Meta Quest 2

Meta’s Best-selling VR Headset Drops to $250 in Early Holiday Deal

meta quest, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest 3 News & Reviews, Quest 2, quest 2 deal, quest 2 price, quest 3, quest 3 deals / Blake Jones / November 14, 2023

It’s pretty unlikely we’ll see any deals this year on Meta’s latest and greatest VR standalone, Quest 3. Before the holiday season kicks into gear though, the company is dropping the price of Quest 2 to just $250.

Both variants are on sale from now until December 31st, dropping the 128GB version from $300 to $250, and the 256GB version from $350 to $300. It’s a limited-time deal though, so there’ no telling when the company will pull the plug.

Launched in 2020, that puts Quest 2 now at half the price of the new Quest 3, which sells for $500 for the 128GB version and $650 for the 512GB version.

Image courtesy Meta

Thankfully, with Quest 2 you can play every game on the Quest Store today. Granted, it doesn’t have the full-color mixed reality capabilities of Quest 3, but you can rest assured knowing that (at least for now) there are no Quest 3 exclusives to make you too envious. Check out the spec sheet below to get a better idea of how the headsets differ.

You can find the deal on Quest 2 over at Meta.com, but also participating retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, and Target.

And what games can you play on Quest 2? Well, you don’t need a computer—just the headset—to play a host of popular VR titles such as hit rhythm game Beat Saber, battle royale shooter Population: One, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted, Among Us VR, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, NFL PRO ERA—the list of best-selling Quest titles goes on.

You can also hook the headset up to a VR-ready computer to play award-winning games such as Half-Life: Alyx, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR, Lone Echo, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice VR, and more. Make sure your computer is capable first though since PC VR games can be really resource intensive.

So while Quest 2 has everything in the box to get up playing VR games, there are a few pain points that accessories can solve—many of which can be bought from third parties and not Meta itself if you’re looking to save a buck.

Check out the specs below, but also get a look at our Quest 3 review to learn more about what separates Meta’s consumer VR headsets.

Quest 3 vs. Quest 2 Specs
	Quest 3	Quest 2
Resolution	2,064 × 2,208 (4.5MP) per-eye, LCD (2x)	1,832 × 1,920 (3.5MP) per-eye, LCD (1x)
Refresh Rate	90Hz, 120Hz (experimental)	60Hz, 72Hz, 80Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz
Optics	Pancake non-Fresnel	Single element Fresnel
Field-of-view (claimed)	110ºH × 96ºV	96ºH × 96ºV
Optical Adjustments	Continuous IPD, stepped eye-relief (built in)	Stepped IPD, stepped eye-relief (via included spacer)
IPD Adjustment Range	53–75mm	58mm, 63mm, 68mm
Processor	Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2	Snapdragon XR2
RAM	8GB	6GB
Storage	128GB, 512GB	128GB, 256GB
Connectors	USB-C, contact pads for optional dock charging	USB-C
Weight	515g	503g
Battery Life	1.5-3 hours	2–3 hours
Headset Tracking	Inside-out (no external beacons)	Inside-out (no external beacons)
Controller Tracking	Headset-tracked (headset line-of-sight needed)	Headset-tracked (headset line-of-sight needed)
Expression Tracking	none	none
On-board cameras	6x external (18ppd RGB sensors 2x)	4x external
Input	Touch Plus (AA battery 1x), hand-tracking, voice	Touch v3 (AA battery 1x), hand-tracking, voice
Audio	In-headstrap speakers, 3.5mm aux output	In-headstrap speakers, 3.5mm aux output
Microphone	Yes	Yes
Pass-through view	Yes (color)	Yes (B&W)
MSRP	$500 (128GB), $650 (512GB)	$300 (128GB), $350 (256GB)

Meta’s Best-selling VR Headset Drops to $250 in Early Holiday Deal Read More »

New Quest Dev Tools to Add Leg Estimation for More Convincing Avatars

Connect 2023, inside out body tracking, iobt, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, News, quest 2 body tracking, quest 2 legs, quest 3, quest 3 legs, VR Tracking / Ryan Harris / October 3, 2023

Meta announced that it’s offering new developer tools for Quest headsets to make avatars more realistic. The company also unveiled a Quest 3-exclusive upper body tracking feature that supports a much wider range of body motion.

