Thomas Van Bouwel, the developer behind popular VR puzzle game Cubism (2020), is nearing launch of the long-teased mixed reality game for Quest that turns your living room into a moving grid of lasers straight out of Mission Impossible.
Update (October 3rd, 2023): Van Bouwel announced Laser Dance is coming to Quest sometime next year. There’s no release window yet, however users looking to get early access can become beta testers. The developer hasn’t confirmed precisely which headset the game is coming to, so we’ll just have to stay tuned. We’ve altered the original article to reflect this, and have put the change in bold.
Check out the new teaser below to see Laser Dance in action:
Original Article (October 24th, 2022): Called Laser Dance, the Quest game aims to turn any room of your house into a laser obstacle course—basically recreating the old laser hallway trope you may recognize from a ton of films, TV shows and video games over the years.
There’s no word on release dates yet, although progress is looking good. Check out a work-in-progress level of Laser Dance in action:
Van Bouwel came up with the idea over the two-day Global Game Jam 2022 earlier this year, and has since fleshed out the game to include parametrically-generated laser patterns based on room size and layout, meaning the action should dynamically fit to your space and serve up a challenge no matter how big (or cluttered) your space.
Although the game has been shown working with Quest 2’s monochrome passthrough, Laser Dance wouldn’t be out of place on Meta Quest Pro, which is capable of more realistic passthrough AR thanks to its five external sensors, offering a higher resolution color view with improved depth-detection. Van Bouwel however hasn’t confirmed which Quest headset the game will support at this time.
We’re looking forward to learning more about Laser Dance, as Van Bouwel is excellent at creating deceptively simple gameplay that really makes you think—look no further than Cubism, which has also kept lock-step with passthrough and hand-tracking updates on Quest since its initial launch in 2020. If you want to follow along with progress on Laser Dance, check out the game’s official Twitter.
Less than 48 hours after Meta fully unveiled Quest 3, John Carmack, legendary programmer and former CTO of Oculus, expressed doubts about mixed reality’s ability to increase headset sales.
Carmack departed Meta late last year, concluding what he called at the time his “decade in VR.” Still, it’s clear the key cohort in Oculus’ genesis story has a lot to offer when it comes to all things XR.
While Carmack doesn’t mention Quest 3 by name, it’s fairly clear he’s talking about Meta’s first consumer mixed reality headset, having tweeted a message of skepticism about the headset-selling power of MR apps:
“I remain unconvinced that mixed reality applications are any kind of an engine for increasing headset sales. High quality pass through is great, but I just don’t see applications built around integrating rendering with your real world environment as any kind of a killer app. I consider it interesting and challenging technology looking for a justification. The power of VR is to replace your environment with something much better, not to hang a virtual screen in your real environment. In all the highly produced videos demonstrating the MR future, the environments are always stylish, clean, and spacious. That is not representative of the real world user base. There is certainly some value in the efforts, but I have always thought there was much more low hanging fruit to be grabbed first.”
Photo by Road to VR
In a follow-up tweet, Carmack maintains he’s not criticizing the future of augmented reality, but rather how MR-capable VR headsets are being served up today:
“I am specifically talking about MR in todays [sic] VR headsets. The magical, all-day wear, full FOV AR headsets of people’s dreams would be great, but they don’t exist, even in labs with billions of dollars.”
Meta announced relatively few MR games for Quest 3 at its full unveiling last week, emphasizing that 50+ new VR games are coming by the end of this year, many of which will feature “MR features” of some sort.
Still, increasing headset sales to rival Quest 2 ought to be a big focus for Meta, as the company revealed at Connect 2023 that it had just broken $2 billion in Quest game and app revenue to date.
While impressive, it signifies a dramatic slowing of content sales over the past year, putting Quest 3 in the metaphorical hot seat to continue the upward trend if Meta intends on defending its $4 billion-per quarter investments in its Reality Labs XR division.
