In April last year, Meta shared some exciting news that it was getting ready to launch Horizon OS, its exclusive operating system for the Quest, on third-party headsets for the first time ever. Promised to come from big names like ASUS, Lenovo, and Xbox, the specifics about these headsets have been largely under wraps until recently. Now, if whispers from the reliable source ‘Luna’ are to be believed, it looks like Asus might be taking the lead.
Luna, known for leaking details about upcoming VR gear and software, has been something of an oracle in the past. This is the same person who got ahead of the official announcement of the Quest 3S and predicted the addition of the Action Button on the headset. They’ve also wowed the community by uncovering a room-scanning setup video for the Quest 3 and disclosed some Quest software features before they saw the light of day—like when Meta was experimenting with keeping apps pinned to the Universal Menu dock.
Teaming up with an unnamed source this time, Luna suggests that the Asus Republic of Gamers headset is on track to be among the pioneering third-party Horizon OS head-mounted displays to actually hit the market.
Going by a possible codename ‘Tarius’, this new headset from Asus is rumored to include both eye-tracking and face-tracking capabilities, which would put it on par with the cutting-edge features of the Quest Pro. It’s speculated to come with state-of-the-art displays, either quantum dot LCD with local dimming or micro-OLED, which hints at some serious visual performance.
If Asus indeed delivers on these impressive specs, it would mean much more than just another Quest 3S lookalike with jazzy RGB lighting. It would represent a significant leap from Quest’s more mainstream consumer lineup, such as the $500 Quest 3 (with 512GB of storage) and the more economical $300 Quest 3S (with 128GB).
Of course, as with any early report, it’s wise to take everything with a pinch of salt. However, it’s quite evident that Meta is gearing up to make a strategic move, likely in response to Google’s Android XR, which is gearing up to hit the scene on Samsung’s forthcoming XR headset, known as Project Moohan, set for a consumer release sometime this year.
