For now, I’d expect new games will have an extra layer of polish, while the Quest 2 will get a more basic experience. It doesn’t look like anything will be exclusive to Quest 3 yet, but that could easily change down the line. Quest 3 owners will still have access to the hundreds of games that also work on the Quest 2, but it’s nice to see some new titles arriving alongside fresh hardware. The Kurzgesagt game, Out of Scale, made me feel like I was living inside of one of its gorgeously animated YouTube videos. Red Matter 2 practically looked like a full-fledged PC VR title, thanks to its incredibly detailed textures and character models. The Quest 3’s higher resolution display also makes games look far better than the Quest 2, but I was more impressed by the handful of titles that were optimized for its faster hardware. (Let's just hope that tabletop virtual keyboard that Mark Zuckerberg showed off actually becomes a reality.) A glimpse of the Quest 3's mixed reality view from my family room. Meta still has to work on actually making the Quest's apps more useful though: I could only reply to WhatsApp chats by awkwardly pecking away at the Quest’s virtual keyboard, leaving voice messages or attaching media from the headset. Looking at WhatsApp chats in the headset was no different than on my gaming monitor. It also helps that the Quest 3 makes every virtual element look incredibly sharp. That's not something I’d use a lot, but the fact that I could create this environment, anchor it to a specific point in the real world, and walk around it simply blew me away. Even better, you can move that tray anywhere in your space. You can arrange up to three windowed Quest apps, like WhatsApp and the Quest Store, on a translucent virtual tray that sits in front of you. The Quest 3 also goes beyond just letting you see the real world: You can also do some basic mixed reality multi-tasking. Doing any of those things in the past would have required either completely removing the headset, or flipping up the visor. That's something I ended up using frequently to check on text and Slack messages, grab information from my computer, and chat with people around me. A double tap on the side of the Quest 3 is all it takes to flip between immersive VR and the real world. The Quest 3's attempt at mixed reality is far from perfect – the color cameras deliver a fuzzy and pixelated view of the world, as if you're in a drug-fueled haze.

Trying to accomplish something similar for a fraction of the price seems impossible. Apple's Vision Pro showed us a genuinely promising vision of spatial computing, one where the digital and physical worlds can comfortably coexist. Meta already proved it can make a solid standalone VR headset, but can it really bring mixed reality to everyone? That seems to be the driving force behind the Quest 3. I don't think you'll miss any of the Quest Pro's features – they're potentially cool, but developers haven’t really taken advantage of them. Though, at least they've lost the annoying rings from the Quest 2 gamepads. Perhaps, hands-on demonstrations of the Quest 2 at a Meta Store will be more convincing.Now for what the Quest 3 doesn't have: There's no face or eye tracking, or cameras on the controllers like the Quest Pro. However, most consumers buy a gaming console or a PC. It should be wildly popular since it's the most immersive experience possible. Looking up, down, or spinning around, the VR world is everywhere when wearing a Quest headset. At an incredibly low price of $300, it provides an experience that can't be recreated with even the widest widescreen monitors. However, that is nothing compared to Meta's investment in building the platform.Īt present, the Meta Quest 2 is the leading solution for virtual reality. Of course, plenty of manufacturers would be thrilled with 10 million units sold.

The latest count from Meta supplier Qualcomm placed sales at about 10 million Quest 2 headsets in late 2021. Yet, the number of users is minuscule compared to what will be needed to grow the Metaverse. The Meta Quest 2 headset is much more popular than the original Oculus Quest or the Rift headsets that preceded it.

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