Latest news with #MetaQuest3
Tom's Guide
a day ago
- Tom's Guide
I used a Meta Quest 3 for work so you don't have to — and there's one huge problem nobody talks about
If you're looking to jump on the VR bandwagon and explore all the ways you can work, game and watch shows in virtual reality, look no further than our list of the best VR headsets. Plus, you'll find more than just Meta Quest headsets on there. Making the most of my Meta Quest 3 has opened my eyes to the possibilities mixed reality (MR) presents — features that go well beyond punching, shooting or dancing your way through the best VR games. Thanks to the Quest 3's MR capabilities, I've cooked up a storm in the kitchen while streaming shows on Netflix, given my room a makeover by visualizing furniture and measurements in the Layout app, and even started learning to draw thanks to the Pencil app. More importantly, these have worked fairly flawlessly. So, why not put this VR headset to work? Meta strived to make its Meta Quest Pro the office machine replacement, and the Apple Vision Pro has also tried its hand at this. But, as you can guess, those ventures didn't catch on (and price wasn't the only major fault). However, thanks to Microsoft's Mixed Reality Link for Meta Quest 3 and Quest 3S, using these VR headsets as an extension to your PC has become significantly more accessible, affordable, and, yes, actually usable. Well, for the most part. It offers the huge benefit of being able to utilize up to three virtual monitors, which you can resize and place wherever you want in mixed reality. This can easily act as a handy, affordable replacement for the best monitors, there's still one issue that stops me from using my Meta Quest 3 for work — and it all has to do with its video passthrough. Since linking my Meta Quest headset to a Windows 11 PC, I've been boasting a three-monitor setup without actually having physical displays crowding my desk. The Mixed Reality Link feature has been a treat, even though it still has some wrinkles to iron out (namely, video calls not working properly and some minor audio connection issues). Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Being able to add three virtual monitors anywhere in my field of view while wearing the VR headset makes for an incredibly versatile setup — one that all types of workers would appreciate. They can be stacked on top of one another, placed side by side, reshaped to be used vertically and even offer the massive, ultra-wide treatment. This adjustability is a boon, and moving and resizing these virtual screens is as simple as dragging and placing them via the Meta Quest 3's hand-tracking feature or Touch Plus controller. Sure, I may boast a 32-inch 4K monitor for my usual desk setup, but for scrolling through websites while watching a YouTube video or show on Netflix, all while playing games like Doom: The Dark Ages on Xbox Game Pass? That's a setup that's hard to beat — even if I have to wear a whole VR headset to make it happen. Now, here's the thing: despite its advantages, and still being able to see the real space around you through the Meta Quest 3's full-colour passthrough for mixed reality visuals, I'd find it hard to actually put this setup to good use while working. With the thousands of words I write each week as per my job here at Tom's Guide, a keyboard is easily my biggest asset. I need to be able to type with ease without any interruptions or irritations, and that makes it hard with a Meta Quest VR headset on my head. I've been impressed with the Quest 3S and Quest 3's full-color passthrough, which allows for an overall clear view of my immediate environment while using apps or watching shows. However, there's no way to get a detailed look at real-world objects — and that includes my keyboard. The Meta Quest 3's passthrough view is too grainy and struggles when lighting conditions aren't right for more precise motions. While that's fine for general tasks like picking up a glass, typing can be a struggle when you need to look down at keys every once in a while. I know, touch typists probably won't have a problem with this, but as someone who looks down at their keyboard sometimes to find the right flow or enter a shortcut, I can't for the life of me get a clear view of my keyboard when I've got my headset on. It leads to typos, stalling to find the right key and general discomfort every time I have to look down with a clunky headset on my head — it doesn't feel nearly as natural as it would without being in MR. Additionally, if there isn't enough light in the room, it's challenging to find anything via passthrough. It's too damn dark! Oh, and as another red flag, sipping on a hot cup of coffee with a VR headset on is not recommended — so says my now-stained shirt. This is all to say that wearing a full-blown VR headset for work and other productivity needs isn't ideal when there's a noticeably weighty device wrapped around your head with blurry video passthrough. However, I still believe this is an incredibly efficient way to work. And that's exactly what the best AR glasses today aim to offer. First off, they're far more subtle than a VR headset, but still offer the versatility of a virtual monitor setup, like the Viture Luma Pro's massive 152-inch virtual screen with a 1200p resolution. Our own Anthony Spadafora even tested this out by ditching his laptop for a mini PC and AR glasses, and it worked like a charm when working on the go. Plus, we've seen how AR glasses used with a laptop can beat the dreaded "tech neck." However, more importantly for me and my fellow typists who prefer to see their surroundings in clear detail, AR glasses still offer a real-world view of the environment, making it far easier to glance at my keyboard, pick up cups of coffee, and handle objects. Although it's still a niche market, working in mixed reality settings offers numerous benefits — some of which are also cost-saving. I'll still be using my Meta Quest 3 with the Mixed Reality Link feature to give my Windows PC an extra set of easily adjustable monitors, but I'll use it primarily for play rather than work. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News to get our up-to-date news, how-tos, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
