cd ~/
Quest ProMixed RealityVPSRequirementsMeta

Quest Pro and Mixed Reality: New Requirements for VPS

How Quest Pro's mixed reality capabilities change the requirements for visual positioning - higher accuracy, lower latency, always-on.

Evyatar Bluzer
3 min read

Quest Pro ships in October 2022 with full-color passthrough, and mixed reality comes with it. In December I wrote that Quest 3 was the next hardware. It is not; Quest Pro is, and the integration I promised for 2022 is with a device I did not name. Digital content sitting on real surfaces is a different problem from digital content in a fully virtual world, and VPS needs to level up to match.

Quest Pro Capabilities

The hardware gives us more to work with: high-resolution color passthrough cameras, better tracking from more cameras and a faster IMU, improved processors with more compute to spare, plus eye tracking and face tracking. MR mode mixes digital content with the real world, and that one sentence hides most of the new requirements.

What changes for VPS?

Accuracy

In VR, virtual content lives in a virtual world and small localization errors are invisible. In MR, digital content sits on real surfaces and errors are jarring. So the target moves from 10cm accuracy, which was acceptable for VR, to 2cm for believable placement.

Latency

VR content is locked to the headset, so latency to the world barely matters. MR content is locked to the real world, and latency shows up as visible drift. The 500ms initial fix from the first Quest integration was fine for VR; MR needs under 200ms initial, followed by continuous refinement.

Always-on

A VR session localizes once at start and is done. MR needs continuous localization as the user moves through space, which drags the power budget into the conversation - a system that runs constantly cannot be a power hog.

Technical Adaptations

Continuous Localization

VPS becomes part of the tracking pipeline:

VIO tracks frame-to-frame
VPS corrects drift periodically
Combined: Accurate + responsive

VPS now queries every few seconds rather than once at startup.

VPS inside the tracking loopThree boxes: VIO top, VPS below it, Kalman filter at the bottom; VIO and VPS exchange two arrows and each feeds the filter; the upward arrow from VPS to VIO is highlighted. VIOtracks frame-to-frameVPSqueries every few secondsKalman filter fuses the two:accurate and responsive pose for MR content2 cm target, first fix under 200 ms motion prior absolute correction frame-to-frame pose absolute pose
VPS inside the tracking loop: VIO hands it a motion prior, it hands VIO an absolute correction every few seconds, and a Kalman filter fuses the two into the pose MR content sits on.

Tighter Integration

VPS and VIO used to be separate systems. Now they share information both ways: VIO hands VPS a motion prior, VPS hands VIO an absolute correction, and a Kalman filter fuses the two.

Quality of Service

MR needs predictable performance. That means bounded latency (no 5-second queries), graceful degradation instead of freezing on failure, and confidence indication so downstream systems know when the pose is uncertain.

Development Timeline

Quest Pro ships October 2022 and the target is launch readiness for VPS MR support. That gives us 6 months: architecture for continuous localization in Q1, integration with the VIO team in Q2, performance optimization in Q3, polish and launch in Q4. Aggressive, but I think achievable.

The Opportunity

Quest Pro positions VPS as core infrastructure. Every MR experience potentially uses it, it comes pre-installed on millions of devices, and it is a foundation for whatever spatial computing turns into. Higher stakes, higher visibility. Fine by me.

Comments