Facebook boss shows off Meta’s Cambria VR headset, mixed-reality demo

Facebook parent company Meta showed off its next-generation virtual reality headset on Thursday. This included Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, playing with the device. Zuckerberg didn’t show the headset itself — it’s mosaicked out — but he did show off a new mixed-reality experience, which appears to involve a virtual pet, called The World Beyond.

The World Beyond, Zuckerberg says in a video posted to Facebook, uses Meta’s Presence platform “to blend the physical and virtual worlds together.” In this case, it’s a mix of the real-world (Meta’s offices) and a colorful virtual fantasy world, complete with a little blue pet monster that users can interact with. Zuckerberg appears to be able to play with the creature and then creates a virtual world by painting over real walls.

The “full-color passthrough version” of The World Beyond will only be available on Meta’s upcoming Cambria headset, but a demo version will be available through Meta’s App Lab soon, Zuckerberg said.

Project Cambria should launch sometime later in the year. The headset, described in a recent report as “a laptop for the face” that aims to bring remote work into virtual reality, is reportedly priced at $799 and higher. Meta is rumored to have four new VR headsets, including Cambria. In 2023, there will be a new version of Meta’s low-end Quest headset, which currently starts at $299. In 2024, Quest and Cambria will both be updated with more recent versions.