Enlarge (credit: Arthur VR)

The Sun never sets in virtual reality. This occurred to me after an hour-long briefing in an Oculus Quest 2 headset. Joined by more than a dozen other floating avatars, we teleported our way around an “outdoor” meeting space that could only be described as aircraft-carrier-meets-Croatian-vacation.

Beyond the vast expanse of virtual breakout spaces was a stunning sunset, but the day never grew dark. When I pressed a button on the Touch Controller a tad too long, I ended up standing unnervingly close to another avatar, a fellow journalist. Then I remembered that you can’t catch the coronavirus from a digital simulacrum.

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  The HP G2 Omnicept Edition looks a lot like the standard HP G2, but it comes with an additional slew of sensors. Visible at the top here is a heartrate tracker, while the eye-related trackers are built around the lenses. [credit: HP ]

We're still waiting to test out HP's next PC-VR headset, the $600 HP G2 , but before it begins shipping to preorder customers in November, HP has already unveiled its next VR sales pitch. And it's a biometric-tracking doozy.

The HP G2 Omnicept Edition delivers everything you'll find in the G2, including a pair of high-res, fast-switching LCD panels; an "inside-out" tracking solution; lenses, speakers, and other optimizations borrowed from Valve Index; and HP's updated version of the Windows Mixed Reality controllers.

But this higher-tier version, which has a vague "Spring 2021" launch window and no price yet, is aimed squarely at enterprise customers with a wealth of built-in sensors. These include: eye-tracking and pupillometry sensors, to separately determine your gaze and your moment-to-moment dilation; a heart rate sensor; and a facial-capture camera, to translate how you look to other users. (HP has not yet shown us how that facial-capture system will work, and they've confirmed that some of its features will not be part of the Omnicept's launch SDK.)

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  Meet the Oculus Quest 2, now in white!

Facebook has inadvertently revealed key information about its next VR headset, the Oculus Quest 2, ahead of an expected unveiling at the Facebook Connect conference later this week.

As discussed in videos posted briefly on Facebook's Blueprint e-learning platform (and since archived on YouTube ), the Oculus Quest 2 is presented as more of a spec upgrade to the existing Quest than a completely new generational split. The standalone headset, which doesn't require external sensors or processing hardware, will play all original Quest games, according to the video. The Quest 2 can also display VR games running on a Windows PC via Oculus Link , just like the original headset.

The Quest 2 sports a SnapDragon XR2 processor, according to the videos, a significant upgrade from the Snapdragon 835 that was adapted for the Quest from mobile phones. Chipmaker Qualcomm says the XR2 can provide two times the CPU & GPU performance, four times the pixel throughput, and 11 times the AI operations per second , compared to the 835.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images )

On Tuesday, Facebook found another way to aggravate millions of users—though this time, the outrage came from its virtual reality department. The company announced that it would soon mandate the use of Facebook accounts within its Oculus ecosystem , all in order to "unlock social features." In Facebook's ideal world, you'll be your Facebook self on the Facebook VR system... instead of using an existing, separate "Oculus ID."

What's the big deal, you may ask? This isn't the first time a major tech company has tried to combine various services under a "unified account" umbrella. But while Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others have spent years building such empires, none has pulled quite the bait-and-switch as Facebook did yesterday. And it's not a matter of tech business as usual. Facebook's latest decision deserves fierce scrutiny, right now, before it explodes like a virus outside of the niche that is virtual reality.

The Facebookening isn’t new—just more extreme

For older, existing Oculus VR products, this mandated switch from Oculus ID to Facebook accounts will begin January 1, 2023—and older devices will still function in an "offline" capacity (and will support tweaks like side-loaded, non-Oculus apps). What's more, buyers of "new" Oculus hardware—including sleeker, higher-performing VR headsets—won't have those old Oculus IDs as an option. Should you buy the company's next fancy-pants headset, your purchase alone will not suffice; you must also log in with a valid Facebook account before that new headset will function.