Meta announced Quest 3, a sequel to the bestselling VR headset of all time, on Wednesday.
The device, starting at $499, is costlier than its predecessor by $200, nevertheless it features a more powerful chip from Qualcomm, higher screens and a capability called “passthrough” which is anticipated to be one in every of the important thing features on Apple’s competing Vision Pro headset.
Preorders open on Wednesday and it ships on Oct. 10.
The defining feature of the Quest 3 headset is the power to quickly see the world outside the headset, which can make the device less isolating and thus more comfortable to make use of for long periods. When in an app on the Quest 3, double-tapping any a part of the headset brings you out of a virtual world and into “passthrough” mode.
Other improvements include “pancake lenses,” a type of optic first used on Meta’s $1,499 Quest Pro that make images sharper and allows for higher resolution.
The discharge of Meta’s latest VR headset comes as a battle looms with Apple in virtual reality. Many within the technology industry imagine Apple’s entrance could expand the whole market and create recent winners, much like how the iPhone jump-started the smartphone market.
To this point Meta, the corporate formerly generally known as Facebook, has a head start. Its Quest 2 is by far the bestselling VR headset, with nearly 10 million units sold last 12 months, barely down from a pandemic peak, in accordance with an industry estimate. Apple’s Vision Pro headset won’t go on sale until next 12 months, and costs significantly greater than Meta’s headsets, starting at $3,499.
But despite Meta’s current success in sales, it isn’t clear just what number of Quest 2 owners apply it to a each day or weekly basis, and the killer app or must-have scenario for VR stays elusive. Meta has invested over $21 billion so far in its Reality Labs division, which develops headsets and VR software.
Passthrough
CNBC was capable of check out the Quest 3 for about an hourlong demo ahead of its launch Wednesday that included game playing and being walked through just a few programs that showed off the corporate’s hardware.
The hardware has been significantly updated, with a recent headband strap and a slimmer headset shape. The headscarf splits the highest strap into two to raised distribute weight. The entire headset, though, is a hair heavier than its predecessor at 515 grams. The speakers on the device even have been improved, and supply a high quality audio experience.
Meta has also updated the 2 mandatory controllers with higher haptic feedback. It uses Qualcomm‘s Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip, which is Arm-based and closer in power and energy drain to a mobile processor than a PC processor.
The additional power on the chip is used to power displays at 2,064 x 2,208 resolution per eye, higher than the Quest 2’s 1,832 x 1,920 resolution per eye. The extra pixels will make it easier to read text contained in the headset. Users can expect about two hours and 12 minutes of battery life, Meta says.
In the course of the demo, I attempted out Samba de Amigo, a $30 game from Sega that’s like Dance Dance Revolution or Rock Band with maracas (in real life, the Quest 3 controllers). I enjoyed it, and even sweated a bit of bit.
The largest improvement to usability is that the Quest 3 emphasizes passthrough, which suggests the cameras outside the device can show live video on the displays contained in the headset, working somewhat like a transparent pair of glasses that also can show computer windows and other graphics. The Quest 3 also can scan the room around you so apps can warn you while you’re about to bump into your surroundings.
Passthrough, while a core component of mixed-reality experiences which integrate computer graphics with the actual world, for now’s a nice-to-have usability feature. In practice, it signifies that users can stop their game or experience contained in the Quest 3 without taking the headset off. In the course of the demo, I used to be capable of chat with Meta officials while wearing the headset, a significant improvement during the last version.
Meta’s launch of the Quest 3 might be in comparison with Apple’s costlier Vision Pro headset. But while Apple packed as much pricey technology into its headset as possible to enable its own passthrough mode it calls “spatial computing,” Meta is in search of to match lots of its features, or no less than an approximation of them, at a fraction of the worth. Meta’s $1,499 Quest Pro is a lower-volume product.
But when there’s one major difference between Meta and Apple at this point, it’s that the previous envisions the Quest mainly as a gaming device, while Apple frames its device as a pc. Meta says it’s lined up 500 games and apps for the headset, including a Ghostbusters title, an Assassin’s Creed game, and a Stranger Things experience developed at the side of Netflix.
