Meta Connect 2023: Our wish list of announcements
Meta Connect 2023 kicks off in a week. Here are a few announcements we'd really like to see.
Meta Connect will be held September 27-28 at Meta's headquarters in Menlo Park, California. For those unable to attend in person, livestreams of the keynote and presentations will be available.
I've already written a preview of confirmed and likely announcements, including Meta Quest 3. This article is about our personal wishes, realistic or not.
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Tomislav: "Quest needs a passthrough-centric interface"
Low-detail environments, cartoon avatars, and a slow-responding interface: Horizon Home still feels like a performance-taxing gimmick. That's one of the reasons I want Meta Quest to get a passthrough-first UX design that doesn't blind me to my surroundings when I put on the headset and doesn't force me to redraw my boundaries every other time, but gets me into VR apps and back to reality as quickly as possible, and lets me use mixed reality apps right out of the box. This would make Meta Quest more accessible, faster, and easier to use, and that's what the technology needs.
My second wish is that Horizon Worlds finally comes to Germany. The VR games Super Rumble and Citadel look promising and are just the beginning of a wave of content that will make a trip to Horizon Worlds worthwhile.
Last but not least, I wish Meta would finally release a Quest-native PC VR interface for Quest Link, as teased three years (!) ago. That would make me dust off my PC again. I know Meta's priorities aren't PC VR, but as we all know, hope dies last.
Ben: "I want to have tea with Meta avatars... in my home"
Ben wants to see a full-fledged mixed reality game that goes beyond the usual AR gimmicks and shows the potential of the technology.
His second wish also has to do with mixed reality. He hopes Meta Quest 3 will be able to scan your house and create a digital duplicate of it, so you can invite Meta avatars into your home and have tea on the couch with them.
Ben is our longtime hardware reviewer and has a difficult history with headstraps. He would like to see an improved Elite Strap for the Meta Quest 3, with a headrest that runs across the top of the forehead, like the Varjo devices have. Meta probably won't grant this request, but hey, maybe a third-party manufacturer will?
Josef: What happened to the Microsoft partnership?
Josef is modest and would already be happy if Meta and Microsoft would keep the promises they made at the last Meta Connect and finally bring Game Pass and Microsoft Office apps to the Meta Quest platform.
As a big fan of VR fitness, Josef would also like to try out Supernatural. Unfortunately, the VR app that Meta spent hundreds of millions of dollars on is not yet available in Germany. Could Meta announce an expansion of Supernatural to other territories outside of North America?
Last but not least, Josef would like to see better smartphone integration, such as easier headset/smartphone pairing, screen mirroring for VR, and the ability to take calls. This would certainly make the Quest user experience less disruptive.
What would you like to see announced at Meta Connect 2023? Let us know in the comments!
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