Meta announced in April of last year that it was preparing to release Horizon OS, its Quest-exclusive operating system, to third-party headsets for the first time. XR devices running Horizon OS were set to arrive from ASUS, Lenovo, and Xbox, although Meta has  remained tightlipped about the headsets since. Now, a report from trusted serial leaker ‘Luna‘ points to Asus being the first out of the gate.

Luna, who shares information about upcoming virtual reality hardware and software, has leaked a number of Meta projects in the past, including the name of Quest 3S before its official announcement and the inclusion of an Action Button on the headset.

Luna’s datamining also revealed a room-scanning setup video for Quest 3 before its launch in 2023, as well as various Quest software features before their unveiling, like when Meta was testing the ability to show and keep apps pinned to the Universal Menu dock.

Luna, ostensibly drawing from an anonymous inside source, now reports the Asus Republic of Gamers headset “will likely be one of the first [third-party] Horizon OS HMDs to ship.”

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Reportedly codenamed ‘Tarius’, Luna maintains the headset is planned to include eye-tracking as well as face-tracking, putting it conceptually at parity with Quest Pro’s most modern features. Displays are also said to be quantum dot LCD displays with local dimming, or micro-OLED.

Provided this is true, it would suggest Asus isn’t just putting out a Quest 3S clone adorned with RBG lighting, but rather a true departure from Quest’s middle-of-the-road consumer offerings, which now include the $500 Quest 3 (512GB) and $300 Quest 3S (128GB).

While the report should be taken with a grain of salt, it’s clear Meta hopes to make a move soon to counter Google’s release of Android XR, which is making its debut on Samsung’s upcoming XR headset, codenamed Project Moohan, which planned for consumer release sometime this year.

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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.
  • Rudl Za Vedno
  • JanO

    Seems like Meta is trying to use OEMs to test the waters with various high-end designsfeature sets (and they will probably undercut all of them once thet have an answer, not a bad strategy if you think about it…).

  • VrBiTcH

    The Asus-holes have the worst tech-support I've ever encountered. They outsource it to the people in India that start by trying to make you spell out your name and address one letter at a time and still cannot guess right! Their web-site and voice-mail systems are equally unhelpful and full of dead-ends. Never buying a flaky product from them again!

    • Somerandomindividual

      ASUS do indeed have the same terrible support that pretty much all Taiwanese/Chinese PC hardware manufacturers have.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    TL;DR: A feasible Asus Horizon HMD will add more RAM, flash, 2.5K displays, eye tracking and slightly improved performance for USD (minimum) 800-1000. Less features/money makes no sense due to how Meta markets Quest 3.

    Asus going for a Quest 3S or even Quest 3 class headset was never an option with Meta selling hardware at cost and requiring all Horizon OS HMDs to use their own Horizon app store, funneling all software revenue to Meta.

    So Asus' only way to make money/recoup cost will be charging a certain margin on top of the production cost. 50% is often considered a minimum for low to medium volume electronics products to at least break even, only mass market products can be successful with low(er) margins due to spreading development costs over much more users.

    But nobody would buy an Asus Quest 3 for USD 750 when Meta is selling the same hardware for USD 500. So Asus has to add extra features to justify taking more money. A cheap way is adding more RAM and flash storage. 16GB LPDDR5 or 128GB MLC flash should cost around USD 10 each. Another cheap improvement is higher resolution passthrough cameras, and the ones in Quest 3 clearly limit the MR experience. That's pretty much what Pico did with the Pico 4 Ultra, updating the SoC to XR2 Gen 2 plus extra RAM and better cameras for MR/productivity apps.

    Meta had a reason though for not adding more RAM or better cameras, boiling down to cost and balanced design. Better passthrough also eats more compute power, adding heat and reducing battery life. Consequently Asus may have to use less aggressive CPU underclocking, add more active cooling and a larger, heavier battery they could use as a counter balance at the back of a halo strap. Which would also allow to drive a higher resolution, ideally paired with (again cheap) eye tracking hardware using Meta's (compute expensive) ETFR. And maybe Asus will go for the new XR2+ that would give them 20% more GPU and 15% more CPU compared to the Quest 3's XR2 Gen 2, plus the performance gained from less underclocking/better cooling.

