where your workplace is virtual.

You don't need a big screen display

because you can put virtual monitors anywhere.

Instead of a set of Zoom squares,

you can meet your colleagues in a virtual beach side resort

where your avatars will reflect your real face.

It can feel just like coming into the office

but from the comfort of your home.

- And then I've lost my hands again.

Hey, I got my hands back.

(Nilay laughs)

I'm gonna be honest with you, Adi.

I hate this.

I hate it more than anything.

- I feel so beaten down by the software.

The Meta Quest Pro is supposed to be a big leap forward

for the company, formerly known as Facebook.

Meta has lost 9.4 billion this year

on virtual and augmented reality,

or the so-called metaverse.

And since we started recording this video,

Meta's laid off 11,000 employees or 13% of its workforce.

But in his address to the company,

Zuckerberg said he's still focusing

on high priority growth areas like the Metaverse.

It's betting everything, right down to its name.

This is where Meta's VR goes from fun and games

to a serious business tool.

Eventually, CEO Mark Zuckerberg

wants something like the Quest Pro

to be your next laptop.

The Quest Pro is like a very fancy version of the Quest Two,

the all in one headset that Meta released in 2020.

Like the Quest Two, the Quest Pro is a self-contained system

with built-in cameras and tracking.

It supports Quest Two apps and games

and it uses the same app store.

You still need a Meta account to start using it

unless your workplace sets up its own login system.

Most of it's internal specs

have gotten a slight bump though.

It uses a new Qualcomm XR Two Plus chip set

instead of the Quest Two's XR Two

and it's got 12 gigabytes of memory

instead of six gigabytes.

The Quest Two controllers featured LED bands

that the headsets built-in cameras could track.

Now the controllers have their own tracking camera.

I haven't noticed a huge improvement in their accuracy

mostly because the Quest Two was already quite good

but they're more compact and they finally charge

on a little plastic dock with the headset

instead of burning through AA batteries.

Where the Quest Two blocked out

most of the light around your face,

the Quest Pro offers more options.

By default, it lets in a lot of light

so people can't, say sneak up on you and surprise you in VR.

You'd be surprised how often that happens.

But it comes with rubber wings

that you can magnetically snap on

to block your peripheral vision

and you can buy a separate full face mask

that shuts out almost all light.

The default option here is okay

if you're sitting still at a desk,

which is how Meta imagines many people using it.

But it made me motion sick for anything else

even typically comfortable games like Beat Saber.

So I appreciate the flexibility

but I spent almost all my time with those wings on.

The main difference here though is the headsets cameras.

The Quest Two has four tracking cameras, one on each corner

and they capture black and white video.

The Quest Pro has a total of 10 sensors

including outward facing color cameras

and internal ones that capture your eyes and face.

All these cameras enable the Quest Pro's

two big selling points.

The first is color passthrough mixed reality,

a midpoint between full immersive VR and AR glasses,

where virtual items are overlaid on a live video feed.

We couldn't directly film past their video.

Meta says support to capture it

is coming in future software updates.

The second is face and eye tracking

which lets an avatar mirror facial expressions

like smiling and raising an eyebrow.

- You look like you're sleeping all the time.

- Yeah, no, it doesn't recognize that my eyes are open.

- Which is weird.

(Nilay laughs)

Okay, there is something to be said about this experience.

- Eye tracking also allows foveated rendering

where software can render the pixels

right where you're looking at more sharply

saving on computing power.

These are interesting new features

but so far there isn't a lot to do with them.

Foveated rendering could make more demanding games

render with more detail

but the Quest Pro isn't meant for games right now.

So most VR developers will be building for the Quest Two.

The color feed is a step up

from the Quest Two's black and white,

but it's still washed out and flickery,

a long way from looking like the real world.

There are some mixed reality apps

but the mixed reality component often remains pretty basic.

Meanwhile, Meta's main use for eye and face tracking

is its own social platforms,

particularly Horizon Workrooms.

Workrooms is at the heart of Meta's new strategy.

It's an app that you can sync

with a desktop computer to use as an office.

For personal work, you can project big screens

in front of your face on top of either a full VR environment

or a pass through video feed.

For collaboration, you can invite other people

to a virtual meeting room

but Workrooms, it has some problems.

- So this is the first time

we've been able to make Horizon Workrooms work.

We've tried it many times.

It has mostly failed out, but here we are together.

- I would like to caveat

that there's supposed to be a third person here with us

so I'm not sure I would say worked.