India Today
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- India Today
Meta previews wild new VR headsets with 4K eyes, 180-degree FoV and near-real visuals
Meta has given the world a closer look at some of its most ambitious VR headset projects yet. At the SIGGRAPH 2025 conference, Meta pulled back the curtain on several experimental devices, each claimed and designed to push virtual reality closer to the point where it feels indistinguishable from real life. The highlight was Tiramisu, a prototype featuring an ultra-sharp display with 90 pixels per degree and brightness levels up to 14 times greater than the Meta Quest 3. advertisementAccording to Meta, the visuals are so convincing that the headset comes close to passing the so-called 'visual Turing test,' where the human brain struggles to tell VR apart from reality. Alongside Tiramisu, Meta also showcased a lightweight, glasses-style headset codenamed Puffin and two wide field-of-view prototypes nicknamed Boba, all offering very different visions of VR's Puffin headset takes a very different approach to design. Weighing under 110 grams, it is far lighter than typical VR headsets and swaps traditional controllers for gaze and pinch controls, similar to the Apple Vision Pro. Instead of packing all the processing power into the headset itself, Puffin uses a separate battery and compute puck that can be clipped to a belt or slipped into a pocket. This helps keep weight and heat off the user's head, making it more comfortable for extended sessions. Inside, it features eye-tracking technology, high-resolution passthrough cameras and micro-OLED displays. Meta is positioning Puffin as a headset for non-gaming uses, with a focus on productivity, communication and augmented reality experiences. It will run on the company's new Navigator-style Horizon OS. Meanwhile, the Boba 3 and Boba 3 VR prototypes are all about immersion through an expanded field of view. Both deliver 4K-by-4K resolution per eye and stretch visuals across a staggering 180 degrees horizontally and 120 degrees vertically. This makes them ideal for experiences where peripheral vision is crucial, such as simulation training or cinematic VR. While these devices are still early-stage prototypes, Meta has built them using current-generation lens technology, suggesting they could be more than just futuristic now, Meta's main VR headset on the market is the Quest 3, which has been well-received for its balance of performance, mixed reality features and price. The company is also experimenting beyond VR, with its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses gaining new AI-powered abilities such as real-time translation, object recognition and hands-free video capture.- Ends
Engadget
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Engadget
The Morning After: Meta teases high-spec VR headset prototypes
Meta previewed some of its latest virtual reality prototypes this week and plans to demo them at next week's SIGGRAPH conference. The aim, according to Meta's blog post, is to offer VR experiences 'indistinguishable from the physical world' — something it says no present-day VR system has yet done. It wants to surpass what it terms the visual Turing test. 'Our mission for this project was to provide the best image quality possible,' said Xuan Wang, an optical research scientist with Reality Labs Research's Optics, Photonics and Light Systems (OPALS) team. And Meta's Tiramisu project seemingly has the numbers to back up those ambitions. It promises three times the contrast, 14 times the maximum brightness and 3.6 times the angular resolution of the Meta Quest 3. The headset offers 1,400 nits of brightness and an angular resolution of 90 pixels per degree. It's a work in progress, however. Tiramisu has a field of view of just 33 degrees by 33 degrees compared to the 110 degrees horizontal and 96 degrees vertical FOV in the Meta Quest 3. It also looks like Google's Daydream, from back in the day. Conversely, another pair of prototypes, codenamed Boba 3, leans into an ultrawide field of view. It has a 180-degree FOV, when human vision extends to around 200 degrees. Also, they're roughly the same size as current VR headsets. — Mat Smith Get Engadget's newsletter delivered direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here! The news you might have missed Google says AI in Search is driving more queries and higher quality clicks Everyone else says differently. A Pew Research Center report last month shed light on Google's AI Overviews' effect on web publishing, showing an abysmal outlook for anyone relying on web traffic. But this week, Google Search head Liz Reid penned a blog post that puts quite a different spin on things. Naturally, she claims click quality and Google Search's total organic click volume to websites has been 'relatively stable' year over year. Reid also said Google sends more 'quality clicks' (visitors who don't quickly bounce) to websites than a year ago. She shared no numbers, however. Continue reading. OpenAI's GPT-5 is here, and it's free for everyone It's safer, faster and more accurate than OpenAI's past