    But all this puts the Asus HMD firmly in the higher enthusiasts price tier. If an Asus 1:1 Quest 3 clone would have to sell at USD 750 to be profitable, adding RAM, flash, better cameras, eye tracking and a larger battery with a more complex headstrap will quickly push the price towards USD 1000, even if each component will be rather cheap. And that's before upgrading to an XR2+.

    Going for less features would leave Asus with an unfavorable value compared to the Quest 3 sold at cost, so their only real option is to add so many features that a significantly higher price seems justified. And if they somehow manage to include 2.5K microOLEDs displays, which are currently only available in the USD 1000 Bigscreen Beyond, a lot of enthusiast should indeed be fine with a USD 1000+ Asus Horizon standalone HMD.

  • Sean

    Micro OLED and I’m in at anything under $1500. LCD? Not a chance for me. Already have a Quest 3 and Quest Pro. Mini LED is not a substitute for OLED.

    • xyzs

      Exactly. I had 2LCD HMDs, sold them both because the difference between pure pitch dark w/ vibrant colors vs grey / less vibrant colors is a huge difference in experience.

      For those who never had OLED VR experience, it's a bit like listening to music in a totally silent environment with good speakers, vs listening with a noticeable background noise on medium quality speakers.

      • Adrian Meredith

        but early oleds (rift, quest1) were awful in dark scenes. better than current lcd yes but so much worst in other areas

        • simon cox

          yeah there are some very obvious tradeoffs. I've used both and generally prefer my quest 3 overall

          • xyzs

            Tradeoff between 8-6yo hardware vs 1 yo hardware is not very fair.

            Try modern OLED vs modern LCD, that will be more fair.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            To be fair it should be modern OLED vs quantum dot LCD with mini LED backlights using more than 1000 dimming zones. Still not providing the exact same experience, but reaching very similar contrast and vibrant colors. And due to the human vision's inability to recognize subtle brightness changes close to big ones, the much lower dimming zone than pixel resolution won't be noticeable in most situations.

    • Somerandomindividual

      Same here, I am done with LCD screens now. I want OLED or bust.

  • Dragon Marble

    I'll be happy if they just put better chips, higher resolution panels and cameras into the Quest Pro.

    • Somerandomindividual

      …which isn't going to happen, so…

      • Dragon Marble

        How do you know they won't take the Quest Pro design and iterate on it? Quest Pro is perfect everyway other than spec.

        Well, spec is kind of important. That's why it didn't sell well. But it's the most comfortable and frictionless headset I've ever worn. It remains, till this day, the only one that I can wear indefinitely.

  • 石雨濛

    Quest Pro's price and its sales should indicate that there really is NOT a market for garbage mobile VR. The ONLY reason Meta sells their garbage 3S and 3 is due to the garbage level prices simply not achievable by any other vendor willing to lose BILLIONS per month on a product.

    Developing a MetaOS HMD is corperate suicide as there is simply NO WAY for companies to lose billions in order to price compete with meta garbage hardware.

    I would say this product is nothing more than vaperware dreamed up by journos.

    • Somerandomindividual

      To say the Quest 3 is garbage despite it being by FAR the best value VR headset on the market shows your opinion is not worth anything useful.

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Well, they already have experience with aVR headset based on the Windows MR platform, and as I understand, it was a pretty comfortable headset. But we'll see, looking forward to more players on the market, and using Meta's platform means a large library to choose from.

  • ApocalypseShadow

    Waste of time. Just make another headset that's comparable, that is the equivalent of DVD players that creates a standard. Whatever version headset you buy, plays the same games as the other stand alone headsets. Which would create a competition on pricing and what add on products that come with it.

    What's the point of putting in features that aren't standard that developers aren't going to support across the board? Eye tracking and face tracking? If other headsets don't have it, then you as a developer will be developing for a small audience. Sony themselves learned this and theirs is standard across PS VR 2. Most games don't take advantage of the eye tracking.

    Would have been great for PC headsets these past years as expensive graphics cards wouldn't have been necessary. All the graphics would have been where you're looking. Who would this headset be for besides those that might, MIGHT get higher resolution. If the games aren't taking advantage, there's no point.

    • Somerandomindividual

      Make a headset that is the equivalent of… DVD players? Ok, boomer, LOL! :D

      • ApocalypseShadow

        Not too smart in your comment huh?

