Meta is launching its newest Quest mixed reality headset, the Meta Quest 3S, for $299 on October 15, 2024, as the company seeks to push VR and metaverse use into more homes with lower-priced headsets.
The Meta Quest 3S will be Meta’s cheapest headset to date, following the company’s boss Mark Zuckerberg’s recent push to see use of the metaverse – a loose term for virtual worlds – become more mainstream.
The release also raises the prospect of VR porn home use becoming more affordable. VR porn users’ ears may also be pricked by Meta saying that it is working on support for the Quest 3S to be able to be used effectively whilst the wearer is lying down. The company also said it’s working on support for the headset to be able to be used properly on trains, which may have fewer implications for VR porn, but might still be handy.
The Meta Quest 3S is billed as technologically comparable to the Quest 3, which was released in October 2023 and is Meta’s current top-of-the-range headset. Meta said the new model has the same mixed reality experience as the Quest 3, with 4.5 times the resolution and color of the Quest 2, which was released in 2020.
The Quest 3S features 1832×1921 pixels per eye, 96 degrees of view horizontally and 90 degrees vertically. There are two memory storage options: 128 GB and 256 GB, and the device has 8 GB of RAM. It has an average run time of 2.5 hours between charges, and comes with controllers. Meta claims that its hand tracking capabilities have improved for the new launch.
Meta said: “We’ve rebuilt Meta Horizon OS for spatial computing, with better support for essential 2D apps like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. We’ve added better spatial audio and improved Passthrough’s contrast and color, making it more realistic and immersive.”
Passthrough is becoming increasingly popular in the world of porn and other adult content, with VR porn companies such as SexLikeReal investing in immersive technology that makes the headset wearer feel the porn performer is in the room with them as they watch. Content like this may not be at the forefront of Zuckerberg’s mind as he unveils his lower-cost headsets, but they offer further potential for VR porn to claim a bigger slice of the adult content industry pie.
The release of the Meta Quest 3S does also herald the end of the line for the existing Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest 3 128GB models. This particular news won’t be particularly welcomed to by many consumers, having only first gone on sale in October 2023. Other Quest 3 models will remain on sale.
The bigger [Meta] picture
Meanwhile, although Zuckerberg’s vision for metaverse use to become the internet’s next great stage following the rise of social media hasn’t yet borne out, Meta is performing strongly as a company. Shares in the firm are up by around 90 percent year on year, as of early October 2024. Industry-watchers point to Meta’s utilization of AI as driving the strong performance.
Meta’s strategy of encouraging home VR and mixed reality use has not been mirrored by Apple, which launched its first mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, in early 2024. The price of the headset started at $3,499, many times the cost of a Meta Quest headset, with Apple envisaging slower growth of mixed reality use in homes.
Meta has also announced the release of Orion: billed as the company’s first ‘true’ AR glasses.
The Orion glasses (pictured above) look noticeably oversized compared to normal glasses, but could mark a step towards genuinely subtle AR glasses that could be worn in daily life without being marked out as tech products.
“That’s the north star our industry has been building towards: a product combining the convenience and immediacy of wearables with a large display, high-bandwidth input and contextualized AI in a form that people feel comfortable wearing in their daily lives,” Meta said.
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