Reducing weight and increasing performance are two of the most important factors in pushing standalone XR headsets forward. While Meta has shown off its own Orion AR glasses prototype using a wireless compute unit, Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth doesn’t think a similar setup is the magic bullet for standalone VR gaming.

Bosworth, who is also head of the company’s Reality Labs XR team, held another one of his Instagram Q&As earlier this week, where he typically delves into a wide variety of topics—some professional, some personal.

In the latest session, Bosworth expounded on the subject of wireless compute units, and how the company thinks they aren’t the right fit for its standalone VR headsets.

Meta Quest 3S | Image courtesy Meta

“We have looked at this a bunch of times. Wireless compute pucks just really don’t solve the problem. If you’re wireless, they still have a battery on the headset, which is a major driver of weight. And, sure, you’re gaining some thermal space so your performance could potentially be better, although you’re somewhat limited now by bandwidth because you’re using a radio,” Bosworth says.

SEE ALSO
'Metro Awakening' Gameplay Shows Off Patently Tense Combat, Immersive VR Take on Familiar Mechanics

Technical hurdles aside, Meta is primarily focused on building something accessible to consumers, with its latest Quest 3S selling for as low as $300 for the 128GB version. Bosworth continues:

“You’ve increased your cost dramatically, because even if your major silicon is in the wireless compute puck, you still need quite a bit of silicon to just power the displays and do the local corrections required there, and handle the stream of data. So it really ends up … the math doesn’t work, is what I’m saying. And it doesn’t end up saving you that much weight and dramatically increases your cost and complexity.”

Meta’s Orion AR Glasses Prototype | Image courtesy Meta

This comes in contrast to Meta’s Orion prototype, which does incorporate a wireless compute unit. Granted, Orion isn’t going to be productized due to its enormous cost—a reported $10,000 per-unit owing to its difficult-to-produce silicon carbide lenses, however it’s clear that in some cases wireless pucks do make sense—namely in delivering less immersive graphics to AR glasses.

Then again, Bosworth has said its first pair of AR glasses for consumers won’t hit at that Quest price-point when they land at some point in the future. Bosworth said back in September that such a device is “not going to be cheap,” noting however the company aims to make them accessible “at least in the space of phone, laptop territory.”

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.

Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Sofian

    We need something like Valve s base stations that would transmit energy to the headset instead of data, or both.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      The problem with wireless energy transfer is that energy loss grows with distance to the power of three when using a point-source like a light bulb or a wireless router. Which is why wireless charging usually requires placing for example a phone on a mat to shorten distance.

      The alternative is using a focused beam. Connecting a WiFi card to a narrow focus antenna/Pringles can allows to extend the range to dozens of kilometers and more. And there are concepts for capturing solar power on satellites and transferring the energy back to earth with a laser or maser (using microwaves), but this usually requires fixed positions and/or continuous tracking and adjusting direction.

      You certainly could do that with a headset too, with image recognition used to always track and aim at the headset. But pointing a powerful laser/maser at your head sounds like a much less safe method to achieve longer play sessions than hot-swappable lithium batteries with only a very, very slim chance of ever catching fire. A Quest requires about 10W in use, and a properly focused blue diode laser with 5W optical output will cut through several millimeters of plywood in one pass.

      • XRC

        If only Tesla was still alive….curious to see his take on wireless transmission of power. Just watched "The current wars" fascinating stuff truly a man far ahead of his time.

        • Michael Speth

          Tesla was great and all but if wireless power transmission was possible, than we could do it. Tesla tried many things and failed too as that is part of being an inventor.

          There are many conspiracies about Tesla but I don't believe he actually invented wireless and free energy. If it was indeed possible, than others would have invented it too.

          • XRC

            From the Wikipedia regarding his laboratory at Colorado springs, Colorado 1899

            "…Tesla demonstrated wireless power transmission at Colorado Springs, lighting electric lights mounted outside the building where he had his large experimental coil"

            (this was shown in "The Prestige" movie with David Bowie playing Tesla)

          • Michael Speth

            Well, if it was really possible, someone would replicate it and build it. If that someone really cared about providing free energy to the world, they would open source it to ensure it survives.

            I have seen many of these free energy device claims especially combustion engines that are claimed to run off only water but a mysterious government always kills them or shuts them down.

            The solution is easy, Free and Open Source the design on github, Torrrent Sites, and social media outlets. The government and others cannot shutdown open source.

            But it never happens. We don't have any free energy devices b/c the reality, it is not possible.

            As I wrote, Telsa failed at a lot of things as many inventors try in order to find what works.

          • XRC

            The 1899 experiments used large amounts of power, he wasn't claiming free energy but wireless transmission of power (with energy input)

          • Michael Speth

            I cannot see transmitting electricty through the air is going to be safe. We are electrical beings afterall so the reason we don't see this technology is primarily b/c it would never be safe.

            We do know it is possible for electricity to transmit through the air (ie lightning) but it is uncontrolled.

