The long rumored Meta Quest 3 virtual and mixed reality headset was announced today by Mark Zuckerberg, just four days ahead of the awaited unveiling of Apple's AR headset.
The Meta Quest 3 ships this Fall at $499 with 128GB of storage, with a pricier option featuring more storage to be detailed on September 27th during the next Meta Connect event.
Meta is calling this the most powerful headset they've ever created. It'll be powered by a next-generation Snapdragon chipset created in partnership with Qualcomm that is said to deliver over twice the performance of the GPU available in the Quest 2.
Additionally, the Meta Quest 3 has been redesigned to be more comfortable and much thinner, thanks to a 40% reduced optic profile (without the foam facial interface).
The Touch Plus controllers have received ergonomic improvements, too. The outer tracking rings have been removed thanks to the new headset's more advanced tracking technology, improving the feeling of the controllers as extensions of your hands in the virtual space.
The TruTouch Haptics tech originally debuted in the Touch Pro controllers is also available in the Meta Quest 3's Touch Plus controllers. Triggers and thumb haptics feedback provide an increased sensation of interactivity with the virtual worlds. Thanks to Direct Touch technology, hand tracking is also natively supported, allowing users to explore even without controllers.
Moreover, the Meta Quest 3 is poised to offer a much improved mixed reality experience thanks to dual 4MP RGB color cameras, a depth sensor for a more accurate representation of the mixed reality play space, and 10x more pixels in Passthrough compared to the Quest 2.
The Meta Quest 3 is backward compatible with the entire Quest 2 library of over 500 games, applications, and experiences. Speaking about the Quest 2, there are some exciting news for the previous headset as well.
From June 4th, its pricing will be lowered to $299 for the 128GB version and $349 for the 256GB version. Moreover, an upcoming software update is poised to improve the performance of both Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets.
According to Meta's benchmarks, the CPU performance in either headset will improve by up to 26%, while GPU performance will increase by up to 19% for the Quest 2 and up to 11% for the Quest Pro. Last but not least, Dynamic Resolution Scaling (DRS) is being added to both headsets, allowing games and applications to increase pixel density without dropping frames at critical times.
