It has been nearly a month since I bought Quest3 from Amazon. com in Japan. As a (self claimed) senior VR player, I have used it for two or three weeks with high intensity. I would like to give a brief comment on this machine.
Good
1. Optical module and screen color
It is also a Pancake lens. Compared with the competing products, Meta should deeply optimize the light path, The optical glare and ghost in the Quest 3-in-1 machine are very slight.
For Pancake, ghosts and glare are widespread, but they are only obvious in some scenes, and Most people don't notice ； The big sweet area and light and thin brought by Pancake can be felt when you touch it.
In terms of display color, Quest 3 should adjust the display saturation: under the Pancake light path, the same scene's display color will be fuller and more realistic than the competing products (compared with the screenshots of the same game stream).
2. WiFi 6
With the update of new chips, the new generation WiFi capabilities are actually installed on the machine. Compared with the previous generation that only supports WiFi 5, Quest 3 naturally has its advantages.
The biggest change brought by the WiFi upgrade is not bandwidth, but stability: compared with the previous generation of WiFi 5 helmets, WiFi 6 router and WiFi 6 helmet can significantly improve the transmission stability.
In the VirtualDesktop streaming scenario, it also runs at 200 Mbps (PC network monitor data), The card frame probability of WiFi 6 is much lower than that of WiFi 5.
For the VD streaming effect, please refer to the video I released on Bilibili: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Nz4y1N7Wu/
3. Comfortable straps and foam (for short-term games)
Quest 3 head strap is no longer the second generation middle split strap, but is replaced by a two-part Y-shaped strap, which makes the force on the head more uniform.
The elasticity of the strap will "hoop" the helmet on the top of the head, and the stress points are distributed in the back of the head, the top of the head and the forehead. The cheekbones will not bear too much force (if you have experienced the discomfort caused by the pressure on the cheekbones of competing products from the inside out, you must know what I am talking about).
Quest 3 foam adds a retractable frame and expands the horizontal space, so that medium-sized glasses can be directly put into the foam. Compared with the second generation, it can be called an epic progress.
Of course, if you wear the ordinary helmet for a long time, the head will still feel uncomfortable (not as good as Quest Pro or Elite). Senior game players have to pay for Elite Headwear to generate income for Meta.
4. Speaker and 3D space audio
Quest3 has a strong built-in speaker. When playing games, the feeling of in ear audio is no less than that of ordinary earphones. The immersion and restoration are very good.
At the same time, many 3D apps have access to 3D space audio. When playing, the game audio has a strong sense of space and is immersive.
However, although the speaker hardware level is very high, considering the usage scenarios of most users, the speaker placement may not be so important.
Poor (barely satisfactory)
1. Display definition
Although Qualcomm XR2 Gen2 chip is actually installed, the LCD physical resolution and software rendering resolution of Quest 3 have not been improved across the ages, but are just conventional minor upgrades.
However, this situation can also be understood: without groundbreaking technological breakthroughs and limited by the current technological development, all VR all-in-one machines should take a balance from power consumption, performance, heat dissipation, endurance, noise and other aspects.
In order to maintain the use time of 2 hours, the Apple VP next door had to connect a large battery tail.
2. ToF sensor
Quest 3 has added a ToF sensor for security protection environment scanning. The environment scanning effect of the new protection system is good. Compared with Hololens, The scanning accuracy of Quest 3 is not poor.
However, at present, it seems that the ToF sensor only has the function of scanning the security boundary, and there is no third-party software that can use the ToF capability (reference: software that uses the iPhone Pro lidar scanner to model).
At present, the environmental information available to the third-party APP of the Quest platform is post-processing information obtained through the Quest SDK, not the original image or sensor data. It is unknown whether Meta will open the original data such as ToF sensor data and color camera data to the third-party software in the future.
3. Price
In Japan, the United States and other original places of sale, The price of Quest 3 is about 3500 yuan, which is an acceptable upgrade price for Quest 2 users.
If the import tariff in mainland China is taken into consideration, the price of overseas shopping for mainland users is about 3800 – 3900, which is not low for the mainstream VR users in China.
Bad
1. Color perspective (VST)
Although there are two color cameras and one ToF sensor, the effect of Quest 3's color VST is still poor, and the distortion of near and far scenes and algorithm correction are poor.
Compared with the competing products of the previous generation chip and a color camera, the Quest 3 VST of Dual Color Photography+ToF has no epoch-making update except for its higher image resolution. It is still far from the immersion of "virtual reality integration" in the imagination.
2. Stability
In the process of my use, I operated a 2D app in the home scene, and there were many shining lines and torn images. The recent update only reduced the probability, but did not completely solve the problem.
In the process of using one party's APP, the application has also been stuck and crashed for many times, and even a system crash restart has occurred.
Of course, with subsequent Rom updates, Meta will certainly solve these problems.
3. Field of vision
Like Quest Pro, Quest 3 also adjusted the placement angle of the screen in order to "cover a larger effective field of vision biologically", but the result of doing so is to reduce the overlap area of the screen at the middle nose. Some sensitive groups (such as me) will have a distinct sense of strangeness, and the eyes will focus on the nose tip from time to time, which is very easy to get tired and aggravate dizziness.
4. Pupil distance adjustment
The stepless pupillary distance dial added in Quest 3 is neither sensitive nor intuitive, and the pupillary distance adjustment feedback pop-up window in the OS is even more intermittent, and it is often twisted for half a day without knowing the current pupillary distance value.
It is also a mechanical adjustment of pupillary distance, The pupil distance adjustment of Quest 3 is not as good as the generation of Vive a few years ago. At least Vive's pop-up feedback is relatively timely.
Which machine should I buy?
If you play VRChat If BeatSaber or PC VR game streaming is not going to be replaced in the next two or three years, and can solve various network problems independently, you can directly choose Quest3.
If you mainly play social all-in-one computer games, and you are short of money, you can consider second-hand platform competitors.
Of course, the above are personal suggestions.