Bigscreen announced its thin and light PC VR headset, Bigscreen Beyond, is facing delays in production, which the company says will see shipping dates for initial preorders pushed later into October and November.
Bigscreen CEO Darshan Shankar says in a blogpost that manufacturing bottlenecks have led to slower-than-expected production rates, making for what the company calls “approximately 25% of the target [production] rate” in some bottlenecks than previously projected.
Bigscreen says around 20% of US-based pre-orders initially quoted for a Q3 shipping window will be shipped by next week, with the rest expected to be completed by November. Most of those Q3 pre-orders were made in February, which was the company’s “biggest month of sales.”
“The remaining 80% will take another 2-7 weeks to ship. We aim to complete all Q3 preorder shipments by November 6-November 19,” Bigscreen says, noting it will reach “full capacity” production by November.
Meanwhile, the company says more recent pre-orders given a tentative Q4 shipment date are still on track, which includes both US and international orders. Here’s the proposed schedule moving forward:
Image courtesy Bigscreen
Bigscreen details a number of issues that contributed to the delays, including important calibration machines lost in customs on the way to a China-based parts supplier, and being out of stock of certain IPDs as they await additional headsets and parts to be produced.
“We’re taking this seriously,” Bigscreen CEO Darshan Shankar explains. “Solving these bottlenecks requires significant effort with multiple flights to China and our team in California working until 5AM. To ensure we improve our manufacturing and calibration bottlenecks, I will personally remain on-site at our factories in China for the next month to ensure ramp up goes smoothly. In addition to these new machines, we will begin a second night shift at our factories to improve production. We’ve also doubled the size of our LA factory team in the past 2 months.”
The tiny SteamVR headset sets itself apart from the competition by offering a much lighter and compact design than traditional PC VR headsets. It does this by including high-resolution microOLEDs, pancake lenses, outside-in SteamVR tracking, and a custom facepad made specially for each customer to insure zero light leakage. Check out our review of Bigscreen Beyond to learn more, and hear our full impressions about what has undoubtedly become a pioneer in VR headset design.
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.
Image courtesy Meta
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:
Meta Quest 3 brings with it new ‘Touch Plus’ controllers that do away with the tracking ring that’s been part of the company’s 6DOF consumer VR controllers ever since the original Rift. But that’s not the only change.
Editor’s Note: for some clarity in this article (and comments), let’s give some names to all the different 6DOF VR controllers the company has shipped over the years.
Rift CV1 controller: Touch v1
Rift S controller: Touch v2
Quest 1 controller: Touch v2
Quest 2 controller: Touch v3
Quest Pro controller: Touch Pro
Quest 3 controller: Touch Plus
6DOF consumer VR controllers from Meta have always had a ‘tracking ring’ as part of their design. The ring houses an array of infrared LEDs that cameras can detect, giving the system the ability to track the controllers in 3D space.
Image courtesy Meta
Quest 3 will be the first 6DOF consumer headset from the company to ship with controllers without a tracking ring; the company is calling new controllers ‘Touch Plus’.
Tracking Coverage
In a session at Meta Connect 2023, the company explained it has moved the IR LEDs from the tracking ring into the faceplate of the controller, while also adding a single IR LED at the bottom of the handle. This means the system has less consistently visible markers for tracking, but Meta believes its improved tracking algorithms are up to the challenge of tracking Touch Plus as well as Quest 2’s controllers.
Note that Touch Plus is different than the company’s Touch Pro controllers—which also don’t have a tracking ring—but instead use on-board cameras to track their own position in space. Meta confirmed that Touch Pro controllers are compatible with Quest 3, just like Quest 2.
Meta was clear to point out that the change in camera placements on Quest 3 means the controller tracking volume will be notably different than on Quest 2.
The company said Quest 3 has about the same amount of tracking volume, but it has strategically changed the shape of the tracking volume.
