Angela Chang, director of product management for VR devices at Meta, joined Cheddar News to talk about the new Meta Quest Pro VR headset and the company's next step to build out the virtual world.

The Meta Quest Pro, the first major product launch for the Metaverse, was released Wednesday. Angela Chang, director of product management for VR devices at Meta, joined Cheddar News to talk about the new VR headset and the company's next step to build out the virtual world. "It's going to really unlock new use cases, especially for work and productivity, as well as collaboration in virtual meetings," she said, "and we also believe that the new experiences built in is going to unlock a new category of experiences based on high quality rich mixed reality.”

Meta Executive Discusses What's Next for VR

and Mena's most advanced virtual reality headset. The Quest Pro is now on sale. It's the first major product launch of metas campaign to build the metaverse and it contains some mixed reality features that can blend elements of the virtual world with a physical one and sports a new processor along with sensors designed to capture facial expressions, making avatars more realistic. Our earlier Michelle castello sat down with Angela chang that as director of product management for VR devices have to talk about the release. Take a listen. So the meta Quest Pro is our most advanced headset yet. It is a beautiful piece of hardware packed with some magical software that really delivers a much deeper sense of presence in the metaverse. Um We've got a lot of innovative features built into it and it's going to really unlock new use cases, especially for work and productivity as well as a collaboration in virtual meetings. Um and we also believe that the new experiences built in is going to unlock, you know, a new category of experiences based on high quality rich mixed reality. Um Finally right, that's the other thing that's really exciting to us is we've been able to add in a bunch of really interesting um face and I sort of like tracking technologies to be able to help your avatars mimic your real facial expressions. So we're having, you know, a virtual meeting, you know, one like this, but in the three D spatial space you can actually be much more authentic to yourself and deliver your expressions much more precisely, you know, I'm glad you talked about the work and productivity features because so many gen z and millennials, they desire remote work over older generations. So how can menace horizon and this device in particular lead the way for a push in this kind of remote lifestyle. Yeah, absolutely. There's a variety of different use cases and situations we really thought through um in one case right, this hybrid meeting situation where a few of us might be co located in the office and a few others may be actually remotely located somewhere else in the world. In that situation. VR is actually not a no brainer to be able to put on the headset, join that meeting together and re really feel that deeper sense of presence with spatial audio, the high resolution graphics as well as now as I mentioned, the facial expression where the avatar can much more authentically represent you. Um and you'll just get a different sense of um immersion and being present with people while you're in those virtual meetings as opposed to you know, to d flat screen, like the zoom call that we're having. Um the other use case is lots of times we also do work by ourselves. Right. And so in those situations um the mixed reality environment is really um productive for being able to spin up say for example three, you know, real size monitor size, the virtual screens right in front of you that you can just like used to work a couple with your natural, you know, hand in gestures, inputs or keyboard and mouse, it's really just giving you a productivity, you know, work experience uh from anywhere that's much more portable as opposed to having to lug a bunch of different um monitors around. So those are just some of the examples of how this device is going to really revolutionize the way people work, you know, when I heard the presentation, when you guys announced that I really saw how this can work for people who are employed and really want to work in that virtual environment. But what features are you most excited for consumers to enjoy if they aren't thinking about the workplace? Yeah, so I think this device has also made a lot of advancements around, you know, features that are good for gaming entertainment. For example, our new controllers have 3 60 degree of tracking. So this way while you're in the entertainment sort of game sort of situation, you won't have to really worry about losing tracking ever again because it's not relying on the headset, seeing the controllers to be Be able to track the positions and so you will be able to do motions like, you know, shooting an arrow with this hand sort of behind the headset and that will track just all five and you'll have a much more immersive deeper experience. Now the price point might be a little bit intimidating for some consumers, it's at $1,500. Are you worried about this concern? And what went into the decision to place it at that price? Yeah, I think in general when you're making the, you know, 0 to 1 really innovative product with lots of technologies packed in things are, you know technology technology doesn't come for free and it's just going to take some time for us to get that right and for the price for that to come down over time. Um and I think this device in general is really aimed at pushing the boundaries of those new use cases right? So that we can um have the people who are a little bit more looking forward to the new technologies and innovations, they're really excited about living in the future of you know uh interacting more in the metaverse. I think for those people this is probably the right product for them as well as in the future. We're very excited to bring this product also to businesses for a lot of the work use cases and collaboration use cases that I spoke about now real quick before we go, how does this quest pro represent a big step forward on the road to meta's vision of the metaverse. Yeah, so I really do think, you know, in the future of the metaverse, um we're going to be spending time right playing, doing work socializing, communicating, shopping in the metaverse. This device is really meant to, you know, advanced sort of our general purpose computing platform, turning VR into more capable platform that can enable and unlock more use cases. Right? So from today where VR is primarily and more entertainment based device, we're really using these technologies, these new features to introduce new use cases like work collaboration. Eventually you can imagine the future people be being able to actually have a career or a small business in the metaverse using a device like this, generally revenue for themselves and consumers can actually come in and sort of trade and digital goods and shop for that as well. So it really does advance I think our vision in terms of multiple sort of fronts. Thanks there to Angela chang met as director of product management for VR devices.