Announced at Connect 2023 late last week, Meta showed off some new features coming both to Quest 3 and the rest of the Quest platform.

On Quest 3, Meta says it will be able to use inside-out sensor data to optically track wrists, elbows, shoulders, and torso—or something the company is calling ‘Inside Out Body Tracking’ (IOBT). The Quest 3-exclusive feature also tracks where your legs are relative to your torso, making avatars capable of bending forward and peering over a cliff.

By using this upper body data to extrapolate lower body actions, the company says it can make avatars replicate more natural movements than traditional inverse kinematics (IK)-based methods.

The company also announced a feature called ‘Generative Legs’, which is headed to Quest 2/3/Pro in December. The developer tool is said to create more realistic leg movement using either three-point body tracking or the Quest 3-exclusive IOBT. It’s capable of recreating more natural standing and sitting poses, a more lifelike gait when walking, and also supports jumping, ducking and squatting.

Since it’s essentially guessing where your legs might naturally be in any given situation, Generative Legs won’t account for individual leg movement like a dedicated tracker might, such as a SteamVR tracking puck or Sony’s Mocapi motion capture device—that means your avatar can’t do karate or breakdance.

Still, it’s pretty impressive how much better the whole system is in comparison to standard IK. Granted, Quest users won’t be able to pull of the fancy footwork CEO Mark Zuckerberg did on the virtual stage at Connect 2022 last year, but it’s starting to look pretty close.

Check out Meta’s Generative Legs and the new Quest 3 upper body tracking feature in action in a Meta-built showcase app called Dodge Arcade:

New Quest Dev Tools to Add Leg Estimation for More Convincing Avatars Read More »

Xbox Cloud Gaming Coming to Quest 3 in December

cloud gaming, Cloud VR, Connect 2023, meta quest, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, quest, Quest 2, quest 3, vr cloud gaming, xbox, xbox cloud gaming, Xbox VR, xbox vr headset / Ryan Harris / September 28, 2023

Meta announced at Connect 2023 that Xbox Cloud Gaming is heading to Quest in December, meaning you’ll be able to play all of your favorite flatscreen games on offer through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

Meta’s full unveiling of Quest 3 yesterday came with a fair bit of news, including specs, price, pre-orders and shipping dates; long story short, you can get Meta’s $500 consumer mixed reality headset starting October 10th, with pre-orders now live.

Sometime in December, Meta says we’ll also get support for Xbox Cloud Gaming on Quest too, which users will be able to use on a virtual screen that can be adjusted and resized.

There’s no specific date yet for when to expect Xbox Cloud Gaming to the Quest platform. On stage, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg only mentioned that it’s “coming to Quest in December,” so it’s possible we’ll see even Quest 2 included in the list of supported hardware in addition to Quest 3 and (presumably) Quest Pro.

As it stands, there are a few standard caveats. Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription and a supported controller (sold separately) is required. Meta says in a blogpost that some streaming limitations may apply as well, including variable server availability and wait times, and geographical restrictions.

Want to know if Quest 3 is worth it? We haven’t gone in for our deep dive review yet, although we got a full hands-on with the headset right before Connect 2023 this week that goes into everything from confort to clarity.

Xbox Cloud Gaming Coming to Quest 3 in December Read More »

Quest Store Revenue Reaches $2 Billion, But Momentum Has Slowed Over the Last Year

connect, Connect 2023, Meta, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, News, Quest 2, quest 2 revenue, quest 3, quest store, quest store revenue / Ryan Harris / September 28, 2023

Coming alongside the big Quest 3 info dump today at Connect 2023, Meta revealed that Quest Store games and apps have generated over $2 billion in revenue. While the store is still earning for developers, looking at revenue over time shows that things have cooled off over the last year.