Notably, Quest 3’s cameras don’t capture above the head of the user nearly as well as Quest 2. But the tradeoff is that Quest 3 has more tracking coverage around the user’s torso (especially behind them), and more around the shoulders:
This graphic shows unique areas of tracking coverage that are present on one headset but not the other
Meta believes this is a worthwhile tradeoff because players don’t often hold their hands above their head for long periods of time, and because the headset can effectively estimate the position of the controllers when outside of the tracking area for short periods.
Haptics
Photo by Road to VR
As for haptic feedback, the company said that “haptics on the Touch Plus controller are certainly improved, but not quite to the level of Touch Pro,” and further explained that Touch Plus has a single haptic motor (a voice coil modulator), whereas Touch Pro controllers have additional haptic motors in both the trigger and thumbstick.
The company also reminded developers about its Meta Haptics Studio tool, which aims to make it easy to develop haptic effects that work across all of the company’s controllers, rather than needing to design the effects for the haptic hardware in each controller individually.
Trigger Force
Touch Plus also brings “one more little secret” that no other Touch controller has to date: a two-stage index trigger.
Meta explained that once a user fully pulls the trigger, any additional force can be read as a separate value—essentially a measure of how hard the trigger is being squeezed after being fully depressed.
What’s Missing From Touch Pro
Meta also said that Touch Plus won’t include some of the more niche features of Touch Pro, namely the ‘pinch’ sensor on the thumbpad, and the pressure-sensitive stylus nub that can be attached to the bottom and used to ‘draw’ on real surfaces.
Meta wasn’t the only company churning out VR news this week with the unveiling of its long-awaited Quest 3 mixed reality headset, as Sony tossed out a slew of PSVR 2 game announcements and updates for its surprise ‘VR Day’ on Thursday.
Here’s a look at everything Sony announced:
Brand New Games
Journey to Foundation
Adapted from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, in Archiact’s upcoming roleplaying game Journey to Foundation you play as Agent Ward, a spy with the Commission of Public Safety. The immersive adventure challenges you to disguise, hack, and blast your way through Asimov’s groundbreaking sci-fi universe using the most advanced tools the Galactic Empire has to offer. Coming to PSVR 2 on October 26th, 2023. Wishlist here.
Heroes of Forever
Heroes of Forever from Lucky Mountain Games is a multi-dimensional arcade cover-shooter for PSVR 2. Prepare to travel across time and space to purge a corruption that is creeping across dimensions: go solo or team up in four-player co-op mode as you shoot your way through an infinitely expandable range of levels, unravelling the mysteries of the multiverse. Coming to PSVR 2 in 2024.
Tiger Blade
Initially announced in June, Tiger Blade bills itself as a high-octane VR action experience that combines fast-paced sword combat and punchy gunplay. Set in an alternate Korea, you play the role of a deadly assassin working for the Horangi chapter of the Tiger Clans. Ordered to steal a mysterious package from a rival chapter, you are shocked to find the object of the heist is a tiger cub. Coming to PSVR 2 on November 17th, 2023.
The Foglands
The Foglands is an atmospheric 3D roguelike shooter from Well Told Entertainment tasking you with discovering new paths, and uncovering old secrets. Run into the unknown, fight monsters, scavenge loot, and try to make it back before you are swallowed by the Fog. Coming to PSVR 2 and PS5 on October 31st, 2023. Pre-orders now live.
BLINNK and the Vacuum of Space
Developed by indie studio Changingday, BLINNK and the Vacuum of Space is billed as an autism-friendly VR adventure. Step aboard the space station Norpopolis where you’re tasked with collecting a cast of space creatures with your handy Vacuumizer 5000. The emphasis is on “fun, stress-free interactions without any fear of discouragement,” the studio says. Coming to PSVR 2 October 10th, 2023. Wishlist here.
PSVR 2 Ports & Updates
Among Us VR
Initially brought to VR by Schell Games, Innersloth, and Robot Teddy for Quest and PC VR, Among Us VR is bringing the immersive VR version of the hit multiplayer game to PSVR 2 sometime soon. Play with up to 10 players to sus out the Impostor and eject them from the airlock. No release date yet. Wishlist here.
