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Meta accidentally shows Quest Pro‘s impressive color passthrough camera

Alan Truly
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At tomorrow’s Meta Connect event, the new Quest Pro VR headset will be officially announced, but leaks and rumors have already given us a good idea of what to expect. The latest leak was actually provided by Meta itself and reveals the quality of the Quest Pro’s color passthrough camera.

An App Lab page for Meta Spark Player contained five screenshots showing a mixed reality view of the physical environment with graphics overlaid. Those screenshots have been removed but were previously saved and shared by Nathie on Twitter. Along with the greatly improved color passthrough, some screenshots provide another look at the Quest Pro controllers.

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Here are some pictures of the Quest Pro's mixed reality passthrough and its controllers that were “accidentally” posted by Meta themselves on App Lab. pic.twitter.com/Gbn4ysc9M2

— Nathie (@NathieVR) October 9, 2022

Each image was watermarked in the lower-left corner as having been “Captured with Quest Pro” — and the results are impressive. Meta cleverly made use of the IR tracking cameras of its older Quest headsets to let you see through the black-and-white cameras on the front of the VR headset. This enables a mixed reality view, but the quality of video on these older headsets is quite poor.

By comparison, the recent images temporarily posted by Meta show a nicely merged view of your physical environment. The images reveal good sharpness and color with the Quest Pro’s 3D graphics overlaid. It appears as if surfaces can be recognized by the headset so you can place virtual objects, such as a campfire, on top of your real table. This is a bit of a silly example, but opens up the possibility of nicely integrating your virtual and physical worlds.

Meta shows Quest Pro's color passthrough camera.
Meta Spark Player app, screenshot shared by @NathieVR

With the upcoming improvements of the Quest Pro headset, it looks like it might be easy to move around in your physical space without removing the headset. Even more interesting, augmented reality apps, widgets, and games should be much more inviting and useful with a high-quality, color view.

The Meta Connect event is scheduled for 10 a.m. PT tomorrow, October 11, and there’s still more to learn about the Meta Quest Pro, so tune in and watch the event, then come back here for our analysis. We’ll be comparing the Quest Pro to the previous generation to find out what’s new, as well as going over all of the details of the event, which will also include metaverse progress and plans.

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Alan Truly
Alan Truly
Computing Writer
Alan is a Computing Writer living in Nova Scotia, Canada. A tech-enthusiast since his youth, Alan stays current on what is…
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