Virtual reality is here to stay although, for now, its expansion in the world of video games has not been as fast or massive as companies like Sony, Valve, HTC, HP or Meta would have wanted, which keep alive that market in which Not too many users participate. And it is that the percentage of gamers who really have in VR their daily entertainment mode not too significant.
New model at the door
Within those attempts to popularize virtual reality, Meta has been especially significant after the announcement at the end of last year of the great project of those of Mark Zuckerberg: the Metaverse. That digital world, parallel to the real one, in which we will be able to immerse ourselves to live such unique experiences that they will suppose in itself a kind of second existence. A place where we can continue spending money, acquiring goods and even dispatching ourselves with little whims that we want to have in this new digital universe.
And the tool to access that Metaverse will be none other than Meta’s glasses, the Oculus that has been launching for a little less than a decade and that now details have been known about the features that will adorn the Quest Pro, a high-end model, above the one we have right now in stores (the Oculus Quest 2) and that they would add two elements that are going to become extraordinarily necessary to connect in the Metaverse with other people.
What sensors might be needed? Well, according to the firmware sent to the Oculus Quest 2 (v38) last March, there was a reference to two very specific ones: an eye tracker on the one hand, and a facial tracker on the other. With those two components, the glasses will be able to know exactly where we are looking or what is the grimace that we have drawn on our face as a reaction to something specific that we have seen or heard. Only with those two extra components in a future Oculus Quest Pro, the degree of interaction of our avatar could be practically complete and transmit with pinpoint precision what we feel and even what we say, which would allow us to reproduce even the natural movement of our lips.
The next step is already here
It is evident that virtual reality is rapidly moving towards a panorama that will not be too far from what we saw in Ready Player One (both the book and the movie) and for that the new generation of helmets are being prepared for the phase in which our body must be digitized to show those emotions virtually. What’s more, Meta is aware of the competition it has in other fields and that is why it feels on the back of its neck the breath of Sony and its PS VR 2, which will presumably arrive this year and have already announced that they will have eye tracking.
Hence the second half of 2022 will be decisive to see exactly how, a year after its announcement, that commitment to the Metaverse that dozens of companies want to conquer in their own way is evolving. But it will not be until Meta says exactly what it is working on when we will really be able to see if the commitment to VR is likely to permeate higher layers of society and reach the category of mainstream. And not just as an entertainment whim for those early adopters who jump on the bandwagon of the latest technology without thinking twice.
