What has improved and what is still a problem

It's been six months since our Quest 3 review.

We praised Quest 3 as an excellent VR headset, but sharply criticized its “barely passable” mixed reality. But as with its previous standalone headsets, Meta released a number of system software and developer tool updates in the first six months of Quest 3's release. Here's what they are and how they change our judgment about whether you should buy it.

Mixed Reality is better, but not significantly

Meta is marketing Quest 3 as the “first mainstream mixed reality headset.” Therefore, in our review we sharply criticized the lack of dynamic occlusion and the significant warping geometric distortion of the transit.

In December Meta released the Depth API allowing developers to add dynamic occlusion. However, it requires complex developer integration and is thus not supported in virtually any app so far. Furthermore, the depth map that powers it has very low resolution, leading to some pretty terrible looking results.

UploadVR test API occlusion depth.

The passage was updated earlier this month with improved dynamic range and improved exposure control, making it easier to view physical screens such as monitors and phones. The graininess was also somewhat reduced. However, this all comes at the cost of a slightly darker and less vibrant-looking image. Interestingly, this new passthrough tuning, including the trade-off between darkness and vibrancy, is closer to that of Apple Vision Pro, as we noted in our review of it.

Meta also fixed one of the passthrough complaints in our review: that it didn't appear in all system interfaces and wasn't supported for loading screens. Apps can now be used passthrough on their loading screen and Meta added passthrough to system interfaces such as the lock screen and the power off menu.

These changes may seem a bit minor, but together they allow you to stay in uninterrupted passthrough from about five seconds after you put Quest 3 on until you take it off, making it feel more like a mixed reality headset and less like a VR mixed reality headset. reality poorly addressed.

Meta is too some allow mixed reality apps to turn off the VR-centric safety boundary so you can use the entire space around you, and since then v62 the headset can remember multiple mixed reality rooms, so you don't have to redo setup every time you move to a different room.

Inside-Out Body Tracking has arrived, but it is hardly used

Quest 3 was announced with a major post-launch feature, inside-out upper body tracking (IOBT).

Inside-Out Body Tracking (IOBT) uses Quest 3's side cameras, which face downwards, to track your wrist, elbows, shoulder and torso using advanced computer vision algorithms. It avoids the problems with inverse kinematics (IK) estimated arms, which are often incorrect and feel awkward because the system is just making guesses based on the location of your head and hands. When developers integrate IOBT, you see your arms and toro in their actual position – not an estimate.

IOBT shipped in December. However, four months later, it's still only used by a small handful of standalone apps, including Swordsman VR, Drunkn Bar Fight, and XRWorkout.

The largest use of IOBT currently is in Virtual Desktop, which uses it to emulate worn out Vive Trackers to enable body-tracked avatar movements in the PC VR version of VRChat.

Spatial videos and panoramas are easy to view

Two of Apple Vision Pro's main use cases, viewing panoramas and 3D “spatial videos” captured by your iPhone, are now easily accomplished on Quest 3.

This means you can watch this content on a headset for one-seventh the price of Apple Vision Pro. If you're the kind of person who takes a lot of photos and videos and thoroughly enjoys looking at them and reminiscing, this might even be a reason to buy a headset.

External microphones are supported

When Quest 3 launched, I was initially excited to use it on our computer weekly VR download podcast but found the microphone had the same annoying thing plosives popping issue as Quest Pro, so I'm still using Quest 2.

The v62 update in February brought some improvements to Quest 3's microphone quality, including specifically the issue with the plosives. However, I tested it and found that it's still not good enough for VR download, and still sounds noticeably worse than Quest 2.

In what may be an acknowledgment that the microphone hardware just isn't good enough, the v64 update earlier this month added the ability to use an external microphone on Quest 3 via the USB-C port. This can be a microphone with a USB-C connector or a microphone via a USB-C adapter.

Accessing SteamVR is easier and free

At launch, use of SteamVR will be required using Meta's free (Air) Link feature or purchasing Guy Godin's virtual desktop. Air Link did not support 120Hz refresh rate on Quest 3 and had inferior battery life than Virtual Desktop.

Meta has fixed both link issues in the v62 update in February. But more importantly, Valve has released a free official Steam Link PC VR streaming app on the Quest Store, making it virtually hassle-free to connect directly to SteamVR.

Exclusive offers to be announced

At launch we noticed that while Quest 3 was a much superior headset, Quest 2 still played the same games for $200 less.

That gap widened to $300 in March when Quest 2 was released reduced to $200. But what has also changed is that the first games that will run on Quest 3, but not on Quest 2, have been announced.

Starship Home uses the 3D scene mesh generated by Quest 3 during mixed reality room setup to position virtual objects on your walls and furniture.

Last week Alien: Rogue raid was announced for Quest 3, PlayStation VR2 and PC VR. Survios hasn't said why it won't appear on Quest 2, but it's likely the kind of game that previously wouldn't appear on a standalone headset at all.

The verdict: Quest 3 six months later

Quest 3 is still an excellent VR headset, the headset most people looking for a VR headset should buy, without any significant competition. In fact, the spatial video and panorama support make it a good buy for certain iPhone owners who aren't interested in gaming or fitness.

While Meta has made progress in polishing its mixed reality capabilities, it still suffers from warping passthrough and rare dynamic occlusion, which is why we'd still describe the mixed reality as barely passable.

While Quest 2 has dropped to $200, developers are starting to build around Quest 3's capabilities much more powerful GPU, and graphical updates to existing games have become a common occurrence. And for gaming PC owners: Virtual Desktops new term and the release of Steamlink has made wireless PC VR better and more convenient than ever on a standalone headset.