11 ms·

Meta Quest 3

253 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

gigatexal 3y ago
if you decline cookies the page doesn't load. meta can get <insert four letter explicative here>ed.
d--b 3y ago
The only information I need: horizontal angle:110, vertical angle 90. Garbage. I don’t know how anyone finds these experience immersive.
- drcongo 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - huytersd 3y ago
    [dead]
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  What are the stats on the predecessor (which is Quest 2, right?) https://www.google.com/search?q=quest+2+horizontal+angle https://www.google.com/search?q=quest+2+horizontal+angle
  - dweekly 3y ago
    https://www.meta.com/quest/compare/ https://www.meta.com/quest/compare/ Quest 2 was 90h/90v, Quest 3 is 110h/96v
- huytersd 3y ago
  [dead]
- ZiiS 3y ago
  I can have an immersive experience using a monochrome book ~10 degrees FoV.
- WXLCKNO 3y ago
  It's only immersive if the content is good but I get what you mean. In 2014 when I was using my Note 4 + Gear VR, I really thought in 5 years (2019) things would be incredibly advanced in VR. Here we are in 2023 and obviously these headsets are way better than we had before, but nothing truly mind-blowing. Foveated rendering + high immersive POV + high resolution. I don't need the mobile processor to be twice as powerful, the difference in rendering is still crap compared to a full PC. I understand there are some actual limits of physics in play here when it comes to FOV but I'm excited for it becomes a solved problem.
  - zitterbewegung 3y ago
    We probably aren't there because of consumer demand. None of the headsets have really gotten enough sales to justify the research in those things to make them better. If they were selling like smartphones we would have a much different set of features.
- gibolt 3y ago
  The screens are much closer to the eyes. Perceived angles may be higher than actual.
- tetris11 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virtual_reality_headsets#Standalone_VR_(mobile_device_mounts_and_all-in-ones) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virtual_reality_headse... If you sort by release date, the Vive XR (2023) beats it on FOV+Rez+Hz, and weights 3x as less. If you sort by FOV, the HTC Vive (2016) easily wins on FOV+Rez+Hz
  - jsnell 3y ago
    What's "it"? Quest 3 isn't on that list. But comparing the Vive XR to the specs in the announcement, the Quest 3 has a higher resolution, same FOV, same refresh rate (experimental sorry for higher refresh rate) at half the price but double the weight.
  - ggreer 3y ago
    That's not true. The original HTC Vive has the same refresh rate (90Hz) and field of view (110° horizontal), but the Quest 3's resolution is 2064x2208 per eye while the Vive's is 1080x1200. The Vive XR Elite has the same refresh rate (90Hz) and field of view (110° horizontal), but a lower resolution of 1920x1920 per eye. It also costs twice as much as the Quest 3. The Vive XR Elite's lower claimed weight of 270 grams is without the battery. With battery it weighs 625g, which is heavier than the Quest 1 (571g), Quest 2 (503g), or Quest 3 (515g).
- mavamaarten 3y ago
  Indeed. HL Alyx through the Quest 2 is the only thing that kinda got me immersed because the environment looks so good. But it takes a while because it's really like looking through a small window. I don't need/want all the mixed reality and metaverse BS. I just want a good FoV and resolution. They really invest in the wrong areas, imo.
marcusestes 3y ago
Terrible marketing website. I tried and failed to find improvements over Quest 2.
- addaon 3y ago
  > Terrible marketing website. I tried and failed to find improvements over Quest 2. "2 RGB cameras with 18 PPD, for 10X the resolution of Quest 2 and 2X the resolution of Quest Pro in passthrough. Delivers full-color, high-fidelity views of your surroundings while you see virtual objects appear in your physical space. Accurate depth projection and room mapping gives you freedom to move throughout your space and interact with virtual characters or objects in the room around you." "2064x2208 pixels per eye enhances resolution by nearly 30% compared to Meta Quest 2 for next-level clarity and lifelike graphics. 4K+ Infinite Display with 25PPD and 1218 PPI brings the best resolution across the entire Quest line of devices."
- LarsDu88 3y ago
  Apple always puts a (questionable) bar graph on their product release pages. Meta though...
- MikusR 3y ago
  "Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, delivering double the GPU processing power for faster load times and more seamless gameplay compared to Meta Quest 2" "2 RGB cameras with 18 PPD, for 10X the resolution of Quest 2 and 2X the resolution of Quest Pro in passthrough." "Integrated stereo speakers with 3D spatial audio places you in your space with 40% louder audio range, bass range and optimal L/R matching capabilities. " "8GB. 33% memory compared with Meta Quest 2" "Pancake optics create a 40% slimmer optic profile* for more comfortable wear. As compared to Quest 2 excluding the facial interface. " "2064x2208 pixels per eye enhances resolution by nearly 30% compared to Meta Quest 2" "Pancake lens provides a slimmer optic profile without compromising the depth of your visual immersion. Increased sharpness by 25% in center FOV (~70% sharper in periphery), with significantly less stray or scattered light artifacts. "
- hu3 3y ago
  See Tech Specs. It's full of comparisons. - Display Resolution: 2064x2208 pixels per eye enhances resolution by nearly 30% compared to Meta Quest 2 for next-level clarity and lifelike graphics. 4K+ Infinite Display with 25PPD and 1218 PPI brings the best resolution across the entire Quest line of devices. - Power: Advanced hardware stack and the first headset with the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, delivering double the GPU processing power for faster load times and more seamless gameplay compared to Meta Quest 2. This brings enough power to support heavy applications like fast-action gaming, seamless full-color, high-resolution passthrough, and so much more. - Mixed Reality: 2 RGB cameras with 18 PPD, for 10X the resolution of Quest 2 and 2X the resolution of Quest Pro in passthrough. Delivers full-color, high-fidelity views of your surroundings while you see virtual objects appear in your physical space. Accurate depth projection and room mapping gives you freedom to move throughout your space and interact with virtual characters or objects in the room around you. - Audio: Integrated stereo speakers with 3D spatial audio places you in your space with 40% louder audio range, bass range and optimal L/R matching capabilities. - DRAM: 8GB. 33% memory compared with Meta Quest 2, giving you more support to play your favorite apps with optimal performance. - Headset Weight: 515 grams. Pancake optics create a 40% slimmer optic profile* for more comfortable wear. - Optics: Pancake lens provides a slimmer optic profile* without compromising the depth of your visual immersion. Increased sharpness by 25% in center FOV (~70% sharper in periphery), with significantly less stray or scattered light artifacts.
tiagod 3y ago
Is it just me getting a loop on the cookie banner? No matter what I press, it refreshes and shows me the banner again. (Firefox Android)
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  keep doing it and clicking on buttons, eventually I got in but it was maybe 6th attempt (firefox + ublock origin)
  - capableweb 3y ago
    Just enable the annoyance lists in uBlock Origin and stop rejecting/accepting cookies like a modern person :)
    - kreeben 3y ago
      I've had UBO for years without enabled annoyance lists (great naming BTW) and WOW, just WOW, after enabling them the internet seems like a completely different place. Thx!
      - capableweb 3y ago
        Personally I discovered them a week ago myself, so I'm happy to spread this new experience to others :)
    - exhilaration 3y ago
      Thank you! For Firefox mobile users: 3 dot menu > add-ons > uBlock Origin > Open the Dashboard > Filter Lists > Annoyances There's two cookie notices options in there.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Broken on Firefox for me
  - addaon 3y ago
wakaru44 3y ago
can't even see the site, I keep fighting with cookie pop ups
huytersd 3y ago
[dead]
TobyTheDog123 3y ago
After I lost all of my purchases after deleting my Facebook account (not that I used my old Quest anyways), I decided I would never purchase another Meta product (even though that's probably the LEAST abusive thing they do).
capableweb 3y ago
> Gaming: 2.4 hours of usage on average > Social: 2.2 hours of usage on average > Productivity: 1.5 hours minutes [sic] of usage on average How is this accurate? What kind of "Productivity" tasks are people doing inside a Quest if it uses more power/battery than gaming? Also, "Social" drawing more power than "Gaming" too? Something seems weird.
- paxys 3y ago
  Going by how my Macbook's battery life evaporates with 10 Chrome tabs + Slack + Zoom, I believe it. Gaming is definitely less load than multiple windows of modern work apps.
  - capableweb 3y ago
    Compared to playing a game which would definitely use both GPU and CPU, instead of mostly just CPU?
    - paxys 3y ago
      Almost every such app uses GPU as well.
      - capableweb 3y ago
        True, but nowhere near the level that a game would. As an example, it'll be hard to find a productivity/office application that is bottlenecked by the GPU, while for games, it's relatively easy to find.
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      The modern web is pretty taxing on a GPU... Plenty of webpages have 100+ layers to composite together...
      - capableweb 3y ago
        Sure, but those only get rendered when stuff is actually changing on the screen, otherwise it stands still, compared to games which would (usually at least) continue to render N FPS no matter if the screen is identical or not compared to previous frame.
cuu508 3y ago
I'm clueless -- how do these things work? Are they standalone, or do you also need a gaming PC? Do you need internet connection, or is there stuff that works offline? Do you need Facebook account? Are they hackable, e.g., are there custom firmware options?
- mesmertech 3y ago
