- Imagine a future
where your workplace is virtual.
You don't need a big screen display
because you can put virtual monitors anywhere.
Instead of a set of Zoom squares,
you can meet your colleagues in a virtual beach side resort
where your avatars will reflect your real face.
It can feel just like coming into the office
but from the comfort of your home.
- And then I've lost my hands again.
Hey, I got my hands back.
(Nilay laughs)
I'm gonna be honest with you, Adi.
I hate this.
I hate it more than anything.
- I feel so beaten down by the software.
The Meta Quest Pro is supposed to be a big leap forward
for the company, formerly known as Facebook.
Meta has lost 9.4 billion this year
on virtual and augmented reality,
or the so-called metaverse.
And since we started recording this video,
Meta's laid off 11,000 employees or 13% of its workforce.
But in his address to the company,
Zuckerberg said he's still focusing
on high priority growth areas like the Metaverse.
It's betting everything, right down to its name.
This is where Meta's VR goes from fun and games
to a serious business tool.
Eventually, CEO Mark Zuckerberg
wants something like the Quest Pro
to be your next laptop.
The Quest Pro is like a very fancy version of the Quest Two,
the all in one headset that Meta released in 2020.
Like the Quest Two, the Quest Pro is a self-contained system
with built-in cameras and tracking.
It supports Quest Two apps and games
and it uses the same app store.
You still need a Meta account to start using it
unless your workplace sets up its own login system.
Most of it's internal specs
have gotten a slight bump though.
It uses a new Qualcomm XR Two Plus chip set
instead of the Quest Two's XR Two
and it's got 12 gigabytes of memory
instead of six gigabytes.
The Quest Two controllers featured LED bands
that the headsets built-in cameras could track.
Now the controllers have their own tracking camera.
I haven't noticed a huge improvement in their accuracy
mostly because the Quest Two was already quite good
but they're more compact and they finally charge
on a little plastic dock with the headset
instead of burning through AA batteries.
Where the Quest Two blocked out
most of the light around your face,
the Quest Pro offers more options.
By default, it lets in a lot of light
so people can't, say sneak up on you and surprise you in VR.
You'd be surprised how often that happens.
But it comes with rubber wings
that you can magnetically snap on
to block your peripheral vision
and you can buy a separate full face mask
that shuts out almost all light.
The default option here is okay
if you're sitting still at a desk,
which is how Meta imagines many people using it.
But it made me motion sick for anything else
even typically comfortable games like Beat Saber.
So I appreciate the flexibility
but I spent almost all my time with those wings on.
The main difference here though is the headsets cameras.
The Quest Two has four tracking cameras, one on each corner
and they capture black and white video.
The Quest Pro has a total of 10 sensors
including outward facing color cameras
and internal ones that capture your eyes and face.
All these cameras enable the Quest Pro's
two big selling points.
The first is color passthrough mixed reality,
a midpoint between full immersive VR and AR glasses,
where virtual items are overlaid on a live video feed.
We couldn't directly film past their video.
Meta says support to capture it
is coming in future software updates.
The second is face and eye tracking
which lets an avatar mirror facial expressions
like smiling and raising an eyebrow.
- You look like you're sleeping all the time.
- Yeah, no, it doesn't recognize that my eyes are open.
- Which is weird.
(Nilay laughs)
Okay, there is something to be said about this experience.
- Eye tracking also allows foveated rendering
where software can render the pixels
right where you're looking at more sharply
saving on computing power.
These are interesting new features
but so far there isn't a lot to do with them.
Foveated rendering could make more demanding games
render with more detail
but the Quest Pro isn't meant for games right now.
So most VR developers will be building for the Quest Two.
The color feed is a step up
from the Quest Two's black and white,
but it's still washed out and flickery,
a long way from looking like the real world.
There are some mixed reality apps
but the mixed reality component often remains pretty basic.
Meanwhile, Meta's main use for eye and face tracking
is its own social platforms,
particularly Horizon Workrooms.
Workrooms is at the heart of Meta's new strategy.
It's an app that you can sync
with a desktop computer to use as an office.
For personal work, you can project big screens
in front of your face on top of either a full VR environment
or a pass through video feed.
For collaboration, you can invite other people
to a virtual meeting room
but Workrooms, it has some problems.
