Another mainstream VR headset is on its way, the long rumoured Meta Quest 3. But with Apple widely expected to reveal their own vision for VR at WWDC this coming week, will the company from Cupertino do what they do best and completely revolutionise the fledging VR industry?
If so, will the Meta Quest 3 be embarrassingly obsolete before it even hits store shelves this autumn?
Meta Quest 3 has several nice upgrades
Compared to the Meta Quest 2, the new third generation headset hosts some hardware refinements. Higher resolution screens teamed with a 2x more powerful Snapdragon GPU should enable higher fidelity graphics and smoother gameplay.
The quality of the experience has also been enhanced. The Quest 3 Touch Plus controllers support improved haptic feedback that should ‘feel more like an extension of your own hand’. Don’t like controllers? Hand tracking will be supported out of the box. The headset itself is 40% slimmer and lighter than the previous model, a major comfort win.
One of the biggest changes though is how Meta Quest 3 handles mixed reality. Meta claim the headset will seamlessly blend the real world with the virtual, allowing players to “navigate that space in natural, intuitive ways that were nearly impossible before. High-fidelity color Passthrough, innovative machine learning, and spatial understanding let you interact with virtual content and the physical world simultaneously…”.
All nice sounding improvements, but we’ll reserve judgment until we’ve actually put one through it’s sweaty paces.
Meta Quest 3 can be had for £500 with 128GB of on board storage when it releases later this year. As you’d expect, Meta Quest 2 is about to get some hefty price cuts.
Apple’s VR debut could make everyone look second rate
Despite the decent specs of the Quest 3, the arrival of Apple into the VR market will be making Meta execs pretty nervous this week.
Apple’s secret VR project has been chugging along for years, according to analysts. And given Apple’s track record when it comes to producing genre defining devices, all eyes will be on WWDC to see just how clever the company has been.
The latest rumours point to a device that uses micro OLED displays with a 4K per eye resolution. The leakers also claim the displays will be capable of a whopping 5000 nits of brightness! The outgoing Meta Quest 2 supports just 100 nits. Ouch.
Still, these are just rumours, and we have no idea as to the physical design of the device, it’s various features nor how its software works. As this is Apple, one thing I’m certain of is a pretty steep price.
What about game support? Well we may have to settle for what Apple considers gaming, which is an elaborate casual experience. After all, driving such high resolutions displays in a AAA title will require a daunting amount of horsepower.
Gamers should ultimately benefit from Apple’s effort
Whatever we get (or don’t) from Apple at WWDC, VR is establishing itself as a popular niche within the gaming industry. With the likes of Meta, HTC, Valve and on console Sony’s PSVR2 all catering to the slowly growing market, an out-of-this-world disruption from Apple will only help push the sector forward.
Let’s just hope Apple’s VR headset isn’t as clunky and uncomfortable as the designs we’ve had to endure so far. That could be the biggest game changer of all.
Are you gonna buy a Meta Quest 3? Or are you waiting to see what Apple does at WWDC? Let me know in the comments.
