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Meta Reportedly Plans Ultralight Headset With Tethered Puck For 2027 (uploadvr.com) 35

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
According to The Information (paywalled), Meta plans to ship an extremely light mixed reality headset in 2027, codenamed Puffin. It follows a report that the company canceled a high-end headset planned for the same year, which previous reports speculated as being a Quest Pro 2. UploadVR reports: Puffin reportedly resembles "a bulky pair of glasses" and weighs less than 110 grams, yet is an opaque VR-style headset with pancake lenses and passthrough cameras. Its remarkably light weight is apparently being achieved by offloading both the battery and computing hardware to an external tethered puck, which Meta "hopes" will be small enough to fit in the user's pocket.

If the report is accurate, Puffin will be significantly lighter than any other shipping fully functional VR headset to date. For comparison, Meta Quest 3 weighs around 400 grams without its straps and facial interface and around 515 grams with them. Of this weight, the battery is around 70 grams. The report describes Puffin as not including controllers, instead using the gaze-and-pinch input scheme introduced by Apple Vision Pro.
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Meta Reportedly Plans Ultralight Headset With Tethered Puck For 2027 More

Meta Reportedly Plans Ultralight Headset With Tethered Puck For 2027

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  • If Facebook is foolish enough to produce such a device, it will be the end of its VR dominance. It's practically begging competitors to take its market. NOBODY WANTS A TETHERED HEADSET.

    • If Facebook is foolish enough to produce such a device, it will be the end of its VR dominance. It's practically begging competitors to take its market. NOBODY WANTS A TETHERED HEADSET.

      Yeah, /. has a great track record predicting which devices will be successful. I mean, just look at what a failure the iPod was. They don't even make them anymore.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BigZee ( 769371 )
      I totally appreciate your point and agree with it. However, the problem is then dealing with a bulky and heavy headset. This is not a problem that's going to get resolved in the short term by technology.

    • It is a great idea, if only for the decoupling of screen hardware and computing hardware.

      The only mistake is going for a long cable and something in your pocket as the default. From a VR perspective it makes way more sense to put the computing on top of your head or at the back of your head. The connection is then far more stable (this is a very high bandwidth connection after all), you have more freedom of movement, and there is plenty opportunity for thermal management.

      I think it is a very promising direc

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by necro81 ( 917438 )

        The only mistake is going for a long cable and something in your pocket as the default. From a VR perspective it makes way more sense to put the computing on top of your head or at the back of your head. The connection is then far more stable (this is a very high bandwidth connection after all), you have more freedom of movement, and there is plenty opportunity for thermal management.

        You can easily make a bidirectional 20 Gbps link over a properly made USB-C cable that's 5 mm in diameter, (with power deli

        • You could even make the tether cable with connectors at either end, so that cables of different lengths might be used depending on the use case. And a clever connector design would be robust enough to manage sudden disconnections, perhaps using magnetic clips.

        • Try boxing in VR every day with a 0.5cm cable ran along your body to your pocket somehow. Doable, but very inconvenient and prone to rapid deterioration of the cable.

          Regarding heat: You do realize that all the standalone VR headsets such as the AVP and the Quests already have all the computing 'right by your head', right? Now _that_ is a solved problem.

          • Clip it to your belt, and then move it to the small of your back? We've gotten pretty good about putting wires where they are least susceptible to damage from moving around - see literally any news broadcast where they have an earpiece and lavalier mic.

            Nobody said you HAVE to put it in your pocket.

            Besides, I'm sure this will be better than having half a kilo of bullshit hanging off the front of your face like you do now.

            • I'm sure this will be better than having half a kilo of bullshit hanging off the front of your face like you do now.

              I'm not sure. Cables can be annoying and unwieldy as fuck. I've used my Quest 3 tethered and wirelessly and tethered is just terrible compared to wireless. Granted, tethered to something in my pocket would be far better than tethered to my PC, but some issues will remain.

              But this is exactly why I said this: "it makes way more sense to put the computing on top of your head or at the back of your head".

      • It could easily be used wirelessly for less demanding use cases (watching a movie on the plane)

        How are you going to wirelessly power the glasses?

        The battery is in the tethered bit.

        • The battery is in the tethered bit.

          It doesn't have to be. See the Bigscreen Beyond.

          • No, it doesn't have to be. But it says right there in the summary that it is:

            Its remarkably light weight is apparently being achieved by offloading both the battery and computing hardware to an external tethered puck

            No, it doesn't have to remain there. But the information we have says it IS there.

            • I was talking about the direction of VR/AR devices, which is not limited to this specific device. But I suppose I should adjust my statement.

              The 2 mistakes they made are:
              1. Going for a long cable and something in your pocket as the default.
              2. Powering the display part via a cable.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      If Facebook is foolish enough to produce such a device, it will be the end of its VR dominance. It's practically begging competitors to take its market. NOBODY WANTS A TETHERED HEADSET.

