At 1:30 a.m. Beijing time on September 28, the 10th Meta Connect was held, and although the overall conference time was delayed by half an hour, the highly anticipated Meta Quest 3 was still met with everyone as scheduled. In addition to the official release of Quest 3, Meta also announced Meta's open-source large-language model Llama 2, as well as the second-generation Ray-Ban smart glasses equipped with Meta AI.
In the opening speech, Zuckerberg described Meta's new understanding of the future metaverse, that is, the ultimate combination of "MR+AI+smart glasses", and the content of the entire conference also revolved around these three themes.
Here's a detailed summary of the conference:
Quest 3: The world's first MR all-in-one
Ahead of Apple's mixed-reality headset, Vision Pro, which goes on sale early next year, Meta released the new generation Meta Quest 3. According to Zuckerberg, this is also the first MR all-in-one in the Quest series. The Quest 3 debut price is $499, up $200 from the launch price of its predecessor, the Quest 2, released in 2020. The base Quest 3 comes with 128GB of RAM, and the internal storage upgrade to the 512GB version starts at $649.99. Pre-orders for the Quest 3 began on the day of the launch, with shipments starting October 10.
Different from Quest 2, the biggest change in Quest 3 is that it is more like an MR (mixed reality) all-in-one machine that integrates VR and AR like Vision Pro, which also echoes Zuckerberg's mention at the beginning that "MR is the ultimate form of the future meta-universe", perhaps this also marks that Meta's all-in-one product line will complete the transformation from VR to MR.
In terms of configuration, Quest 3 is the world's first all-in-one equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 second-generation processor, which is based on the Arm architecture and has 8GB of RAM. According to Zuckerberg, the graphics performance of the Quest 3 is almost twice that of the Quest 2, and he used games as an example, some games that used to require an external PC can now run directly on the Quest 3 all-in-one.
In terms of display, the display resolution of the Quest 3 reaches 2064 x 2208 monocular, which is nearly 30% higher than the Quest 2 monocular resolution of 1832 ×1920. The Quest 3 has a horizontal field of view of 110 degrees (binocular) and a vertical field of view of 96 degrees, which is about 15% more than the Quest 2, and also better than the Quest Pro.
In terms of form, the Quest 3 is also a major change from its predecessor, thanks to the new Pancake solution, the Quest 3 is nearly 40% thinner than the Quest 2 in optical profile, but the Quest 3 weighs slightly heavier than the Quest 2, at 515 grams. Zuckerberg said that this is a design made with the user's wearing comfort in mind. In addition, the Quest 3 improves the much-maligned IPD adjustment function on the previous generation, allowing users to adjust the interpupillary distance setting of the Quest 3 directly through the scroll wheel on the fuselage.
The biggest hardware difference between the Quest 3 and the Quest 2 is the camera module: the Quest 3 all-in-one has three sensors on the front, and two new full-color cameras provide more efficient color perspective. It is understood that due to the Snapdragon XR2 Gen2 chip, the average perspective delay of the Quest 3 is controlled within 12 milliseconds, which can be ignored, which is almost comparable to the Vision Pro.
According to reports, Quest 3 users can switch freely between VR and MR two different modes, users can choose VR mode when they want a more immersive experience, and MR mode when users want to see both the content screen and the real world environment, and the switching method is also very simple, just use the handle or gently tap the side of the headset twice to switch. Quest 3 also automatically scans the room's environment to avoid users hitting obstacles.
Zuckerberg also mentioned that Quest 3 is coming next year with a new feature called Augments. According to the video, Quest 3 can identify interactive virtual items in a space through the Augments feature and add virtual items to the real-world environment. For example, users can "hang" photos from Facebook and Instagram in their homes, and they can also put trophies and decorations obtained in MR games in cabinets. Zuckerberg said that this feature will be further updated in the future to unlock more interesting and novel gameplay for users.
In addition, the Quest 3 handle has also been greatly changed, and like the Quest Pro released last year, the Touch Plus handle removes the positioning ring in front and uses an infrared sensor for positioning, and its haptic feedback has been further improved. And the Quest 3 also supports hand tracking, so users can also choose to control without a controller.
The battery life of the Quest 3 has not improved significantly, and according to Zuckerberg, the battery life of the Quest 3 is the same as that of the Quest 2, which is about 90 minutes to 3 hours.
