Facebook teases high-end Project Cambria headset for VR and AR

Facebook showcased Project Cambria at its Connect event. That is a new VR and AR headset, which will have high-end features and also a high price. Many details have not yet been disclosed.

The headset Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off at the Connect event resembles the model that previously appeared in animations and was referred to as the Oculus Quest Pro. Such a Pro version of the Quest has not been announced and Facebook now indicates that Project Cambria is also not a headset that will find a place in the line of affordable Quest glasses.

Project Cambria

Specifications of Project Cambria has not been disclosed by Facebook. It is known that the glasses will have cameras that capture the environment in color and wearers must be able to see the world around them when they have the glasses on. That is already possible with the Quest 2, but that is limited to black and white and a low resolution. With Project Cambria, that should provide a more realistic and usable image so that the headset can also be used for AR display, where digital objects are placed in the real world.

The headset will also get cameras to track users’ eye movements and facial expressions. The user’s body movements can also be convincingly displayed in virtual environments, claims Facebook. Zuckerberg argues that such hardware is necessary to enable the ‘metaverse’, a virtual world in which people come together and interact in all kinds of ways. Next year, the company will show more of Project Cambria. For the time being, it is not known what the specifications of the glasses are and what they will cost.

Zuckerberg says his company is also working hard on AR glasses, but he also says it will be years before they will be available because it is difficult to fit powerful hardware into normal glasses. He also refers to the smart camera glasses that Facebook recently released together with Ray-Ban and calls that a first step.

While Facebook barely gave any concrete details about upcoming hardware, the company did show demos of realistic avatars that look lifelike. Zuckerberg also spoke about using neural input to control virtual environments. Such features are not expected any time soon; Facebook showed the techniques in the context of a roadmap for developments in the coming years.