Cheaper Quest 3S, AI, AR and everything else you can expect from a metaverse event

Update, September 25, 11:15AM ET: Big day for the Meta! You can follow the event as it happens with commentary from Karissa Bell and Devindra Hardawar in our Meta Connect 2024 live updates story. The original article follows below.

In the past, the biggest AR/VR event of the year was known as Oculus Connect and then Facebook Connect. But whatever the name, Meta’s fall event is its flagship showcase of the company’s latest and greatest achievements in the virtual reality and mixed reality space. Like last year, we can predict the biggest news coming out of Meta Connect 2024 with only two acronyms: AI and AR.

Like every other major tech industry this year, Meta will be keen to show how it plans to stay afloat in an AI-powered future. And with seven months to go until the launch of Apple’s Vision Pro, which came with a temporary spike in demand for augmented reality (AR), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be eager to show off his plans to make AR a reality.

Although Zuckerberg isn’t as hot on the subject as he was when he rebranded his company, the union of AI and AR is one of the ways he can make the dream of increasingly virtual worlds a reality. It may seem small Ready Player Onebut if AR glasses really take off, they could still let Meta control another piece of our digital world. And to help get them there, bringing a cheap VR headset couldn’t hurt.

With all that in mind, here are a few things we expect to see at Meta Connect 2024, which kicks off almost tomorrow – September 25 – and runs for two days. The show begins with a live stream at 1PM ET, which is expected to run for about an hour.

Orion AR glasses

After reportedly killing off an expensive next-generation hybrid headset, which was meant to compete with the Apple Vision Pro, Meta is instead focusing on augmented reality glasses, codenamed Orion, as its next innovation. As seen on the back of one of Mark Zuckerberg’s pictures (above), and later confirmed by him, Orion is like a chunky independent hipster.

Unlike Quest 3, which fully consumes your vision and uses cameras to show you a low-quality view of the world, Orion can let you see the real world like a pair of normal glasses. But, like Magic Leap and Microsoft’s HoloLens before it, the Meta glasses may superimpose a holographic image on top of your reality. The main difference, of course, is that it seems much heavier than those machines.

“Glasses, I think, are going to be a big thing,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with the Blueprint Podcast (via. RoadtoVR). “We’re almost ready to start showing off the full holographic glasses. We will not sell it widely; we’re focused on building a full consumer version instead of selling a prototype.”

Back at Meta Connect 2022, Zuckerberg showed how the company is thinking about AR glasses, and an interesting wrist-based controller:

“It’s probably our most exciting template yet,” said Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. The Verge last year. “I might get myself in trouble by saying this: I think it might be the most advanced piece of technology in the world in its domain. In the domain of consumer electronics, it might be the most advanced thing we’ve ever produced as a brand.”

According to the leaked Meta roadmap, the company plans to release new Ray-Ban smart glasses next year that will add a small built-in screen alongside the existing camera, speaker and microphone. That will be followed by the first Meta consumer AR glasses in 2027. It makes sense that we will see some kind of concept device this year. Much like Apple’s Vision Pro was the company’s successful version of the AR/VR concept car to introduce developers to its vision of “local computing,” Meta will need to give developers a way to use its platform to create their own AR experiences. Competitor Snap recently released its fifth-generation AR Spectacles, and this version is aimed at developers (for a subscription fee of $99/month).

A cheaper alternative to Quest 3

Instead of an upgraded headset, all signs point to Meta releasing a stripped-down version of the Quest 3 called the Quest 3S, reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Recent leaked images from Quest Link’s Meta app have confirmed the headset’s presence. According to Gurman, the company aims to make it much cheaper than the current version, reportedly considering a price point of $300 or $400, while still delivering an experience close to the Quest 3.

A recent leak suggests that it will start at just $299. A Reddit user shared a clip of an Amazon ad reportedly shown at Peacock featuring the Quest 3S, complete with price and storage (h/t Load VR). According to the ad, the 128GB Quest 3S will cost $299, but there may be other storage options as well. It may replace the Quest 2, which sits in the $299 lineup long after its 2020 release.

So why would Meta do this? There is a huge performance gap between Quest 3 and Quest 2, making life difficult for developers. With a cheaper device like the Quest 3, possibly using the same processor, it would be easier to build games that could scale to two price points. In accordance with Bloomberg’s Gourmet, Meta also considered releasing some models of the new headset without any integrated controls, which could make the price even lower.

More AI, of course

Expect Meta to show off more ways it’s using AI across its Quest headsets and Ray-Ban smart glasses. The company rolled out contextual AI search capabilities on those glasses in January, allowing you to ask Meta AI about objects or landmarks you were looking at, or for quick translations. Based on our testing, however, those features are surprisingly half-baked.

Meta will likely discuss how it’s improving those existing features by using its Llama 3.1 large-scale language model (LLM), which it positions as an open source competitor to Google and OpenAI’s LLMs. In particular, the company notes that Llama 3.1 offers improved capabilities for translation, statistics and general information. There is certainly room for Meta to introduce the new AI capabilities powered by Llama 3.1 to Ray-Ban’s smart glasses, but due to their limited processing power and battery life, we’ll probably have to wait for an updated model before we see anything truly groundbreaking.

Karissa Bell contributed to this report.