models. OpenAI is releasing the long-awaited GPT-5 and says it has across-the-board enhancements. The company claims the model is its best yet for coding, writing, safety, accuracy and more. At the start of the year, Altman said GPT-5 would offer a unified experience for users, and the new model delivers on that promise. For the first time, OpenAI's default offering is a reasoning model, meaning the system is programmed to tackle complex problems by breaking them into smaller parts. Previously, if you wanted to force ChatGPT to use one of OpenAI's reasoning models, you had to select the Think Longer option from the prompt bar. This meant most free users didn't even know OpenAI had more capable models. Continue reading. Framework Desktop (2025) review Powerful, but not for everyone. Framework's 2025 edition of its Desktop PC is powerful, particularly for creative professionals and developers. It uses an AMD Ryzen AI Max APU, which is a workstation-level chip, but to integrate it, the CPU and RAM are soldered directly to the mainboard, making them non-upgradable. The DIY Edition of the Desktop fortunately requires minimal setup, but this isn't the easy-to-make gaming PC you might be hoping for: It's better suited to productivity tasks, like running AI models and video editing. Continue reading. The most fun Switch 2 accessory is on sale If you're going to get a webcam, make it a Pirhana Plant. If you've got a Switch 2 but haven't yet dived into the camera functionality, here's a good reason to. HORI's Piranha Plant camera is on sale right now for only $40. That's $20 off and a good deal for anyone who wants to take advantage of the Switch 2's camera functionality in games like Mario Kart World. It even comes with a plant pot stand if you want to use it not directly plugged into the Switch 2. If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.
Engadget
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Engadget
Meta says these wild headset prototypes could be the future of VR
Meta previewed some of its latest virtual reality prototypes this week, with concepts that are compelling on the specs and long on the design. Literally. The company shared some details on its Tiramisu project, dubbing it "hyperrealistic VR." This set promises three times the contrast, 14 times the maximum brightness and 3.6 times the angular resolution of the Meta Quest 3. In actual stats, that's up to 1,400 nits of brightness and an angular resolution of 90 pixels per degree. One of the goals for Reality Labs Research's Optics, Photonics and Light Systems (OPALS) team is to create a virtual reality experience that is indistinguishable from the real world, or what it calls a visual Turing test. "Our mission for this project was to provide the best image quality possible," said Xuan Wang, an optical research scientist with OPALS. But the team achieved that quality with some tradeoffs; Tiramisu has a limited field of view of just 33 degrees by 33 degrees compared to the 110 degrees horizontal and 96 degrees vertical FOV in the Meta Quest 3. And the form factor is currently a pretty bulky beast, as you can see above. Meta researcher wearing the Boba 3 headset (Meta) The other prototypes detailed in the company's blog post are Boba 3 headsets. These mixed and virtual reality headsets offer an ultrawide field of view. All three projects will be on display during the SIGGRAPH 2025 conference in Vancouver next week.
The Verge
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Meta's prototype headsets show off the future of mixed reality
Meta's consumer VR headsets are already among the best you can get for their price points, but at a conference next week, the company is showing off some impressive-sounding research prototypes that could be a peek at what its headsets might be capable of in the future. One headset, called 'Tiramisu,' brings a 'new milestone for realism in VR,' Meta says in a blog post. Tiramisu has 'high contrast — roughly 3x that of Meta Quest 3 — combined with an angular resolution of 90 pixels per degree (PPD) — 3.6x that of Quest 3 — and brightness up to 1,400 nits — 14x that of Quest 3.' There are apparently some trade-offs, including that it's 'bulkier and heavier' than consumer headsets available today and has a limited field of view (FOV), but it's 'the closest we've come to a visual experience that passes the visual Turing test yet.' Two other headsets, the 'Boba 3' and the 'Boba 3 VR,' instead have a very wide FOV. While the Quest 3 has a horizontal FOV of 110 degrees and a vertical FOV of 96 degrees, the Boba 3 headsets have a horizontal FOV of 180 degrees and vertical FOV of 120 degrees. That horizontal FOV brings the headsets much closer to the FOV of the human visual system, which Meta says is 'roughly' 200 degrees. The Boba 3 headsets, which leverage 'displays in mass production and similar lens technologies to those found in Quest 3,' have a display resolution per eye of 4K by 4K. That's higher than the 3K by 3K display resolution per eye of last year's Boba 2 prototype and the 2K by 1K display resolution per eye of the previous Boba 1 prototype. The prototype headsets will be shown at next week's SIGGRAPH 2025 conference, and I recommend checking out Meta's blog post to see videos of them in action. While Meta says they are 'purely research prototypes, with novel technologies that may never make their way into a consumer product,' you can see how they might eventually lead to headsets that can offer much more immersive VR experiences. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Jay Peters Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Meta Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Virtual Reality