  Standalone, but you can connect to PC if you want to play graphically intensive games. Quest 2 basically, you login with FB account so you need internet connection at first. Pretty "unhackable" afaik, you can install custom mods for games but thats pretty much it in terms of modifications I've seen.
  - MikusR 3y ago
    You don't need Facebook account.
    - jncfhnb 3y ago
      You need a Meta account
      - eatsyourtacos 3y ago
        Which is not a facebook account..
        jncfhnb 3y ago
        Not yet!
- ghosty141 3y ago
  Both standalone as well as connecting to pc works. I believe they work offline but I dont know for sure. Not hackable, what is often possible is using custom client software that handles the vr stuff on the pc.
- 3y ago
pornel 3y ago
Early review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpUIndlsV78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpUIndlsV78 Seems positive overall. Pancake lenses like in Quest Pro. Chipset fast enough to get dynamic shadows in games.
AmericanOP 3y ago
Hey Mark, Send an email to NVIDIA's GeForce Now bizdev guy. Develop a cheap-o streaming device and put all the juice in the display. Congratulations, I just made you billions of dollars. Donate my cut to PETA.
- babypuncher 3y ago
  streaming + vr seems like a recipe for disaster. even if you don't mind a few extra frames of latency when playing games on your TV, you absolutely will when head tracking is involved. streaming + mouse & keyboard for shooters still feels like shit, even when I tried it on google stadia over google fiber. honestly i kind of hope this game streaming fad never really takes off, because so far it just seems to make games worse. i'm convinced publishers want it as a means to further erode user ownership of the software they buy. "oh, sorry, the single player game you bought four years ago on a streaming platform is no longer available due to rights issues. would you like to buy the sequel for $70?"
  - AmericanOP 3y ago
    Playing ultra-settings Starfield on an old retina MacBook air is mindblowing. GeForce Now, imo, is quietly the killer app of 2023. > game streaming fad never really takes off I am in the opposite camp. I want game developers to be freed from local hardware constraints, and indy developers to have access to the same graphical fidelities as AAA. Real, meaningful innovation in gaming is a possibility.
    - babypuncher 3y ago
      > and indy developers to have access to the same graphical fidelities as AAA The bottleneck here isn't performance, it's the cost of producing high quality assets on a AAA scale. Streaming won't solve this. As for "local hardware constraints", I've yet to see any streaming games that were not possible on local hardware. Personally, I'd rather upgrade my GPU or video game console every 5 years than lose all the very tangible benefits that come with running games on my own hardware (ownership, mods, preservation, etc.) I will say that I think services like GeForce Now are the best use case for the technology. Since it is essentially a rentable high end gaming PC in the cloud, the user brings their own games. If GeForce now shuts down, you still have the option of downloading all the games you bought for on it to a PC. Nvidia is smart to position this as an additive experience, rather than a replacement like Stadia was.
galkk 3y ago
I'm not VR pro, but the resolution sertainly feels lacking. There were articles where people were writing how they are programming for many hours in their quest2. I cannot understand how this is possible with this bad text
- SKWR-PLS 3y ago
  Its okay if you have not used a high res screen recently. Its like using a shitty college classroom projector to program. I have a cheap 4k monitor so it kind of ruined vr for me for the moment. I will not get an 8k monitor until I have the screen in a headset first.
  - galkk 3y ago
    And this is weird to me. As a software engineer, who works with text all the time, I was buying IPS panels with as high resolution as I was able to justify for my entire career. I don't see myself coding it quest, it is just too blurry. Although this could be me and my personal preferences, as I also cannot program on something like macbook air 13", and there are people who can easily do it. I used dual 2k 27" more than 10 years ago, now the main screen that I look at is 4k 32" and there are 2 2k 27" side by side. If linux didn't suck with mixed dpis and there were 240Hz IPS 27" (I use one of them for gaming), I'd already start considering 4k 27". --- Having said all of that, I certainly believe that there will be time when the FOV and resolution will be enough to replace monitors. Like now, I have 3 monitors because I don't want to dance with workspaces etc. I still can focus only on one at one time. Intelligent zoom and activation of windows/workspaces, improved to one that Apple shown in visionpro presentation, will be killer feature, as I objectively will be able to have multiple 4k screens without any table space used by monitors.
- cpuguy83 3y ago
  2nd'd But also I can't handle the poor resolution of most ultra-wide monitors either.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  Going off the guesstimated PPDs and so on, I feel like the Apple Vision Pro is really going to be about the bare minimum to actually feel comfortable working on code stuff in VR/AR.
dougmwne 3y ago
This seems like on paper it is quite close to the Apple Vision Pro. The performance per watt of the chips is probably not far off and both devices deal with the same basic design constraints of needing to fit comfortably on your head. The main difference seems to be the micro OLED and eye tracking on the Vision Pro vs. the Quest’s inclusion of controllers. I’ll be curious how these two devices stack up to each other and exactly how different the user experiences end up being. The MR experience seems like it may be close. The VR gaming experience seems more emphasized on the Quest, but hand tracking has come a long way so I wouldn’t rule out the Vision Pro here either. Overall I’m doubtful either device will hit mass market appeal.
- computing 3y ago
  I'm sorry, but what about the Quest 3 on paper seems to you to be close to the Vision Pro?
  - dougmwne 3y ago
    Device with focus on mixed reality and productivity sporting the latest in mobile chips and hand tracking. It also does VR but MR is the new feature being brought to the table.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    Vision pro is all about mixed reality. So is the quest 3. As far as I can tell most of the difference between 2 and 3 is the vastly improved mixed reality. Basically this device is positioning itself to be the consumer version of the vision pro.
- TobyTheDog123 3y ago
  >The main difference seems to be the micro OLED and eye tracking on the Vision Pro vs. the Quest’s inclusion of controllers. Both of which are complete dealbreakers. AR/VR/Spatial is defined completely by immersion and lack-of-nausea, where less resolution and the inclusion of controllers demolish. You're right, both probably won't reach mass-market appeal, but the two certainly aren't comparable in any metric other than reach.
sgarman 3y ago
I'm a bit out of the game on VR these days but I noticed there is no eye tracking which probably means no foveated rendering? I thought that was the new hottness these days.
- dougmwne 3y ago
  The Quest Pro had eye tracking, but it was likely excluded for cost reason here. The performance increase from Foveated Rendering was minor on the Quest Pro because of the overhead needed to do high accuracy, low latency eye tracking. Eye tracking will probably make it to the Quest 4, especially if Apple proves it out as a control input. Big If there IMHO.
SubiculumCode 3y ago
sorry quest 2, you wont be supported for long now -
tootie 3y ago
Will this have what it takes to compete the Apple thing whose name I forgot?
post_break 3y ago
Wish there was a trade in option from the Quest 2.
- jxi 3y ago
  I'm glad I sold all my Quest 2 headsets (family) earlier this year. These things go obsolete faster than phones.
IvyMike 3y ago
I wonder what the future holds for these devices now that Meta has drastically decreased their Metaverse spending.
fidotron 3y ago
Notable shift in emphasis to mixed reality. I wish they had HDR support called out for the passthrough though. The Quest 2 CPU was too weak, and while this one will be better the Apple chips are still way out in front there. The proportion of people in tech I know with a Quest 2 they never use is amazing. We all want VR to work but fundamentally headsets are a bad idea.
- CobrastanJorji 3y ago
  Could you explain about HDR passthrough? I'm thinking "see real life sunsets in glorious HDR color," which is probably not what you mean.
  - make3 3y ago
    hdr for the added content no?
  - fidotron 3y ago
    It's that rooms, especially sunny ones, contain incredible amounts of variation in intensity, and that failing to capture/display that is at least as big a problem as not enough pixels per inch. It also helps dramatically if the captured HDR surroundings can be fed on to an envmap for use in the 3D rendering phase.
    - CobrastanJorji 3y ago
      Oh, that makes sense. Real life has a big dynamic range, so if you're trying to augment that, it won't look right unless it also can cover a big dynamic range.
- phowat 3y ago
  I daily drove my quest 2 using immersed VR for a few months. In the end, the resolution was just not good enough for it to be better than my 3 monitor setup. But I'm looking forward to trying again in a couple of generations.
  - 3y ago
synergy20 3y ago
I have a Quest2 that only used for about 1 hour, is there any resale value or trade-in somewhere? it's collecting dust these two years, supposed to be a Christmas gift, did not work out at all.
- accrual 3y ago
  eBay filtering by sold listings?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Looks like they're currently mostly fetching $150-200 used: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=quest+2&_sacat=0&LH_ItemCondition=3000&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=quest+2&_sacat=0&LH_Ite... I'm actually surprised -- I thought it would plummet once the 3 came out. Maybe it still will over the next few weeks if people with 2's upgrade to 3's and the marketplace gets flooded with 2's.
- umeshunni 3y ago
  Mine was sold within a few hours of listing it on FB Marketplace.
  - synergy20 3y ago
    Thanks! will try it there.
bitwize 3y ago
A.k.a. the budget version of Apple Vision Pro. Just $649.99 plus all your personal data! Strap it on your eyeballs and feed the machine, the algorithm hungers!
