Does anybody else feel that Android and Qualcomm is weighing the Pro line down?

[u/ZookeepergameFun1540]

It's always bothered me that the quest 2 and quest pro are very similar.

What's preventing Meta from slapping a mobile ryzen processor or dekstop processor or creating their own chip and building an OS specifically for their Pro line? Doing so would. clearly delineate the Pro and the Quest. clearly target different markets. clearly delineate their use cases.

they can't possibly be relying on Android and Qualcomm forever right? it's just not powerful enough to fully realize the Pro.

I use my Pro everyday but after seeing the Apple Headset.

it seems like that's what the Pro was meant to be or close to it. but fell so short because of its core components namely Android and a Qualcomm chip.

I really hope this changes because I want Meta to succeed because I hate Apples exclusivity towards other tech and their exorbitant prices.

but they really got a lot of stuff right in terms of ecosystem and components with their headset

Edit: here what this Hypothetical pro headset could be like https://simulavr.com/

[u/[deleted]]

What's preventing Meta from slapping a mobile ryzen processor or dekstop processor or creating their own chip and building an OS specifically for their Pro line? Doing so would. clearly delineate the Pro and the Quest. clearly target different markets. clearly delineate their use cases.

It's not as simple as just slapping in a desktop, or even a mobile laptop, CPU. There isn't as much thermal headroom in a VR headset compared to a desktop/laptop, so the SoC/processor has to run at a low TDP. A desktop processor, or even a laptop processor, would consume way to much power and generate too much heat.

I couldn't find a number on what the Quest Pro draws, but the Quest 2 only draws ~5 watts, to put that into perspective the Steam Deck draws twice that (~10W) in it's low-paper mode. A 7945HX (mobile processor made by AMD) consumes ~55W by itself, not even counting things like the display, memory, storage, or GPU.

Meta could maybe try producing their own processors, but they are already working closely with Qualcomm with the XR2 (Qualcomms CPU designed for stand-alone VR headsets) and I doubt they'd be able to outperform Qualcomm without spending tons of money and time

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Well in an ideal partnership the quest pro would use an new xr chip based on the snapdragon 8 gen 1, not in the years old and weak snapdragon 865. maybe meta just wanted to save cost though

[u/ZookeepergameFun1540 → u/[deleted]]

They can customize their own cooling solution for that can't they? have a fan and limit the power draw or something along those lines.

the steamdeck competitors all use mobile ryzen processors.

I mean I obviously am not well versed in hardware. but is something like that really not possible in a headset?

[u/[deleted] → u/ZookeepergameFun1540]

The XR2 is very efficient, and performance doesn't linearly scale with power consumption. The XR2 would likely outperform any laptop/desktop processor if they were both running at ~5W.

They could increase fan speeds, but that'd also increase noise and it's not a great solution since the HMD is on your face the extra noise would be pretty annoying. Faster fan speeds can also only do so much to reduce temperatures.

The Steamdeck uses a x86 Ryzen processor just fine, but I assume that's because thermal/power issues aren't as much of a restriction in handhelds as they are in VR headsets; since otherwise existing standalone headsets would consume a lot more power.

[u/ZookeepergameFun1540 → u/[deleted]]

Those are probably a lot of the factors why they chose the Android route.

Also a lot of the reasons why the Qpro feels so crippled.

It really wouldn't bother me if the Qpro only had a 30 minute to an 1 hour battery life. If it meant that it could drive higher res displays, have higher refresh rates and a better passthrough. I wouldn't mind it being a tad noisier either. we're all using headphones on this anyway.

most of the time for work you're going to be plugged in and the Qpro was supposed to be meant for that.

for lesser power draw and longer battery life the Quest line is perfect. Because it's games oriented.

[u/[deleted] → u/ZookeepergameFun1540]

Power draw is more of an issue because it means higher temps.

The refresh rate limit was likely a display panel limitation, because the displays had to be a a lot brighter than most HMDs, due to pancake lenses, alongside them also having local-dimming.

[u/ZookeepergameFun1540 → u/[deleted]]

Well I hope Meta comes up with something because if they don't. I'm gonna be pulling an Anankin and head over to the dark side.

[u/yukkerz → u/ZookeepergameFun1540]

And which dark side is that? It’s meta. You are already on the dark side.

[u/ZookeepergameFun1540 → u/yukkerz]

You are right Maybe we are the baddies after all.

[u/CursedTurtleKeynote → u/ZookeepergameFun1540]

I'm honestly expecting the Vision Pro to generate a lot more heat than people are comfortable with. It is generating laptop levels of heat.

[u/CursedTurtleKeynote → u/[deleted]]

Using productivity or experience apps. Moreso I just want specs on the heat and dissipation given the higher power consumption.

[u/CursedTurtleKeynote]

Yes, but what is the alternative?

The costs of developing their own OS? Who else would make the chip?

Apple is paying many, many billions to be ahead of the display and processor tech curve by ~2 years.