  • impurekind

    Good, because I simply do not like the idea of an additional puck I have to carry around in my pocket or wherever, be it wireless or wired. Just keep working on making the Quest more powerful and better and smaller and lighter and so on with each generation of headset as best you can, and we'll get to where we need to be in the end without going off on some stopgap tangent.

  • Michael Speth

    I agree a wireless puck is stupid. Are people really calling for a wireless puck? I think what people are asking for is a WIRED puck. A wired puck would include a battery and hardware. The headset would NOT requiring streaming anything.

    Meta has streaming on the brain because they simply do not want you to directly connect to the headset because that defeats their entire premise of their OS. They want to OWN you and your data.

    Nobody is calling for a wireless puck that streams video the headset.

    People are calling for a WIRED puck that provides direct connection to HMD like HTC VIVE PRO VISION Display Port.

    • Korgen

      No more wire, thank you !

    • gothicvillas

      Not a puck maybe but something the size of ps4. You can play without it but lets say if you had it, your old games would play in higher setting mode and some games probably wouldn't work on your own. Make this computer unit as optional (little PC sort of)

    • xyzs

      This guy is always answering the questions he decided were answered…

      Nonody ever talked about a wireless puck…. ever… not even Apple: That would be 2 batteries to manage also.

      However, getting the gravity pulling our cheeks down reduced by 50 percent, everyone wants that. So what’s his problem with solving true issues?

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    These questions never have yes/no answers, it always depends on context. They would probably have loved to not need an extra compute puck on Orion, but it just wasn't feasible within a weight and size limit that wouldn't have been immediately ridiculed as nonsense. You absolutely can have PCVR performance in a mobile headset, and we already had this early on with VR backpacks, fully blown PCs with a huge battery worn on the back and connected by wires to the HMD that some companies tried to establish and only location based VR venues used. You can build a standalone Bigscreen Beyond that adds only 50g, but it will be underpowered to the point of being useless with shitty battery life.

    Options change with technology, like sensors getting smaller, wireless faster, so something nonsensical or even impossible now may work in five years, and something possible today may still make no sense in ten. HMD design is always about balance. As in features, and ideally also as in weight on the head. There is a reason for using weaker ARM chips, or tethers, or Fresnel lenses, or external compute packs for some use cases, while others justify 4K microOLED with pancakes, eye tracking with ETFR, hot-swappable batteries, heavy halo straps or using more powerful x86 hardware and GPUs.

    And once you add ergonomics with people having vastly different IPDs, head shapes, eye defects, body sizes, dexterity and mobility, any idea that there is one right way build a VR headset or one thing/tech that has to be included for it to be acceptable becomes just narrow-minded poppycock.

    • Storymode Chronicles

      The real issue remains that shared wireless compute units open pandora's box on the hardware ecosystem. Once you fully decouple compute from mobile form factors there's no reason that unit can't just as easily power all of your mobile devices.

      Right now every single mobile device has its own discrete processing, which justifies larger pricetags. If you can just "cast" something as intensive as VR, that becomes a new expectation for consumers. The first question appears then, "why can't I use the same wireless compute from my VR headset with AR headset?".

      After that the exact logic of form factors comes into question. The puck is only that bulky because of its battery. Now what if the battery on the puck is hot-swappable? Now you just created a small, hot-swappable compute unit that can seamlessly transfer computer systems resources to shell devices wirelessly, wired, or inserted directly into the body of the shell to become a seamless part of its form factor.

      About a decade ago, there was a prototype floating around for a shell laptop that got its compute/radio power when you inserted your smartphone where the trackpad should be. That's essentially the question you beg when you decouple compute from a mobile form factor, only now you've decoupled it from the smartphone too. Now you've got a gameboy cartridge that can insert into a smartphone body to bring it to life with compute.

      And, it can bring a tablet to life. And a laptop. And a tv. And a headset. And a watch. In whatever configuration you want, even providing compute to multiple devices just by casting windows. It fundamentally changes the hardware market. Any hardware partner would be terrified of this, but any consumer should be salivating over it, and AR almost makes it an inevitability.

      Suddenly every device is an inexpensive shell with one high tech cartridge at the center of the ecosystem. Devices are just accessories now. Don't want a bulky smartphone for your night out? Swap the cartridge into a chiclet phone. Want to play your game on a bigger screen? Swap it to a tablet. Need a keyboard? Swap to a laptop shell. And each device cost a fraction what it used to.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        If only it was that easy. Different visors and compute units working together would require them to adhere to one standard for streaming and handling/transferring sensor data from/to visor/compute unit. Early tethered PCVR HMDs sent camera/sensor data back to the PC over USB, but more sensors and cameras now require data processing close to the sensors on the HMD on a small SoC, with no existing standards for how these talk to sensors, process data or send it back.

        Take PSVR2. Sony could have encrypted the protocol/transfer, but didn't bother to. Instead the connection to PS5 uses standard USB-C with DP-Alt for image and data transfer. The PSVR2's SoC talks to the cameras, sensors, haptics and does some of the tracking, sending back preprocessed data. Not documented, but also not hidden, making reverse engineering an option. iVRy invested significant amounts of time and money for specialized data flow analysis equipment, gaining interesting insights, but in the end PSVR2 only became usable on PC once Sony provided support, with eye tracking, haptics and HDR still missing.

