Oculus Quest 2 looks likely to be updated with a 120Hz refresh rate, according to comments made by the Vice President of Facebook Reality Labs.
During a Q&A session on Instagram, Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth responded with a literal ‘thumbs up’ to a question about whether Quest 2 would see an update to 120Hz, and touched on a number of other topics relating to VR.
The faster the refresh rate in a VR headset, the smoother the virtual world it creates, and so 120Hz marks a dramatic improvement on the 72Hz refresh rate the Quest 2 originally launched with (before being updated with support for 90Hz in November 2020).
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Technically-speaking, the Quest 2 is already capable of achieving (or ‘upscaling’ to) a 120Hz refresh rate, but the applications themselves are required to run at 120 FPS – which is a tall order for a mobile chipset. Issues of performance and battery life also occur when running the headset at 120Hz.
Now, though, it seems developers may be able to develop software for a device which runs at 120Hz natively – we suspect Facebook would make it optional for developers to choose between 72Hz, 90Hz, and 120Hz depending on the requirements of their application – meaning players can expect, in the near future, improved gaming performance on the Quest 2.
As with 90Hz support, the company would likely roll out 120Hz support on the Quest 2 through a software update, though there’s no word yet on a release date.
Looking to the future
The suggestion that the Quest 2 will be upped to a 120Hz refresh rate is good news for fans looking towards the Oculus Quest 3.
We had assumed that the 90Hz refresh rate upgrade the Quest 2 received in November 2020 would be its last, and we wouldn’t have expected to see a major increase (if any at all) in a new device given that most VR titles still don’t yet support that higher refresh rate.
With the Quest 2 set to receive native 120Hz support, though, it’s safe to assume that a Quest 3 would launch with that capability.
In any case, while the Quest 3 is still a long way off (2022, we reckon), expect to see dramatically improved gaming performance on the Quest 2 in the near future – which can only further help push VR gaming into the mainstream.
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Via RoadToVR