Tin Hearts
Created by Rogue Sun, a studio founded by members of the team that created legendary adventure game Fable, Tin Hearts is a narrative puzzle adventure that centers on a tale of love and compromise. It’s already available on the original PSVR, however a free PSVR 2 update is coming this holiday season. A playable PSVR 2 demo is coming October 17th.
Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs
Resolution Games has done a lot to make Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs feel like the early Angry Birds games—no microtransactions and all of the fun of smacking over elaborately-constructed wooden forts holding evil green piggies within. Challenge yourself to bash through each three-dimensional puzzle to defeat Dr. Frankenswine, and create and share content with the online level builder. Owners of the original PSVR version can upgrade for $10. Coming to PSVR 2 October 10th, 2023. Wishlist here.
Ruinsmagus: Complete
Ruinsmagus: Complete was actually released on PSVR 2 by Japan-based studio CharacterBank a little over a week ago, bringing the JRPG’s mysterious ruins, ancient artifacts, and fierce battles to Sony’s latest VR headset for the first time. Previously launched on Quest and PC VR headsets last year, Ruinsmagus: Complete puts you in the common boots of new guild member, setting you out on a mission to strengthen the guild with your magic, resources, and wisdom across 25 story-driven quests. Buy it on PSVR 2 for $30.
Paper Beast Enhanced Edition
Paper Beast Enhanced Edition launched on PSVR 2 and PS5 on September 27th, bringing the extraordinary origami-inspired adventure to Sony’s latest VR headset for the first time. Launched on the original PSVR in 2020 by Pixel Reef, Paper Beast was widely praised for its innovative gameplay, unique aesthetics, and surreal universe. Owners of the game on PS4 can upgrade to the new version for $5. Buy it on PSVR 2 for $25.
Popular YouTube edutainment channel Kurzgesagt is teaming up with VR developers Schell Games (I Expect You To Die, Among Us VR) to make an exploration adventure game for Quest.
Called Out of Scale: A Kurzgesagt Adventure, the fully immersive educational game is said to transform “the iconic look and feel of [Kurzgesagt’s] 2D videos for users to explore and learn about the concept of scale.”
Schell Games says players use drones, scanner rays, and a multitude of other lab tools to wind their way through several missions, while teleporting between five levels of scale to see how the different properties work in each unique dimension.
Beyond the main single-player game, Out of Scale: A Kurzgesagt Adventure will also come with what the studios are calling a ‘multiplayer theater’ which allows you to meet up with friends and other players to watch Kurzgesagt videos together.
There’s also slated to be a mixed reality mode where you can unlock the game’s core life forms and objects creatures so they can interact with in your real-world environment.
The game’s Quest Store listing maintains it’s launching on October 26th, supporting Quest, Quest 2, Quest Pro, and Quest 3. It’s not available for pre-order, priced at $15.
Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR has been in the works seemingly for ages, but one major question has gone unanswered until now: just how does the game’s parkour work?
If you’ve played pretty much any existing Assassin’s Creed game, you’ll know that doing parkour is largely a matter of holding down a button, then pointing in the direction you want to go. If there’s a wall in front of you, your character will find hand-holds and start climbing. If you’re running across the rooftops and reach a ledge, your character will leap to a building across the street and find a hold. If there’s a series of pilings in front of you, you’ll hop up onto the first one and leap from one to the next.
I recently got a chance to check out a build of Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR for the first time on Quest 3, and I was really curious how parkour would work… and, well, it’s pretty much the same deal as the non-VR games, but there’s an interesting twist.
Basically anything that can be done with your legs—like leaping across rooftops or from platform to platform—is done with the kind of ‘automatic’ parkour approach found in the non-VR games. Hold a button and point in the direction you want to go.
But most things done with your hands—like grabbing ledges or climbing up walls—require you to reach out and actually grab the world like you’d expect from a VR climbing game.
