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Facebook Technology Hardware

Meta Rolls Out Higher-Priced Quest 3 Headset, Just Ahead of Apple's Vision Pro (bloomberg.com) 33

Meta introduced its latest lineup of head-worn devices, staking fresh claim to the virtual- and augmented-reality industry just ahead of Apple pushing into the market. From a report: The company officially unveiled the Quest 3 headset on Wednesday, raising the price by $200 to $500, at its annual Connect developers conference. It also introduced second-generation smart glasses that it developed with luxury sunglass maker Ray-Ban. The Quest 3, which was previewed by Meta earlier this year after Bloomberg published a hands-on review of the device, offers improved performance over the Quest 2 from 2020. It also marks a pivot from VR to mixed reality, which melds virtual and augmented reality.

It's a high-stakes moment for Meta's hardware business. Though the company has dominated VR goggles for years, Apple is poised to release its Vision Pro headset in the coming months, setting up a showdown. Like the Quest 3, the Vision Pro is a mixed-reality headset -- though one with exclusive Apple technology and content. The Vision Pro will have Apple's marketing muscle behind it, but also a much higher price: $3,499. In addition to the competitive pressure, Meta also has struggled to sell consumers on the metaverse -- a collection of interlocking online worlds that make use of its headsets.

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Meta Rolls Out Higher-Priced Quest 3 Headset, Just Ahead of Apple's Vision Pro

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  • I know Apple has a cult following but is anybody even interested in their headset? The thing costs a mint, fails to live up to the promises, and doesn't really offer anything new.

    • Re: Yay Quest 3 (Score:2, Informative)

      by beelsebob ( 529313 )

      It offers multiple new things:

      1. A full computer integrated. This isnâ(TM)t a VR headset, itâ(TM)s a computer with an XR UI.

      2. A full OS integrated. Again - not a VR headset playing second fiddle to a desktop or phone OS, a computer with an OS and UI designed for mixed reality.

      3. An interaction model that assumes youâ(TM)re a lazy fat ass. No lifting your arms up and pointing. No doing grand gestures. No standing l, walking, jumping, running, hiding in trees, ⦠just sit on you

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        1. Every standalone headset, including the meta quest, has a full computer integrated into it.

        2. Every standalone headset, including the meta quest, has an OS integrated into it.

        3. Perfect for when your employer decides to save on rent by confining everyone to work pods [lismark.co.uk] for your twelve hour shift. Plus, meta rolled out virtual offices back in 2020. Almost nobody cared, but surely they'll care if it has an Apple logo on it, right?

        4. Who doesn't like working with motion sickness from looking around at dif

        • It isn't invented until Apple invents it!
        • by k0t0n ( 7251482 )
          UX matters, in oculus you couldn't read text due to the low ppi, current generation headsets seem to finally provide sufficient clarity, obviously apple is priced within distorted reality range, while oculus will be lacking on the top notch components
          • Vision Pro has about 2x the pixels of the Quest 3. Which is a pretty good showing for the Quest 3 considering it's 1/7th of the price. It's not "good enough" territory yet but it's enough of an upgrade compared to 4 years ago that new use cases are becoming viable.
      • This comment is a perfect example of the misinformed bubble that Apple fanboys live in.
        • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

          He even bought in on the spin that lacking VR support is some kind of a feature. Magic Leap beat Apple to selling an overpriced MR only with a walled garden app store years ago. Apple has a few progressive improvements to that technology. Oh my.

          Meanwhile the Quest 3 allows me to spawn a portal into Stranger Things Upside down dimension in my living room and walk through it into an immersive VR experience in that world. There have been a couple prototype sets that did this sort of thing before but nothing ma

          • Still, I hope Apple fans buy a boatload of the apple headsets. Competition and growth into another pool of consumers to feed money into the content ecosystem is a good thing.

            Though you can count on Apple being completely incompatible with the rest of the ecosystem and being totally into their own "not-invented-here syndrom" alternatives.

            i.e.:
            - think incompatible consoles back before everything turned into "a sort of living room small PC". think the added difficulties of making mobile games that must run both on Android (among other: Vulkan for 3D) and iOS (there 3D is Apple's own homegrown API).
            - do not think of it as SteamDeck and other portables merely adding more ways to run

            • by Shaitan ( 22585 )

              I don't expect most content generated for the vision to spill over but I think it'll expand general awareness and acceptance of the technology. And there will be skills carryover so I'd still expect this to provide welfare for MR developers at the least.

              But I'm mostly just trying to be optimistic here.

      • by slazzy ( 864185 )
        Why ⦠j woâ(TM)t fâ(TM) sl â¦hdât f¦x unicode support?
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      You get to experience Job's Reality Distortion Field in 3D.