        Sony could have completely prevented PSVR2 use on PC by encrypting crucial data, and cross-vendor compatibility for visors and compute units would be just as easy to prevent and much harder to reverse-engineer even with everything being open.

        • Storymode Chronicles

          Standardization between manufacturers will likely take multiple generations, but the genie is still out of the bottle before that.

          Each manufacturer ecosystem will move first on their own, and then cascade into a larger version of VHS vs Beta requiring standardization over time. Making a puck that works between a single manufacturer’s AR and VR headsets, such as Metais advocating against here, is just the point it begins to dawn on a critical mass of consumers.

          Samsung and Apple both manufacture a full family of mobile form factors which would be affected, and Meta works with hardware partners who do. It’s guaranteed to be a big roadblock for them with layers of economic incentive working against it.

          Take Broadcom and Qualcomm. Instead of manufacturing a CPU, GPU, memory and radios for each of these devices, they’re then cut down to a single unite across all of them. That’s a huge revenue adjustment.

          Apple even refuses to make a high quality laptop case for the iPad, they do not want to give customers the expectation that one device can have multiple form factors.

          They’re very much avoiding this eventuality. The Vision Pro was so front heavy they absolutely needed to move some components to a puck, but chose battery alone to avoid raising questions regarding a future where even just an iPhone could potentially power it.

          Internally though, the conversations are happening. These puck designs, which are paradoxically required to achieve their holy grail of an AR device consumers are willing to wear all day, just make it unavoidable.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            I'm not so optimistic. We've had decades of component standardization driven by the need to reduce cost, and yet the only USB devices that can be easily swapped between different operating systems are either those with simple HID definitions like keyboards and mice, or storage devices. The storage devices still require incompatible formats not supported by others, unless you stick to limited lowest common dominator ExFAT requiring a Microsoft license.

            It took a decade for webcams to all support UVC, and there still is no standard for wireless cameras. Printers are slowly getting there with IPP. Everything else requires dedicated drivers to be written for each system, as does using advanced, non standard functions. If no driver exists to connect a specific graphics tablet, external USB display, WLAN or bluetooth stick to your system of choice, it just won't work. And all these devices are way simpler to connect than a VR visor with lots of high precision sensors.

      • Slick Shewz

        You can already cast VR. Almost every person that plays pcvr does it. You could technically cast VR from any external compute source, it would just require a compatible software connection.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          "Just require" being the issue here. A lot of things are technically already possible, but require active interest/support by multiple parties that often doesn't necessarily exist. Quest can already sideload Android apps, so running Play store flat apps on Quest "just requires" either Google or Meta giving up demanding all the revenue from future XR apps. So it will not happen.

    • Dragon Marble

      To be fair, he is talking about options with today's technology for a specific use case: standalone VR. We've seen many headsets, not just from Meta. Nobody does any computing puck. Even the Vision Pro, which already has a wired "puck", does not offload computing.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        The Magic Leap 2 uses a tethered compute unit, and Xreal offers the Beam Pro for their visors/AR glasses, both see-through displays at least trying to look and feel more like large sun glasses than XR headsets.

        There have been a number of concepts, but so far the design consensus seems to be that VR HMDs are so intrusive and dependent on fast sensor processing anyway that external compute units aren't worth the effort/cost/complexity. People willing to strap large plastic boxes to their faces won't be stopped by a little more weight, while those only accepting almost normal looking see-through glasses much lighter than any standalone XR HMD most certainly would be by tripling the devices weight.

        Interestingly the Magic Leap 2 uses the same rather powerful AMD APU as the non-OLED Steam Deck, where several computer vision cores can still be found on the chip (removed on the OLED-refresh) and even have BIOS settings, but aren't used for anything. And many use the Xreal glasses with a Steam Deck to provide a huge virtual display to play on. The APU was originally designed for a never released Microsoft Surface laptop/tablet.

        • Dragon Marble

          Right, all the pucks we've seen so far won't be able to run even the Quest 1 games. As David Heaney from UploadVR often points out: the constraint is thermal. You have to assume a puck is something people can put in their pockets without catching fire.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            The Steam Deck (APU) is way faster than a Quest 2 and at least its CPU part should still easily beat Quest 3. So unless Magic Leap massively underclocked or otherwise limited it, the Magic Leap 2 should technically be able to run games with the same performance levels as current Quest headsets. The weaker AR glasses are those using a Qualcomm XR1 SoC that is specially designed for those low power units. That chipset has a much weaker GPU than the Quest 1, but more compute power for AI.

            That only affects puck-less glasses though, the compute pucks are usually rather thick and allow for improved cooling compared to for example the Quest Pro, where two fans sat directly behind the very inefficient pancake lenses to remove all the excess heat those generated from the very tiny space inside the headset. The Magic Leap 2 Puck is worn at a belt, not placed inside a pocket, so airflow isn't an issue. Not sure about the Xreal Beam (Pro), which is basically an ARM based Android Phone lacking the display.

