Meta says it’s has begun pushing out a software update which will bring some pretty profound performance boosts to both Quest 2 & Quest Pro.

Update (June 21st, 2023): Meta says Quest update v55 is now starting to roll out to Quest 2 & Quest Pro users. The company is promising the update will deliver a significant boost to the devices’ performance which should make the VR experience smoother overall while allowing apps to render at somewhat higher resolutions.

Update v55 also includes a standalone Messenger app and a revamped ‘Explore’ tab (which now shows Reels from Instagram and Facebook, if your accounts are connected). The update also adds multi-touch capability to the in-headset browser for hands-on zooming of web pages.

And last but not least, users will find two new home environments for their headset. The first is ‘Futurescape’, which was the backdrop of this year’s Quest Gaming Showcase; the second is ‘The Great Sand Sea’, which is exclusively available to users who have pre-ordered Asgard’s Wrath 2.

As ever, Meta advises that these updates roll out gradually to the population of headset users, so if you don’t see it right away you might need to wait a little longer.

The original article, which covered the update’s performance improvements, continues below.

Original Article (June 1st, 2023): Meta unveiled Quest 3 today, its next consumer-focused headset slated to launch in fall starting at $500. Quest 3 is going to be more powerful than Quest 2 by a good margin; the company says it has “more than twice the graphical performance as the previous generation Snapdragon GPU in Quest 2.”

Now the company says it’s tossing out a software update to both Quest 2 and Quest Pro chipsets that will provide up to 26% CPU performance increase for both. As for the headsets’ GPUS, we’re told to expect up to 19% GPU speed increase for Quest 2 and 11% for Quest Pro.

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“As developers take advantage of these changes, you can expect smoother gameplay, a more responsive UI, and richer content on both headsets,” the company says in a blogpost. “And we’re enabling Dynamic Resolution Scaling for both Quest 2 and Quest Pro, so games and apps can take advantage of increased pixel density without dropping frames.”

The company hasn’t said just when to expect the update, but we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled on Meta blog and social channels in the coming days. In the meantime, check out all of our Quest 3 coverage so far which has come right ahead of the big Quest Gaming Showcase kicking off today:

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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 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Till Eulenspiegel

    In other words, they are overclocking it.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      More likely, they are less aggressive underclocking it. The CPU part of the XR2 Gen 1 in Quest 2 runs at a much lower speed than technically possible to provide more thermal headroom, so the GPU part can run at full speed without the SoC having to throttle everything to prevent overheating.

      They have made a lot of of improvements to the software over time, so it is very likely that the same app can run a lot more efficiently and thus create less heat on a Quest 2 with the latest OS compared to when the Quest 2 launched. They also have more experience what situations will bring the XR2 close to its thermal limits, and technologies like Dynamic Resolution Scaling would allow the OS to reduce visual fidelity to preserve frame rates when the power consumption goes up.

      So they don’t need to overclock, they can instead reduce the safety margins required in the past and now drive the XR2 closer to its regular speed for a longer time. Overclocking usually decreases lifetime and massively increases power requirement and heat. Running it steadily close to the specs due to more dynamic workload management instead of having larger jumps with performance peaks and lows would still increase the consumed power and thus reduce battery run time, but much less than actual overclocking.

      • Till Eulenspiegel

        Many Quest users already knew that Meta is holding back the full potential of the hardware, even John Carmack is saying it before he left. I have been using Quest Games Optimizer for a very long time, you can make a lot games run at a higher fps or higher res without any problem except draining the battery quicker.

  • CrusaderCaracal

    Nice

  • JanO

    I was on v54 and had an update a few days back… Still v54… But I now have a few of the features mentionned here. Definately had the performance boost…

    Even good old Grid legends plays nice now; I went from 75% resolution @72Hz to 100% res at the same frame rate! This gamewill be awesome on Q3!