What’s the most popular PC-based virtual reality headset? If you said the Valve Index, you’re wrong: it’s the Meta Quest 2. Yes, the stand-alone, wireless headset from Facebook’s parent company is by far the most popular option, even for gamers who just want something to connect to a PC, because it’s cheap and has tons of tools for doing so. That means the new, just-announced Meta Quest 3 will probably take its place when it arrives later this year.
The Quest 2 was a gentle revision from the original design, more focused on the ecosystem than the hardware. That’s not the case with the Quest 3. Even with the short preview video posted by Meta, we can see it’s inheriting a ton of advanced hardware and capability from the much more expensive Quest Pro. The Quest 3 will feature a new Snapdragon processor with “double the GPU power,” higher-resolution displays, new controllers with more advanced haptics and without the sensor rings, and a 40 percent thinner build. Those last two points should make it a lot easier to throw on for a quick session, to say nothing of travel.
But perhaps the biggest change is full-color pass-through cameras with depth sensors, enabling the Quest 3 to function as a full augmented reality set as well as VR. The Quest 2 had pass-through camera functionality, but it was sort of bootstrapped onto the motion and position sensor system, limited to choppy black-and-white video just to let you walk around a room without tripping over an ottoman like Dick Van Dyke. The new system is fully capable of AR gaming…the better to compete with Apple’s much-rumored AR system, no doubt.
Meta
Though Meta didn’t show it, presumably the Quest 3 will preserve the ability to connect to a local gaming PC, either wirelessly or via USB-C, and play PC VR games through Steam VR or Quest’s proprietary store. Despite raising the price significantly to $500, it’ll still be the cheapest new VR system around, and won’t require the extra dedicated room sensors of Valve and HTC’s hardware. If you’re looking for an even cheaper solution, the older Quest 2 is getting a discount to $300 for the base model — which is technically just a return to its original retail price.
The Quest 3 will get a more thorough technical breakdown before its release, sometime in the fall of 2023.