If you somehow missed the announcement of Apple’s Vision Pro earlier this year, you might not be aware of the current drive toward mixed reality. For the uninitiated, it’s basically another name for augmented reality, which means the addition of virtual elements atop your normal surroundings.
That could be anything from a virtual screen playing a video to a plant in the corner of the room. It really doesn’t matter: The important part is that you can see both your real environment as well as elements of a virtual one at the same time.
It’s funny, because mixed reality isn’t even remotely new. Microsoft rolled out Windows Mixed Reality six years ago and there have been a bunch of mixed reality VR headsets you could hook up to a suitably beefy PC or laptop.
The Meta Quest 3 might sound like a mere evolution of the Quest and Quest 2, but it isn’t. It’s a proper game-changer because it supports mixed reality.
Where the Quest 2 and original Quest had low-resolution monochrome cameras that offered a grainy, monochrome representation of your room, the Quest 3’s much higher-resolution color cameras produce an almost lifelike representation where you can walk around and interact with things just as if you weren’t wearing the headset.
Almost. It isn’t perfect: There’s too much video wobble unless you stand still, which can make you feel queasy. Plus, quality quickly becomes grainy when the room isn’t bright enough. You really need a lot of light for video passthrough to look its best.
And while the main components of the Quest 3 are slimmer, they’re still pretty heavy and the headset gets uncomfortable after a while. You need the headband to be tight to keep the lenses