Meta’s Head of Developer Relations Melissa Brown announced the figure on stage, further noting that 100+ new and upgraded titles are coming to the Quest Store before the year’s end, more than half of which will be brand new games and apps.

While $2 billion sounds like an impressive number—it certainly is for the XR industry at large—it pales in comparison to what Meta regularly spends on its Reality Labs division.

Quest 2 next to Quest 3 | Image courtesy Meta

Back in July, the company reported a quarterly loss just south of $4 billion in Q2 2023; Reality Labs’ revenue was down by 39% due to lower Quest 2 sales, making for the worst quarterly performance in the past two years.

With today’s announcement, it’s also clear at what rate content sales have cooled off since Quest 2 was launched in 2020. The company announced at Connect 2022 in October last year that it had topped $1.5 billion in Quest Store revenue, accounting for everything since the first Quest’s launch in 2019, meaning it’s only managed to generate $500 million in the past 12 months, putting a clear end to any kind of take-off ramp that might have appeared to be forming.

Moving forward, this will undoubtedly put more weight on Quest 3 to fill in where Quest 2 left off, as stockholders will no doubt expect the $500 headset to meet or beat its forebear’s relatively meteoric success. Quest 3 pack in much of the functionality of the $1,000 Quest Pro headset, including color passthrough sensors for mixed reality, and has a significantly sleeker profile and more powerful chipset than the now $300 Quest 2.

Will that be enough for first-time VR users to jump in? Enough for Quest 2 users to upgrade? Whatever the case, Meta is undoubtedly subsidizing its XR hardware to make software sales more attractive. And if it doesn’t keep pumping out first-party titles like Asgard’s Wrath 2, they’ll need at least keep those multi-million-dollar success stories coming, like Gorilla Tag’s $26 million in revenue high-swinging success story, or the other 40 Quest games that Meta said had posted revenues over $10 million.

– – — – –

Connect 2023 kicks off today, taking place September 27th and 28th at Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters. There’s been a ton of news already, so make sure to follow along by heading to our main page for all of the latest in Meta’s XR stuff.

Quest Store Revenue Reaches $2 Billion, But Momentum Has Slowed Over the Last Year Read More »

New Quest Update Reimagines the Landing Page, Once Again Sequestering Your App Library

Feature, Meta Quest 2, meta quest explore, meta quest horizon feed, meta quest interface, meta quest ux, News, opinion, vr friction / Ryan Harris / September 11, 2023

Instead of taking you right to your library of installed apps, Meta is making yet another perplexing change to the Quest landing page in v57.

Since the earliest days of Meta’s VR platform, the company has been seemingly obsessed with not putting your library of VR apps front-and-center.

Instead the first thing you see when you put on a headset from the company, or launch its companion smartphone app, is some kind of dynamic ‘feed’ with content you weren’t looking for in the first place.

The Ever Changing ‘Explore’ Page

For a long time when putting Quest on your head Meta made you look at ‘Explore’, an algorithmically-curated assortment of disparate content that was not your library of installed apps.

The current Explore landing page | Photo by Road to VR

Seemingly forever unhappy that people don’t love the Explore page, Meta has constantly reimagined it over the years, changing the layout what seems like every six months. I swear every time I’m finally used to it, it changes.

And once again, it will change.

In the newest Quest v57 update Meta is replacing the Explore landing page with a new and freshly confusing ‘Horizon Feed’, which is also not your library of installed apps.

Sensibly, you might think the Horizon Feed would contain only content from Horizon Worlds, acting as a sort of portal for you to jump into the company’s miniverse. But no, apparently in Horizon Feed you’ll find all manner of games, apps, and of course, Reels!

