Meta has introduced the Quest 3, its next-generation AR/VR headset. The announcement by Fb’s father or mother firm comes just some days forward of the anticipated unveiling of Apple’s AR/VR headset on the firm’s Worldwide Builders Convention (WWDC 2023) this coming Monday, June 5. Meta’s Quest 3 will hit cabinets later this 12 months.
Meta says the brand new Quest 3 headset is 40% slimmer than the Quest 2 and can boast a extra snug design. The brand new headset will characteristic a higher-resolution show with as a lot as twice the graphics efficiency of its predecessor, which first debuted in 2020.
The brand new Quest headset can also be the primary to be powered by a next-generation Snapdragon chipset, co-developed by Qualcomm Applied sciences.
The Quest 3 makes use of the TruTouch haptics characteristic that debuted alongside the Contact Professional and can assist customers “really feel the motion like by no means earlier than.” The Quest 3 is appropriate with the Meta Quest Contact Professional Controllers. The headset will help hand monitoring proper out of the field, permitting the usage of the headset with out controllers. It’s additionally anticipated to be backward-compatible with the Quest 2’s lineup of 500+ VR video games, apps, and experiences, together with a number of new VR and MR titles that will probably be prepared when the brand new headset launches.
The Quest 3 is priced fairly a bit cheaper than Apple’s much-rumored AR/VR headset, which is anticipated to start at round $3,000. By comparability, the Quest 3 headset will begin at $500 for the 128GB storage mannequin.
Meta will share extra details about the Quest 3 headset throughout its Meta Join occasion, to be held on September 27.
Quest 2 can also be getting a value drop. As of June 4, the present mannequin will fall as soon as once more to $300 for the 128GB mannequin and $350 for the 256GB model.
Meta additionally has a software program replace within the works for the Quest 2 and Quest Professional GPU and CPU. The replace ought to present as much as a 26% CPU efficiency improve, in addition to an as much as 19% GPU velocity improve for the Quest 2 and 11% GPU increase for the Quest Professional. The replace can even allow Dynamic Decision Scaling for each fashions, which is able to permit video games and apps to make the most of elevated pixel density whereas eliminating dropped frames.
The brand new Quest 3 headset sports activities an all-in-one design. That is in distinction to Apple’s much-anticipated headset, which Bloomberg scribe Mark Gurman says will probably be powered by an exterior battery pack linked completely with a cable. The powerline will sport a proprietary connector to connect to the headset magnetically, however Gurman notes it will likely be firmly linked so it doesn’t disconnect whereas in movement. The round-tipped cable connector will lock into the port by rotating it.
Gurman final week shared a hands-on impression of the Quest 3, noting that he “got here away impressed with the mixed-reality focus of the Quest 3, the much-improved video pass-through capabilities, the sooner efficiency, and the big content material library.”