- That's true.

Alex Heath was unable to join us.

The face tracking is somewhat working.

Adi looks very sleepy all the time.

I am talking with my hands. - The face tracking

is also better than I expected,

even though it's not great in a lot of ways.

- Yeah, but it's like it's on the curve

so it's not good enough

that you are not talking with your hands.

Like I'm overcompensating with my hands.

- Yes.

- [Nilay] I cannot tell what your face is actually doing

because you keep winking and squinting at me.

- Yes.

I don't know, maybe this just exaggerates

all of our normal expressions

so we can see how weird we look all the time.

I don't know.

These are thoughts that I feel like would be weird

for a work meeting, so...

- There is zero chance that I would ever

make a serious decision in this software.

- It is bizarre that I have,

bizarre that I have for years

been connecting my Meta headset

to things related to Facebook

so that I can have a seamless social experience

so that I can have like, oh, isn't it great

that you can take advantage of the social graph?

I have to go to a website,

log in through an arcane-like authentication system

that even I don't understand where my account is.

I get on the web, I create a meeting room

I invite people to the meeting room through,

similarly I have no idea how or where

or where these accounts are.

And then maybe, maybe they get a link

and then they can click on the link

and then they launch themselves into the headset

and maybe it works.

As I said before, the Quest Pro's focus

is business collaboration.

So we're spending our most of our time

in Meta's Workrooms app

but the social app, Horizon Worlds

is a big part of Meta's metaverse strategy

a free VR platform for games, events and social hangouts.

And my experience so far is less than stellar.

- [Nilay] Adi, where are you?

- [Alex] Yeah, Adi, where are you?

- [Adi] Hi, yeah, sorry, I have to go.

But it's nice meeting you.

- [Nilay] Adi is talking to people who are not us.

Alex, you have turned into just some sort of acquaintance.

- [Man] She's not over 18.

We need to find someone over 18.

- [Alex] Oh, amazing.

(indistinct chatter)

- [Kid] I don't think anybody here is over 18.

Xxxx.

- [Boy] I'm not over 18, that's for sure.

- [Nilay] I'm literally watching people

try to find Adi to harass her.

- [Alex] Wait, really?

- [Nilay] I'm listening to people saying there's--

I'm literally listening to kids say she's the only--

- [Alex] She's the only one, that's just the dudes.

- [Nilay] They're like, they found a girl

and they're like chasing her.

- [Adi] You too.

- [Nilay] Are you kidding me?

- [Alex] Wait, we gotta go see this.

- [Nilay] I didn't hear that.

- [Adi] Run, go, go, go, go, go, go.

- [Nilay] Wait, you don't hear the gaggle of bros

who are like, "She's the only girl on the server,

"let's go talk to her."?

- [Adi] Oh no, I didn't hear that.

I was hearing the other, there was the woman

who said that I look just like her.

I'm gonna leave now.

- Yeah, I'm gonna go too. - I wanna go home.

- [Nilay] Okay.

- [Alex] Where are we going?

- [Nilay] I don't know.

Was that Alex?

That's Alex.

And Alex again.

I haven't seen Adi.

- [Adi] I'm gonna invite you to go to my home.

- [Alex] Hit the travel.

- [Nilay] Okay, where do I do that?

How do I do, how do I do any of this?

- [Alex] Adi, send it again.

Adi, send it again.

- How do I get out of here?

Okay, so I don't know where you were at that time

but where Alex and I were standing

all of the dudes around us started saying, "There's a girl."

And then they said, "This is true, ask if she's over 18."

And then somehow, I believe you told them

that you were over 18 and they were like--

- I did not tell them that.

I didn't know where they were.

This must have been some other girl.

- Well, that's not great either.

And in many ways, worse.

- Okay, we were finally able to get Alex Heath to join us

and chat about our time so far,

not in Workrooms but in Horizon Worlds.

- [Nilay] Alex, was this worth $10 billion?

- [Alex] This is worth negative $10 billion.

I would pay $10 billion to never use this again.

I wanted to have hope that we could do this

and it would be fun but I mean, you guys agree

this is like one of the most buggy

software experiences ever, right?

I mean, I have not experienced software

this bad in a long time.

- [Nilay] Yeah, it's a real mess.

- I think bug is unfairly nice.

I think bug implies that there is a working version of this

that this is somehow not living up to.

This is just so unintuitive.

- No, I mean, like, when I tried