This Article is Republish from Patreon (June 1st, 2022)
Hi! I’m Brad.
Today I am doing something a little different. I have probably the largest leak I’ve ever published on my socials. I wasn’t able to go to AWE 2022. But I can still put people in awe… Unfortunately it’s only for the Meta Cambria.
Normally you would expect a video from me documenting a large leak like this. But I am supremely exhausted from making Meta Cambria Leak videos. So a non-paywalled Patreon post is the best way to get people to see the info. Especially since I have no blog or journalist website of my own.
While Zuckerberg made a big deal recently about the mixed reality capabilities of this device in a video; He also blurred the device like it was hiding some privates. So here is a fun way to show off the underwear without any censorship.
Attached are a bunch of images for the final version of Cambria/Redwood/SeaCliff/Arcata/Unknown1 (Meta loves their codenames). From what I understand, Cambria is following in the footsteps as Quest 2 in that the final model that is releasing to consumers is marked as a (DVT).
Lets talk about these photos first, even though there is a lot more info to dive into afterward:
The first thing to note is that the (2nd) render I had made for Cambria was almost exact to the final version. Of course we missed some slight details, but oh well. It’s hard to remember/get everything.
Lets talk about the things on the sides that we missed. You may notice a wire on the right side of the device. In one of the pictures its sorta coiled/curved. This is the power delivery wire that connects the battery in the back of the head strap to the HMD up front. It seems that when you adjust the strap to the “closest point,” it will coil automatically. And stretch to be straight when you adjust the opposite way
We were also correct in our render on where the volume buttons and 3.5mm headphone jack was located. It’s hard to see but it’s on the bottom right of the strap. Close to the HMD itself.
On the left side, we are noticing that there is a clip attached to the strap as well. When I asked about it: the answer I got was it’s for the USB C Cable that is to come bundled with the device. This is very similar to how most PC VR HMDs include a plastic clip to run a tether around comfortable their devices. I am shocked they are including this, since I figured they would push the Oculus Air Link method rather than the Oculus (wired) Link method but there it is. Especially from the fact this device is almost certain to include Wifi-6E
On the back of the head strap, not much new stuff to point out. Battery is located here which will allow the HMD to have a very equal balance. The switch to pancake lenses allows the components on the front to come closer to your face as well. This allows the overall center of gravity to be much more aligned than previous HMDs. This device will be extremely comfortable due to these choices.
There is a dial on the back which is considered the main adjustment mechanism for head sizes. But what we missed in our renders was what looks to be a dial on the front of the HMD too. I didn’t ask my source about this, but from what we know in datamining: I am going to guess that this dial sets how far the lenses are to be from someone’s face (similar to the comfort dial in Valve Index). Asking previous sources: the IPD is set by grabbing the lenses themselves and moving them. Same as Quest 2, but instead of 3 set IPD modes, its a smooth transition between a wider range of IPDs
Finally the last major details are all on the front. Cambria uses 2 “glacier” cameras on the front left and right. 1 “teton” high resolution RGB Camera in the center. Teton is only used to colorize the stereo with it’s ~16 Megapixel beauty. Glacier cameras are just fast and only provide a “Luma” composite.
Above the Teton camera, you can see a small square. This is the IR Projector that works in tandem with the cameras to get great depth data. Samulia and Basti564 were the first to know about this feature via datamining. And the three of us reported on it way back around October of last year. It’s mostly focused on getting an amazing finger tracking experience at first. But can be used for a variety of depth sensing functions.
This is pretty much the entire recap of the photos attached to this post. IF you have any more questions about it, post a comment below and I will ask my sources if I have any details involved with that.
Final Predicted Hardware Specs for Meta Cambria:
(2) 2160×2160 MiniLED Backlit LCD Panels
(2) Custom Pancake Lenses
16MP Color Camera for Color Passthrough
Eye + Face Tracking (IR Camera based)
XR2+ Gen 1 SoC
12GB LPDDR5 RAM
256GB SSD
WiFi 6E Support
~5000 mAh battery
BUT THERE’S MORE! Software!