- smoldesu 3y ago
  The Vision Pro wishes it could sell as many units as the Quest did. If the lifetime units sold exceeds the Quest 2's first quarter of shipments, it will be a small miracle. > Just $649.99 plus all your personal data! Strap it on your eyeballs and feed the machine, the algorithm hungers! My favorite part of Hacker News is how people rattle their adtech surveillance pans, but always hide away whenever someone mentions the NSA or PRISM. You guys remember last week when Canada used FIVE-EYES to grab telecom data off an unsuspecting, international citizen using commodity hardware? Coming soon: the same duopoly of shit, but now on VR. As they say, don't throw stones from glass headsets.
CobrastanJorji 3y ago
Any word on what "tactile feedback" or "experiences you can feel" for the controllers means here? Did they just add vibration and punch it up with marketing bullshit, or is something fancier being described?
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  The quest controllers have always had some vibration, which is key to many experiences (and why I'm not taking Apple's offering seriously). Maybe they upped what the controllers can express?
- callalex 3y ago
  That is usually marketing speak for multiple linear oscillating motors that are accurate enough to accept WAV files as input.
Waterluvian 3y ago
Counter-intuitively, I think I'd be able to manage a headset better if it wasn't this box strapped to the front of my face, but rather an evenly balanced hockey helmet with a flip-up mask. I can do hours wearing a hockey helmet, but these things are uncomfortable after a little while, and I think it's because it's just a more balanced thing that my neck muscles aren't constantly counteracting. Not to suggest that that's the only thing that makes these a non-start for me, but I feel like that's one of the core issues.
- Arelius 3y ago
  That’s what the PlayStation VR does, and can confirm, it is better.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I always hear good things about PlayStation VR. It seems a real shame that the only company in VR with any experience making wearable devices is using a proprietary platform. At this point the optics seem… I dunno, pretty well worked out? So, I’d rather have Sennheiser VR than Facebook. Sennheiser knows how to balance a heavy thing on my head for hours.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  Seriously, I'd rather have more weight than a face-forward center of gravity. If you're going to cram a laptop in there, put the non-optics behind my head.
- phkahler 3y ago
  There were add-on batteries for the Quest 2 that would attach to the back of the headset, thereby improving the balance which adding battery life. I never tried one.
  - circuit10 3y ago
    I’d rather they’d just move the built in battery
  - 3y ago
jrm4 3y ago
Got a 2 on accident, an aunt was dazzled by ideas of exercising and meditating and was wildly underwhelmed by the actual experience, and gifted it to my family. Kind of fun to have around very occasionally, but I'm still seeing nothing to indicate anything more than "overpriced, non-essential toy." Would never pay good money for one. (and this is from a household where the Steam Deck is absolutely an essential toy.)* *edit, come to think of it -- said aunt has logged more hours on my Steam Deck even though we don't live together, thanks to the Jackbox series. I feel like there's a lot of good anecdata here :)
- circuit10 3y ago
  The novelty wears off after a bit and then it’s mostly just a less convenient version of a game console (the limited software really hurts any other use)
  - jrm4 3y ago
    Good point -- I do wonder if it's inherent or if we really are missing some "much better software?" A thing that makes me think the latter might be the is how there's no real Google Earth for the Quest, which strikes me as madness? (also, Aircar and having to jump through hoops to find Tiltbrush/Openbrush?)
    - circuit10 3y ago
      The PC Oculus software was much better so there’s definitely more they can do; the Quest software is full of artificial limitations, like having window placement and sizing be unnecessarily limited. They’re also somewhat hostile to sideloading (not blocking it but making it more difficult than it needs to be) which probably hurts niche use cases
      - jrm4 3y ago
        Yup, I do the sideloading. It's kind of interesting how garbage most the sideloaded apps are? I'm not expecting amazing, but, like even your average popular Roblox game has more polish.
MBCook 3y ago
So what’s the killer app? Beatsaber and some other games can be a lot of fun, but they’re not new. What new experience are ready for this? I get the quality is better, and that’s not nothing. But other than that this largely seems like more of the same. VR still doesn’t seem to have advanced much in software to me. And Meta keeps pushing virtual meetings and such but that’s not my cup of tea. I owned a Quest 2 and had some fun with it. I’ve owned previous headsets too. But I just don’t see anything that would makes me say “ooh I need that”. This feels very “PC” to me. By which I mean they’re selling it because they can sell new hardware. The Pentium 9 is out! Which is fine. But when Sony/Nintendo/MS want to sell a new console they put new and fancier games. They give you a specific reason to upgrade besides better specs. So you can play Horizon 12: We’re On The Moon Now. Or Bob’s Crazy Adventure. Whatever. All this time and it still seems like the market is 95% games, and those aren’t advancing much beyond visuals. So I don’t feel like I’m really missing anything.
- itsyaboi 3y ago
  XBox cloud gaming is pretty big. Roblox is huge with kids as well.
  - pzmarzly 3y ago
    +1. I don't have a TV, so if I could just stream my macOS desktop and Xbox Cloud Gaming (which I already use) to a virtual 50+' screen that follows me as I walk around, that will be enough for me to buy in.
    - rabf 3y ago
      https://www.immersed.com/ https://www.immersed.com/
  - MBCook 3y ago
    That seems to reinforce my point to me. Both of those are available on other platforms. They don’t need the Quest 3. Why not just buy an Xbox? What makes me need a Quest 3?
brynbryn 3y ago
The best VR experience I've ever had was with the original PSVR, sat on a chair surrounded by cables with my wife and son playing with me. I bought Oculus Rift and then the Quest 2 and they were both used for 40 mins max and collect dust. For me, it is an incredibly isolating experience unless, like PS did, other people are playing with you in the room and you are taking turns.
no_time 3y ago
I really REALLY wish this thing could be jailbroken. The only thing holding me back from buying one is that I'm not paying $500 + our lovely 27% VAT to strap a surveillance device to my face.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
epolanski 3y ago
The website isn't GDPR compliant, can't read it without accessing the cookies.
c7DJTLrn 3y ago
Still no varifocal, foveated rendering, or significant FOV bump. Yawn.
RomanPushkin 3y ago
If you haven't tried it yet, Supernatural app is great. I lost around 30 pounds while I was using it at home. Now gained some weight back, but hopefully in winter time will get back to the app. And today I got announcement it's only $10/month vs $20 starting October 14.
- dmix 3y ago
  I boxed every day for a month on Quest 2, I would have paid $200+ if I could get full colour pass through at the tap of a button. idk if I'd pay $500 but that would have made working out daily wayy easier. I used a sweat mask that also blocked light, so no down peaking, youd have to take it off just to take a drink of water or sit down for a couple minutes. That's very annoying.
wnevets 3y ago
As someone who hasn't done anything with these VR headsets it appears Meta & Apple are emphasizing AR/productively because gaming with these things are terrible.
- XTHK 3y ago
  My experience with flight sim, boxing, golfing, and building games feels a lot better with any sort of VR headset. There is also a weird thing where building stuff in VR taps into some primordial primate urge to build much moreso than other gaming media. I've built some structural stuff in real life and the sense of satisfaction of building in VR is nearly identical, which is an absolute trip.
xyst 3y ago
Wouldn’t touch this shit with a 10 ft pole. Don’t need FB/Meta harvesting my VR data.
Farbklex 3y ago
I am just waiting until Valve releases an open, PC based competitor to the meta quest.
- serf 3y ago
  when has Valve released anything 'open'? (at least with regards to end-user products..)
  - justinsaccount 3y ago
    The steam deck is a linux pc with an unlocked bootloader. All of their work on Proton is open source: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
  - tormeh 3y ago
    I mean, you can install Windows or whatever distro you'd like on the Deck. Not sure what more you could want, honestly.
  - xu_ituairo 3y ago
    The Steam Deck is extremely open in both software and hardware
genghisjahn 3y ago
I'll buy this simply to have a better experience playing Onward VR. I'd buy it if that was the only app/game available. There's other stuff to mess with from time to time but Onward keeps the quest 2 in mostly daily use.
footlose_3815 3y ago
I tried a 2 and it was a sterile, and walled-garden experience. Getting Steam to work on it felt like all workarounds. Lots of accuracy and user experience issues that made me return it. I expect no different with this.
freedomben 3y ago
What's the Linux story around Quest these days? I want to buy a VR headset but Linux compat is a must. Any recommendations?
- callalex 3y ago
  It’s a standalone device, so I’m not sure I understand the question.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  You can't exactly run Linux on the hardware itself, but you can easily get it working with OpenXR-compatible software stacks. Getting your Linux box up to snuff is a bit harder though.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- riskable 3y ago
