Full Color Mixed Reality Capabilities Coming to Meta’s Project Cambria

Last year’s Meta Connect event found the company teasing a forthcoming VR headset, codenamed Project Cambria, and now, finally, there are some more details.

The company showed off some of the nifty features that will be included with the headset in an official YouTube video. The biggest new tool? Project Cambria headsets will support a full-color and highly-detailed pass-through. For comparison’s sake, current Meta Quest 2 headsets only offer an extremely grainy black and white pass-through for viewing the real world during use.

The emphasis on that full-color pass-through leads us to the next Cambria innovation, a robust suite of mixed reality applications. The video shows several demos of the headset being used to augment reality, from designing commercial products to playing games with friends. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also shared a video in which he donned a Cambria headset and played with a virtual pet in a forthcoming mixed reality experience called The World Beyond. 

Unfortunately, Zuckerberg’s headset was blurred in the video and the Cambria headset in the YouTube video featured a Quest 2 exterior. In other words, we are still waiting for a physical reveal. 

Actual specs are also scant, with the company only saying that Cambria boasts “advanced hardware specs.” Pricing is still under wraps, but Meta says the headset is still on track to launch sometime this year. 

Current Quest 2 owners are not being left in the cold, as The World Beyond will be available on that platform via App Lab soon, though with that low-resolution black and white pass-through.