    • Newlot

      When do you think will we see the first VR/MR/AR HMD to sell over 50 million units?

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        2016.

        Versions of Google’s 2014 Cardboard are estimatef to have shipped more than 50mn units. The production cost being only 1/1000th that of a Quest, allowing for example the New York Times to send 1mn to their subscribers in 2015-11, then a second round of 300K five month later, surely helped. As did the main material cardboard being easily printable to turn it into a hip and popular advertising gift to basically throw at people.

        No idea when for the second time a devise will ship 50mn units, or when for the first time people will have bought 50mn for themselves instead of getting them for free, or will actually use 50mn. Quest as a device family with already around 25mn HMDs sold will probably hit the 50mn mark first, but may not qualify as “bought for themselves” either, as large parts of them seem to have been given to teens as Christmas presents for free. Nor for the “actually use them” condition due to low retention.

  • Till Eulenspiegel

    That's why Apple has the advantage – they can use the iPhone as the compute unit. People carry their phone everywhere, so it's not another added weight.

    • Nevets

      Er, have you seen their first HMD?

      • Till Eulenspiegel

        They can lowered the cost by using the iPhone as the compute unit. It’s already tethered to a battery unit, having it connects to the iPhone could likely be the strategy for their cheaper consumer headsets.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          Maybe in the future, but so far the iPhones use A-series Apple silicon optimized for low power, while iPad Pros and Macs use more powerful M-series requiring much larger batteries. AVP uses the M2, but then adds the similarly sized R1 signal processor for handling all sensor data, tracking and passthrough. Leaving the M2 free to mostly runni UI and applications, and AVP with a much higher power consumption and at the same time much lower battery life than an M2 MacBook Air or Pro, despite the external battery pack twice the weight of an iPhone 16 (plus).

          Using iPhones as a compute device will certainly one day become an option, but not for a couple of years. And people still using their iPhones a lot more than AVP won't appreciate if it is turned useless by its battery being drained after connecting a future Apple HMD for just an hour or less.

  • polysix

    META is a cancer to VR. Standalone crap must die.

    • Nevets

      Ah, nice to see you're back.

    • Korgen

      "Standalone crap must die"
      Like you.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Nah, standalone should certainly not die, I look forward to playing my SteamVR library on a standalone headset (over PCVR wireless) in the near future. But it'll be some years before that'll be a reality for a standalone chip to reach at least the power of an 4060+.

      • I've been using my SteamVR stuff on Quest ever since it became availble.
        Zippo complaints!
        []^ )

        • Andrew Jakobs

          I meant natively, without the need for my PC, so I could just take the headset to my parents and play there or take it on holiday.

  • TomC

    Why not a wired unit with a 'puck' putting the weight on the shoulders?
    Maybe worn like an over-the-shoulder-under-the-other-arm sling.
    Keeps the wire short and out of your way, unlikely to get snagged as you move around. Probably equal weights low on the sling on front and back – spiltting battery and electronics.
    Potentially with an extra camera or two aimed to catch hand/arm movements in front and back.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      I'd take the slightly heavier headset over such a sling due to the extra complexity of putting the headset on. I really hate the wired battery of my wireless module.

  • XRC

    My only experience of using a HMD with a wired puck was the original Magic Leap 1. Assumed it would be cumbersome and irritating (the wired puck) but it sat in a little sling harness which placed it neatly under my arm

    Found myself running about chasing dinosaurs all over a large room, and didn't notice the puck once.

    The HMD was superb with it's lower mass and dual focus optics.

    • Guest

      Yeah he was only talking about wireless, which I'd be kind of surprised if that was what most people were asking about. In some specific scenarios, wires can be a hazard, but for general and especially non-industrial use, I think it'd be a totally reasonable tradeoff for the benefits at this early point, and it won't really incur nearly as much of the complexity and cost penalties that he's mentioned, since he was talking about a wireless scenario.

    • Glad you had a great time with it. We had very different experiences. I found the puck that that came with the magic leap was insane, it's was not pocket friendly and close the the size of portable cd player ( a bit smaller ). Also I have never used an HMD with worse ergonomics, if you wore it naturally the screen did not vertically line up with your vision. I found you had to wear it so the back was really high on the crown of my head, it just had the worst fit out of any product I have ever used.

  • Nevets

    Make it wired then. It's the faceclamp design that keeps so many HMDs on the shelf after purchase. Not a single company seems to realise that and Meta has done literally nothing substantive to improve the physical experience of wearing their product.

    • Stephen Bard

      With the Bobo headstrap on my Quest 3, I completely forget that I am wearing anything on my head for many hours at a time. Lighter weight and longer lasting HMD batteries are in work but I probably wouldn't notice the small improvement. The wired battery pack on the AVP that weighs as much as the headset itself is an incredibly ugly/awkward/inconvenient solution. No wired battery or compute pucks please!

      • Olle

        Are you kidding me? I have the bobo vr strap and I cant stand more than 20 minutes before it feels like my neck is carved out of stone.