  It's still severely locked down Android. You can enable some hand-holding kid gloves "developer mode" features that go ever so slightly above what a normal user would be able to do but be prepared to sacrifice your firstborn just to get developer access (requires having a phone paired to the device with your personal Facebook account so no chance of sharing developer mode features with anyone else). Trying to do file management on the Quest platform is a nightmware. With a whole lot of work you can flash some Android apps that can do things like SFTP but it's impossible to keep the headset "awake" long enough to complete large file transfers. Not only that but it'll auto kill such apps that have been open for a while without activity. You have no mechanism to schedule tasks or execute arbitrary scripts. There's no command line access to speak of. Closest you can get is locked down adb. Apps can access other apps storage areas if they've designated that area as shareable (e.g. not part of the app itself). So that means if you say, mod Beat Saber (which is very complicated/difficult compared to PC) the downloaded maps can be accessed by a normal Android file sharing application. But like I said, the headset will turn itself off and occasionally just plain kill any app that's running without activity (maybe due to lots of network activity? Dunno). Trying to keep the files on your headset in sync with anything anywhere is always a manual process. There's no way to script or automate anything. You also can't install URL handlers that would say, open another app to handle a particular filetype (that's locked down). I haven't tried it but I also haven't seen a mechanism to install your own certificates. There's also no way to set the clock (LOL). Once you pick your timezone when you first power on the device (and mandatory pair it with your personal phone/Facebook account) you must use that timezone forever. This means that if something goes wrong with the date (as did happen with my headset) the device will no longer accept any SSL certificates which means no updates and basically everything stops working on the headset. The only fix for this is a factory reset. Meta support is also total garbage. If you have an issue and it's not part of their script of answers or something they've encountered a million times it's not getting fixed. FACTORY RESET is what they say over and over again because Meta wants the headset to be perceived as an appliance and most certainly not as a general-purpose computing platform. That last fact is what I think holds back the entire platform as a whole. If they used a regular Linux distribution and gave developers the power to use it like a normal Linux distribution it would accelerate innovation and vastly increase the usability, availability of apps, and overall improve the user experience.
baby 3y ago
This was the announcement I was really waiting for, but I actually got blown away more by the AI stuff
- adfm 3y ago
  Hint: Immersive Generative AI is the killer app. Radiance fields, Gaussian Splatter, Photogrammetry, and other computational photographic techniques are where this is headed. It's not that much overhead to render a stereoscopic view from the same dataset. That camera array on the back of your phone is more than capable of hand tracking. Being able to capture "spatial video" is the hook Apple is using to sell their top-of-the-line iPhone 15 Pro Max handsets. You can already achieve this to a degree[^1] with tools like Lifecast[^2], but when Apple throws their billion-dollar marketing chops behind it, you get it integrated into a dominant ecosystem. [^1]: https://holovolo.tv/ https://holovolo.tv/ [^2]: https://www.lifecastvr.com/index.html https://www.lifecastvr.com/index.html
andrewmcwatters 3y ago
No one is making good software for these things. And Meta’s desire to have their own walled garden is reducing the strength of their products.
hacful-tonteg 3y ago
how does the pro version compare to the 2 and 3? would you get pro over this one?
MuffinFlavored 3y ago
Do they have a trade-in program like Apple does for the iPhone/MacBook? New $1k phone, but trade your old one in for $500... not as bad. I doubt there's a market for a bunch of used/refurbished Meta Quest 2s though...
- glonq 3y ago
  So I might get $20 for my dusty, abandoned Rift S then?
seydor 3y ago
No killer app but the best tech if 2023. will buy
xd1936 3y ago
What's even the point, now that Echo VR is gone? :( https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/31/23580356/meta-shut-down-echo-vr-oculus-quest-arena-ready-at-down https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/31/23580356/meta-shut-down-e...
xDragonSlayerx 3y ago
> DRAM > 8 GB. 33% memory compared with Meta Quest 2, giving you more support to play > your favourite apps with optimal performance. Umm... So they are bragging about how they put in less DRAM?
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  Probably the biggest disappointment with the Quest 3, but the improved FOV does make up for it.
- MikusR 3y ago
  Quest 2 had 6
johnfernow 3y ago
As someone who loves VR, I'm not sure at $500 who this headset is for. If you want something cheap but decent, a Quest 2 is a better deal at $300. It'll give you a cordless, hassle-free, console-like experience as a standalone device if that's what you want, or, if you instead want to play graphically intense VR games, you can connect it to a gaming PC and use SteamVR (AirLink, Virtual Desktop, or a USB-C cable.) If you want something high end with a really solid game library so far, the PSVR2 is much better than this at $550 (though requires a PS5.) The Quest 2 had a promising start with several great games coming to it, but then Meta seemingly stopped funding new games and VR ports, and unfortunately SteamVR hasn't had a ton release recently either. Sony, on the other hand, had an incredible starting library for the PSVR2 and plenty more AA and AAA games are releasing soon. Discoverability is also much better on PSVR2 — my friend with the headset has shown me many great games that actually are on the Quest and SteamVR, but I had never seen them before as there are so many more games on Steam and the Quest store (unfortunately most of which aren't good.) Not sure if Sony curates their store better or if it's just that not much shovelware has been made on it yet. In either case, great games exist on all 3 of those platforms, but they're easiest to discover on PSVR2. As others have mentioned, Meta's resources would be better spent bringing games to their existing headset versus creating new ones. I do think that having a more powerful headset would allow more impressive experiences (as is the case with PSVR2), but people aren't going to keep buying their devices if only a handful of impressive games release on them. Nintendo regularly releases underpowered hardware compared to the competition, but they make such great first-party games that they end up selling incredibly well despite their lackluster hardware. The Quest 2 sold very well, and I imagine that games like Resident Evil 4 VR probably convinced many people to buy it (I know at least one person who got it for that game.) The Quest Pro did not sell well, so I'm not sure why they think better hardware but with the same library will convince people to buy new headsets. EDIT: I guess I should have done a bit more searching, as does seem like there are some potentially popular games coming out for the Quest still, such as Assassin's Creed Nexus VR and Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable. Strange I haven't gotten any ads for it on YouTube, I saw tons of ads for Resident Evil 4 VR for the Quest 2 (as well as some of the Star Wars VR games.)
- dmix 3y ago
  Quest 2 was underrated one of the best deals in tech in recent history. Easily worth the $300. I got way more enjoyment out of it than I ever expected as a casual gamer. Replaying Resident Evil 4 + the various workout apps like boxing made it worth the price. But I got much more. The beta app store offers a TON of free games still in dev too. https://sidequestvr.com/apps/applab/0/rating https://sidequestvr.com/apps/applab/0/rating
CraigJPerry 3y ago
I haven’t kept up with VR/AR at all but is anyone offering the ability to attend concerts and shows via VR? I’m thinking like some kind of high quality 360 audio/video capture rig sat in a good seat at gigs across the country and I can buy a cheap ticket to attend via VR. It’s obviously never going to beat attending in real life but my use case is more about getting to attend gigs I can’t get to in real life.
- mgiampapa 3y ago
  They explicitly called out sporting events during the press release, so I would expect that concerts would be easy. They already have gear for court / ring side seats.
jamesfisher 3y ago
"Accept all cookies" just sends me back to the cookie acceptance prompt. Can't view the page content. Chrome on Android.
finikytou 3y ago
random question what is the radioactivity into those vr headsets meta quest 3 and vision pro and what are the impacts of having wifi right on your brain?
unsated 3y ago
I wonder who in audience was cheering for Horizon Worlds getting more features. There are hardly any useful experiences in there. Mostly it's obscenity screaming people, alarmingly often sounding very young.
rldjbpin 3y ago
very interesting to see that they did not talk much about specs besides "oh we got the latest chip" and "our screen and lens are better". standalone vr has its own place, but for enthusiasts, and even some of their own demos, are using the headset with a pc. i would like to know more about what they did to improve that experience. a faster usb-c throughput is a must, so would be improvements with wifi performance. since none of them were mentioned, i am afraid we will be stuck at the same limitations with quest 2 despite working with "better" hardware. rumour mill is talking about a valve contender soon tm (or at least a new headset), which if close in price, might be better suited for many who are ok with cables.
cultofmetatron 3y ago
looks great but I barely even use my quest 2. I think for the money a nintendo switch is a better deal. and I say this as someone who is eagerly awaiting for the apple vision. The biggest use case for me is having a virtual multi monitor setup. there's apps to do that in quest 2 but they just weren't' quite good enough to daily drive.
simonebrunozzi 3y ago
I wrote this blog post "Meta and the Metaverse: a mostly useless big hit" about 2 years ago [0] I don't know if you agree, but it still mostly applies today. What's the killer app? Why do we need this? [0]: https://simon.medium.com/meta-and-the-metaverse-a-mostly-useless-big-hit-f6b938d8983e https://simon.medium.com/meta-and-the-metaverse-a-mostly-use...

