Meta reportedly began work on Quest Pro 2 in November

Meta began work on a Quest Pro 2 in November 2023, according to The Information.

Buried in their report today about Apple suspending work on the 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 the Meta “began work in November on a new high-end headset. , coded internally in La Jolla.”

We’ve heard that name La Jolla before. In March 2023, an internal Meta hardware roadmap was leaked to The Verge. Along with accurately describing the Quest 3 and other Meta products, the roadmap revealed that a Quest Pro 2 candidate for 2024 has been scrapped in favor of a more ambitious but “way into the future” model codenamed La Jolla.

Quest Pro 2 “Way Out In The Future” With Photoreal Avatars

Meta reportedly canceled a short-term successor to the Quest Pro, with the upcoming model now “reaching the future” with photorealistic avatars.

According to that roadmap, the La Jolla would feature Codec Avatars, have a higher resolution, and retain the rear battery design of the Quest Pro.

“We want to make it higher resolution for work use and work with nails and text and things like that,” Meta’s VR VP Mark Rabkin reportedly said.

Codec Avatars is Meta’s long-term research and development project that aims to revolutionize remote communication by achieving truly convincing photorealistic avatars driven in real-time by headsets with face-tracking sensors and eventually glasses. Meta first revealed the existence of the project in 2019.

In January, references to Codec Avatars were found within Quest’s public firmware code, suggesting that Meta is actively working to bring the feature to an actual product. However, in March of last year, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said that while the company was “making progress” in shipping Codec Avatars “we’re still years away.”

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It’s unclear how Meta’s partnership with LG affects La Jolla, or if it’s a completely different project. Several South Korean outlets, first in September, reported that LG would produce the upcoming Quest Pro headset, but last month LG said it was “checking its pace” after multiple reports that the headset had been pushed back to 2027 between significant differences of opinion between LG and Meta.

Ma and Liu’s new report doesn’t say when Meta plans to ship the La Jolla, but the leaked roadmap that mentions it is “way out in the future” by March 2023 suggests it won’t be anytime soon. Meta’s next headset will be the Quest 3S, and its focus is to go lower than the Quest 3, not higher.