A new hardware device is useless without any software updates! Semi-recently I posted a tweet detailing a large set of features being worked on internally at Meta. The Tweet thread is here: https://twitter.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/1517534726877294594
I also got new information on what concepts we will see in the much nearer term. But first, I asked for updates on these individual things from my source to see where they are at.
1) The anchoring of App/Browser Windows in your home environment is in “experiment” phase but not planned to be released for this year.
2) The Suspense API: Where you can suspend 2D applications and VR experiences, launch another app and resume your progress seamlessly afterwards – also in “experiment” phase and nowhere near release.
3) The Windows API: which allow developers to put a Oculus dashboard/home window in their VR applications was the only feature not known to my source. But it sounds like it’s probably on a longer term release schedule like these other two previously mentioned.
In regards to nearer term updates (this year) to get ready for Cambria, they told me that:
The next 2 major software updates are for the new Meta accounts promised to replace the Facebook account and co-presence, which will allow you to invite friends into your home environment.
There is a long term plan to rebuild the Home environment (which includes the three bullet points above) but there WILL be visual differences since they want to target higher resolutions/frame rates. And allow support for NFTs. Yes. I am serious.
One last thing to note, they want users to be able to create their own custom Home environments as well. No idea on the timeframe for this custom home feature.
What about Cloud Gaming?
The final thing to note in this excruciatingly long “article” is that I asked about the Oculus Avalanche Cloud Gaming service that me and Samurai recently brought to light. And was shown to be activated for a random user I talked to in the UK.
They confirmed to me that they are actively working on Avalanche Cloud, occasionally showing demos of various apps running, i.e. Horizon Worlds, Half-Life Alyx, etc., but to show how serious they are about this: they are starting to invest more into improving internet speeds/before introducing such a feature set. My source linked me to this article – https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-5g-ultra-wideband-175-million-people-2022
Unsubstantiated Musings
One final rumor I heard. I have no idea if it’s true, I am mostly putting this out there as a fun quip to end a seriously long leak dump. (Usually more sources come out to me when I do these musings too)
So for a while, I had felt this Cambria device was a strange pivot from a previously planned device known at one time as Oculus Quest Pro. I have no idea if they are going to name this device as that, but what I truly mean is: at one point, I feel the scope of this HMD was smaller than what it became in a short “last-minute” time span.
People talk about the effect that the introduction of Apple’s MR HMD will have on the industry, but no I feel people rarely talk about how Meta’s internal responses are likely to be. Any rumor we hear publicly is likely already known internally by these companies. They have “research farms” purely tasked to do industrial espionage.
If a company dominating the XR space such as Meta sees a true glimpse that Apple is getting in the final stages to release something, what would they do to react? The Information recently reported that Meta plans to release 4 new “VR” devices by 2024. Which is notable already. But a small tidbit of the article said that Cambria was supposed to release around Meta Connect last year.
In the Zuck keynote last year, he had a hardware briefcase brought into his home where he was seemingly preparing to open up and show the world what was inside. But that part of the show seemed to have been cut/edited out which left and awkward taste for a lot of people. Including me.
We in the rumor mill also heard a lot of rumors from semi-notable sources that there was going to be a release. So what happened?
Again, this is my heavy speculation but: I believed the scope of Cambria was meant to be much smaller than it ended up becoming. Once Meta got word of Apple releasing an extreme high-end device, possibly in 2022, they rushed to push more capabilities in a Quest 2 Pro device they were getting into the near final stages. Specifically better MR features.
The final unsubstantiated rumor I heard recently was: Andrew Bosworth, CTO of Meta Reality Labs – doesn’t even want to release Cambria in the state it’s in. But Mark Zuckerberg is the real one that is pushing the company to release it later this year.
Meta Cambria is hoping to be the first steps to being a replacement for a laptop. More specifically a Chromebook. But as many people suggested, a 2160x2160p per eye resolution is going to not be very good for productivity. Text alone will a problem. It’s exactly why Apple is likely pushing a 4K per eye uOLED resolution in their MR device that is going to be a “MacBook for the face”