    • I know Apple has a cult following but is anybody even interested in their headset? The thing costs a mint, fails to live up to the promises, and doesn't really offer anything new.

      Care to provide Citations for any of those Claims (other than the price, which everybody knows)?

  • by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2023 @02:02PM (#63881527) Homepage Journal

    I bought the Quest 2 for a cheap VR set, but the biggest problem aside from the janky framerates when operating as standalone device was the pupillary distance incremented in 5mm steps. So if your pupillary distance isn't on one of the preset scores, your eyes kept straining, trying to focus. I hardly use it because of this. If that isn't fixed, I wouldn't recommend any Meta VR device to anyone

    • More than that, they keep making the software worse.

      All of a sudden I can't resize the ridiculously small default web browser window - it's a static size and all I can do is "move" it forward or backward in the VR space, otherwise known as a locked-aspect scaling.

      What is the fucking point of a web browser in a VR space if I can't scale it to an impressively large (and useable) size? Stop fucking around with stuff that works in order to make it not work please.

    • I also have a Quest 2 and I hardly use mine because there's nothing to do on it. I'll occasionally boot it up, have to figure out which Oculus/Facebook/Meta account my device is associated with and sign into it, poke around the store for a bit, then shut it off. There's only so many rhythm games or tedious task simulators I can tolerate...

    • I had a big problem, or I should say, a narrow problem, because there was no physical adjustment of the IPD, and my eyes are apparently too close together for the lowest software adjustment on the old headset. Had to take mine back. Got pretty painful.

      And with Carmack having left, I sort of lost hope in their management having a clue. Sad.

    • by Scoth ( 879800 )

      It shouldn't be necessary, but you can get/make thin little 3d printed inserts that let it use the in-between settings. Fortunately the middle setting works fine for me but I've had a few friends struggle with it. Hopefully they do fix it.

  • Paywall ? Generally i try not to complain about this since , yeah, newspapers should make money took, but what the heck, this is just a vanilla announcement type article. does it really merit a bloomberg.com only link ?

    How about any of the other 100 sources that aren't paywalled? like TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2023/09... [techcrunch.com]

    https://techcrunch.com/2023/09... [techcrunch.com]

    (actually i'm not sure if TC is paywalled. I can currently read them but don't know if it's meant that way or because of current browser setti

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2023 @02:16PM (#63881559)

    "Though the company has dominated VR goggles for years, ..."

    Oculus, as an independent company. dominated VR goggles for years. Since purchasing Oculus, has FriendFace actually done anything (in terms of hardware) other than coast on Oculus' former success? I know they keep trying to create their own stupid metaverse taking advantage of the hardware platform purchase - but that's pretty obviously been an abject failure.

    • But but but... you can have LEGS in the Metaverse now!

      LEGS!

      Seriously, that's the only announcement that I can remember about Metaverse upgrades. That says something.

    • Well, they keep making the software worse. That's something, I suppose.

    • by nomadic ( 141991 )

      What do you mean they dominated for years? They never put out a VR product until after Meta bought them.

    • Oculus, as an independent company

      False. People seem to forget just how far back this relationship goes. Prior to Meta Oculus dominated the VR market in the same one that kid on the corner dominated the duivelsla market because he's the only person in the world selling a duivelsla and all 5 duivelsla users own that brand of duivelsla (note I made that up;-) ).

      Meta bought Oculus in 2014, back when VR was virtually non-existent. They effectively paid for all R&D, they paid John Carmacks' CTO wage for 8 years. They invested a huge amount o

  • I don't know why people don't talk more about eye tracking. Having used it on the PSVR2, I have to say that it's a game changer. It's almost like it's reading your mind.

    The fact that the Quest 3 doesn't have it is going to be a major oversight.
    • The fact that the Quest 3 doesn't have it is going to be a major oversight.

      No, the oversight is thinking that you need every feature. Meta released a headset with eye tracking, it was a flop, and it was mainly a flop because of the expense. The PSVR2 is not the Quest. It's $50 more for the headset and requires to be tethered to a machine meaning to get anywhere with a PSVR2 you're out of pocket $1050 without even having purchased a game to play.

      A lot of consumers do not think paying $550 more for eye tracking is worth while. If they did, the Quest Pro wouldn't have been the flopta

      • I hear what you're saying. But having used it, I'm saying that Eye Tracking is not just a feature, it's revolutionary. It's not a matter of price. It's like buying a car and saying that "people don't want to pay more for wheels." It will be the thing that makes AR/VR useful/attractive. In fact, I hope that it decouples from AR/VR and replaces the mouse (at least on portable devices like laptops).

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