Meta Connect, the company’s annual XR developer conference, is going all-digital again this year and it promises to share updates that look into the “near and far future” of the company. While there’s still a little over two weeks to go, now the company has published the livestream session schedules, giving us a better idea of what we can look forward to.
Update (September 23rd, 2022): You can check out the full program here, but here’s a quick rundown of what the October 11th event holds:
As you’d imagine, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking the lead for the keynote, which is set to kick off Connect’s day-long event. We’re sure to get some conceptual, forward-looking stuff here to go along with some juicy nuggets on how the VR part of the company is faring—now and into the near future. Also… Quest Pro is probably on the docket, so stay tuned.
The so-called Developer State of the Union keynote is taking place afterwards, led by Anand Dass of Metaverse Content Applications, Chris Pruett of Content Ecosystem at Reality Labs, and Yardley Pohl of the VR Product dept. Here we’re supposed to learn about Meta’s “new and updated tools and programs from Reality Labs.”
There’s also over a dozen developer sessions throughout the day, spanning from how to best monetize you game to the company’s vision for its future avatars.
And to top it all off, legendary programmer and Consulting CTO John Carmack will be holding his annual unscripted chat on everything. Outside of a supposed hardware announce, Carmack’s chat is usually the highlight of the conference since it provides so much insight and history into the making of the company’s VR headsets. You can sign up for reminders here so you don’t miss out.
The original article follows below:
Original Article (September 6th, 2022): Like last year’s all-digital Connect, this year’s dev conference will include livestreaming keynotes and developer sessions, which the company says will be available on the Reality Labs Facebook page. And it’s all being boiled down into one day.
There’s no schedule out yet (see update), however the company says its one-day virtual event will explore “the building of the metaverse and the future of augmented and virtual reality.” You can sign up for updates over at metaconnect.com for any upcoming livestreams.
We’d expect that much, but more specifically we’re hoping to learn a few key things. Topping the list is info surrounding its next VR headset, Project Cambria, or what is rumored to be dubbed Meta Quest Pro.
On the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg let it slip that its “next device [is] coming out in October,” which suggests a Cambria launch during Connect. That would also mean we get the full info drop on the so-called Quest Pro then. Reminder: at more than $800 Cambria is likely meant for prosumers and developers looking to get their hands on a VR headset capable of AR interactions (aka ‘mixed reality’) thanks to color passthrough and built-in eye tracking.
Whatever we see though will most certainly need top last year’s big name change if the company wants to make good on its complete rebranding, which essentially unplugged the Facebook and Oculus brand names and pivoted the company to focus more on building the metaverse.
Some other bits we’d expect in Connect 2022: Meta’s social VR space Horizon Worlds demonstrating a more definite direction, which we’d hope includes better-looking avatars and the sort of baked-in social features its VR hardware has been missing since, well, forever.
Now that Oculus…er…Meta Quest 2 has seen a price bump and the company still hasn’t delivered on its ambitious metaverse concepts, Connect 2022 may be just the place for the company to set expectations for Meta moving forward.