moser found a string in the latest ios Quest app referencing pairing a new controller that reads, Pair Meta Quest Pro right controller. 

We soon will be free from facebook accounts attached to our quest. Let me know what you think about this if you care or will still keep your facebook connected to your new meta account. Thanks for watching and I’ll catch you in the next quickie.

After the leaks from last week Zuck confirmed on his facebook page today that horizon homes is launching with the next quest update version 41 sometime next week.

Horizon home in Marks words will bring social presence into your virtual home as soon as you put on your headset. Invite friends to hang out, watch videos together, or jump into apps right from your virtual home. He also stated that more options to customize your home space are currently in development. 

Zuck showed off the new quest feature with free climber Alex Honnold whose film free solo showcased his death defying climbs without any harness or safety back up. They watched part of his 360 film the soloist VR together using the new horizon home share feature to give us an idea how it would look to bring our friends into an experience together virtually.

I’m interested in how this is going to work “as soon as you put on your headset” but I will say I am all for new features and updates to the quest as long as we can still use everything else properly.

Do you plan on using this feature? Let me know down below and of course I’ll catch you in the next quickie.

Getting a new quest? Get $30 free store credit on me by using my oculus quest coupon code: https://www.oculus.com/referrals/link/QuestQuickie/

My Favorite Oculus Quest 2 Accessories:

Quest 2: https://amzn.to/3PfvOi7

BOBO Battery Headstrap: https://amzn.to/3FvYVcw

Kiwi Pro Grip Covers: https://amzn.to/3l09346

VR Cover Facial Interface: https://amzn.to/3L1prf8

It’s another week and so another accidental or maybe purposeful leak comes out from a quest 2 user. Redditor imlife1102 was given access to what seems to be the horizon home feature that was teased back in october of 2021 where your quest friends can join you in your home as their avatar. The reddit user was able to invite a friend into their home and they were able to move around in their space. I found it interesting that we could see their dashboard when they popped in. Nice animation by the way on the pop in. Im life did share that they were not on the public test channel so it was baked into the version 40 update that they recieved. We actually saw a hint of this feature back in the PTC for version 37 called co presence so this seems to be nearly ready for its release. 

To add to this VR code sleuth Samulia also found new strings of code in the recently released PTC for version 41 that looks to hint at creating new horizon profiles attached to your quest accounts. WIth one prompt in the code saying your horizon profile is how you appear and connect with others in VR. We’ll guide you through the steps to get setup. So it seems we might have a new profile process coming soon.

Maybe this is the answer to removing the need for a facebook account to use a quest headset but honestly I’m really not sure but the one positive is that it looks like you’ll be able to more easily change the name that you want to be called in VR according to this string of code here.

What other leaks are coming? Is this just marketing?

Getting a new quest? Get $30 free store credit on me by using my oculus quest coupon code: https://www.oculus.com/referrals/link/QuestQuickie/

My Favorite Oculus Quest 2 Accessories:

Quest 2: https://amzn.to/3PfvOi7

BOBO Battery Headstrap: https://amzn.to/3FvYVcw

Kiwi Pro Grip Covers: https://amzn.to/3l09346

VR Cover Facial Interface: https://amzn.to/3L1prf8