Review: Meta Quest 3S is cheaper in both senses of the word

Significant visual and comfort compromises make last year's Quest 3 a better VR investment.

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[xoe]

If you're trying to decide between a 3S and a 3, it's pretty much a no brainer to go for the 3. The 3S is basically "good enough to be usable with a ton of minor to moderate pain points" whereas the 3 is "a complete good quality experience that has few downsides".

Whatever you end up buying, Meta or otherwise, make sure you have a rigid/semi rigid strap, it will vastly improve comfort.

 

[xoe]

Does this mean that the Quest 2 will lose access to the current existing library? Or that you just can't access new titles?

If the former is true, who the hell would buy one of these things?

It's unfortunate and certainly a downside, you've got a limited number of years with these as a usable product, not such a big issue with the rapid improvement in the market. Also the issue can be mitigated by using PCVR. There is currently no standalone headset with guaranteed perpetual support of existing titles.

 

[xoe]

I feel like approaching VR's adoption as "cost of device" as the problem is the wrong approach ...

People want super fun activities they can do and as far as i can tell most non VR enthusiasts who have tired it has found that "fun, but only for a while".

No lowering the bar of cost entry makes something "fun, but only for a while" any better.

Not that I think Carmack or any of the talking heads in the VR world have all that better ideas that will increase adoption.

The library of content for VR is constantly growing. There are issues though, VR games tend to be shorter (10-20 hours) when compared to flat games which tend to be closer to 60-120 hours. This is probably because of the smaller uptake for VR games, it reduces the development budget for VR games, if you can only realistically expect a few million dollars in sales tops, then you don't have the ability to produce a 60-120 hour games.

This will change with time, but it's a slow process. There are now several really good single player games in the Meta store. But we are still at a point where the best value games are those that have a lot of replay value, like beatsaber, superhot and multiplayer games.

 

[xoe]

Well, it feels like barring several major technical advances we are at a plateau for VR. It’s fun and useful in a few niche cases, and that’s it.

I don’t see how these limited cases can support the kind of massive investment it will take to get to the full time glasses thin VR people dream about (if that is even physically possible).

There's no reason to believe that it isn't physically possible, the latest prototype that Meta demoed to places like Tested is already well on the road to that vision.

 

[xoe]

The Quest 3 hasn’t managed to spark the same excitement as the Quest 2 for a variety of reasons.

The price is definitely one of those reasons. Which would make sense why Meta wanted to put out a cheaper version.

The problem is that price isn’t the only factor. The Quest 2 offered something new and exciting for the pandemic era and at a price people could afford. Now that the fad is over, there’s not much that the Quest 3 or 3S is offering to draw people in.

AR experiences haven’t proven to hold interest and there aren’t many games or experiences getting hype from the socials.

So the 3S may get a few people to buy in where their biggest gripe was price, but that could also lead to disappointment and future lost customers if the hardware and software doesn’t show off what makes it better than the Quest 2.

The dedicated VR fans aren’t likely to buy a Quest 3S unless money really is an issue and it’s the best they can afford.

AR experiences haven’t proven to hold interest and there aren’t many games or experiences getting hype from the socials.

That is largely because most AR apps have had limited access to information about the environment, pretty much just a simple relatively low resolution mesh of the environment. Meta has only just started the process of making a live camera feed available.

that could also lead to disappointment and future lost customers

The biggest issue with the Quest 2 and 3S is the lens system, positioning the headset correctly is critical to having a non mediocre experience, and doing that is non trivial for new users.

 

[xoe]

VR != AR

VR headsets are heavy and expensive mainly because they need to push lots of pixels at a high frame rate to keep up with our eyes resolution and not make us nauseous. That means compute and battery need to be beefy.

AR on the other hand does not require as high resolution or frame rate, since the pass through mitigates the issues of VR. As for the overlay, decent resolution is good enough as many of the Orion reviewers have testified.

Apples way of doing AR with VR passthrough does however seem to ve the wrong way to do it, and is much more subject to the plateau you are speaking of.

I'd be willing to bet that compute and battery on 3S is less than 25% of the weight.

Compute requirements of VR and AR are near identical, what makes you think otherwise?

 

[xoe]

You can buy a link cable and continue to use your Quest 2/3 as a tethered headset, probably forever.

Don't even need a link cable, a decent wireless connection is sufficient.

 

[xoe]

Which doesn't do you a lot of good if you were foolish enough to trust Facebook and buy games off the Oculus store.

Yes, but it does plenty of good for anyone who is weary of buying a quest due to potential limited support lifetime.

 

[xoe]

My 17 yr old son was at a friend's house, and was checking out his Quest 3. The kid had his Quest 2 sitting in his closet, and gave it to my son. So I guess now we've dipped into VR, something that I have avoided investing in over the last couple of years. Can't beat free really. He said it was pretty laggy without being connected to his PC, but it plays ok being connected via USB.

If you're dead set on PCVR an air bridge is the way to go when using a Quest. They are pretty affordable and compatible with all recent Quest headsets.

 

[xoe]

My biggest issue with VR is the discomfort. I do not get why Meta insist with an all-in-one unit. Just place main board and battery in a tethered unit that you strap to your chest or waist, and keep the actual visor as light as possible. That should make the experience much easier for everyone and also introduce flexibility in terms of managing upgrades of cpu, battery and visor separately.

What headset/strap combinations have you tried?

Moving the battery is easy, moving the mainboard would be an insane engineering challenge for minimal gain and would probably have a ton of downsides. You need bidirectional extremely high bandwidth extremely low latency communication for all the cameras, sensors and displays. In order to do that you'd need an encoding and decoding chip on either end which will add to power consumption, latency, total weight, and cost.

The alternative is to have the mainboard on the headset do everything besides running the OS and applications. At that point you're basically doubling the cost of your compute for a slight weight reduction.

Meta seem to be doing something like that, wirelessly, with their latest public AR glasses, no word on which tasks are done where. But the cost is supposedly extreme.

 

[xoe]

Not that different from game consoles when a console flops support vanishes. The last sega consoles and the WiiU show that.

On those you get to maintain access to your existing library.

 

[xoe]

Don't even need a link cable, a decent wireless connection is sufficient.

No it isn't. Nowhere near stable enough for a good experience.

I specified decent if you're not getting a good experience then the most likely issue is a connection which is not decent. Either you're dealing with interference, have a congested network, or don't have a Router/AP with sufficient performance. Is what way exactly is instability making the experience not "good"?