I initially didn’t know how I’d feel about parkour being so automatic in a VR rendition of the game, but as I played Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR more I began to see promise.
The game is very clearly built upon the parkour systems and structures that are core to the franchise. And that means you can expect a pretty dense set of possible routes, comprised of many different things to climb, clamber, or bound across. The system that determines where you intend to go is pretty impressive and unrestrictive.
Coming to see the world as more than just the ground around you, and then moving fluidly through newly identified routes, is central to the fantasy that Assassin’s Creed games aim to deliver. Doing all of that locomotion in a VR-native way could easily lead to cognitive overload for the player, or require slowing down the game’s sense of momentum.
Striking a balance between ‘automatic’ moves, and those you have to do with your hands, could really be a good solution to keep the game interesting in VR without losing that signature sense of fluidity.
And you might be wondering… why haven’t I said anything about comfort? Well, in the short period that I got to actually do parkour in the game, I didn’t notice any overt comfort issues, which honestly kind of surprised me, especially as I was bobbing up and down while leaping from one piling to the next, or from one rooftop to another. The game wasn’t even using blinders in my demo.
But I’ll need a lot more time with the game to truly feel out how Assassin’s Creed parkour pans out in the VR context, both in gameplay and longer term comfort. But for now I’m certainly intrigued.
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We’ll know more—like how the game’s combat and other major systems work—soon enough; Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR launches November 16th on Quest 2, 3, and Pro.
Quest 3 is an impressive leap in hardware, especially in the visual department, but it continues Meta’s tradition of building great hardware that feels held back by its software.
Update (September 27th, 2023): Fixed the link to the second page at the bottom of this page.
After months of teasing and leaks, Quest 3 is finally, officially, fully announced. Pre-orders start today at $500 and the headset ships on October 10th. While you can get the full specs and details right here, the overall summary is that the headset is an improvement over Quest 2 nearly across the board:
Better lenses
Better resolution
Better processor
Better audio
Better passthrough
Better controllers
Better form-factor
The improvements really add up. The biggest improvement is in the visuals, where Meta finally paired the impressive pancake optics from Quest Pro with a higher resolution display, resulting in a significantly sharper image than Quest 2 that has industry-leading clarity with regards to sweet spot, glare, and distortion.
Quest 3 has two LCD displays, giving it 4.6MP (2,064 × 2,208) resolution per-eye, compared to Quest 2 with 3.5MP (1,832 × 1,920) resolution per-eye. And even though that isn’t a massive leap in resolution, the upgraded lenses are so much sharper and it makes a huge difference compared to just the number of pixels.
Photo by Road to VR
Quest 3 also has an improved IPD (distance between your eyes) function and range. A dial on the headset gives it a continuous adjustment between 58–70mm. Given the eyebox of the optics, Meta officially says the headset is suitable for any IPD between 53–75mm. And because each eye has its own display, adjusting the IPD the the far edges doesn’t sacrifice any field-of-view.
Beyond the IPD upgrade, Quest 3 is the first Quest headset with an eye-relief adjustment, which allows you to move the lenses closer or further from your space. As a notched adjustment that can move between four different positions, it’s a little funky to adjust, but it’s a welcomed addition. Ostensibly this will make the headset more adjustable for glasses users, but as someone who tends to benefit from lower eye-relief, I hope that the nearest adjustment goes far enough.
Between the upgraded IPD adjustment and eye-relief, Quest 3 is the most adjustable Quest headset so far, which means more people can dial into the optimal optical position.
Quest 3 has a slightly modified rear strap, but it’s still a soft strap in the end. A deluxe strap and deluxe strap with battery will be available (Quest 2 deluxe straps are unfortunately not forward-compatible) | Image courtesy Meta
Holistically speaking, Quest 3 has the best display system of any headset on the market to date.
The only major things that haven’t improved over Quest 2 are the default headstrap, battery life, and weight, which are all about the same. The biggest benefit of the new optics is their performance, but their more compact form also means the weight of the headset sits a little closer to your face which makes it feel a little lighter and less bulky.