        We have lots of headsets. Including the discontinued headsets from Microsoft. But no actual standard. It's getting there with controllers as most now look like Quests. But in order for eye tracking to mean anything, the majority of headsets need to have it. PS VR 2 has it. But Quest and PC don't. As a result, most developers aren't developing for eye tracking. Besides the fact PS VR 2 isn't selling well.

        Quest Pro had it. Vive Focus has it. How many developers took or take advantage of them? Mostly none. One was discontinued and the other gets no eye tracking software.

        Once we get to the point of most products having similar features across the board, yes like DVD players, then, developers actually take advantage of those features. Every Android phone or Apple phone has the same standard features. So, every new Android phone or Apple phone gets the same software.

        Use your head next time. The concept is so fricken obvious to understand.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Maybe Meta themselves have it planned for their next headset, and also don't underestimate things like foveated rendering on system level making the SOC have to do less work so more time can be cranked out of the battery.

      • ApocalypseShadow

        The problem with that is that Quest 3 and QuestS DON'T have it.

        Quest 3 and QuestS barely get taken advantage of because most developers are still in the mindset of Quest 2. Sure, developers update with textures. But not truly push the company's new headset. When Quest 4 shows up, you think they are going to drop support of their previous headsets? There might be a few developers that take advantage of eye tracking and make their games look better. But don't expect them to make a generational leap and push Quest 4 to its limits over Quest 3.

        That's part of them problem when they decided to do minor headset updates and not leaving the previous generation behind. Sure having BC on software is great. But the drawback is that most of these developers build their games at the level of Quest 2. I betcha if Quest 4 has eye tracking, most developers will have software at the level of Quest 3 with minor graphics improvements. Most won't even do eye tracking support. Only way is that Quest 4 would have to drastically outsell Quest 2. And so far, I'm not seeing Quest 3 do that. And they are already discounting Quest 3S by $50. Meaning, it's not selling as fast as they want it to or the headset would be flying off the shelf at it's regular price.

        Only real example of generations is on PS VR 2. GT7 will not run on PSVR. It was a leap besides the best software on it like RE4 Remake or RE8. But Sony's pricing and lazy development, and third party developer support, meant that most games don't take advantage of eye tracking. Developers are making games that PC and Quest can support. And eye tracking aren't on those platforms. So, PS VR 2 has almost no eye tracking support. Sad. But true.

        Every headset across console, stand alone and PC needs to have it out it's going to get wasted with no support.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      DVD players as a standard made sense because the content resolution was restricted by NTSC/PAL/SECAM TVs for half a century anyway, with early HDTV attempts being extreme niche.

      VR HMDs create their content live, so you can get quite a different experience from a USD 300 Quest 3S rendering below display resolution vs a 2.5K PCVR HMD supersampling to 4K, esp. when there are different quality levels selectable like in many modern games.

      Add special interest groups like VRChat users really liking eye, face and full body tracking to communicate with others, or simulator fans relying on ETFR to run MSFT at decent framerates on an RTX 4090, and standarding on a lowest common "one size fits all" dominator sound like a much worse idea than offering a variety of devices for different use cases, with some feature initially supported by only a few apps, but longterm establishing/improving the most useful features for everyone.

      • ApocalypseShadow

        Chat rooms aren't going to make eye tracking standard. A small niche of users might get a kick out of looking at each other and looking at their mouths. But that's not going to do it.

        Console, PC and stand alone, all need to have eye tracking to make it standard. Business headsets as well. Just like most developers are pushing for some XR standard, just as Facebook and Google are trying to create an OS standard, eye tracking needs to be a standard. You can have a few minor differences as a manufacturer of headsets. But we're tracking needs to be in all of them. Just like cellphones all have cameras, Wi-Fi, power button and volume standards, is the same thing needed for VR headsets. Same thing that will be needed for future AR glasses. There will need to be standards there as well.

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          TL;DR: A common minimal feature set would be nice, but is currently not really feasible beyond 6DoF head tracking; realistically some tech will initially only launch on expensive HMDs with very limited use, with only some of it then getting mature and cheap enough to become standard in the next HMD generation; and then it will take another HMD generation for developers to learn how to properly utilize it.

          I fully agree that eye tracking has to become a standard feature, esp. since the required hardware is rather cheap, and consider Meta not integrating ET into Quest 3 that HMD's biggest flaw. Meta would probably have added it if they had seen AVP's ET based UI early enough during development, and failing to do so threw the use of ET for interaction in apps and games back by several years.

