Apple should watch out: Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Quest 3 is packing some powerful capabilities that could steal some thunder from the upcoming Vision Pro headset.
The Quest 3 launches on Oct. 10 starting at $499. We tried it out at the Meta Connect conference, and after a 30-minute session with the device, the Quest 3 left me impressed with its mixed reality functions. It seems poised to draw comparisons to Apple’s own approach to the technology.
Full disclosure: I haven’t had the chance to use the Vision Pro. But while wearing the Meta Quest 3, I couldn’t help but feel Zuckerberg’s $499 headset represents a far better deal over Apple’s own headset, which launches early next year for a whopping $3,499.
The price alone puts the Vision Pro out of reach for most consumers. The Meta Quest 3, on the other hand, appears to pull off a strong mixed reality experience, while also offering access to a growing library of VR games and apps.
Indeed, the first thing I noticed when I wore the Quest 3 is that I could immediately see my real-world surroundings, despite the headgear around my eyes. That’s because the next-generation Quest is outfitted with an array of cameras and sensors, which can effectively let the wearer see through the headset in high-resolution, full-color quality.
The “full color passthrough” alone represents a substantial upgrade from earlier Quest headsets, which also rendered the user’s real-world surroundings, but only in black-and-white, grainy visuals. With the Quest 3, I didn’t have to take off the hardware every time to gain a clear view. The headset beamed real-world visuals around me in fairly high quality. I could even read some small text on a piece of paper next to me, although I had to squint hard.
The full color passthrough also means the headset can power mixed reality experiences by overlaying virtual objects over your real-world sights. I experienced this first hand while playing a game called First Encounters on the headset. The Quest 3 was able to render the game elements as I stood in an empty room at Facebook’s campus in Menlo Park, California.
While in the mixed reality mode, I saw the real-life office space around me, which was carpeted and furnished with a couch and cabinet. But as the game begin, I watched a cartoon-like rocket drop from the office ceiling and down to my feet. A swarm of creatures reminiscent of the tribbles from Star Trek then proceeded to break through the room, forcing me to fight back with a pair of blaster pistols.
The most tantalizing part of the demo was how the game respected the boundaries of the office space and furniture around me. I saw the tribble-like creatures bounce across the real-life couch and cabinet on my flanks, rather than pass through them. I also noticed that I didn’t suffer any motion sickness during the mixed reality game. In contrast, I sometimes can feel dizzy when fully immersed in a traditional, but enclosed VR experience.
In my short time with the headset, the product also felt easy to wear and light, even though it technically weighs in at 515 grams, or 12 grams more than the Meta Quest 2. In addition, the revamped controllers are easier to hold, thanks to Meta removing the outer tracking rings present on the older controllers.
The other major enhancement is the upgraded display. The headset boasts a 2,064-by-2,208 pixels-per-eye resolution, or a nearly 30% improvement from the 1,832 by 1,920 per eye resolution in the Quest 2. The company further improved the visuals by using “pancake lenses" in the headset, which Meta says can increase image sharpness by 25%.
We noticed the better image quality, especially while playing the sci-fi VR game Red Matter. The game setting and objects appeared far more solid, making the experience feel more real. Although the better displays don’t completely eliminate the pixels you can see across the headset, they’re certainly more faint.
Of course, we’ll need to spend more time with the Quest 3 to fully understand its capabilities. So stay tuned for our review. But it looks like Meta has added some significant improvements to the headset, three years after launching the Quest 2. The resulting product not only promises a better VR experience, but it also unlocks a new era of mixed reality for the Quest line, making it a direct competitor to the Apple Vision Pro.