253 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

if you decline cookies the page doesn't load. meta can get <insert four letter explicative here>ed.

d--b 3y ago

The only information I need: horizontal angle:110, vertical angle 90. Garbage. I don’t know how anyone finds these experience immersive.

drcongo 3y ago
[flagged]
- huytersd 3y ago
  [dead]
MuffinFlavored 3y ago
What are the stats on the predecessor (which is Quest 2, right?) https://www.google.com/search?q=quest+2+horizontal+angle https://www.google.com/search?q=quest+2+horizontal+angle
- dweekly 3y ago
  https://www.meta.com/quest/compare/ https://www.meta.com/quest/compare/ Quest 2 was 90h/90v, Quest 3 is 110h/96v
huytersd 3y ago
[dead]
ZiiS 3y ago
I can have an immersive experience using a monochrome book ~10 degrees FoV.
WXLCKNO 3y ago
It's only immersive if the content is good but I get what you mean. In 2014 when I was using my Note 4 + Gear VR, I really thought in 5 years (2019) things would be incredibly advanced in VR. Here we are in 2023 and obviously these headsets are way better than we had before, but nothing truly mind-blowing. Foveated rendering + high immersive POV + high resolution. I don't need the mobile processor to be twice as powerful, the difference in rendering is still crap compared to a full PC. I understand there are some actual limits of physics in play here when it comes to FOV but I'm excited for it becomes a solved problem.
- zitterbewegung 3y ago
  We probably aren't there because of consumer demand. None of the headsets have really gotten enough sales to justify the research in those things to make them better. If they were selling like smartphones we would have a much different set of features.
gibolt 3y ago
The screens are much closer to the eyes. Perceived angles may be higher than actual.
tetris11 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virtual_reality_headsets#Standalone_VR_(mobile_device_mounts_and_all-in-ones) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virtual_reality_headse... If you sort by release date, the Vive XR (2023) beats it on FOV+Rez+Hz, and weights 3x as less. If you sort by FOV, the HTC Vive (2016) easily wins on FOV+Rez+Hz
- jsnell 3y ago
  What's "it"? Quest 3 isn't on that list. But comparing the Vive XR to the specs in the announcement, the Quest 3 has a higher resolution, same FOV, same refresh rate (experimental sorry for higher refresh rate) at half the price but double the weight.
- ggreer 3y ago
  That's not true. The original HTC Vive has the same refresh rate (90Hz) and field of view (110° horizontal), but the Quest 3's resolution is 2064x2208 per eye while the Vive's is 1080x1200. The Vive XR Elite has the same refresh rate (90Hz) and field of view (110° horizontal), but a lower resolution of 1920x1920 per eye. It also costs twice as much as the Quest 3. The Vive XR Elite's lower claimed weight of 270 grams is without the battery. With battery it weighs 625g, which is heavier than the Quest 1 (571g), Quest 2 (503g), or Quest 3 (515g).
mavamaarten 3y ago
Indeed. HL Alyx through the Quest 2 is the only thing that kinda got me immersed because the environment looks so good. But it takes a while because it's really like looking through a small window. I don't need/want all the mixed reality and metaverse BS. I just want a good FoV and resolution. They really invest in the wrong areas, imo.

marcusestes 3y ago

Terrible marketing website. I tried and failed to find improvements over Quest 2.

addaon 3y ago
> Terrible marketing website. I tried and failed to find improvements over Quest 2. "2 RGB cameras with 18 PPD, for 10X the resolution of Quest 2 and 2X the resolution of Quest Pro in passthrough. Delivers full-color, high-fidelity views of your surroundings while you see virtual objects appear in your physical space. Accurate depth projection and room mapping gives you freedom to move throughout your space and interact with virtual characters or objects in the room around you." "2064x2208 pixels per eye enhances resolution by nearly 30% compared to Meta Quest 2 for next-level clarity and lifelike graphics. 4K+ Infinite Display with 25PPD and 1218 PPI brings the best resolution across the entire Quest line of devices."
LarsDu88 3y ago
Apple always puts a (questionable) bar graph on their product release pages. Meta though...
MikusR 3y ago
"Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, delivering double the GPU processing power for faster load times and more seamless gameplay compared to Meta Quest 2" "2 RGB cameras with 18 PPD, for 10X the resolution of Quest 2 and 2X the resolution of Quest Pro in passthrough." "Integrated stereo speakers with 3D spatial audio places you in your space with 40% louder audio range, bass range and optimal L/R matching capabilities. " "8GB. 33% memory compared with Meta Quest 2" "Pancake optics create a 40% slimmer optic profile* for more comfortable wear. As compared to Quest 2 excluding the facial interface. " "2064x2208 pixels per eye enhances resolution by nearly 30% compared to Meta Quest 2" "Pancake lens provides a slimmer optic profile without compromising the depth of your visual immersion. Increased sharpness by 25% in center FOV (~70% sharper in periphery), with significantly less stray or scattered light artifacts. "
hu3 3y ago
See Tech Specs. It's full of comparisons. - Display Resolution: 2064x2208 pixels per eye enhances resolution by nearly 30% compared to Meta Quest 2 for next-level clarity and lifelike graphics. 4K+ Infinite Display with 25PPD and 1218 PPI brings the best resolution across the entire Quest line of devices. - Power: Advanced hardware stack and the first headset with the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, delivering double the GPU processing power for faster load times and more seamless gameplay compared to Meta Quest 2. This brings enough power to support heavy applications like fast-action gaming, seamless full-color, high-resolution passthrough, and so much more. - Mixed Reality: 2 RGB cameras with 18 PPD, for 10X the resolution of Quest 2 and 2X the resolution of Quest Pro in passthrough. Delivers full-color, high-fidelity views of your surroundings while you see virtual objects appear in your physical space. Accurate depth projection and room mapping gives you freedom to move throughout your space and interact with virtual characters or objects in the room around you. - Audio: Integrated stereo speakers with 3D spatial audio places you in your space with 40% louder audio range, bass range and optimal L/R matching capabilities. - DRAM: 8GB. 33% memory compared with Meta Quest 2, giving you more support to play your favorite apps with optimal performance. - Headset Weight: 515 grams. Pancake optics create a 40% slimmer optic profile* for more comfortable wear. - Optics: Pancake lens provides a slimmer optic profile* without compromising the depth of your visual immersion. Increased sharpness by 25% in center FOV (~70% sharper in periphery), with significantly less stray or scattered light artifacts.

tiagod 3y ago

Is it just me getting a loop on the cookie banner? No matter what I press, it refreshes and shows me the banner again. (Firefox Android)

saiya-jin 3y ago
keep doing it and clicking on buttons, eventually I got in but it was maybe 6th attempt (firefox + ublock origin)
- capableweb 3y ago
  Just enable the annoyance lists in uBlock Origin and stop rejecting/accepting cookies like a modern person :)
  - kreeben 3y ago
    I've had UBO for years without enabled annoyance lists (great naming BTW) and WOW, just WOW, after enabling them the internet seems like a completely different place. Thx!
    - capableweb 3y ago
      Personally I discovered them a week ago myself, so I'm happy to spread this new experience to others :)
  - exhilaration 3y ago
    Thank you! For Firefox mobile users: 3 dot menu > add-ons > uBlock Origin > Open the Dashboard > Filter Lists > Annoyances There's two cookie notices options in there.
jncfhnb 3y ago
Broken on Firefox for me
- addaon 3y ago

wakaru44 3y ago

can't even see the site, I keep fighting with cookie pop ups

huytersd 3y ago

[dead]

TobyTheDog123 3y ago

After I lost all of my purchases after deleting my Facebook account (not that I used my old Quest anyways), I decided I would never purchase another Meta product (even though that's probably the LEAST abusive thing they do).

capableweb 3y ago

> Gaming: 2.4 hours of usage on average > Social: 2.2 hours of usage on average > Productivity: 1.5 hours minutes [sic] of usage on average How is this accurate? What kind of "Productivity" tasks are people doing inside a Quest if it uses more power/battery than gaming? Also, "Social" drawing more power than "Gaming" too? Something seems weird.

paxys 3y ago
Going by how my Macbook's battery life evaporates with 10 Chrome tabs + Slack + Zoom, I believe it. Gaming is definitely less load than multiple windows of modern work apps.
- capableweb 3y ago
  Compared to playing a game which would definitely use both GPU and CPU, instead of mostly just CPU?
  - paxys 3y ago
    Almost every such app uses GPU as well.
    - capableweb 3y ago
      True, but nowhere near the level that a game would. As an example, it'll be hard to find a productivity/office application that is bottlenecked by the GPU, while for games, it's relatively easy to find.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    The modern web is pretty taxing on a GPU... Plenty of webpages have 100+ layers to composite together...
    - capableweb 3y ago
      Sure, but those only get rendered when stuff is actually changing on the screen, otherwise it stands still, compared to games which would (usually at least) continue to render N FPS no matter if the screen is identical or not compared to previous frame.

cuu508 3y ago

I'm clueless -- how do these things work? Are they standalone, or do you also need a gaming PC? Do you need internet connection, or is there stuff that works offline? Do you need Facebook account? Are they hackable, e.g., are there custom firmware options?

mesmertech 3y ago
Standalone, but you can connect to PC if you want to play graphically intensive games. Quest 2 basically, you login with FB account so you need internet connection at first. Pretty "unhackable" afaik, you can install custom mods for games but thats pretty much it in terms of modifications I've seen.
- MikusR 3y ago
  You don't need Facebook account.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    You need a Meta account
    - eatsyourtacos 3y ago
      Which is not a facebook account..
      - jncfhnb 3y ago
        Not yet!
ghosty141 3y ago
Both standalone as well as connecting to pc works. I believe they work offline but I dont know for sure. Not hackable, what is often possible is using custom client software that handles the vr stuff on the pc.
3y ago

pornel 3y ago

Early review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpUIndlsV78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpUIndlsV78 Seems positive overall. Pancake lenses like in Quest Pro. Chipset fast enough to get dynamic shadows in games.