The new Horizon Feed landing page | Image courtesy Meta

Yes, Reels… the company’s short-form 2D video content that’s designed for quick and casual viewing on a smartphone. Certainly when I put on my headset that’s what I want to see—not my library of installed apps.

Below the Fold

Even the headset’s companion smartphone app, the ‘Meta Quest’ app, doesn’t want to make it easy to access your library of installed apps. Instead, the first thing you see when you launch the app is a smattering of algorithmically-curated content—a feed of course—that you weren’t looking for when you put your headset on in the first place.

Did you know that you can actually remotely launch VR apps on Quest right from the smartphone app? It’s incredibly convenient.

Or it could be, but most people don’t even know that’s possible because to even find your library of installed apps you need to launch the smartphone app, click ‘Menu’ (the last option on the toolbar), then scroll down below the fold to finally find ‘My Library’. Counting from the top of the page, it’s the 17th item down the list of Menu items. It has moved progressively further and further down the page down the years.

Those apps you hand-picked, bought, and installed? Oh yeah, they’re down here on the last page.

Literally ‘Parental Supervision’ and ‘Help and Support’ are placed higher on the list than your library of installed apps.

Does Meta really think that Parental Supervision (something which doesn’t even apply to many users), and Help and Support (how often do you think people need help for this product), should be easier to reach than the user’s library of installed apps?

Feed Me

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Meta has an obsession with algorithmically-curated feeds. It’s the thing that defines the company’s core products (ie: Facebook, Instagram), and small changes to their feed algorithm can have major influence over how long people stay on those platforms and how much they engage.

But here’s the core problem with Meta’s feed obsession. While casual and even mindless scrolling is the norm on smartphones—devices which can be engaged and disengaged with in a matter of seconds—this couldn’t be further from the truth for VR headsets.

Anyone putting on a VR headset already has a damn good reason to bother putting it on in the first place.

They already know what they want to do; getting between them and that thing is just compromising the user experience. If you want to hit them with a feed, do it after they’re done with the thing they intended to do in the first place. And while you’re at it… maybe instead of hiding their library of installed apps—you know, the content they hand-picked and paid for—why not make it easier for the user to launch them in the first place so it’s easier for them to return?

Now of course people at Meta are reading this and saying ‘we’ve got all these stats that show that people really click on the stuff in the feed!’ I’m sure you do… and it’s because that’s the thing you’re constantly putting in front of their face.

Metrics will lead you astray if you aren’t measuring the right things. You’d better believe that friction—the process of putting on the headset and getting to the thing you actually want to do—is and has long been one of VR’s biggest issues. If that’s not what you’re optimizing for (these feeds certainly aren’t) then you’re just crippling the overall user experience.

It’s the people that don’t come back to the headset that you should be most carefully observing, not looking to see if you can steer someone to a different piece of content after they’ve already decided to put the headset on.

Vision Pro shows your apps right when you put on the headset… how novel | Image courtesy Apple

Standing in stark contrast to Meta’s approach is Apple Vision Pro. When you put on the headset, what’s the very first thing you see? Your library of installed apps.

New Quest Update Reimagines the Landing Page, Once Again Sequestering Your App Library Read More »

Meta Avatars Finally Get Legs on Quest

horizon worlds, horizon worlds avatars, IK, inverse kinematics, Meta, meta avatars, meta horizon worlds, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, metaverse, News, Social Virtual Reality, Social VR / Ryan Harris / August 29, 2023

Meta released a Quest software update via its public test channel (PTC), which lets users opt-in to try new features before they’re pushed out to everyone. Among the v57 PTC update is a feature that’s been notably missing from Meta avatars: legs.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised at Connect 2022 that its avatars would eventually be getting legs, putting an end to the platform’s characteristic floating torsos at some point in the not-too-distant future. At the time, Zuckerberg showed off his on-stage avatar jumping and kicking, although it was revealed later this was actually created using some fairly common external motion capture tech.

