Tuesday, 18 June, 2024 UTC
Summary
Meta started work on a Quest Pro 2 in November 2023, according to The Information.
Buried in their report today about Apple suspending work on Vision Pro 2 to focus on shipping a cheaper headset by the end of next year, The Information's Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu also report that Meta "started work in November on a new high-end headset, internally code-named La Jolla".
We've heard that La Jolla name before. In March 2023 an internal Meta hardware roadmap was leaked to The Verge. Alongside accurately describing Quest 3 and other Meta products, the roadmap revealed that a 2024 Quest Pro 2 candidate had been canceled in favor of a more ambitious but “way out in the future” model codenamed La Jolla.
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According to that roadmap, La Jolla would feature Codec Avatars, have higher resolution, and retain Quest Pro's rear-battery design.
“We want to make it higher resolution for work use and really nail work, text and things like that” Meta's VP of VR Mark Rabkin reportedly said.
Codec Avatars is Meta's long-running research & development project aiming to revolutionize remote communication by achieving truly convincing photorealistic avatars driven in real-time by headsets with face tracking sensors, and eventually glasses too. Meta first revealed the project's existence in 2019.
In January references to Codec Avatars were found inside the code of the public Quest firmware, suggesting Meta is actively working on bringing the feature to an actual product. In March last year though, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said that while the company was "making progress" on shipping Codec Avatars "we are still years away".
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It's unclear how Meta's partnership with LG factors into La Jolla, or whether it's an entirely different project. Multiple South Korean outlets, the first in September, reported LG would make future Quest Pro headsets, but last month LG said it's "controlling its pace" after multiple reports the headset had been pushed out to 2027 amid significant differences of opinion between LG and Meta.
Ma and Liu's new report doesn't say when Meta plans to ship La Jolla, but the leaked roadmap mentioning it being “way out in the future” from March 2023 suggests to not expect it any time soon. Meta's next headset will be Quest 3S, and its focus is on going lower-end than Quest 3, not higher.