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Facebook parent company Meta's next VR headset, Cambria, coming next year

Project Cambria has face tracking, new lenses and color-passthrough AR. It'll be more expensive, that's for sure.

Scott Stein Editor at Large
I started with CNET reviewing laptops in 2009. Now I explore wearable tech, VR/AR, tablets, gaming and future/emerging trends in our changing world. Other obsessions include magic, immersive theater, puzzles, board games, cooking, improv and the New York Jets. My background includes an MFA in theater which I apply to thinking about immersive experiences of the future.
Expertise VR and AR, gaming, metaverse technologies, wearable tech, tablets Credentials
  • Nearly 20 years writing about tech, and over a decade reviewing wearable tech, VR, and AR products and apps
Scott Stein
2 min read
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Project Cambria, a headset coming next year, will add face tracking, color cameras and improved lenses.

Facebook

Facebook (now rebranded as Meta) has a new VR headset in the works, but it's not designed as a replacement to the Quest 2. Think of it more as a more expensive, future-forward pro model. At the company's developer-focused Connect conference, amid broad news of the company's plans for a cross-device metaverse and next-generation smart glasses (and a name change as a parent company), CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced hardware code-named Project Cambria, which will have improved mixed reality, face tracking and more compact optics.

Watch this: Watch everything Zuckerberg announced at Facebook Connect 2021

Zuckerberg acknowledged the existence of a "Quest Pro" in a conversation with CNET earlier this year, where he discussed a future headset with additional sensors: "If you were focused on building a higher-end device that could really max out further on some of those other use cases, in addition to doing the gaming pieces, there are some interesting questions about how you design."

Read moreFacebook changes corporate name to Meta amid controversy

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A brief glimpse at the pancake lenses, which promise to be less bulky than existing Quest headsets.

Facebook

The new headset isn't seen as a replacement for the company's year-old Oculus Quest 2. Instead, it'll likely be a higher-priced experiment aimed at pushing new sensor tech for VR and mixed reality, acting perhaps as a bridge to where the company wants to head next with AR glasses that don't exist yet.

The news comes in a week during which Facebook has already faced allegations that it puts profits over the safety of its users, along with a cache of internal documents that pin blame on the social network for perpetuating hate speech, misinformation, human trafficking and other harmful content.