In short, Quest can’t track legs yet, which means the v57 PTC update is packing a pretty standard implementation of inverse kinematics (IK), resulting in the sort of body positioning guesswork you see in apps like VR Chat. Still, nice to see a full body in Quest Home for once, right?

X (formerly Twitter) user Lunayian shows off the new avatar legs after installing the v57 PTC update.

Meta Quest v57 PTC finally adds legs to your Meta avatar 😀 pic.twitter.com/3dzuuppp6e

— Luna (@Lunayian) August 29, 2023

YouTuber and tech analyst Brad Lynch also tried out the new legs, showing off some of the limitations currently. Notably, you won’t see your avatar’s legs when looking down directly at them—they’re only viewable via the mirror, and ostensibly by other users—and the IK system still doesn’t account for crouching.

According to data mined by X user NyaVR, the v57 PTC update also includes the ability to enable and disable the avatar mirror, a new Horizon Worlds Portal in home, an Airplane Mode, and an Extended Battery Mode.

The comes alongside a wider push to attract more users to Horizon Worlds, as Meta recently took its first steps of ending Quest-exclusivity for the social VR app with the launch of a closed beta on Android mobile devices. It’s also set to arrive on standard PC browsers too at some point.

Additionally, Meta seems to also be investing more in first-party content for Horizon Worlds, having released Super Rumble late last month, a hero shooter which feels more in line with the sort of sticky content that ought to attract and bring users back more regularly.

We’re sure to learn more about Quest software features and Horizon Worlds stuff at the company’s annual Connect developer conference, which takes place September 27th.

Meta Avatars Finally Get Legs on Quest Read More »

Meta Shows Off Quest Hand-tracking Improvements, Claims “almost as responsive as controllers”

hand tracking, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, News, quest 3, quest hand-tracking, Quest Pro / Mike M. / August 24, 2023

Apple is going all-in with hand-tracking for its upcoming Vision Pro, but can hand-tracking really replace proper VR controllers? Meta, Apple’s main competitor in the space, isn’t going so far as to make that particular claim, however the company says Quest’s recent hand-tracking improvements are now “almost as responsive as controllers” thanks to its recent v56 software update.

First announced in late July, the company’s Hands 2.2 tracking improvements are introducing what Meta says is better hand responsiveness and a few new experimental features that we’ll probably see in Quest 3.

Now rolling out to Quest headsets, Meta says users should notice hand-tracking latency reduced “up to 40%” in regular use, and “up to 75%” during fast movement. Meta says those dramatic gains in fast movement latency are thanks to the introduction of a new Fast Motion Mode (FMM) for more frenetic games, like fitness and rhythm games that require you to punch incoming objects.

Here’s a look at controllers relative to the new Hands 2.2 release:

v56 is also rolling out to Quest Pro, which includes two new experimental features: simultaneous hands and controllers (Multimodal) tracking, and controller-driven hand pose (Capsense Hands).

Multimodal tracking is said to unlock a number of mixed input style, including Hand+controller gameplay, instant transitions between hands and controllers, and improved social presence when using one controller. It’s only available on Quest Pro for experimentation, although Meta plans to add support for additional devices later.

On the other hand, Capsense Hands lets developers show a natural hand model visualization on top of, or instead of, a user’s controller. Check out both in action in the video below:

“Hand Tracking gives your app’s users the ability to engage with their VR or mixed reality environment in a way that is natural and intuitive,” Meta says in a developer blogpost. “These interactions deepen the immersive experience and help people feel more connected to what’s going on around them in-headset. Hands can also provide a faster on ramp for users new to VR. By integrating Hand Tracking in your existing apps, you can give your users more flexibility to tailor their experience and find what works best for them—and thanks to Hands 2.2, you can feel confident knowing your app’s users will enjoy a great experience regardless of whether they play with hands or controllers.”