          But currently lacking developer support doesn't mean that integrating ET into HMDs right now is pointless. Sony managed to get ETFR to save up to 72% of the rendering time on PSVR2, and the Tobii software shipped with Pimax Crystal saves ~40% (while eating ~20% battery life in untethered use by taxing the built-in XR2). Only on the limited Quest Pro gains from ETFR are so low compared to the cost in CPU performance/battery life that it mostly isn't worth turning on. But if you want to use it, you can, and you don't depend on developers to support it. You can force the renderer to use either FFR or ETFR on PS5, SteamVR or HorizonOS, so even if it isn't standard yet, you can get some benefits right now.

          Neither a small number of VRChat enthusiasts nor ETFR on a few HMDs alone will establish ET as a standard, but besides some immediate benefits, those niche uses help finding valid use cases and feasible applications. Many PSVR2 developers with guaranteed ET availability will shy away from using it for game play, if they also want to port to platforms not yet offering it. But some of the more daring ones will start to experiment with integrating ET and provide workarounds for e.g. PCVR HMDs still lacking it.

          It would be great to have a minimal set of features guaranteed everywhere, but that's not really realistic with HMDs ranging from cheap standalone to high end HMDs ten times as expensive, very different performance profiles and implementations of for example hand tracking ranging from pretty solid to only infuriating. And sometimes even adding the tech fails to establish it. The 2016 Rift CV1 Touch controllers came with much more precise haptic feedback than regular controllers, but devs barely made use of it due to the required effort, so Meta replaced it with cheaper/less precise haptics on the 2019 Rift S/Quest 1. Later they bought a company offering a tool to auto-generate haptics from game audio to make feedback implementation easier, and with PSVR2 and its Sense controllers now establishing precise, PCM controlled haptics, the tech may return to Meta's HMDs a decade after their first attempt, now matured with a much higher chance to get accepted.

          I doubt that things will move to something like an industry wide consensus on essential features. Instead the process will remain messy, we will continue to see some tech get added experimentally at the edges, some failing, some becoming standard, often taking many years longer to get actually used than it should. Not ideal, often wasteful, but still better than having to wait for everyone to agree on one common standard first, which probably won't happen.

  • pixxelpusher

    Hoping one of these 3rd party headsets has a FOV greater than 120 degrees. 150 degrees would be a decent upgrade.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      I agree with you, but 120-130 is already a major improvement over current headsets.

  • Robobobot

    If they want to catch the eye of the enthusiast market this really needs to have a direct DVI input.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      this really needs to have a direct DVI input

      Hm, that doesn't sound like a good idea. Even though DVI was the first widespread digital video signal standard in the late 1990s, it was never specified beyond 2560*1600@60Hz even in the expensive dual-link variant and required a rather thick cable with 29 wires.

      So Asus should probably stick to the more modern DP/DisplayPort instead, which not only allows for 7680*4320@120Hz, but can also be run over rather cheap USB-C cables using the USB DP Alt mode, with a plug only about 1/20th the size of DVI.

  • foamreality

    'Displays are said to be LCD or micro OLED'. Cool. I thought they were going to be CRT displays. /s

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      LCD or microOLED allow for using pancake lenses, while (current) OLED panels are too dim for the very light inefficient pancakes and therefore have to be paired with either Fresnel or aspheric lenses. So this frustratingly unspecific listing of display types at least hints that Asus will probably go for a slim HMD form factor like Quest 3 or AVP rather than one more bulky due to the larger display-lens distance in non-pancake HMDs like Quest 3S, PSVR2 or Varjo XR-4.

      And the first head mounted display, Ivan Sutherland's "Sword of Damocles" from 1968, actually used two small and rather long CRTs from an analog stereoscopic helicopter vision system. Those would already have been (technically) able to display about 3000 lines, mostly because they were b/w displays without any actual pixel structures, so the minimal detail size just depended on the size of the electron beam hitting the homogeneous phosphor layer on the glass surface.

  • Ardra Diva

    Meta should just concentrate on the Quest, it's the one everybody likes. No good reason to offer anything else, as the Quest can also be a pass through for PC-VR. Just make the Quest 4 a big upgrade and watch the accolades pour in.