        • Alex Soler

          LOL. BoboVR S3 Pro owner here. I initially upvoted Stephen Bard post because of the "No wired battery or compute pucks please!", but I did not take into account the Bobo VR comment. In fact I can agree that it's comfortable ergonomically, and convinient because of the battery pack, and for this reason I use it when playing with friends. But it's also true that it's waay too heavy :-D. It was somehow dissapointing.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      No thank you, it's actually the wire and external battery which keeps my headset on the shelf due to its extra complexity to put the headset on (next to the basestations needing to plug into the powersockets(HTC Vive Pro/wirelessmodule/index controllers). Really looking to my new PC next year and using the Pico 4 for wireless PCVR.

  • Alex Soler

    Sorry but I don't get it. If it can be done for Orion, I don't understand why it can be done for an MR headset. You could distribute batteries though the strap, and presumably you can reduce them, since they don't have to power the GPU. The bandwidth problem is already solved for Quest3, and I assume wifi 7 will be better. So I infer that's exclusively a cost issue, which could be solved giving 2 config options.

    Maybe there is another reason here. Meta is the standalone VR king now. A wireless compute puck would be almost equivalent to the PC unit of a PCVR config, so Windows and Steam would become again direct competitors for HorizonOS and the Meta platform, putting all the last years Meta strategy at risk.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Higher resolution displays require even more bandwidth. 4k/eye would still require a hefty processing unit on the headset itself. But I don't really care, to me a headset like the Pico 4 is already light enough, and it certainly has many room for improvements on comfort.

      • Alex Soler

        WIFI7 and/or a direct wireless connection + foveated rendering (better with eye tracking but even fixed would help) would do the trick for res I think.

        But I don't really care, to me a headset like the Pico 4 is already light enough

        Good for you ;-). Honestly. Not my case.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      Orion doesn't stream the image live, as this would quickly drain the tiny onboard battery. Instead it uses a push model where the mostly static image is held on the very light HMD itself, and updates rendered on the compute unit only send once something chsnges, with their wireless.connection shut down in between to preserve battery life.

      Orion is more of an advanced HUD than an MR headset, and if you need to include a power hungry hires stream decoder and highspeed wireless chipset that have to stay active all the time, you might as well add CPU and GPU there. The wireless on-demand-only connection to the compute unit doing all the heavy lifting is what allows for Orion's insanely low power consumption, and thereby low weight and form factor, which justifies the significantly increased complexity and price. For a VR streaming HMD still requiring a hot SoC and lsrge battery, the benefits just aren't big enough.

      • Alex Soler

        if you need to include a power hungry hires stream decoder and highspeed wireless chipset that have to stay active all the time, you might as well add CPU and GPU there

        Don't think so. It's when my laptop GPU is working when my laptop gets hot and its fans have to start working hevily. Also it drains more power. So I don't buy that putting all that outside the headset won't have enough benefits, at least a for big percentage of people.

        Also, Meta has complained about thetered VR to justify standalone for a long time. Now PCVR can be wireless too, so what was the big "problem" of PCVR (apart from price) is no more. Now they have to go with other excuses for not to put the compute power in a separate unit ("it's too complicated").

        And dont' take me wrong. I think full standalone is a good thing and has evolved incredibly, and is good that it stays as a product line, because is gonna be better. But with a separate compute unit you'd have lighter headsets, with more graphics power.

        The "Yes but you cannot take it anywere" is even almost empty too now that everybody recognizes that MR headets are gonna be for home comsumption, not for the subway.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          TL;DR: some of the technical limits are very real, and power consumption the main reason why there are no cheap, light and long lasting streaming-only HMDs, with high price and niche audience another.

          Believe me, I'd love to see HMDs get rid of the battery in front, ideally removing it from the head altogether. And if an external compute solution allows for reducing more weight, I'm all for it. But there are some real technical limits, like the processing of sensor data needing to happen close to the sensors themselves due to both latency and bandwidth/data line limits. The XR2+ Gen 2 AFAIR now allows to connect up to 13 cameras via CSI, while the Quest Pro already ran into problems with the only seven CSI ports on XR2 Gen 1, requiring some hacks using FPGAs. CSI is a serial interface, requiring only three or four lines, but even if only two are data lines, you still end up with 26 total.

          The thin USB-C cables now used to connect everything only use four differential lines/eight cables for data, so at best you can externalize the CPU and GPU parts for rendering the app, similar to what PCVR does, but you still need compute on the headset. VirtualDesktop allows for SSW reprojection, taking the previous frame from the PC with motion vectors from the game engine to create a correctly shifted second frame on the headset itself, using the built-in h.264/265 decoder, the CPU and the GPU of the Quest. If all you needed was a low performance decoder, Quest runtimes when used as a PCVR headset should be way longer than standalone use, but they aren't.

          Deckard may improve this, with dedicated modes for high power standalone and low power streaming only modes for longer play sessions with PCVR streaming. There were rumors about including both an AMD APU for playing x86 games and a low power ARM SoC for streaming that would also do some tasks like tracking in parallel to the APU in standalone mode. The ARM with better low power modes might shut down the WiFi connection for most of the time, as high speed WiFi is now mostly needed for lower latency, not total bandwidth, so it idles most of the time.