Meta says we should hear more about its hand-tracking upgrades in the near future, as the company is hosting its annual Meta Connect developer conference on September 27th, which ought to include an info dump (and likely release date) for its upcoming Quest 3 headset, which is bringing much of the functionality of Quest Pro to the consumer price point of $500.

Meta Shows Off Quest Hand-tracking Improvements, Claims “almost as responsive as controllers” Read More »

Meta’s XR Revenue Down 39% “due to lower Quest 2 sales,” as Quest 3 & Vision Pro Loom

apple vision pro, Meta, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, meta reality labs, meta revenue, meta xr revenue, News, Quest 2, quest 3, reality labs, reality labs q2 2023, reality labs revenue, VR Industry / Mike M. / July 28, 2023

Meta’s latest quarterly results show its Reality Labs XR division is again reporting an operating loss just south of $4 billion. Now, for its Q2 2023 results, the company says Reality Labs’ revenue was down by 39% due to lower Quest 2 sales, making for the worst quarterly performance in the past two years.

Meta has been clear about its plan to spend aggressively on XR over the next several years, so it’s again no surprise we’re seeing operating budgets in the billions with only a fraction of that coming back in via Quest 2 hardware and software sales.

In fact, Quest 2 sales play such an important role in Reality Labs’ quarterly performance that Meta has reported $276 million in revenue in Q2 2023, or 39% lower than last quarter.

Meta reported that Reality Labs expenses were $4 billion, which was up 23% since the same period last year. The company says this was due to lapping a reduction in Reality Labs loss reserves and growth in employee-related costs, bringing the XR division’s operating loss to $3.7 billion for Q2 2023.

Meta says it expects continued operating losses in the future, saying losses will likely “increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in AR/VR and our investments to further scale our ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, the company is preparing to launch Quest 3 in late 2023, the $500 follow-up headset that integrates many of Quest Pro’s mixed reality capabilities. Meta’s $1,000 Quest Pro has also reportedly been discontinued, however (without substantiating that particular claim) Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth implied earlier this month that a Quest Pro 2 isn’t off the table.

Apple’s Vision Pro is also looming, set to launch sometime next year. As rising tides lift all boats, hype around Vision Pro could actually benefit Meta in the short term. Apple’s $3,500 XR headset has attracted new attention to the space, however Meta’s consumer-friendly pricing and extensive game catalogue for Quest 3 may be well positioned this holiday to capitalize on that Apple-adjacent cachet.

Meta’s XR Revenue Down 39% “due to lower Quest 2 sales,” as Quest 3 & Vision Pro Loom Read More »

Meta Releases Anti-piracy Tools for Quest Devs, Including Hardware-based App Bans & More

anti-piracy, hardware app bans, Meta, meta quest, Meta Quest 2, News, piracy, quest hack, quest piracy, VR Hardware, vr piracy, vr security / Blake Jones / July 28, 2023

Meta announced it’s introducing new anti-piracy measures for Quest developers that the company says will protect VR apps from “unauthorized modifications and potential security breaches.”

Called the Platform Integrity Attestation API (Attestation API), Meta says its new system is designed to detect whether an app’s server is interacting with an untampered VR device, thereby ensuring whether an app is authentic or not.

The Attestation API includes things like secure device authentication, hardware-based app bans, protection of financial and enterprise app data, prevention of external data misuse, and other anti-piracy measures.

In a developer blogpost, Meta calls it “increasingly important to instill a consistent method for validating the integrity of apps in order to provide a secure and safe user experience for everyone.”

It remains to be seen what effects this will have on modding communities, since modders for Quest games such as Beat Saber may inadvertently run afoul of the new token system at the core of the Attestation API.

“Once integrated, the API will provide you with an ‘attestation token,’ which you can use to determine if an app running on a Meta device has been tampered with,” Meta says. “This token is cryptographically signed by the Attestation Server to reinforce the security and reliability of the attestation process.”

At the time of this writing, we have not yet received a response for comment from Meta on what effects it may have on those communities. We’ll update this piece when/if we do.

