Fb’s Oculus Quest 2 is experimenting with mixing VR and the true world

A VR light switch overlaid with passthrough camera images of a real room.

Facebook

Facebook’s double ambitions in virtual and augmented reality could be in the middle with that Oculus Quest 2. A new developer toolkit for the Quest enables pass-through cameras to be mixed with VR graphics, enabling mixed reality.

Mixed reality was good gushing over the Oculus Quest for a while: In addition to the headset’s type of scanning the world and painting game boundaries for VR with the headset’s black and white cameras, Facebook added some modes in which to surf the web and Typing on a Logitech keyboard also work with passthrough camera data. There is also Hand tracking.

Color effects can also be applied to the black and white camera data.

Facebook

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The developer mode called Passthrough API Experimental isn’t intended for actual apps just yet, but Facebook is aiming for Oculus Quest apps to add mixed reality later this year. The suggested uses are for work, social, and gaming. Projecting avatars onto the real world is reminiscent of what Microsoft Mesh is promising with HoloLens 2. But with the Oculus Quest 2, this would be done with a $ 300 consumer headset. Another area where this could make a lot of sense would be Fitness gameswhere high-motion games like Beat Saber could be played over a walk-through view of the actual room – without the risk of accidentally puncturing the wall.

Facebook’s post emphasizes that apps that use the passthrough camera data cannot access, view, or save images or videos with the Quest 2 cameras, an element of data protection that the company also emphasized when announcing its advance Advertising in VR.

However, the Quest 2’s cameras are low definition and black and white, not ideal for capturing a lot of real world data or detail. This suggests a future Quest upgrade with better cameras: Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed that a Quest Pro is in the works that could end up leaning further into mixed reality. And with Facebook’s AR glasses plans Far from being realized, the quest seems to be a step towards finding out more about AR with current apps.

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