AmericanOP 3y ago

Hey Mark, Send an email to NVIDIA's GeForce Now bizdev guy. Develop a cheap-o streaming device and put all the juice in the display. Congratulations, I just made you billions of dollars. Donate my cut to PETA.

babypuncher 3y ago
streaming + vr seems like a recipe for disaster. even if you don't mind a few extra frames of latency when playing games on your TV, you absolutely will when head tracking is involved. streaming + mouse & keyboard for shooters still feels like shit, even when I tried it on google stadia over google fiber. honestly i kind of hope this game streaming fad never really takes off, because so far it just seems to make games worse. i'm convinced publishers want it as a means to further erode user ownership of the software they buy. "oh, sorry, the single player game you bought four years ago on a streaming platform is no longer available due to rights issues. would you like to buy the sequel for $70?"
- AmericanOP 3y ago
  Playing ultra-settings Starfield on an old retina MacBook air is mindblowing. GeForce Now, imo, is quietly the killer app of 2023. > game streaming fad never really takes off I am in the opposite camp. I want game developers to be freed from local hardware constraints, and indy developers to have access to the same graphical fidelities as AAA. Real, meaningful innovation in gaming is a possibility.
  - babypuncher 3y ago
    > and indy developers to have access to the same graphical fidelities as AAA The bottleneck here isn't performance, it's the cost of producing high quality assets on a AAA scale. Streaming won't solve this. As for "local hardware constraints", I've yet to see any streaming games that were not possible on local hardware. Personally, I'd rather upgrade my GPU or video game console every 5 years than lose all the very tangible benefits that come with running games on my own hardware (ownership, mods, preservation, etc.) I will say that I think services like GeForce Now are the best use case for the technology. Since it is essentially a rentable high end gaming PC in the cloud, the user brings their own games. If GeForce now shuts down, you still have the option of downloading all the games you bought for on it to a PC. Nvidia is smart to position this as an additive experience, rather than a replacement like Stadia was.

galkk 3y ago

I'm not VR pro, but the resolution sertainly feels lacking. There were articles where people were writing how they are programming for many hours in their quest2. I cannot understand how this is possible with this bad text

SKWR-PLS 3y ago
Its okay if you have not used a high res screen recently. Its like using a shitty college classroom projector to program. I have a cheap 4k monitor so it kind of ruined vr for me for the moment. I will not get an 8k monitor until I have the screen in a headset first.
- galkk 3y ago
  And this is weird to me. As a software engineer, who works with text all the time, I was buying IPS panels with as high resolution as I was able to justify for my entire career. I don't see myself coding it quest, it is just too blurry. Although this could be me and my personal preferences, as I also cannot program on something like macbook air 13", and there are people who can easily do it. I used dual 2k 27" more than 10 years ago, now the main screen that I look at is 4k 32" and there are 2 2k 27" side by side. If linux didn't suck with mixed dpis and there were 240Hz IPS 27" (I use one of them for gaming), I'd already start considering 4k 27". --- Having said all of that, I certainly believe that there will be time when the FOV and resolution will be enough to replace monitors. Like now, I have 3 monitors because I don't want to dance with workspaces etc. I still can focus only on one at one time. Intelligent zoom and activation of windows/workspaces, improved to one that Apple shown in visionpro presentation, will be killer feature, as I objectively will be able to have multiple 4k screens without any table space used by monitors.
cpuguy83 3y ago
2nd'd But also I can't handle the poor resolution of most ultra-wide monitors either.
crooked-v 3y ago
Going off the guesstimated PPDs and so on, I feel like the Apple Vision Pro is really going to be about the bare minimum to actually feel comfortable working on code stuff in VR/AR.

dougmwne 3y ago

This seems like on paper it is quite close to the Apple Vision Pro. The performance per watt of the chips is probably not far off and both devices deal with the same basic design constraints of needing to fit comfortably on your head. The main difference seems to be the micro OLED and eye tracking on the Vision Pro vs. the Quest’s inclusion of controllers. I’ll be curious how these two devices stack up to each other and exactly how different the user experiences end up being. The MR experience seems like it may be close. The VR gaming experience seems more emphasized on the Quest, but hand tracking has come a long way so I wouldn’t rule out the Vision Pro here either. Overall I’m doubtful either device will hit mass market appeal.

computing 3y ago
I'm sorry, but what about the Quest 3 on paper seems to you to be close to the Vision Pro?
- dougmwne 3y ago
  Device with focus on mixed reality and productivity sporting the latest in mobile chips and hand tracking. It also does VR but MR is the new feature being brought to the table.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Vision pro is all about mixed reality. So is the quest 3. As far as I can tell most of the difference between 2 and 3 is the vastly improved mixed reality. Basically this device is positioning itself to be the consumer version of the vision pro.
TobyTheDog123 3y ago
>The main difference seems to be the micro OLED and eye tracking on the Vision Pro vs. the Quest’s inclusion of controllers. Both of which are complete dealbreakers. AR/VR/Spatial is defined completely by immersion and lack-of-nausea, where less resolution and the inclusion of controllers demolish. You're right, both probably won't reach mass-market appeal, but the two certainly aren't comparable in any metric other than reach.

sgarman 3y ago

I'm a bit out of the game on VR these days but I noticed there is no eye tracking which probably means no foveated rendering? I thought that was the new hottness these days.

dougmwne 3y ago
The Quest Pro had eye tracking, but it was likely excluded for cost reason here. The performance increase from Foveated Rendering was minor on the Quest Pro because of the overhead needed to do high accuracy, low latency eye tracking. Eye tracking will probably make it to the Quest 4, especially if Apple proves it out as a control input. Big If there IMHO.

SubiculumCode 3y ago

sorry quest 2, you wont be supported for long now -

tootie 3y ago

Will this have what it takes to compete the Apple thing whose name I forgot?

post_break 3y ago

Wish there was a trade in option from the Quest 2.

jxi 3y ago
I'm glad I sold all my Quest 2 headsets (family) earlier this year. These things go obsolete faster than phones.

IvyMike 3y ago

I wonder what the future holds for these devices now that Meta has drastically decreased their Metaverse spending.

fidotron 3y ago

Notable shift in emphasis to mixed reality. I wish they had HDR support called out for the passthrough though. The Quest 2 CPU was too weak, and while this one will be better the Apple chips are still way out in front there. The proportion of people in tech I know with a Quest 2 they never use is amazing. We all want VR to work but fundamentally headsets are a bad idea.

CobrastanJorji 3y ago
Could you explain about HDR passthrough? I'm thinking "see real life sunsets in glorious HDR color," which is probably not what you mean.
- make3 3y ago
  hdr for the added content no?
- fidotron 3y ago
  It's that rooms, especially sunny ones, contain incredible amounts of variation in intensity, and that failing to capture/display that is at least as big a problem as not enough pixels per inch. It also helps dramatically if the captured HDR surroundings can be fed on to an envmap for use in the 3D rendering phase.
  - CobrastanJorji 3y ago
    Oh, that makes sense. Real life has a big dynamic range, so if you're trying to augment that, it won't look right unless it also can cover a big dynamic range.
phowat 3y ago
I daily drove my quest 2 using immersed VR for a few months. In the end, the resolution was just not good enough for it to be better than my 3 monitor setup. But I'm looking forward to trying again in a couple of generations.
- 3y ago

synergy20 3y ago

I have a Quest2 that only used for about 1 hour, is there any resale value or trade-in somewhere? it's collecting dust these two years, supposed to be a Christmas gift, did not work out at all.

accrual 3y ago
eBay filtering by sold listings?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
crazygringo 3y ago
Looks like they're currently mostly fetching $150-200 used: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=quest+2&_sacat=0&LH_ItemCondition=3000&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=quest+2&_sacat=0&LH_Ite... I'm actually surprised -- I thought it would plummet once the 3 came out. Maybe it still will over the next few weeks if people with 2's upgrade to 3's and the marketplace gets flooded with 2's.
umeshunni 3y ago
Mine was sold within a few hours of listing it on FB Marketplace.
- synergy20 3y ago
  Thanks! will try it there.

bitwize 3y ago

A.k.a. the budget version of Apple Vision Pro. Just $649.99 plus all your personal data! Strap it on your eyeballs and feed the machine, the algorithm hungers!

smoldesu 3y ago
The Vision Pro wishes it could sell as many units as the Quest did. If the lifetime units sold exceeds the Quest 2's first quarter of shipments, it will be a small miracle. > Just $649.99 plus all your personal data! Strap it on your eyeballs and feed the machine, the algorithm hungers! My favorite part of Hacker News is how people rattle their adtech surveillance pans, but always hide away whenever someone mentions the NSA or PRISM. You guys remember last week when Canada used FIVE-EYES to grab telecom data off an unsuspecting, international citizen using commodity hardware? Coming soon: the same duopoly of shit, but now on VR. As they say, don't throw stones from glass headsets.