Meta is allowing developers to opt-in now for their Quest apps, which spans Quest 2, Quest Pro, and the upcoming Quest 3, which is slated to launch in late 2023. Meta has published documentation for both Unity and Native.

Meta Releases Anti-piracy Tools for Quest Devs, Including Hardware-based App Bans & More Read More »

Meta Launches Monthly VR Game Subscription Service for Quest

Meta, meta quest, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, meta quest plus, Meta Quest Pro, News, quest, Quest 2, quest 3, quest game subscription, quest plus, Quest Pro, quest subscription / Ryan Harris / June 27, 2023

Meta today announced a new VR game subscription service that will give you access to two hand-picked Quest games per month, priced at $8 per month, or $60 annually.

Called Meta Quest+, the subscription service will be available to Quest 2, Quest Pro and eventually Quest 3 users.

Similar to PlayStation’s PS Plus service, Meta is offering up two specific redeemable titles on the first of each month which you can download and keep for as long as you’re a paid member.

Meta says members can cancel at any time, which would mean you’d lose access to each game you redeemed, although the company says rejoining allows you to gain access to those previously redeemed titles.

The service is kicking off in July with Cloudhead Games’ physical action-rhythm FPS Pistol Whip and the nostalgia-fueled arcade adventure Pixel Ripped 1995 from ARVORE Immersive Experiences.

August is set to have Mighty Coconut’s highly-rated Walkabout Mini Golf and FPS roguelite MOTHERGUNSHIP: FORGE from Terrible Posture Games.

Meta Quest+ is set to cost $8 per month, or billed for $60 annually, a 37% savings over the monthly charge. You can learn more and also sign up here.

Meta says Quest+ titles are eligible for App Sharing across accounts, although if you happen to already own any of the games on offer monthly, you’ll just have to stick around to see whether something comes up that you don’t already own.

To sweeten the pot, the company is doing a deal for July that reduces the first month’s charge to $1, which is then followed by the regular $8 per month. That specific offer ends July 31st, 2023.

While Quest+ has been the subject of rumors for the past few months, it wasn’t clear which route the company would go—whether it would be a Viveport-style affair that allows you to pick from a pool of eligible games, or what they revealed today, a highly curated system like PS Plus. It’s an interesting route which could signal they’re expecting a substantial raise in new users in the coming months, as the company is set to launch its $500 Quest 3 headset September 27th, 2023, which has come along with a price reduction of Quest 2 to the original $300 price point.

Meta Launches Monthly VR Game Subscription Service for Quest Read More »

New Quest 2 & Quest Pro Update Brings Performance Boost and New Home Environments

Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, News, Quest 2, quest 2 performance update, quest 2 updates, quest 3, Quest Pro, quest pro performance update, quest pro updates / Ryan Harris / June 22, 2023

Meta says it’s has begun pushing out a software update which will bring some pretty profound performance boosts to both Quest 2 & Quest Pro.

Update (June 21st, 2023): Meta says Quest update v55 is now starting to roll out to Quest 2 & Quest Pro users. The company is promising the update will deliver a significant boost to the devices’ performance which should make the VR experience smoother overall while allowing apps to render at somewhat higher resolutions.

Update v55 also includes a standalone Messenger app and a revamped ‘Explore’ tab (which now shows Reels from Instagram and Facebook, if your accounts are connected). The update also adds multi-touch capability to the in-headset browser for hands-on zooming of web pages.

And last but not least, users will find two new home environments for their headset. The first is ‘Futurescape’, which was the backdrop of this year’s Quest Gaming Showcase; the second is ‘The Great Sand Sea’, which is exclusively available to users who have pre-ordered Asgard’s Wrath 2.

As ever, Meta advises that these updates roll out gradually to the population of headset users, so if you don’t see it right away you might need to wait a little longer.

The original article, which covered the update’s performance improvements, continues below.

