Meta’s Quest 3 headset arrives on October 10

When you’ve been patiently ready for Meta to place the ending touches on the upgraded Quest 3 VR headset, and even when you’ve been ready impatiently, we’ve got excellent news. The corporate has introduced that the Quest 3 be popping out on October 10, with pre-orders reside out there right now at shops like Finest Purchase. At $499.99 it’s considerably dearer than its predecessors, however nonetheless the most cost effective solution to get into the present technology of VR gaming by far.

The large change for the Quest 3 is the addition of full-color, high-speed cameras to the outside of the casing. Whereas the Quest 2 allowed you to “see” via its monitoring cameras, the low-res, black-and-white image was actually solely helpful for stopping your self from hitting a wall (or catching your folks making impolite gestures whereas your eyes have been lined.) The brand new digital camera setup permits for much extra rapid interplay with the world past your headset, to not point out a brand new give attention to augmented actuality apps and video games.

Different large modifications to the design embrace new hand controllers that don’t want the sensor ring, a 40 % thinner physique enabled by pancake lenses, enhanced 2064×2208 per-eye decision, a larger area of view, louder open-air audio system, and a extra highly effective Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor. (Sure, XR2 Gen 2. Good work, Qualcomm.)

Although it’s primarily designed as a stand-alone system, the Quest 3 may also connect with PCs for gaming with extra highly effective visuals. That functionality, mixed with a low worth, makes the Quest 2 the preferred VR headset on Steam, far outpacing Valve’s personal Index {hardware}.

Meta is betting large on that expanded augmented actuality performance being a win for the Quest 3. And it actually wants one. Regardless of promoting greater than 20 million Quest headsets since buying the Oculus firm and VR expertise, Meta is burning via billions of {dollars} chasing Fb founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse ambitions, which don’t appear to enchantment to anybody else. That’s not an awesome place to be in, particularly with Apple poised to enter the market on the excessive excessive finish with its Imaginative and prescient Professional headset subsequent yr.