Finally, Zuckerberg also announced the good news that Xbox Cloud Gaming will arrive at Quest 3 in December, when it will unlock 100+ upgraded games or new masterpieces, including Roblox, Assassin's Creed Nexus, Fury of Asgard 2 and more.
The second generation of Ray-Ban smart glasses: built-in Meta AI, new live broadcast function
In addition to the all-in-one machine, the new smart glasses Ray-Ban Meta, which were previously revealed, were also unveiled at the conference, which debuted at $299 and began accepting pre-orders this Wednesday and will be available on October 17.
The new version of smart glasses is equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 generation chip, the processor runs less than 1 watt, the smart glasses can last 4-6 hours when fully charged, and the charging case can continuously charge the glasses 8 times.
In terms of audio, the new version of smart glasses has a big improvement. The glasses are equipped with an audio system similar to Amazon's Echo Frames and Bose Tempo series, so that only they can hear music when the user is playing. According to reports, this smart glasses has also made a major upgrade in the microphone system, glasses have a total of five microphones, of which the microphone at the bridge of the user's nose can further improve the user's experience of receiving calls and voice interaction.
This smart glasses is equipped with a small camera on the right temple, and users can use the glasses as a camera. The glasses can store 500 photos and 100 30-second videos, all synced via Meta's App Facebook View.
In addition to being used to take photos, record videos, and listen to music, the biggest improvement in the function of the new generation of smart glasses is the new live broadcast function, users only need to tap a few times on the temples, you can start live broadcast on Facebook or Instagram, Meta shows users the live performance of glasses in scenarios such as go-karts and outdoor outings. After you start a live stream, a white light around the lens flashes to remind the user to start recording.
Meta's AI moment
At this conference, AI is undoubtedly a major play. In the past year, Meta has successively launched text generation 3D video models, image segmentation models SAM, open source large language model Llama 2, etc., and AI community models have also begun to see scale. Zuckerberg said that the next step for Meta will be to fully bring AI into the Meta family bucket and bring a new social experience to users.
Zuckerberg first unveiled the image generation model Emu that the team is working on. According to reports, Emu can generate a series of high-quality photos, and the generation speed is extremely fast, a picture only takes about 5 seconds to generate. Zuckerberg said that Emu will soon be available in Facebook's chat and sticker features, and plans to launch platforms such as Instagram next month.
Shortly afterwards, Zuckerberg launched a consumer-facing generative artificial intelligence product, including a chatbot that can generate both text replies and realistic images, called Meta AI. Zuckerberg said that in the future, everyone will need many different roles and different personalities of AI to interact with it and complete related activities. To this end, Meta has created as many as 28 AI avatars with different preset personalities for Meta AI, each with a distinct personality, they all have corresponding social accounts, and users can have different types of conversations with them on social platforms. According to reports, personalized AI will achieve voice communication capabilities next year.
In addition, Zuckerberg also introduced that Meta is now working on building an artificial intelligence platform, which he named AI Studio, which contains a series of AI API interfaces and will be officially launched in the next few weeks.
summary
As Zuckerberg said, this year's Meta Connect conference is different from the past, you can see that MR, AI and smart glasses as the core content of the entire conference, almost throughout the entire Meta new product line, Zuckerberg also further indicated Meta's vision for the future meta-universe, that is, the ultimate form of "MR+AI+smart glasses".
Throughout the conference, we can also feel Meta's hidden "connotation" of Apple Vision Pro, such as the speaker's repeated speeches emphasizing "no wires, no battery packs", and Zuckerberg's goal of Meta, that is, to give everyone the opportunity to access various innovative technologies, not just a few people. It can be seen that Meta's choice to announce Quest 3 on the eve of this year's Apple Developer Conference, as well as the same main MR application scenarios, seems to be preempting Apple Vision Pro to prove itself to the market, and compared with the price of Vision Pro $3499, although the price of the previous generation is increased by $200, the Quest 3 priced at $499 still occupies a great price advantage.
In general, this time the Meta conference still handed over a more satisfactory answer to users, the movements of the giants also further show us the shape of the future technology world, now that Quest 3 has been released, the release of Vision Pro is also close at hand, the real "meta-universe endgame" seems not far away, we can also look forward to it.
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