Status of the Quest 3 Mixed Reality Reality Headset: The Quest 2 Goes Live, and the Vision Pro Gets Closer
The Quest 3 is filled with upgrades and promises about new capabilities. We’ve gotten to try the headset a bit, but we’ll have lots more testing to do before we can say if this is the mainstream mixed reality headset Meta has been promising. Meta is back on the right headset track after the debacle with the Quest Pro.
The announcement fills out the spec sheet in a big way. The Quest 3 is powered by the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor and 8GB of RAM, which Meta says doubles the graphics performance over the Quest 2 and should also be substantially better than even the Quest Pro, which runs the last-gen XR2 chip. The cheapest Quest 3 comes with 128GB of internal storage, and for $649.99, you get 512GB. Meta says the battery life is “about the same as Quest 2,” which means somewhere between 90 minutes and three hours, depending on what you’re doing.
Two new Full-color cameras on the front of the headset deliver greatly improved passthrough video, the most important hardware difference. Qualcomm says the XR2 Gen 2 has an average passthrough time of just 12 milliseconds, comparable to Apple’s Vision Pro, but it does not know if it depends on image resolution of its partners. You can choose to use the Quest 3 in a fully immersive VR mode or in what it calls a “blended” mode that lets you see both your real-world surroundings and whatever game or content you’re looking at.
This isn’t hologram reality yet, but it is in the right direction. To switch between modes, you can use the controller or just tap two of your fingers together twice; this double-tap gesture is also core to the Vision Pro and seems to be the agreed-upon way to operate a headset.
Mixed Reality on the Quest 3: Where are we going? Where do we go from here? What do we expect to see in the near future?
The headset is almost half the weight of the previous model, 515 grams. Meta says it has been designed to be more comfortable, but we will have to wait and see.
The Touch Plus controllers of the Quest 3 do away with the large tracking ring and instead use IR sensors that track your position. They have improvements to the feel of the games, so you should get more sense of sound as you play, and the Quest 3 supports hand tracking, so you can ditch the controllers altogether if you want.
The device is a little different from the previous one. The original foam face mask that the Quest 2 was originally shipped with was annoying to clean, but I used the soft rubber one that is wipeable when you sweat through a Beat Saber session. The default head fixture has been updated to accommodate hair buns and ponytails with a Y-shaped top strap, and you can still buy a version of the Elite Strap with or without a supplemental battery. It is not interchangeable with the Quest 2 version. The mask and strap you get in “Blood Orange”, or “Elemental Blue”, can also be seen in the default black face mask and white cloth strap. The Elite Strap will probably add some heft but it is still very light compared to the 722- gram Quest Pro.
More mixed reality experiences are coming, including one based on Ghostbusters and some more complex-looking tabletop experiences. Meta wants to let you watch streaming TV on a virtual screen, and it also wants you to place persistent virtual objects around your real living space, including a bobblehead of your Supernatural trainer. Combine that with the Quest Pro’s existing work-oriented MR apps, and Meta’s overall MR pitch seems similar to that of the Apple Vision Pro: a really big virtual screen that can substitute for your TV and monitor. I find myself left cold by this pitch, at least for the current generation of headsets — but I’ve heard enough people express interest in it that I’m willing to concede there could be a market.
I found little of that promise in the Quest 3’s mixed reality demos. We sat at a coffee table and called up a virtual floating arena where we waved tiny robots around to punch each other. The passthrough video made it feel like we were playing a board game instead of going into a totally different world. That’s neat — but the experience wasn’t something I’d do for more than a few minutes.
The other MR apps were a bit frustrating. A Stranger Things game used the hand-tracking feature that all current Quest headsets support, letting me open portals and move bat creatures with hand gestures. But the game’s use of these gestures felt awkward and unreliable, and the experience was short and on-rails. I played a decent minigame that involved blasting cute fuzzy aliens to capture them but it wasn’t much different than the demo I tried in 2015.
I haven’t tried the quests 3 long enough to make a judgement, but I am not confident that it is a viable substitute for your other screens. I spent my demo time trying to find a comfortable fit, because no matter how well designed they are, current-gen devices are unavoidably bulky. I don’t want to wear the Elite Strap all day for work or watch tv during dinner, but it might help with that.