Meta has announced that an upcoming Quest 2 update will unlock additional performance that developers can tap into to make their games look better. Some apps will benefit from the increased performance automatically.

Meta announced this week that the latest updates to Quest 2 will allow the headset to boost the GPU processing power available to developers from 490Mhz to 525MHz (a 7% increase). That might not sound like much, but with developers limited to the power of a mobile processor, every bit of additional performance counts.

Meta says “no integration or coding is needed to start reaping the benefits of this improvement,” as the headset’s dynamic clocking system will automatically boost the GPU speed if it detects that an app needs it. For apps with occasional stuttering, this little boost could smooth things out.

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For apps using the headset’s dynamic foveation capability (which blurs the area in the peripheral view to improve performance), Meta says the headset will boost the processor to the new 525MHz speed to maintain visual quality before blurring the peripheral area. That means apps which previously relied on cranking up the blur during demanding scenes should look better in those cases than if they didn’t have access to the extra power.

Meta says the Quest 2 performance increase is technically available as of v47, but requires a bit of a workaround to enable it each time. As of the Quest 2 v49 update the performance boost will be unlocked without any caveats.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Octogod

    Would love to see what the v47 popup looks like. Anyone see this in the wild?

  • Foreign Devil

    Didn’t Carmack say the inefficient use of the GPU was something like 50% ? I guess they are trying to improve that somewhat. I know it’s mostly choked to prevent overheating/battery drain.

    • Eric Wescott

      That was the CPU. The CPU is significantly more underlocked than the GPU on Quest 2.

    • Jistuce

      In context, that was a clear metaphor for Metabook’s business efficiency. He wasn’t saying the Quest 2 hardware was woefully underutilized, but that the business MAKING the Quest 2 was plagued with inefficiencies that bottleneck technical progress.

      And he explicitly states that the Quest 2 should’ve come out two years sooner than it actually did(making it just the Quest, I guess).

  • Till Eulenspiegel

    Meta has also increased the headphone volume output as well – they decreased it a few months ago, now it’s back to normal.

    • Martin

      Oh this is good news! I’ve been cranking on my volume button a lot more and now I know why. I’ll have to give it a go after the update when I get home today. Thanks!

  • Martin

    And I haven’t heard anything recently regarding the super resolution mode on Q2. I was able to get it working once about a year ago before they stopped users from doing it. I’m wondering if anyone knows if it’s been able to be done again in another way?

    When I got it to work, it was shockingly better. Would love to use it for less intensive apps like watching movies.

  • Rupert Jung

    With they would use that to boost RE4 and Red Matter 2 to 90 Hz.

    • namekuseijin

      total waste. They’re already smooth and crisp enough. I want to know games on Quest 2 years from now using this, AppSW and perhaps something like AER2.0. should be able to run Skyrim VR…