Powered Up
Photo by Road to VR
When Quest 3 is firing on all cylinders—including software that’s well-optimized for its performance envelope—you’ll wonder how you ever got by with the visuals afforded by Quest 2.
Take Red Matter 2, for instance, which was already one of the best-looking games on Quest 2. Developer Vertical Robot put together a demo app, which lets you instantly switch back and forth between the game’s Quest 2 visuals and newly enhanced Quest 3 visuals, and the difference is staggering. This video gives an idea but doesn’t quite show the full impact of the visual improvements that you feel in the headset itself:
Not only are textures significantly sharper, the extra processing power also allowed the developers to add high-resolution real-time shadows which make a big difference to how grounded the virtual world feels around you.
However, the exceptionally well-optimized Red Matter 2 is a rare exception compared most apps available on the platform. Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, for instance, looks better on Quest 3… but still pretty rough with blotchy textures and shimmering aliased shadows.
And this was an example that Meta specifically showed to highlight Quest 3’s improved processing power…. And yes, the Walking Dead example shows that the developers used some of the extra power to put more enemies on screen. But the question here is, what good is a phone call if you are unable to speak what good is better optical performance if the textures aren’t matching them in the first place?
So while Quest 3 offers the potential for significantly improved visuals, the reality is that many apps on the platform won’t benefit as much from it as they could, especially in the near-term as developers continue to prioritize optimizing their games for Quest 2 because it will have the larger customer base for quite some time. Optimization (or lack thereof) is a systemic issue that is more complicated to address than just ‘throw more processing power at it’.
Quest 3 is the first headset to debut with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip, which claims up to 2.5 times the graphical performance of XR 2 Gen 1, and up to 50% better efficiency between identical workloads | Photo by Road to VR
But as we all know, graphics aren’t everything. Some of the most fun games on the Quest platform aren’t the best looking out there.
But when I say that software is holding back the headset, more than half of that sentiment is driven not by the visuals of apps and games, but by the headset’s overall UI/UX.
This applies to all Quest headsets, of course, but the platform’s obtuse and often buggy interface hasn’t seen the same kind of consistent improvements that the hardware itself has seen from Quest 1 to Quest 3—which is a shame. The friction between a player’s idea of wanting to do something in the headset and how seamless (or not) it is to put on the headset and do that thing is deeply connected to how often and how long they’ll actually enjoy using the headset.
Meta has given no indication that it even acknowledges the deficiency of the Quest UI/UX. With the release of Quest 3, on the interface specifically, it doesn’t seem like it will make any meaningful changes on that front. In terms of UX at least, there’s two general improvements:
Passthrough
Photo by Road to VR
Quest 3’s passthrough view is a big leap over the low-res black-and-white passthrough of Quest 2. Now with full color and higher resolution, passthrough on Quest 3 feels more like something you can use all the time (granted, I haven’t had enough time with the headset to tell if the passthrough latency is low enough to prevent motion discomfort over long periods, which was a problem for me on Quest Pro).
And while it isn’t clear to me if the software will enable passthrough by default (as it should), being able to easily see a reasonably high quality view outside of the headset is a notable UX improvement.
Not only does it make users feel less disconnected from their environment when putting on the headset (until they’re actually ready to be immersed in the content of their choice), it also makes it easier to glance at the real world without removing the headset entirely. That’s useful for talking to someone else in the room or looking to make sure a pet (or child) hasn’t walked into your playspace.
I was surprised to see that with the newly added depth sensor there’s still warping around your hands, but overall the passthrough image is much sharper and has better dynamic range. Unlike Quest Pro, I was able to at least roughly read the time and some notifications on my phone—an important part of not feeling completely disconnected from the world outside the headset.
