Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The Meta Quest 3 is sharper, more powerful, and still trying to make mixed reality happen”.
This is the metaquest 3.. It’S shipping on October 10th for 499 dollars and meta is calling it the first mainstream headset built for mixed reality. That means that, on top of upgrading its components and slimming down its profile from The Quest 2 meta has added a high quality, color pass-through camera feed. Bringing your view from the headset a little closer to the real world. Here are the straightforward upgrades to the quest 3 specs.
We already knew it would be Slimmer than the Quest 2 thanks to a new pancake lens design that doesn’t take up as much space. It uses a second generation, Qualcomm Snapdragon xr2 chip, which is supposed to give it double the graphics performance of the quest 2.. But it’s supposed to get roughly the same battery life between two and three hours. The base version has a relatively small, 128 gigabyte storage capacity, but you can bump that up to 512 gigabytes for a price you can buy some new accessories too, like face masks in different colors and a charging dock that comes with rechargeable controller batteries, as well as A new version of the more comfortable Elite strap you’ll, also notice that the controllers look a little different.
The quest 2’s controllers had an LED studded ring that curved over your knuckles to help the headset track. It last year’s Quest Pro got rid of this ring and replaced it with cameras that were mounted on the controllers, which streamlined them but made them more power hungry. The quest 3 controllers don’t have a ring or built-in cameras meta promises that AI advances will let them accurately track your hand position without either of those things. In my time with the quest 3, the controllers did seem to work well, but it was a Hands-On demo showing them under the best possible conditions, so we don’t know how they’ll perform at home.
The biggest difference, however, is contained in those three black notches on the front of the headset. The left and right ones contain high resolution, color cameras that can pass their feed through to your display. The center one contains a depth sensor which helps the headset map. Your surroundings, combined, they let the headset blend the virtual and Real Worlds. So you can play a virtual tabletop game on your coffee table or capture aliens rolling around your living room floor. You can tap the headset’s right Temple twice to swap between a full virtual world and a pass-through mixed reality.
One and meta is promising new games and apps that take advantage of. Mr now, you may have heard this promise before the Quest 2 had very limited and low resolution. Black and white pass-through and the quest Pro had color pass through that meta promoted as a huge selling feature.
But the quest 3s mixed reality seems like a significant leap up from the pros. For one thing, the higher resolution display means you’ll, get more detail from the feed for another. The color balance and lighting seems dramatically improved.
I could do things like check my phone while wearing the quest 3, which I generally couldn’t do with the pro again. I saw this headset in a very controlled environment, but I could occasionally almost forget. I was looking through a screen which never happened with meta’s earlier devices.
The depth sensor also gives the headset a better sense of your space. Unlike the Quest 2, the quest 3 can automatically suggest a boundary for your play Space instead of making you physically draw it. Although in my short time with the headset that physical drawings still proved more convenient, this is all cool, but I’m still not sure Matt has given me a reason to want mixed reality.
I got to try a couple of fun experiences, but they were still at the level of physics, demos or simple couch games, nothing as advanced or interesting as the quest’s best full virtual reality Games. There’S a new system called augments that puts persistent virtual widgets like weather or radio in your real space, but I’m not convinced that’s more convenient than pulling out my phone and I’m a bit of a mixed reality. Skeptic in general. I’M also not excited by a lot of the pitches I’ve seen for the Apple Vision, Pro and even bigger bet on the medium, but the quest, 3’s core, Mr technology seems promising enough. Then I’m excited to see what developers do with it after launch. For now, though, the big question seems like how much better the quest 3 is at full immersive VR than the quest 2.. After all, the Quest 2 is sticking around at a much cheaper 299 dollars and the flagship games we’ve seen for the quest 3 like Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR will still work on the quest 2.. Also without more testing, I can’t say how much more comfortable the quest 3 will be after long sessions, even with Slimmer Optics than its predecessors. It’S a big bulky thing to wear on your head. I spent my hour-long demo adjusting it to find a sweet spot where it was Secure, but not too tight.
On the other hand, the quest race, upgraded display and processor are great news if you’re looking for detailed and better looking graphics for Standalone VR, if the Slimmer controllers still track well, getting rid of that ring is a real Improvement and the quest 3’s mixed reality feels Like less of a compromise than ever before, we’re looking forward to getting our hands on the headset for longer to see if meta’s promises hold up .