Could Meta Quest one day get eye and face tracking accessories? Meta’s CTO talks about the technical hurdles.
Meta Quest Pro supports eye and face tracking, while Meta Quest 3 does not. For good reason: such a feature would have put the new mixed-reality headset out of reach for most consumers. The Quest 3 costs $499, while the Quest Pro is twice as expensive.
One way to provide eye and face tracking for more affordable headsets would be as an accessory. There are examples of this: HTC offers eye and face tracking modules for its standalone Vive Focus 3 headset. Could Meta some day offer a similar upgrade option?
This is what Meta’s CTO says
In his latest Q&A on Instagram, Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth commented on this very question. His answer in full:
Integrated eye tracking will come … at some point
Even if Meta were to find an upgrade option that worked well, it is unlikely that such modules would fit Meta’s ultimate goals. The company is committed to bringing as many headsets to the masses as possible, not providing niche solutions for niche products.
In addition, a purely optional technical feature would never receive the full support of the developer community and would rarely be used by applications. The potential of the technology would be wasted.
It is more likely that eye and face tracking will become a standard feature for Quest headsets at some point. After all, both can be considered essential for VR and AR. Bosworth recently said that eye tracking would one day be part of the base package of every Quest headset. And you can guess that once the devices offer eye tracking, face tracking won’t be far behind.
Source: Mixed News
