Facebook have leaked the Oculus Quest 2 early
Too bad it requires a Facebook account, though.
Facebook have accidentally leaked the Oculus Quest 2 after a pair of videos detailing the new VR headset emerged on their Blueprint training site yesterday. The successor to the standalone Oculus Quest is due to be officially announced tomorrow during Facebook's Connect developer conference on September 16th, but you can watch both videos right here to get an early sneak peek. Boasting a display with 50% more pixels than the original Quest, it's the highest resolution VR headset Oculus have made to date and their "most advanced all-in-one VR system yet".
According to the videos, the Oculus Quest 2 will be smaller and lighter than the original Quest, and it will have a new soft-touch headset for increased comfort. Its controllers have also been streamlined to be more ergonomic. It's not yet clear whether old Quest controllers will continue to work with the Quest 2, but I'd imagine these details will be confirmed during its full unveiling at Facebook's Connect conference tomorrow.
The Quest 2 has significantly more powerful innards than the first Quest, too. It's powered by a Snapdragon XR-2 chipset, which Qualcomm says is twice as fast as the first Quest's Snapdragon 835 chipset, and it will have 6GB of RAM for more advanced VR experiences.
It also has "an almost 4K display", with a resolution of nearly 2K per eye, and 3D positional audio. It will also be available with an optional 256GB of internal storage, which is a decent step up from the existing 64GB and 128GB options on the original Quest.
Intriguingly, the videos also suggest that some upcoming Quest 2 games will let you ditch the controllers altogether and simply use your hands - including what looks to be the Quest home menu.
There's no word on pricing yet, but considering the current 64GB Quest costs £399 / $399 (and the 128GB version goes for £499 / $499), I'd expect that new 256GB model to cost quite a bit more.
There's also the small problem that all new Oculus headsets will require the use of a Facebook account soon, which sucks. Starting from October, all new VR users will be required to sign in to their headsets using their Facebook accounts, while existing users will be given the option to merge their Oculus account with their Facebook one.
Existing users can choose not to merge the two accounts, but they'll only continue to receive support for their Oculus accounts until January 1st 2023. After this point, users will be able to carry on using their headsets as well as their previously purchased games, but won't have "full" functionality.