- So this is the first time
we've been able to make Horizon Workrooms work.
We've tried it many times.
It has mostly failed out, but here we are together.
- I would like to caveat
that there's supposed to be a third person here with us
so I'm not sure I would say worked.
- That's true.
Alex Heath was unable to join us.
The face tracking is somewhat working.
Adi looks very sleepy all the time.
I am talking with my hands. - The face tracking
is also better than I expected,
even though it's not great in a lot of ways.
- Yeah, but it's like it's on the curve
so it's not good enough
that you are not talking with your hands.
Like I'm overcompensating with my hands.
- Yes.
- [Nilay] I cannot tell what your face is actually doing
because you keep winking and squinting at me.
- Yes.
I don't know, maybe this just exaggerates
all of our normal expressions
so we can see how weird we look all the time.
I don't know.
These are thoughts that I feel like would be weird
for a work meeting, so...
- There is zero chance that I would ever
make a serious decision in this software.
- It is bizarre that I have,
bizarre that I have for years
been connecting my Meta headset
to things related to Facebook
so that I can have a seamless social experience
so that I can have like, oh, isn't it great
that you can take advantage of the social graph?
I have to go to a website,
log in through an arcane-like authentication system
that even I don't understand where my account is.
I get on the web, I create a meeting room
I invite people to the meeting room through,
similarly I have no idea how or where
or where these accounts are.
And then maybe, maybe they get a link
and then they can click on the link
and then they launch themselves into the headset
and maybe it works.
As I said before, the Quest Pro's focus
is business collaboration.
So we're spending our most of our time
in Meta's Workrooms app
but the social app, Horizon Worlds
is a big part of Meta's metaverse strategy
a free VR platform for games, events and social hangouts.
And my experience so far is less than stellar.
- [Nilay] Adi, where are you?
- [Alex] Yeah, Adi, where are you?
- [Adi] Hi, yeah, sorry, I have to go.
But it's nice meeting you.
- [Nilay] Adi is talking to people who are not us.
Alex, you have turned into just some sort of acquaintance.
- [Man] She's not over 18.
We need to find someone over 18.
- [Alex] Oh, amazing.
(indistinct chatter)
- [Kid] I don't think anybody here is over 18.
Xxxx.
- [Boy] I'm not over 18, that's for sure.
- [Nilay] I'm literally watching people
try to find Adi to harass her.
- [Alex] Wait, really?
- [Nilay] I'm listening to people saying there's--
I'm literally listening to kids say she's the only--
- [Alex] She's the only one, that's just the dudes.
- [Nilay] They're like, they found a girl
and they're like chasing her.
- [Adi] You too.
- [Nilay] Are you kidding me?
- [Alex] Wait, we gotta go see this.
- [Nilay] I didn't hear that.
- [Adi] Run, go, go, go, go, go, go.
- [Nilay] Wait, you don't hear the gaggle of bros
who are like, "She's the only girl on the server,
"let's go talk to her."?
- [Adi] Oh no, I didn't hear that.
I was hearing the other, there was the woman
who said that I look just like her.
I'm gonna leave now.
- Yeah, I'm gonna go too. - I wanna go home.
- [Nilay] Okay.
- [Alex] Where are we going?
- [Nilay] I don't know.
Was that Alex?
That's Alex.
And Alex again.
I haven't seen Adi.
- [Adi] I'm gonna invite you to go to my home.
- [Alex] Hit the travel.
- [Nilay] Okay, where do I do that?
How do I do, how do I do any of this?
- [Alex] Adi, send it again.
Adi, send it again.
- How do I get out of here?
Okay, so I don't know where you were at that time
but where Alex and I were standing
all of the dudes around us started saying, "There's a girl."
And then they said, "This is true, ask if she's over 18."
And then somehow, I believe you told them
that you were over 18 and they were like--
- I did not tell them that.
I didn't know where they were.
This must have been some other girl.
- Well, that's not great either.
And in many ways, worse.
- Okay, we were finally able to get Alex Heath to join us
and chat about our time so far,
not in Workrooms but in Horizon Worlds.
- [Nilay] Alex, was this worth $10 billion?
- [Alex] This is worth negative $10 billion.
I would pay $10 billion to never use this again.