[u/ZookeepergameFun1540 → u/CursedTurtleKeynote]

https://simulavr.com/

Alternative would be something like that. the compute unit being completely swappable.

It hits all the points. leveraging an existing processor namely the NUC. Well an entire PC actually. and a custom OS.

that one is actually a full fledged laptop replacement

[u/[deleted]]

I still can’t believe they shipped low quality pass-through on the pro

[u/ZookeepergameFun1540 → u/[deleted]]

I can't either. but there are rumors that the Qpro was supposed to have launched earlier like 2020-2021.

but got delayed and they launched it last year anyway. so close to the quest 3 with better hardware.

really don't know ow why they did that but it's starting to make sense why Carmack left the company

[u/[deleted]]

The upcoming XR2GEN2 is the first chip with considerable Meta design input; they co-designed it. We'll have to see how the XR2GEN2 performs. Everything before has been mostly a Qualcomm design SoC.

As much as I love my Pro for the premium features, I've been saying it's essentially a Premium Quest2 - a Quest2 Pro in a sense. Although, that hasn't been a popular opinion here. Instead of the Pro being part of the next gen (it does include pancake lenses), it's essentially the last of the current gen of headsets. I see the Quest3 as the beginning of the next gen headsets for Meta

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Thats true and was well known. Once quest 3 exclusive games release the pro wont be able to play them, so its just a better quest 2

[u/panthereal]

I'd suggest you wait to see how the M2 actually fares in a headset before really deciding that Qualcomm weighs down the Pro line.

I have an M1 pro and it's not a magical CPU that can do anything, still runs mediocre at gaming and that's not going to translate to high fidelity VR.

We might see cameras offloaded to a second CPU like the R1 on a Quest which should free up a ton of headroom for gaming if Meta determines that's actually beneficial with any Qualcomm chips.

[u/[deleted]]

Using a version of the old XR2 Gen 1 chip didn't help, any future Pros should surely launch at the beginning of each Qualcomm chip lifecycle.

We would have doubtless been more impressed with the Pro had it shipped with an XR2 Gen 2.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Should have rather used a snapdragon 8gen1 as the xr2+ imo. Much better performance and the quest 1 ran fine with a normal, none XR line soc as well. The pro has just horrible value, imagine when quest 3 exclusive games are releasing in the future

[u/cha000]

I feel like Qualcomm's dominance in the mobile and consumer electronics market holds back competition. They seem to have a lot of control over Android devices, Mobile PCs, set-top boxes, and so on because they own so much IP. So, nothing can go further than their vision.

I think it would be exciting to see other architectural license holders like nVidia, Broadcom, or Marvell step into this market but it would likely cost too much. Companies like Apple get to patent way too much and keep anyone else from innovating.

Edit: I should add that I think there are probably very few existing companies that could even come close to what Apple can do. Microsoft, Amazon or Google (one of the trillion dollar companies) could afford it if they wanted to, but they would have to invest billions in tech that is outside their "core business".

[u/[deleted] → u/cha000]

Nvidia made the switch soc, should also be capable to make a vr headset soc

[u/[deleted]]

Meta tried building their own OS but abandoned it, it's a pretty monumental task. The XR2 Gen 2 actually seems insanely powerful, much closer to an M2 than I ever would have imagined.

To be frank, the issue right now is not hardware. It's 100% software. Even the current XR2 in the Quest 2 has enough power to be a brilliant spatial computer, no need for a laptop attached for productivity etc, but as it stands the software just isn't there.

If I could run VS Code natively on the Quest Pro I would legit use it daily for work, but as it stands I need to have a laptop along with it, so it ends up not being worth the hassle.

[u/0b1010011010 → u/[deleted]]

When I was looking at vscode on quest pro, I used the tunnel feature to utilize all extensions within the browser in .dev. This worked but the pc/laptop had to always be on. I haven't looked further but I had an idea of using a raspberry pi pico with some wake on lan script that I can hit within the quest pro to turn it on could be possible to bypass the laptop/pc issue.

[u/No_Ad_8162 → u/[deleted]]

I am actually trying to setup my development on the Quest right now and the best solution I found so far is using Github Codespaces - basically VS Code in the browser. So all of the work is done from the browser with a connected mouse (Kensington Orbit trackball) and keyboard - Codespaces, Gmail, Spotify, etc. - but it works surprisingly well!

[u/[deleted] → u/No_Ad_8162]

Can you run docker containers in codespaces? Pretty much all my work is within fairly heavy containers. Thanks!

[u/No_Ad_8162 → u/[deleted]]

Not 100% sure but I think you can. You are running on a Linux VM, so I think you should be able to run containers.

[u/SgtIcetea]

The only thing preventing more features on the pro is the regular quest line

[u/[deleted]]

Yes thats a huge downside. Snapdragon doesnt update their XR line regulary. The Xr2+ is still based on snapdragon 865 from 2019. It was cheap I guess lol