Meta Quest 3 will be the next virtual reality viewer from Zuckerberg’s firm and will come next fall anticipating the highly anticipated, Apple’s mixed reality device that is supposed to be the great revulsion in this group of technologies.
Meta has yet to reveal any official details of this development, but Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman claims to have had access to a prototype of a model scheduled for release in October 2023. It will replace the Oculus Quest 2, a device that at the time was the most interesting headset in terms of features/price, but which was launched in 2020 and shows the passing of time.
They say Gurman that Meta Quest 3 is thinner and noticeably lighter than its predecessor, abandoning the use of plastic for cloth straps to hold it to the head. The viewer will be able to function completely standalone, but also connected to a PC through the Oculus Link. Thus, it will run any development compatible with the Rift ecosystem, application or game. Meta is, the company that sells the most VR and the one that has the most software available.
The biggest news will come from camera array. And it is that Meta wants to expand the capabilities of VR and offer a more complete XR device, like the one that Apple is supposed to be developing and that includes mixed reality capabilities. To do this, Meta has completely redesigned the front of the device. Instead of a nondescript-looking gray face, it has three vertical, pill-shaped sensor areas. Left and right mounted color video cameras pass through, which are the ones that allow us to see the world around them. The control panel includes a depth sensor, the first to be mounted on a Quest scope.
The bottom has a volume control and a wheel to adjust the interpupillary distance, or IPD. This is used as a measure to adjust the position of the lens for the best viewing experience. In addition to being able to configure in a greater range the Quest 3 will allow you to adjust the IPD without removing the headphones. That’s a big improvement over the Quest 2, which requires you to remove the headphones and manually move the screens within the device.
The power button and USB-C port are also located on the side of the headphones. Lastly, Gurman says that performance is much better, probably due to a new dedicated SoC from Qualcomm. Price-wise, Meta Quest 3 is expected to be a bit more expensive than version 2, between 400 and 500 dollars, but four to five times cheaper than Apple AR. It is expected that the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase event will serve as a presentation of the new viewer that would be commercialized later in October.