          There are many technical options, but on anything mobile, the main problem is always power, and with modern WiFi at high speed alone consuming a lot of that, there are still no trivial routes to light wireless streaming HMDs with long battery life, and the market is to small to pay for the non-trivial ones.

          • Alex Soler

            Well sooner or later someone is gonna try it, one way or another. So time will tell, I guess ;-)

  • Olle

    Anything that takes weight off the face I would say. If that requires a wired computing/battery pack, so be it.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Nope, wired computing battery is awful. Take the weight of the face and place it anywhere around the head. Still really hate the wire if my wirelessmodule for the HTC Vive Pro, and my 3D printer is still broken so printing a decent cradle for on the headset/strap itself is not possible yet for me.

      • Olle

        I don't understand how a wired battery/computing puck can possibly be worse than having all weight on your face/head. The face and neck pressure in the current quest is unacceptable to me.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          In theory wired headphones are way better, never running out of battery or having connectivity issues, not adding latency, lighter and cheaper to produce than wireless ones, and almost impossible to lose while connected to a phone.

          In reality the cable is annoying, and people buy lots of easily lost high latency bluetooth headphones for much higher prices.

          • Olle

            Yes the cable on headphones is annoying I agree but to a limit. Your comparison with HMDs is not justified because with headphones, you don't lose that much by doing the switch to wireless. The battery problem was the last stand but ever since the airpods that is a non issue for me atleast. Meanwhile, the weight on your face/head/neck is a major problem for HMDs. If the weight problem can be mitigated by a wire, then doing that tradeoff is a no-brainer imo.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            TL;DR: In the end it all boils down to different needs for different usage types, with Meta going mostly for a more casual type of VR experience with low complexity hardware that can be produced at low cost, even if other solutions could provide a lot of benefits too.

            Tether acceptance depends a lot on personal preference. Many people are fine even with a 5m tether for PCVR, some absolutely hate every dangling cable, and some don't mind, but somehow get tangled in them all the time. A cable or anything extra will add some friction, and whether it is worth the benefits gained hard to tell.

            The vast majority of Quest users seems to prefer more casual games, at least those are always leading the sales and get the best ratings on average. These games often come with short session length, so users hop in for 20-30 minutes once a day or even less, making both short battery life and increased weight not that much of an issue. The convenience of just putting on the device, quickly play a round and then just drop it somewhere will outweigh any complexity that would come with a separate wired battery pack.

            Someone looking for longer sessions or games with lots of fast head movements may have completely different preferences. A few seconds extra to put the headset on and properly route the cable would be more than compensated by having less weight on the head while getting more battery life. For them separating the battery might be a no-brainer.

            Ideally we'd simply get more choice. PCVR sort of offers that with options to go wireless with Quest 3, Pico 4, the 2.5K Vive Focus Vision or even the Vive Pro with wireless adapter, or full-feature wired with Pimax Crystal, or ultra-light with Bigscreen Beyond. But these are all rather expensive. On the lower budget all-in-one market there pretty much is only Meta aiming for the largest market share possible at the lowest technically possible price, so they will go for the low complexity solution that serves most users, even if there would be no-brainer solutions that would massively improve the headsets for some parts of their user base.

          • Olle

            Sure different use cases will prioritize different design choices but atleast with meta quest pro, the target audience was productivity users. With those users in mind, it makes no sense having the thing weighing north of 700gs as productivity takes place in long sessions. Same with AVP. Despite the battery pack it still weighs half a kilo. All in all, I think the weight of the thing decides how long sessions people will use it for, not the other way around. To find out, just design a light weight headset with a wired battery/computing puck and see what happens. But that hasn’t happened yet.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Remember that Quest Pro was pitched as a VR conferencing HMD to be used with Horizon Workrooms, allowing people to quickly hop into a virtual conference. It came with a charging station to make sure users never have to be concerned about either the HMD or the controllers not being charged, and used a fixed halo strap design that allows to put on and remove the headset faster than a soft strap would do without messing up hair. The halo also allowed for removing the light seal, using the HMD without it blocking the entire environment or touching the face, leaving marks or messing up makeup. It was all about convenience, and with improved balance from the battery at the back, the weight wasn't that much of an issue. There are areas in the world where people carry 50kg+ jars on their heads, 700g isn't an issue when well balanced.

            AVP packs so much tech consuming multiple times the power of a Quest 3 that adding a battery on the head would have made it a lot heavier. And since the intended use is very clearly for seated applications, the external battery was the compromise they went with. The fact that they never offered a way to attach the battery to a belt like Magic Leap does for their compute units shows that you aren't really supposed to move around with it a lot.

            Long battery life is important for people that spend a lot of time in VR/XR, which so far are only some gamers and VRChat users. The ones with the longest sessions are probably simulation fans, which will usually go for a tethered PCVR headset that resolves all power issue. Location based VR venues or companies needing the headsets ready for all of the day go with professional headsets like the HTC Focus that include hot-swappable batteries, with one set charging while the other is in use. Gamers needing long run times on consumer standalone headsets so far simply are only a rather small niche.