Original Article (June 1st, 2023): Meta unveiled Quest 3 today, its next consumer-focused headset slated to launch in fall starting at $500. Quest 3 is going to be more powerful than Quest 2 by a good margin; the company says it has “more than twice the graphical performance as the previous generation Snapdragon GPU in Quest 2.”

Now the company says it’s tossing out a software update to both Quest 2 and Quest Pro chipsets that will provide up to 26% CPU performance increase for both. As for the headsets’ GPUS, we’re told to expect up to 19% GPU speed increase for Quest 2 and 11% for Quest Pro.

“As developers take advantage of these changes, you can expect smoother gameplay, a more responsive UI, and richer content on both headsets,” the company says in a blogpost. “And we’re enabling Dynamic Resolution Scaling for both Quest 2 and Quest Pro, so games and apps can take advantage of increased pixel density without dropping frames.”

The company hasn’t said just when to expect the update, but we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled on Meta blog and social channels in the coming days. In the meantime, check out all of our Quest 3 coverage so far which has come right ahead of the big Quest Gaming Showcase kicking off today:

New Quest 2 & Quest Pro Update Brings Performance Boost and New Home Environments Read More »

Quest 3 Features Confirmed in First Hands-on

hands on with quest 3, Meta Quest 2, Meta Quest 3, Meta Quest Pro, News, quest 3, quest 3 features, quest 3 hands-on / Ryan Harris / May 29, 2023

It seems Meta is looking to stoke some hype for its next Quest headset just days before Apple is slated to unveil its own, as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman released Quest 3’s first hands-on, confirming a number of features from previous leaks in the process.

Gurman detailed a number of features in his hands-on with the upcoming mixed reality headset, saying that Quest 3 feels lighter and thinner than the Quest 2, featuring a stronger strap with fabric sides.

Like we’ve seen in previous renders, Quest 3 is said to feature three vertical “pill-shaped sensor areas” on the front of the device. On the left and right are color video pass-through sensors and standard cameras, while a depth sensor is placed in the middle, which is used for environment meshing and automatic identification of surrounding walls.

Tracking cameras are found on both left and right bottom sides of the device, departing from Quest 2’s four-sensor array placed on each corner of the headset. Sounds pretty similar to the image featured in a previous leak from Bradely Lynch.

Quest 3 is said to come with a physical interpupillary distance (IPD) adjustment wheel next to the volume rocker which will allow users to dial in a finer IPD measurement. As a departure from its Quest Pro-esque feature set, Quest 3 is said to lack face and eye-tracking, which means none of the lauded ‘social presence’ features or foveated rendering.

Notably, Gurman says the actual clarity and VR displays within the Quest 3 feel “similar to those in the Quest 2 — despite the resolution being rumored to be slightly higher.” It seems Quest 3’s claim to fame will be its color mixed reality passthrough and faster performance thanks to a second-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2.

“[V]ideo pass-through on the Quest 3 presented colors more accurately and offered an almost lifelike rendering of the real world. I was even able to use my phone while wearing the headset, something that often feels impossible on a Quest 2,” Gurman says.

There’s no mention of optics, or whether it will indeed use pancake lenses like Quest Pro or a Fresnel lens like Quest 2.

From Gurman’s description, it seems Touch controllers aren’t getting the Pro-level design either, as they appear to be optically tracked by the headset via IR markers à la Quest 2. It’s said to lack both Quest Pro’s embedded controller sensors and Quest 2’s hoop-style tracking design, which could be interesting.

Pricing for the Quest 3 isn’t finalized, however it’s expected to be higher than the Quest 2 at around $500. Meta is also expected to concurrently offer Quest 2, making for the widest headset lineup the company has ever offered at one time.

Gurman says Meta is set to target the cheaper headset segment while Apple targets the upscale market with its reported $3,000 mixed reality device. While Apple’s headset is expected to make its debut on June 5th, Gurman says Meta is bringing Quest 3 in October.

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