Meta Quest 3 is a standalone virtual reality (VR) headset developed by Reality Labs, a division of Meta Platforms. It was unveiled on June 1, 2023, and released on October 10, succeeding the Quest 2 as the third generation of the Meta Quest line. As with its predecessors, the Quest 3 is a standalone device running Meta Horizon OS, a derivative of Android Open Source Project (AOSP); VR games and apps can be run natively on the headset, or streamed from a PC over USB-C or Wi-Fi. The Quest 3 features updated hardware with elements of the Quest Pro, including a thinner form factor and lenses, and additional sensors and color passthrough cameras intended for mixed reality (MR) software. The headset received positive reviews, with critics noting its slimmer build and performance improvements over the Quest 2, but panning its passthrough cameras for their clarity and a relative lack of MR experiences at launch, and its relatively unchanged system software.
Specifications
Hardware The Quest 3's design is an evolution of that of the Quest 2, combined with elements of the Meta Quest Pro. It uses a pair of LCDs with a per-eye resolution of 2064×2208p, which is a roughly 30% increase over the 1832×1920p resolution of the Quest 2. And the effective resolution increase in headset is actually even higher thanks to each eye seeing the entire screen at all times because of its two, movable displays, instead of only part of a single panel. Quest 2/3S' stationary single display with movable lenses inevitably led to lost pixels needed for the other IPD settings at the edges that you couldn't see. This change from a single immobile display to two movable displays has been calculated using the Quest Pro (as it's just ~3% under Quest 2's resolution but uses dual panels) to provide around a ~+10-15% increase in PPD ("pixels per degree"), aka pixel density or visible pixels in headset. This means that Quest 3 actually has a total effective resolution increase over Quest 2/3S of around ~+40-45%. Said new dual LCD panels are viewed through in-house custom-designed 2x element pancake lenses (similar to those in the Quest Pro) to enable significantly better image clarity from edge to edge, FOV improvement, and a 40% thinner device enclosure. It returns to an inter-pupillary distance (IPD) mechanism similar to the first-generation Quest, allowing it to be set between 53 mm and 75 mm using a scroll wheel (as opposed to the Quest 2, which only supported three preset distances and used a single screen panel). The face of the headset is adorned with three "pills" containing sensors and cameras. The two outer pills each contain a hybrid monochrome visible light/infrared camera whose captured format alternates between frames, and which are used for positional tracking of both the headset itself (using the monochrome feed for "inside-out" optical SLAM) and the Touch Plus controllers (using the IR feed to track embedded IR LEDs), along with a 4 MP RGB color camera for mixed reality passthrough. And in addition to the two located inside said outer pills on the device's front, there are another two of these exact same dual role IR tracking cameras on the bottom left and right sides of the headset (giving it 4x in total) so as to give it a suitably large tracking volume. The center pill contains an IR patterned light emitter in line projector form (marketed as a depth sensor), which is used in combination with the two front facing IR cameras to understand the depth and distance of the user's surroundings for boundaries and mixed reality experiences. The Quest 3 uses the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, a system-on-chip manufactured by Qualcomm and based on their Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 flagship mobile phone SoC, which Meta has touted as having more than twice the raw graphics (GPU) performance of the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 used by the Quest 2 and other similar standalone headsets. The headset ships with "Touch Plus" controllers; they are similar in design to the Touch Pro controllers used by Quest Pro, and replace the infrared sensor ring with infrared sensors in the body of the controller, augmented by internal sensors and input from the headset's hand tracking. Unlike the Touch Pro controllers, they do not use a dedicated processor and cameras for on-board positional tracking, and are powered by AA batteries rather than rechargeable batteries. Quest 3 is also compatible with the Touch Pro controllers. In December 2023, an API was added for inside-out body tracking, which uses computer vision and the headset's side cameras to track upper body and arm motions. This can be combined with the "generative legs" API (which uses a machine learning model to estimate the motion of the user's legs) to provide a degree of full-body motion tracking without additional sensors. A depth API was also added to improve the quality of mixed reality rendering.
Software
The Quest 3 is backward compatible with all Quest 2 software. Existing software may receive updates to add higher fidelity graphics (including high resolution textures) when running on Quest 3; due to platform limitations, it is difficult to distribute separate packages targeting Quest 2 and Quest 3 on Quest Store, which may result in software consuming additional storage on Quest 2 due to the inclusion of Quest 3-specific assets in a unified package. During a private presentation to employees, Meta virtual reality vice president Mark Rabkin stated that there were plans for 41 new Quest apps and games to be released at launch; during a digital presentation on June 1, 2023, Meta showcased Quest titles scheduled for the late-2023 launch window such as Assassin's Creed Nexus VR, Asgard's Wrath 2, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, I Expect You to Die 3, Onward, PowerWash Simulator, Samba de Amigo: Virtual Party, Stranger Things VR, and Vampire: The Masquerade — Justice among others. During Connect, Meta announced that Xbox Cloud Gaming would be available as an app for Meta Quest 3 in December 2023.
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