          • Olle

            If most users don’t have a problem with the weight of HMDs then I stand corrected. But even on this VR-fan site I’m hearing people complaining about clunkiness pretty frequently, and combined with fact that mainstream adoption hasn’t happened suggests weight may play a role. Like I mentioned earlier in this thread, personally I can’t use my Quest 2 with a bobo vr strap for more than 15-20 minutes before I have to take it off due to stiffness in the neck.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            I do not doubt that pretty much all HMDs are too heavy, which will certainly stop people from using them. Quest 3 with the default head strap gives me a headache almost instantly from the plastic buckles pressing against my head, and every single HMD I ever tried puts so much pressure on my cheek bones that I can only wear them for a few minutes. Consequently all my headsets/straps have to be heavily modified to be usable for me.

            But I know that I'm an exception. Apparently most Quest users never replace the default strap. Many enthusiasts will, but even among those there are many that find some replacements great and others unbearable. I'm a big fan of halo straps removing the weight/pressure from my face, which for me is the main issue, while others find even the PSVR1 strap unusable because it concentrates weight on only a few points due to their specific head shape.

            Overall I think that total weight usually isn't the problem, its weight distribution. My issue with HMD face pads is that all the pressure that is supposed to be spread over the whole cushion is effectively concentrated on a few square millimeters, and the same happens with those who's skull doesn't match the PSVR1 halo strap. One way to solve this is to reduce the weight of HMDs until the overall pressure becomes very low, but even the super light Bigscreen Beyond still uses a face pad custom made for each user from a 3D face scan to reduce this issue. It will take a very long time for VR HMDs to reach the weight of regular glasses, but for most users, a better balance and fitting paddings can resolve most of the issues caused by weight putting pressure on head and face today.

            Your neck issue seems to be something different than the problems most people face. A lot of people complain about lack of comfort, but a stiff neck would have to have a different cause. People regularly wear for example welding or motorcycle helmets with much higher weights for hours, so it's not that the extra physical strain from weight alone inevitably leads to neck pain. Unfortunately I have no idea what could create your issues. I realized that concentrated pressure on a few points was my main problem when I started to modify the facial interfaces, and with some hacked together pads exactly fitting my face, the problems simply vanished.

          • Olle

            Interesting what you say about weight distribution, then I might try to look for a better solution to my problem in the future. I had just assumed that the weight itself was the problem not the distribution of it.
            On a side note, I was recently forced to switch from contacts to glasses and knowing my sensitivity to weight on the head from vr, I got myself the lightest ones possible. They weigh a total of 17 grams and still I loathe wearing them due to the heaviness applied to the nose and front of the face. Kinda disappointing as no smart glasses in my lifetime will be able to match that weight. But who knows, perhaps in a few hundred years…

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Human physiology is weird. I wear glasses more than twice as heavy as yours, because I could never deal with contacts. I wear them mostly while driving, and my main issue isn't the weight on the nose, but that the arms sometimes put pressure on veins on the sides of my head, which leads to sudden, severe pain, forcing me to basically rip the glasses from my face.

            I can get a similar effect from headsets putting too much pressure on certain spots on the lower back of my head. Pressure on veins causing pain seems pretty common, so what we'd really need is headstraps that are adapted to the individual skull shape so the weight is evenly distributed, custom made facial interfaces to evenly spread any pressure on the face while keeping the nose clear (for me anything pressing on the side of the nose uncomfortably reduces air flow), counter weight for balance at the back and straps securing the whole thing while avoiding areas like those with veins where pressure again would lead to much more discomfort. Unfortunately 3D surface scans like those used for fitting by Bigscreen or Apple aren't even enough, because the relevant part is the bone structure, not the tissue layers of varying thickness above it.

            Considering all that, we are pretty far from headstraps with ideal fit, and the Quest default soft strap isn't even trying. Due to the inherent injustice in the universe, there are apparently enough users that are just fine with that strap for Meta never feeling the urge to include better options. Or maybe a soft strap that automatically adapts to different skull shapes is the closest to a one-size-fits-all solution even possible.

            The Bigscreen Beyond pairs a 127g HMD with a custom made perfect-fit facial interface spreading weight/pressure over a much larger area than typical HMDs, held in place by one wide, 28g soft strap that adapts to the back of the head. And according to many users, this is so comfortable that they forget they are wearing a HMD during use. So at least there is some hope that you won't have to wait hundreds of years for a comfortable headset, and some DIY hacking might improve things right now. You might even be able to improve your glasses by modifying the nose pads that again put all the pressure on a small area. You could prototype it by just taping some larger cardboard circles on top of the existing pads for an increased contact area. And if this improves comfort, finding larger/softer/better fitting nose pads could be an interesting option.

          • Olle

            I'm sure that those scans used for Bigscreen Beyond improves comfort to some degree but I'm skeptical that it can make that much of a difference. From what I understand, as soon as you involve human physiology, almost the only way to know for sure how to optimally fit something on someone is to try it on and ask how it feels. The complexity of what is comfortable or not isn't something that any kind of scan could account for as it includes a mixup of physiology and psychology. It's veru different from the completely controlled technical problem of creating improved lenses and/or better CPU/GPU, cameras etc.