      In your rush to first post, you misinterpreted what the article is getting at. FTFA:

      Its remarkably light weight is apparently being achieved by offloading both the battery and computing hardware to an external tethered puck, which Meta "hopes" will be small enough to fit in the user's pocket.

      I interpret that to mean: the

      • In your rush to first post, you misinterpreted what the article is getting at. FTFA....

        I knew exactly what the article was getting at. I didn't need to read beyond "tethered," as nothing beyond that point changes anything. A totally self-contained device is the correct form factor, and Facebook got that right as far back as the Quest 1. The only thing that needs to improve is battery technology, which is beyond Facebook's power.

        Maybe I'm an outlier, but I stop noticing the Quest on my head after the first few seconds of play. Any kind of tether is a form factor regression. It's not quite as b

    • We want a tethered headset just a little more than we want a half-kilo of shit hanging off the front of our faces.

      Having something that is more comfortable to wear for any period of time you may be using it, which has a single cable running to your pocket or something that clips to your belt is far better than the design they are shilling today. Not having to support all that weight with your neck is definitely an improvement.

      And, by having a tethered thing, they could conceivably work in replaceable batte

  • I'm probably not in the target market, but I still don't care about VR headsets of any type.

  • Better Name (Score:3)

    by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @09:14PM (#64747724) Journal
    If they are going to name it after a bird Dodo might be the more appropriate choice.

  • Continuation of Dominance (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Thursday August 29, 2024 @09:18PM (#64747734)

    If Facebook is smart enough to produce such a device, it will be the continuation of its VR dominance. It's practically begging competitors to lose this market. EVERYBODY WANTS A TETHERED HEADSET.

    Seriously, I have the AVP .. the main thing that sucks about it is its weight .. feature-wise it's really compelling (wish there was more content though). Resolution could be improved for use as a desktop. If they get a VR set to 100 grams .. which is the weight of sunglasses that would be insane .. especially if they balance the load bearing on it. A tether doesn't cause ANY issues .. I keep the battery in my pants pocket and forget it's there. I imagine if there's a CPU it would get warm? They should manage that part I guess (someone told me that's the reason Apple kept the CPU in the headset foolishly).

    • Sorry, but I disagree about the cable nit being an issue, I hate that cable, it requires extra effort to handle the cable/battery before you can start, the cable doesn't feel right down your neck/body, the battery pops off your belt/out if your pocket during roomscale crouch or jump or gets stuck between you and the couch/pillow. Nope, I still like it much better if the battery is in the headset/strap itself. But many headsets don't come with the best balanced headstrap out of the box.

  • They have tiny pockets if they have them at all.

    • Your strength stat isn't nearly as important as having a bag of holding. A typical girl will be lugging around far more stuff than you would be able to fit in your manly pocket.

  • I remember that since the late 90s all the way up to about a year or two after the iPhone launched ... 90% of slashdotters hated .. I mean really HATED the concept of a smartphone.
    Reference from 2005:
    https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]

    Note .. whenever I said we need big touchscreen phones (such as this example 2 years before the iPhone), I didn't get a +5 mod, instead some guy said we'll use a TV for email instead. Reference:
    https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Timing is critical to making a tech idea work. Really three things came together to make smartphones work. First was powerful energy efficient processor. Second was higher capacity batteries without severe memory issues (NiCad was still used in the 1990). Finally the creation of direct manipulation interfaces that didn't require a stylus. People forget how that was enormous that was for making the public actually want one of these things.

      I developed for mobile devices pre iPhone. I evaluated and actu

    • Can't forget the original iPod review! https://slashdot.org/story/01/... [slashdot.org]

    • That's a bit of an overreaction. I looked at the link and plenty of the criticisms still hold up. Smartphones have really become a single point of failure. Good photos still do require big lenses (over denoised, smoothed, sharpened and colorized phone cam shots are at best good enough). Storage on mobile devices is still a problem. Big phones are still unwieldy. Input on phones still sucks ass compared to typing on a normal keyboard.

      It's just that Slashdotters overestimate the extent to which these will be

  • Don't you hate it when your puck runs away from your headet?

  • No thank you, I already hate the cable running down my neck/body down to the battery for my HTC Vive Pro/Wireless module hanging on my belt/in my pocket, but which jumps off or out of it during roomscale movements like duck. The cable is very annoying due to needing to do something extra to start playing. Also the cable gets jabbed sometimes due your arm getting entangled with it, yeah you could use extra clips to pin the cable to you clothes, but that is more extra work before you can start playing. Best,
  • Gee, I wonder what happens when you put something that relies on air cooling into a closed pocket.
  • That must be one the worst commercial names ever.

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