This also opens the door to improving the flow of putting on the headset in the first place; if passthrough is enabled by default, Meta should encourage users to put on the headset first, then find their controllers (instead of awkwardly trying to fit the headset with controllers already in their hands). And when the session is over, hopefully they turn on passthrough and instruct people to put down their controllers first, then remove the headset. These are the kinds of UX details the company tends to miss entirely… but we’ll see.
Room Scanning
The other real UX improvement coming with Quest 3 could be automatic room scanning, which automatically creates a playspace boundary for users instead of making them create their own. I say “could be” because I didn’t have enough time in my hands-on with this feature to tell how quickly and reliably it works. More testing to come.
Similar to implementations we’ve seen on other headsets, the room scanning feature encourages users to look around their space, giving the headset time to build a map of the geometry in the room. With enough of the space scanned, a playspace boundary will be created. The same system can also be used to establish the position of walls, floors, and other geometry that can be used in mixed reality applications.
Paid Parking
Also worth mentioning is the optional (and fairly expensive) official Quest 3 dock. Keeping the headset and controllers powered, updated, and ready to go is a big challenge when it comes to VR friction. Having a dedicated place to put your headset and controllers that also charges them is definitely a boon to the UX.
Photo by Road to VR
This feels like something that should really be part of the package, but you’ll have to pay an extra $130 for the privilege. Hopefully we’ll see more affordable Quest 3 docks from third-parties in the near future.
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.
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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.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today at Connect, the company’s annual XR developer conference, that it’s going to launch a set of mixed reality mini-apps on Quest 3 that you can stick anywhere in your house.
Relying on Quest 3’s room-mapping capabilities, the so-called ‘augments’ are due to launch sometime next year on Meta’s newly fully unveiled mixed reality headset, bringing what the company calls “interactive, spatially aware digital objects that come to life all around you.”
This includes simple objects, like a piece of art you can stick to your real-world wall, or something more involved like a weather app on your desk that alerts you before rain starts—all of it appearing right in place whenever you put on your headset.
Image courtesy Meta
Zuckerberg also noted that these sorts of ‘frames’ can contain things like Facebook videos, Instagram Reels, and other apps, but also portrait-shaped ‘portals’ that act as immediate links to VR games, like fitness app Supernatural.
Meta says it’s also going to launch branded augments like an iHeartRadio music player and Beat Saber trophies—ostensibly all of the sort of stuff that Meta thinks you’d want to hang on your wall as you’re consuming traditional content through the headset.
We’ve seen some similar stuff from Magic Leap before it pivoted to enterprise, and Apple is sure to push many of the same augmented reality widgets with the launch of Apple Vision Pro. It’s going to be interesting to not only see what sort of brand deals the company can reel in, but how it goes toe-to-toe with Apple as it courts the more purely AR side things.
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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 with Connect for all of the latest XR stuff from Meta.
Meta announced at its Connect developer conference today that LEGO is releasing a mixed reality game for Quest 3, named LEGO Bricktales.
The blocky puzzle game essentially puts you in front of a number of diorama biomes, which were crafted brick by brick.
“Your journey will take you to the deepest jungle, sun-drenched deserts, a bustling city corner, a towering medieval castle, and tropical Caribbean islands,” Meta says in an announcement.
The objective is to help the minifigures of these worlds by solving puzzles and unlocking new skills throughout the story to further explore these worlds and uncover the many secrets and mysteries they contain.
LEGO Bricktales isn’t just puzzles and skills, Meta says on the game’s Quest Store page.
“From purely aesthetic creations, such as a market stand or music box, up to functional physics-based puzzles like building a crane or gyrocopter – each diorama offers a variety of construction spots with the freedom of intuitive brick-by-brick building. In each spot you are given a set of bricks and it’s up to you to figure out a unique build that will work. On top of specific puzzles and quests, there are additional builds in the amusement park so you can customize the rides to make them your own,” the description reads.
In addition to Quest 3, LEGO Bricktales will also support Quest 2 and Quest Pro when it launches, which is coming December 7th, 2023. The game is currently available for pre-order, priced at $30, which comes with an exclusive in-game outfit.