            As for the glasses problem, I've been all over the city where I live asking opticians about solutions and trying various DIY solutions to no avail. The manufacturer of my glasses only create two different pads for these and none of them are very comfortable. My primary strategy has been to try to extend the surface area to include parts of the nose. I've given up those attempts. Now I think that if you have a problem that not that many other people have, then you're out of luck. Since most people are happy with wearing glasses of today, getting them more comfortable isn't something that would get research funding. I made some efforts finding research of this kind a few months back and I ended up finding a single paper by some undergraduate students that was their graduate thesis. As one could expect, they didn't offer any conclusive solutions although taking the time and effort has to be respected.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            I've been considering to cast my face with plaster to get a mould that matches the shape of my face while pressure is applied to its surface, and use the results as the base for future attempts to create truly fitting face padding. So far I've been too lazy, but at least procured the required plastered bandages, now buried in some project box.

            And I afraid that you are unfortunately right with both the need for trial and error to actually find the correct fit, and those with rare problems being basically out of luck and forced to come up with their own solutions, if they can find any.

          • Olle

            I wish you good luck with that project, should you muster up the energy to go through with it.

          • Arno van Wingerde

            That sounds like more than just getting used to it. Your glasses must have a totally wrong pressure distribution. BTW my glasses weigh 30 g and the only point where they are uncomfortable is behind the ears, where I set them very tight, so I don't have to worry about rollercoasters and such.

          • Arno van Wingerde

            Hm? I don't know how it is in your field, but I attend video conferences that take hours – not per se very productive, but often the only way to get people together without everybody having to fly for hours. So an AVP would definitely get uncomfortable then.

        • I don't get that, either.
          It's why I downvoted that comment.

  • All in all, this makes a ton of sense, taking everything into consideration.

    []^ )

  • Slick Shewz

    Sounds like a wired compute puck is the answer. It eliminates all those issues, while maintaining all the benefits, with the only downside being a cord to your pocket.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      And that downside is, from my own experience (HTC Vive Pro wireless module) , a big downside. Not as big as a cable running to your PC (either ground or ceiling using pulleys), it is already a much better experience as that, but still not as good as for instance my Pico 4.

  • You cannot be serious …. lol

    Disregarding the rest of your gobbledeegook nonsense,
    concerning Meta's AIOs: they offer devs a fine set of oilpaints.
    Is it Zuck's fault that the studios decide to use this goldmine of hardware
    to make "Primary-Colored Zombie RTS IV" …??
    No.
    It is not.

  • Phuerph

    The actual weight is alright if you put a proper headstrap and face cover with little cushions to make it confortable. I fear if they were doing a external computing stuff it would not be very popular. What they should really be pushing for people complaining it's a mobile device and have limitations is cross buy game with pc, some already do that and it's awesome. I would never buy a game on steam if i can buy it on meta both standalone and pcvr at once.
    concerning the weight the battery could be put at the back like the pico, i hope new technology battery will allow longer battery life but most importantly if we could have battery with very fast charge without being degraded that would be a game changer, even if you have 2h of battery if you can fully charge it in 10/15 min that would solve the need to add extra weight in the headset.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      Of all the tech used in headsets, the lithium battery probably has seen the least progress. Energy density is largely defined by the chemistry and therefore doesn't really increase, and some type of lithium based battery has been the go-to for more than a decade. The major improvement was probably lithium polymer batteries becoming shapeable so they could be squeezed into unorthodox shapes like curved halo straps. Otherwise we regularly get news about a new revolution in battery tech, but they are usually either about container sized salt batteries used to cover power grid spikes, or never make it to actual mobile devices.

      The most practical workaround is still battery hot swapping, with a tiny battery on the HMD lasting for 5min, and a bigger one placed at the back that can be swapped without having to shut down the headset. The Vive Focus 3 came with swappable batteries and the Vive Focus Vision finally dropped the need to shut down first. Ideally you'd be able to swap the battery blindly while wearing the headset, but HMD manufacturers might shy away from that for security reasons. And of course it adds cost for the extra complexity, second battery and external charging station required.

      • XRC

        The hot swap on my crystal works well. I get a low battery warning, power off the HMD, swap the rear battery and power the HMD back up, it starts where I left off without affecting the runtime, very neat.

        get about 2.5 hours with eye tracking on, and just over 3 hours with it switched off.

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Yes, it creates an extra complexity, I'm speaking from experience, especially if you don't want the wire just flailling around and with certain movements the puck might pop off your belt or out of your pocket. I know it prevents me from just skipping a short session on e in a while.

  • Pablito

    Both Andrew Bosworth and Mark Zuckerberg continue to be the main obstacle in the way of standalone tech. as it struggles to reach PCVR quality. Their tragically feminine approach continues! Contained in the article above are absolute lies coming from Bosworth! LIES!!!

  • LazyFox

    How are we only at this point with smart glasses now, given that Google Glass was over a decade ago?
    Google Glass was also a lot less bulky and vastly cheaper.