Meta Quest 3

Meta Quest 3
The Meta Quest 3 is a virtual reality (VR) headset developed by Reality Labs, a division of Meta Platforms. It was unveiled on June 1, 2023, and released on October 10. It was officially announced during the Meta Connect 2023 event held on a Wednesday in September 2023, alongside other products such as the first-generation Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and new AI features including a personal AI assistant, Meta AI.
Specifications
Hardware
The Quest 3's design is an evolution of that of the Quest 2, with a "40% slimmer optic profile" and thus physical device depth (made possible by the switch to the same dramatically thinner, visually clearer, and fully custom designed two element "pancake lenses" already found on the Meta Quest Pro), and the face of the headset being adorned with three "pills" containing sensors and cameras.
The left and right pills each contain a black & white infrared camera used for 6DOF "inside-out" tracking (in addition to the other two placed one each on both sides of the headset's bottom edge; with all four working together to track both the headset and controllers), along with a color camera used for stereoscopic 3D mixed reality passthrough. While the middle pill on the other hand contains a brand new for Quest, depth sensor. Using these new natively color stereo 3D passthrough cameras and depth sensor, the Quest 3 will feature a vastly improved mixed reality system known as "Meta Reality".
It will use the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, a system-on-chip manufactured by Qualcomm and based on their Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 flagship mobile phone SoC, which Meta has touted as having more than twice the raw graphics (GPU) performance of the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 used by the Quest 2 and other similar standalone headsets. The Quest 3 will also have a roughly +30% higher display pixel count than both the Quest 2 and Quest Pro, with an expected 2064x2208 resolution per eye.
The Quest 3 ships with the updated "Touch Plus" controllers, which are similar in design to the Touch Pro controllers used by Quest Pro and feature improved haptic feedback without a tracking ring. The controllers won't have "completely dead-zone free" self-tracking capabilities given the lack of internal cameras and SoC's required for this functionality, although the headset will be backward compatible with the Touch Pro controllers in order to enable the use of this feature.
Software
The Quest 3 is backward compatible with all Quest 2 software. During a private presentation to employees, Meta virtual reality vice president Mark Rabkin stated that there were plans for 41 new Quest apps and games to be released at launch; during a digital presentation on June 1, 2023, Meta showcased Quest titles scheduled for the late-2023 launch window such as Assassin's Creed: Nexus VR, Asgard's Wrath 2, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, I Expect You to Die 3, Onward, PowerWash Simulator, Samba de Amigo, Stranger Things VR, and Vampire: The Masquerade — Justice among others.
Release
According to a roadmap obtained by The Verge in February 2023, Meta planned for the Quest 3, internally codenamed "Stinson", to be released later that year. The Verges roadmap corroborates with files, including schematics, of the Quest 3 shared in September 2022 by virtual reality analyst Brad Lynch.
Ahead of an official announcement, Bloomberg writer Mark Gurman published a newsletter on May 28, 2023, reporting from a private event where he had received a hands-on demo of a Quest 3 prototype—codenamed "Eureka". Ahead of a VR gaming digital presentation later that day, Meta officially revealed the Quest 3 on June 1, 2023 via a video on Mark Zuckerberg's Instagram account. The teaser announced that the Quest 3 would be released in late 2023, and be priced at US$499.99 for a 128 GB model (with larger storage options to be announced in the future). Several publications noted the timing of the announcement, as it came four days prior to Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC)—where the company was expected to (and ultimately did) announce an augmented reality headset.
The Meta Quest 3 was made available for pre-order on Sep 28, 2023 with orders shipping the following month. It is priced at US$499 for the 128GB version and US$649 for the 512GB version.
Reception
Pre-release
In a hands-on report published prior to the official unveiling, Bloomberg writer Mark Gurman found that the new AR passthrough mode was significantly better than any previous Meta products (including Quest Pro), with it being good enough to clearly read and use one's phone through; but that due to the new "ringless" controller design it also tracked the controllers in his hands less accurately. Meta explained that it will improve the controller tracking accuracy over time before launch with a variety of already discovered but then not yet implemented tracking technologies and software updates.
The Meta Quest 3 has received favorable reviews from various tech outlets. IGN described it as "the best standalone, consumer-oriented VR headset you can get right now"​​. PCMag echoed this sentiment, awarding it their Editors’ Choice award and commending its value despite a higher price point compared to the Quest 2. Polygon noted the technical and ergonomic upgrades making it a faster, thinner headset than the Quest 2, but mentioned a need for more game titles to take full advantage of the hardware​.
Images
References
External links
Meta Quest
Virtual reality headsets
Wearable devices
Ninth-generation video game consoles
Augmented_reality
Virtual_reality
Virtual world communities
Metaverse