Tech Fix: With Meta’s Quest 3, mixed reality is here. Now what?

Brian X Chen

SAN FRANCISCO: Last week, I spent several hours trying Meta’s latest goggles, the Quest 3. They ship next month. The headset runs virtual reality games with a novel twist: While shooting a blaster gun, snatching bats from mid-air and controlling a robot, I could see the real world through built-in cameras.

This is what Meta and its new rival, Apple, which recently unveiled the $3,500 Vision Pro headset, call “mixed reality” or “spatial computing,” interchangeable terms to describe computers that blend digital data with the physical world.

These immersive computers, the companies say, could eventually become indispensable tools that change the way we live. Imagine reading a holographic recipe in the corner of your eye while cooking, for example, or staring at furniture parts with digital assembly instructions overlaid on them.

But for now, the devices are primarily used for playing games, and killer apps have yet to surface. Meta’s $500 Quest 3 headset has sharper graphics than its predecessor, the Quest 2, which costs $200 less.

Its marquee new feature is a set of high-resolution, “pass-through” cameras for seeing the outside world in color. They are a big improvement from the Quest 2’s weaker camera system, which rendered a muddy monochrome picture.

After a two-hour session playing with the Quest 3, I removed the goggles and asked Meta employees the $10 bn question (that’s the amount the company invests annually in VR technology) about mixed reality: What’s the point? Meta’s answer to that is vague.

The ability to simultaneously interact with virtual and physical space, the company said, would make it easier for people to feel connected to one another while wearing goggles.

That could eventually be useful for collaborating on work tasks. What kind of work? Those apps are actively in development, a Meta spokesman told me.

To market the Quest 3, Meta highlighted mixed reality games. In First Encounters, a space game, I used a blaster gun to shoot a virtual wall, removing pieces of it brick by brick to see into the real world.

In Stranger Things VR, a game based on the popular Netflix series, I took on the role of the show’s antagonist with telepathic powers. I could see virtual cracks embedded into the physical room surrounding me; when I pointed at the cracks and spread my fingers outward to open them up, bats flew out of the chasms. I grabbed them to squish them dead.

In Bam!, I could see other Quest 3 wearers in the room while we controlled miniature robots that battled each other inside a virtual arena. Each player could see a virtual platform containing the arena and adjust it to be level with the physical tabletop in front of them.

The game was fun, but seeing others flail around their motion controllers while donning the geeky goggles didn’t improve the game (though it certainly made me feel more self-conscious).

Weighing about a pound, the headset felt heavy on my head after about 15 minutes, causing neck strain. The graphics were bright and intense on the eyes. Bending over, twisting around and swinging my arms eventually felt exhausting.

So the Quest 3 may be a fun toy to entertain house guests, but most gamers looking for a social experience will probably prefer the old-fashioned setup of sitting on their couch with a game controller.