CobrastanJorji 3y ago

Any word on what "tactile feedback" or "experiences you can feel" for the controllers means here? Did they just add vibration and punch it up with marketing bullshit, or is something fancier being described?

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
The quest controllers have always had some vibration, which is key to many experiences (and why I'm not taking Apple's offering seriously). Maybe they upped what the controllers can express?
callalex 3y ago
That is usually marketing speak for multiple linear oscillating motors that are accurate enough to accept WAV files as input.

Waterluvian 3y ago

Counter-intuitively, I think I'd be able to manage a headset better if it wasn't this box strapped to the front of my face, but rather an evenly balanced hockey helmet with a flip-up mask. I can do hours wearing a hockey helmet, but these things are uncomfortable after a little while, and I think it's because it's just a more balanced thing that my neck muscles aren't constantly counteracting. Not to suggest that that's the only thing that makes these a non-start for me, but I feel like that's one of the core issues.

Arelius 3y ago
That’s what the PlayStation VR does, and can confirm, it is better.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I always hear good things about PlayStation VR. It seems a real shame that the only company in VR with any experience making wearable devices is using a proprietary platform. At this point the optics seem… I dunno, pretty well worked out? So, I’d rather have Sennheiser VR than Facebook. Sennheiser knows how to balance a heavy thing on my head for hours.
ethbr1 3y ago
Seriously, I'd rather have more weight than a face-forward center of gravity. If you're going to cram a laptop in there, put the non-optics behind my head.
phkahler 3y ago
There were add-on batteries for the Quest 2 that would attach to the back of the headset, thereby improving the balance which adding battery life. I never tried one.
- circuit10 3y ago
  I’d rather they’d just move the built in battery
- 3y ago

jrm4 3y ago

Got a 2 on accident, an aunt was dazzled by ideas of exercising and meditating and was wildly underwhelmed by the actual experience, and gifted it to my family. Kind of fun to have around very occasionally, but I'm still seeing nothing to indicate anything more than "overpriced, non-essential toy." Would never pay good money for one. (and this is from a household where the Steam Deck is absolutely an essential toy.)* *edit, come to think of it -- said aunt has logged more hours on my Steam Deck even though we don't live together, thanks to the Jackbox series. I feel like there's a lot of good anecdata here :)

circuit10 3y ago
The novelty wears off after a bit and then it’s mostly just a less convenient version of a game console (the limited software really hurts any other use)
- jrm4 3y ago
  Good point -- I do wonder if it's inherent or if we really are missing some "much better software?" A thing that makes me think the latter might be the is how there's no real Google Earth for the Quest, which strikes me as madness? (also, Aircar and having to jump through hoops to find Tiltbrush/Openbrush?)
  - circuit10 3y ago
    The PC Oculus software was much better so there’s definitely more they can do; the Quest software is full of artificial limitations, like having window placement and sizing be unnecessarily limited. They’re also somewhat hostile to sideloading (not blocking it but making it more difficult than it needs to be) which probably hurts niche use cases
    - jrm4 3y ago
      Yup, I do the sideloading. It's kind of interesting how garbage most the sideloaded apps are? I'm not expecting amazing, but, like even your average popular Roblox game has more polish.

MBCook 3y ago

So what’s the killer app? Beatsaber and some other games can be a lot of fun, but they’re not new. What new experience are ready for this? I get the quality is better, and that’s not nothing. But other than that this largely seems like more of the same. VR still doesn’t seem to have advanced much in software to me. And Meta keeps pushing virtual meetings and such but that’s not my cup of tea. I owned a Quest 2 and had some fun with it. I’ve owned previous headsets too. But I just don’t see anything that would makes me say “ooh I need that”. This feels very “PC” to me. By which I mean they’re selling it because they can sell new hardware. The Pentium 9 is out! Which is fine. But when Sony/Nintendo/MS want to sell a new console they put new and fancier games. They give you a specific reason to upgrade besides better specs. So you can play Horizon 12: We’re On The Moon Now. Or Bob’s Crazy Adventure. Whatever. All this time and it still seems like the market is 95% games, and those aren’t advancing much beyond visuals. So I don’t feel like I’m really missing anything.

itsyaboi 3y ago
XBox cloud gaming is pretty big. Roblox is huge with kids as well.
- pzmarzly 3y ago
  +1. I don't have a TV, so if I could just stream my macOS desktop and Xbox Cloud Gaming (which I already use) to a virtual 50+' screen that follows me as I walk around, that will be enough for me to buy in.
  - rabf 3y ago
    https://www.immersed.com/ https://www.immersed.com/
- MBCook 3y ago
  That seems to reinforce my point to me. Both of those are available on other platforms. They don’t need the Quest 3. Why not just buy an Xbox? What makes me need a Quest 3?

brynbryn 3y ago

The best VR experience I've ever had was with the original PSVR, sat on a chair surrounded by cables with my wife and son playing with me. I bought Oculus Rift and then the Quest 2 and they were both used for 40 mins max and collect dust. For me, it is an incredibly isolating experience unless, like PS did, other people are playing with you in the room and you are taking turns.

no_time 3y ago

I really REALLY wish this thing could be jailbroken. The only thing holding me back from buying one is that I'm not paying $500 + our lovely 27% VAT to strap a surveillance device to my face.

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epolanski 3y ago

The website isn't GDPR compliant, can't read it without accessing the cookies.

c7DJTLrn 3y ago

Still no varifocal, foveated rendering, or significant FOV bump. Yawn.

RomanPushkin 3y ago

If you haven't tried it yet, Supernatural app is great. I lost around 30 pounds while I was using it at home. Now gained some weight back, but hopefully in winter time will get back to the app. And today I got announcement it's only $10/month vs $20 starting October 14.

dmix 3y ago
I boxed every day for a month on Quest 2, I would have paid $200+ if I could get full colour pass through at the tap of a button. idk if I'd pay $500 but that would have made working out daily wayy easier. I used a sweat mask that also blocked light, so no down peaking, youd have to take it off just to take a drink of water or sit down for a couple minutes. That's very annoying.

wnevets 3y ago

As someone who hasn't done anything with these VR headsets it appears Meta & Apple are emphasizing AR/productively because gaming with these things are terrible.

XTHK 3y ago
My experience with flight sim, boxing, golfing, and building games feels a lot better with any sort of VR headset. There is also a weird thing where building stuff in VR taps into some primordial primate urge to build much moreso than other gaming media. I've built some structural stuff in real life and the sense of satisfaction of building in VR is nearly identical, which is an absolute trip.

xyst 3y ago

Wouldn’t touch this shit with a 10 ft pole. Don’t need FB/Meta harvesting my VR data.

Farbklex 3y ago

I am just waiting until Valve releases an open, PC based competitor to the meta quest.

serf 3y ago
when has Valve released anything 'open'? (at least with regards to end-user products..)
- justinsaccount 3y ago
  The steam deck is a linux pc with an unlocked bootloader. All of their work on Proton is open source: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
- tormeh 3y ago
  I mean, you can install Windows or whatever distro you'd like on the Deck. Not sure what more you could want, honestly.
- xu_ituairo 3y ago
  The Steam Deck is extremely open in both software and hardware

genghisjahn 3y ago

I'll buy this simply to have a better experience playing Onward VR. I'd buy it if that was the only app/game available. There's other stuff to mess with from time to time but Onward keeps the quest 2 in mostly daily use.

footlose_3815 3y ago

I tried a 2 and it was a sterile, and walled-garden experience. Getting Steam to work on it felt like all workarounds. Lots of accuracy and user experience issues that made me return it. I expect no different with this.

freedomben 3y ago

What's the Linux story around Quest these days? I want to buy a VR headset but Linux compat is a must. Any recommendations?

