Facebook recently announced its new branding going forward and renamed itself Meta Inc. The new name also brings a new direction to the company’s focus on VR and AR development. What’s more surprising is that the company plans to rename its most famous VR brand Oculus to Meta. So Starting in early 2022, all Oculus brand names will be retired and products like Oculus Quest 2 known as Meta Quest 2.
According to Andrew Bosworth, the company’s soon-to-be CTO starting in early 2022, you’ll start to see the shift from Oculus Quest from Facebook to Meta Quest and Oculus App to Meta Quest App over time. In addition, other hardware products will also gradually adopt the Meta branding. Facebook Portal will become Meta Portal, and Facebook Reality Labs will change its name to just ‘Reality Labs.’ Even the upcoming new high-end VR headset by the company might also be known as Meta Quest Pro.
Oculus Quest updates and improvements
Mark Zuckerberg, who is now the CEO of Meta Inc., announced a slew of updates to the existing Oculus Quest 2. Although the company is moving forward, they didn’t forget to support their existing top VR product. This included support for AR, voice recognition, a new home environment, 2D apps, cloud saves, and more. It seems the company is focusing on supporting Oculus Quest 2 a little longer, seeing as there wasn’t any sign of the new Virtual Reality headsets coming anytime soon.
2D app support for Quest
Starting today, the Quest will support 2D apps from third-party developers such as Zoom, Slack, Canva, etc. These apps will work just like normal mobile apps and take advantage of Quest’s multitasking capabilities. You can open more than three apps at the same time in the Quest home environment. Select apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Smartsheet, and Spike, will be available in the Oculus Store today.
Support for AR and mixed reality apps
Quest developers will now be able to develop, and ship apps made for AR and mixed reality, thanks to the new software developer kits released by the company. This will let developers take advantage of the cameras on the Quest 2 and make AR apps and games for the users.
Facebook free Quest login from 2022
Finally, you will be able to log into your Quest 2 without a Facebook account. Using this feature, users will be able to log in with their business accounts. However, it will take a while to come to the general public with open beta starting in 2022 and general availability in 2023.
Horizon Home (new home environment for Oculus Quest)
Horizon Home will replace the current Oculus Home on the Quest. This will bring new social integration allowing multiple users to connect with each other. Users will be able to bring friends into the social space to hang out, watch videos together, and play games. In the future, users will even be able to customize their home environment according to their needs.
Developer support for voice recognition, hand and keyboard tracking
Aside from AR, the company also released other software developer kits for voice recognition, hand tracking, and keyboard tracking. This will allow users to use their voice to search for things in-app content, just like using Alexa or Siri. The Quest 2 has supported hand tracking and keyboard tracking for a while, but it hasn’t been used widely. This will allow many developers to make apps and games that use these features often, which will improve.
Cloud Backup for Oculus Quest
Cloud backup support is coming to all games on the Quest platform. The system will be completely automatic and will not require developers to integrate it. Previously when Facebook services went down earlier this month, users were unable to access their games on their Quests. So this will be a huge help in that regard.
