Mark Zuckerberg has revealed the Meta Quest 3, the company’s long-rumored, next-gen virtual reality headset. The Meta CEO showed off the device for the first time a few hours before the latest Meta Quest Games Showcase and just ahead of Apple’s WWDC.

As with the Quest Pro, the Quest 3 supports mixed reality and offers full-color passthrough. This enables users to see a color version of the physical space around them via the external cameras. The headset will be able to blend augmented reality elements into the outside world. Zuckerberg says it’s “the first mainstream headset with high-res color mixed reality.”

Zuckerberg claims the device has a “next-gen” Qualcomm chipset and that it offers twice the graphics performance of the Quest 2. It’s said to be Meta’s “most powerful headset yet. Despite the extra oomph, the Quest 3 is 40 percent thinner and more comfortable than its predecessor, Meta’s CEO noted.

The headset will start at $499 and it’ll be available this fall. It’s half the price of a Quest Pro and it costs the same as a PlayStation VR2 (which users need to plug into a PS5).

It’s hardly a surprise that Meta has a Quest 3 on the way. Earlier this week, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman said he’d had hands-on time with a Quest 3 prototype. Gurman wrote that the headset “feels far lighter and thinner” than the previous model and that it had a sturdier head strap. Unlike the Quest Pro, though, the Quest 3 may not have face or eye-tracking features.

Even if it weren’t for all the reports that an updated headset would arrive this year, Meta is continuing to invest in VR games and experiences — it has sunk tens of billions of dollars into building its vision of the metaverse over the last couple of years. It’s hard to imagine the company doing that without having a successor to the three-year-old Quest 2 in the works.

In another year, Zuckerberg might have waited until Meta Connect, which typically happens in October, to reveal the Quest 3. However, Meta may be trying to steal some of Apple’s thunder. The latter is widely expected to reveal a premium mixed-reality headset at WWDC next week. As such, Meta may soon have a major competitor in the mixed reality space.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-meta-quest-3-is-a-499-mixed-reality-headset-with-full-color-passthrough-141204527.html?src=rss

Source: Engadget – The Meta Quest 3 is a 9 mixed reality headset with full-color passthrough