I wanted to have hope that we could do this
and it would be fun but I mean, you guys agree
this is like one of the most buggy
software experiences ever, right?
I mean, I have not experienced software
this bad in a long time.
- [Nilay] Yeah, it's a real mess.
- I think bug is unfairly nice.
I think bug implies that there is a working version of this
that this is somehow not living up to.
This is just so unintuitive.
- No, I mean, like, when I tried
to join the workroom with you guys,
it just took me into this empty blue expanse
and I couldn't even like get to the menu to restart.
I had to force restart the headset from the button.
I mean, even as a like a reviewer
you barely want to go through it.
I just, while you guys were in Workrooms,
I went into a creator world by myself
and it was literally just two like 10 year olds
trying to figure out how to get out of the wall
they were stuck in on either side of the world,
talking to each other and me in a vast world.
And I'm like, this is it.
This is it.
- [Nilay] What I keep saying
is they should just put this back on the shelf
and not let talk about the metaverse
until something is a hundred times better than this.
Is that your read of this?
- [Alex] That's my read.
I almost wonder if they should scrap this
and just start over.
I mean, I don't know what's salvageable in this experience.
I mean, this is just such a bad experience.
I hate to say it that way.
This is the most savage I've been about a product
but I really don't understand why this exists.
Like, why this is like out for people to be able to use.
And the fact that Workrooms was even worse
and more buggy and that's the whole purpose
of this Pro headset is to like spend time in Workrooms.
And like I just want to acknowledge
you cannot schedule a meeting in Workrooms in the headset.
Like, how did that ship?
I just, I don't really understand.
And so it does not surprise me
that the people building it don't use it
because like I cannot even figure it out myself.
And I write about this stuff for a living.
- It's easy to see why Meta built Workrooms.
It wants to own the future
of not just video games, but computing in general.
It has to, if it wants a business big enough
to compete with its original social networking behemoth,
but the Quest Pro hardware
isn't ready to be your next computer.
The headset weighs around 200 grams more than the Quest Two
or around a hundred more than the Quest Two
with its added elite strap.
It balances that weight
by moving its battery to the back of the headset.
But the design focuses heavy pressure right at my hairline,
to the point that after wearing it for a few hours
I've sometimes got a painfully numb strip on my forehead.
The battery lasts one to two hours
compared to the Quest Two's two to three hours,
which isn't great either.
The Quest Pro screen is roughly the same resolution
as the Quest Two's at 1800 by 1920 pixels per eye.
That's pretty good for a VR headset right now
but it's way too grainy to comfortably stare
at a bunch of text all day.
I might take the Quest Pros virtual screens
over a tiny laptop screen, but not for very long.
The software meanwhile is even worse.
Workrooms is a huge mess
that requires toggling between a web and VR app interface
to set up meetings that load incredibly slowly,
if participants can get into them at all.
It's even clumsier
than your average video conferencing setup
which is already the software version of hell.
And the whole Quest user interface
is fine for launching games,
but it's still limited as a full fledged operating system.
Companies have been using VR for decades,
mostly for specialized work like simulation and 3D design.
The Quest Pro has potential
for places that are already doing this.
It's a relatively high powered standalone headset
with good controllers, and it's not that expensive
compared to other business focused VR headsets.
But Meta needs more than that.
It needs new people to adopt VR for work.
People like, well, us.
For most people,
the Quest Two is still a better option for Meta VR.
It's lighter and vastly cheaper.
It's not as powerful but most game developers
will still be targeting its specs.
The Quest Pro's special features
don't do much for the average user yet.
And if you really love those more compact controllers
you can even buy them for the Quest Two,
although they cost $299.
We know there's a Quest Three coming out next year as well
and who knows what upgrades that will include.
The Quest Pro has some good ideas.
I hope it's upgrades appear in more of Meta's headsets
but right now everyone is looking to Meta
for a giant leap to save the company.
And at best, the Quest Pro was a medium sized step
in the right direction.
- [Nilay] Like I don't know how to do it.
- Three and a half.
Three and a half.
Okay, great.
Three and a half.
I can do that.
My hands don't do this.
- [Nilay] Yeah, no, let's try that.
- Thanks everybody for watching and let me know,
would you rather have one Meta Quest Pro headset
or three and a half Quest Two's?