callalex 3y ago
It’s a standalone device, so I’m not sure I understand the question.
smoldesu 3y ago
You can't exactly run Linux on the hardware itself, but you can easily get it working with OpenXR-compatible software stacks. Getting your Linux box up to snuff is a bit harder though.
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riskable 3y ago
It's still severely locked down Android. You can enable some hand-holding kid gloves "developer mode" features that go ever so slightly above what a normal user would be able to do but be prepared to sacrifice your firstborn just to get developer access (requires having a phone paired to the device with your personal Facebook account so no chance of sharing developer mode features with anyone else). Trying to do file management on the Quest platform is a nightmware. With a whole lot of work you can flash some Android apps that can do things like SFTP but it's impossible to keep the headset "awake" long enough to complete large file transfers. Not only that but it'll auto kill such apps that have been open for a while without activity. You have no mechanism to schedule tasks or execute arbitrary scripts. There's no command line access to speak of. Closest you can get is locked down adb. Apps can access other apps storage areas if they've designated that area as shareable (e.g. not part of the app itself). So that means if you say, mod Beat Saber (which is very complicated/difficult compared to PC) the downloaded maps can be accessed by a normal Android file sharing application. But like I said, the headset will turn itself off and occasionally just plain kill any app that's running without activity (maybe due to lots of network activity? Dunno). Trying to keep the files on your headset in sync with anything anywhere is always a manual process. There's no way to script or automate anything. You also can't install URL handlers that would say, open another app to handle a particular filetype (that's locked down). I haven't tried it but I also haven't seen a mechanism to install your own certificates. There's also no way to set the clock (LOL). Once you pick your timezone when you first power on the device (and mandatory pair it with your personal phone/Facebook account) you must use that timezone forever. This means that if something goes wrong with the date (as did happen with my headset) the device will no longer accept any SSL certificates which means no updates and basically everything stops working on the headset. The only fix for this is a factory reset. Meta support is also total garbage. If you have an issue and it's not part of their script of answers or something they've encountered a million times it's not getting fixed. FACTORY RESET is what they say over and over again because Meta wants the headset to be perceived as an appliance and most certainly not as a general-purpose computing platform. That last fact is what I think holds back the entire platform as a whole. If they used a regular Linux distribution and gave developers the power to use it like a normal Linux distribution it would accelerate innovation and vastly increase the usability, availability of apps, and overall improve the user experience.

baby 3y ago

This was the announcement I was really waiting for, but I actually got blown away more by the AI stuff

adfm 3y ago
Hint: Immersive Generative AI is the killer app. Radiance fields, Gaussian Splatter, Photogrammetry, and other computational photographic techniques are where this is headed. It's not that much overhead to render a stereoscopic view from the same dataset. That camera array on the back of your phone is more than capable of hand tracking. Being able to capture "spatial video" is the hook Apple is using to sell their top-of-the-line iPhone 15 Pro Max handsets. You can already achieve this to a degree[^1] with tools like Lifecast[^2], but when Apple throws their billion-dollar marketing chops behind it, you get it integrated into a dominant ecosystem. [^1]: https://holovolo.tv/ https://holovolo.tv/ [^2]: https://www.lifecastvr.com/index.html https://www.lifecastvr.com/index.html

andrewmcwatters 3y ago

No one is making good software for these things. And Meta’s desire to have their own walled garden is reducing the strength of their products.

hacful-tonteg 3y ago

how does the pro version compare to the 2 and 3? would you get pro over this one?

MuffinFlavored 3y ago

Do they have a trade-in program like Apple does for the iPhone/MacBook? New $1k phone, but trade your old one in for $500... not as bad. I doubt there's a market for a bunch of used/refurbished Meta Quest 2s though...

glonq 3y ago
So I might get $20 for my dusty, abandoned Rift S then?

seydor 3y ago

No killer app but the best tech if 2023. will buy

xd1936 3y ago

What's even the point, now that Echo VR is gone? :( https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/31/23580356/meta-shut-down-echo-vr-oculus-quest-arena-ready-at-down https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/31/23580356/meta-shut-down-e...

xDragonSlayerx 3y ago

> DRAM > 8 GB. 33% memory compared with Meta Quest 2, giving you more support to play > your favourite apps with optimal performance. Umm... So they are bragging about how they put in less DRAM?

bottlepalm 3y ago
Probably the biggest disappointment with the Quest 3, but the improved FOV does make up for it.
MikusR 3y ago
Quest 2 had 6

johnfernow 3y ago

As someone who loves VR, I'm not sure at $500 who this headset is for. If you want something cheap but decent, a Quest 2 is a better deal at $300. It'll give you a cordless, hassle-free, console-like experience as a standalone device if that's what you want, or, if you instead want to play graphically intense VR games, you can connect it to a gaming PC and use SteamVR (AirLink, Virtual Desktop, or a USB-C cable.) If you want something high end with a really solid game library so far, the PSVR2 is much better than this at $550 (though requires a PS5.) The Quest 2 had a promising start with several great games coming to it, but then Meta seemingly stopped funding new games and VR ports, and unfortunately SteamVR hasn't had a ton release recently either. Sony, on the other hand, had an incredible starting library for the PSVR2 and plenty more AA and AAA games are releasing soon. Discoverability is also much better on PSVR2 — my friend with the headset has shown me many great games that actually are on the Quest and SteamVR, but I had never seen them before as there are so many more games on Steam and the Quest store (unfortunately most of which aren't good.) Not sure if Sony curates their store better or if it's just that not much shovelware has been made on it yet. In either case, great games exist on all 3 of those platforms, but they're easiest to discover on PSVR2. As others have mentioned, Meta's resources would be better spent bringing games to their existing headset versus creating new ones. I do think that having a more powerful headset would allow more impressive experiences (as is the case with PSVR2), but people aren't going to keep buying their devices if only a handful of impressive games release on them. Nintendo regularly releases underpowered hardware compared to the competition, but they make such great first-party games that they end up selling incredibly well despite their lackluster hardware. The Quest 2 sold very well, and I imagine that games like Resident Evil 4 VR probably convinced many people to buy it (I know at least one person who got it for that game.) The Quest Pro did not sell well, so I'm not sure why they think better hardware but with the same library will convince people to buy new headsets. EDIT: I guess I should have done a bit more searching, as does seem like there are some potentially popular games coming out for the Quest still, such as Assassin's Creed Nexus VR and Attack on Titan VR: Unbreakable. Strange I haven't gotten any ads for it on YouTube, I saw tons of ads for Resident Evil 4 VR for the Quest 2 (as well as some of the Star Wars VR games.)

dmix 3y ago
Quest 2 was underrated one of the best deals in tech in recent history. Easily worth the $300. I got way more enjoyment out of it than I ever expected as a casual gamer. Replaying Resident Evil 4 + the various workout apps like boxing made it worth the price. But I got much more. The beta app store offers a TON of free games still in dev too. https://sidequestvr.com/apps/applab/0/rating https://sidequestvr.com/apps/applab/0/rating

CraigJPerry 3y ago

I haven’t kept up with VR/AR at all but is anyone offering the ability to attend concerts and shows via VR? I’m thinking like some kind of high quality 360 audio/video capture rig sat in a good seat at gigs across the country and I can buy a cheap ticket to attend via VR. It’s obviously never going to beat attending in real life but my use case is more about getting to attend gigs I can’t get to in real life.

mgiampapa 3y ago
They explicitly called out sporting events during the press release, so I would expect that concerts would be easy. They already have gear for court / ring side seats.

jamesfisher 3y ago

"Accept all cookies" just sends me back to the cookie acceptance prompt. Can't view the page content. Chrome on Android.

finikytou 3y ago

random question what is the radioactivity into those vr headsets meta quest 3 and vision pro and what are the impacts of having wifi right on your brain?

unsated 3y ago

I wonder who in audience was cheering for Horizon Worlds getting more features. There are hardly any useful experiences in there. Mostly it's obscenity screaming people, alarmingly often sounding very young.

rldjbpin 3y ago

very interesting to see that they did not talk much about specs besides "oh we got the latest chip" and "our screen and lens are better". standalone vr has its own place, but for enthusiasts, and even some of their own demos, are using the headset with a pc. i would like to know more about what they did to improve that experience. a faster usb-c throughput is a must, so would be improvements with wifi performance. since none of them were mentioned, i am afraid we will be stuck at the same limitations with quest 2 despite working with "better" hardware. rumour mill is talking about a valve contender soon tm (or at least a new headset), which if close in price, might be better suited for many who are ok with cables.

cultofmetatron 3y ago

looks great but I barely even use my quest 2. I think for the money a nintendo switch is a better deal. and I say this as someone who is eagerly awaiting for the apple vision. The biggest use case for me is having a virtual multi monitor setup. there's apps to do that in quest 2 but they just weren't' quite good enough to daily drive.

simonebrunozzi 3y ago

I wrote this blog post "Meta and the Metaverse: a mostly useless big hit" about 2 years ago [0] I don't know if you agree, but it still mostly applies today. What's the killer app? Why do we need this? [0]: https://simon.medium.com/meta-and-the-metaverse-a-mostly-useless-big-hit-f6b938d8983e https://simon.medium.com/meta-and-the-metaverse-a-mostly-use...