Meta held their annual conference last week, showcasing a new Quest headset, as well as the prototype for a sleek pair of AR glasses. To boot, they also had a couple of accessories that may interest VR porn fans too.
Meta Announce The Meta Quest 3s Headset
The big announcement at this year’s Meta Connect was, as expected, the announcement of a new Quest headset – the Quest 3s. Well, ok, it’s not really a completely new headset as such, but rather a cheaper version of the Quest 3. Whilst it is heavier and has slightly lower resolution than the Quest 3, it shares the same Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor. More importantly, it has the same color passthrough feature for mixed reality, as the Quest 3 does. But the big deal with the Quest 3s is that it will cost only $299 for the 128GB model, compared to $499 that the same storage model of the Quest 3 costs.
What does it mean for VR and AR porn?
The significantly lower price will mean that the Quest 3s will be an affordable Christmas gift this festive season, and should sell in large numbers, giving a boost to the VR porn market, including passthrough porn. Meta also announced that along with discontinuing the 128GB Quest 3, they are dropping the price of the 256GB model from $649 to just $499. So VR porn sites might see their best Holiday Season sales spike this year since the ‘Covid Christmas’ of 2020.
Meta Reveals ‘Orion’ Prototype AR Glasses
Another announcement from Meta was even more exciting, and in all likelihood far more significant in the longer term. They revealed the prototype of their first pair of AR glasses, codenamed Orion, and it impressed tech writers with its impressively compact form factor, whilst still managing to maintain a decent field-of-view. It actually does look like a pair of glasses. Furthermore, the glasses are not teathered to the pocket-sized device that provides their computing power. RoadToVR.com explains :
While the glasses are said to handle core capabilities like head-tracking, the compute puck takes on the work of rendering the content. Off-loading that rendering power to the puck means the headset can not only be smaller, but cooler too, relieving the key issue of heat dissipation on such a compact device.
And Orion leans on yet another device to complete its experience: a wristband loaded with sensors. The EMG wristband can detect subtle movements of the user’s hand and fingers, allowing for precise input without the users needing to hold their hands up in front of them.
What does it means for VR and AR porn?
Passthrough porn (which is just 3D VR porn in passthrough/mixed reality mode) has already become more than a ‘niche’ within VR porn. A sizeable percentage of VR porn fans only want to experience the action in passthrough now. Imagine how much popular it will be when instead of wearing a bulky headset, you just need to slip on a pair of glasses. But even more than that, these glasses are true augmented reality glasses that enable ‘holograms’ to appear in volumetric 3D, so you can ‘move around’ them, and interact with them in various ways. They also have AI built in to them already. Predictions that the AI girlfriend market could be a billion dollar market within 10 years, may be extremely conservative if these glasses hit the market before then (and Meta expects them to do so before 2030).
New Breathable Masturbation Friendly Quest VR Headset Interfaces
Two of the most popular uses of Quest headsets have been VR porn (to nobody’s surprise) and fitness gaming. At the Connect conference, Meta also revealed two new interfaces to make playing games such as Beat Saber, and no doubt banging Rika Fane in VR, a less sweaty affair.
The ‘Breathable Facial Interface’ has a ‘perforated yet immersive’ fabric design, and a silicone face pad exterior. Meta also announced an ‘Open Facial Interface’, designed primarily for mixed-reality sessions, but which also allows the wearer to breathe more easily.
Read more about the accessories at RoadToVR.com.