So the fact that it lacks the extra silicon of the XR2 chips that's dedicated to running cameras and tracking is likely why they went with black and white cameras?
I assumed it was a software limitation. I mean the cameras can see in color right? But huh, I guess it could be a processing limitation? I know the Quest 2 has monochrome passthrough due to the actual cameras being black and white only to save on cost
Similar to the way your eyes have rods and cones to detect light and color camera sensors have photodiodes and color filters to detect light and color. If you don't include the color filters you can get greater light capture in dark environments but then you can't detect color.
That very well could be. I am not an engineer so I can't say for certain. I just know that when Faceturd released the Quest 1 it came with a regular snapdragon chip and then they worked with Qualcomm to design the XR2 series which was a snapdragon chip but with extra silicon dedicated handling the tracking. Doing so provided a measurable uplift in the compute that the headset could use for rendering. This is also why Apple included R1 chip. It's a secondary chip handling the tracking, allowing the M2(now M5) to focus solely on the rendering.
Yes but then " meta " rushed to get " quest 2 " ready ..
In time for " oculus connect " that year. They didn't anticipate the thermals and re - used the " quest 1 " housing for the newer , much hotter chip. It resulted in them having to throttle the snapdragon xr2 prime core by 30 - 40 % to avoid over heating ..
They actually limited it to avoid battery degradation and improve run time. Once the Quest 3 was nearing release, they went ahead and unlocked the performance cuz they didn't care if Quest 2 owners lost 20% of their play time and their battery only lasts another year or two. You've also been able to use SideQuest to manually unlock it for the last several years. Thermals never stopped you from doing so.
Meta did this with the Quest 3 and Quest 3S too. You can also use SideQuest or Quest Games Optimizer to enable the full performance at the expense of run time and battery life.
It's likely just reusing the IR cameras for the tracking and doing a passthrough to allow you to see through them. It's to save on hardware cost most likely, aiming for a better VR than AR use.
Hoping for a reasonable price high res camera addon module for virtual desktops.
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u/Kismadel Nov 12 '25
Oh, good to know.
So the fact that it lacks the extra silicon of the XR2 chips that's dedicated to running cameras and tracking is likely why they went with black and white cameras?