Haven’t seen another posted so figured I’d start up a Quest 3 impressions thread!
Received mine the other day, waiting on my conversion kit for the Bobo Halo Strap to come in, but I’ve given it a spin and I’ll share my first impressions here coming from the Quest 2:
- Lenses: DRAMATIC improvement. I’m retraining myself to look around in VR rather than moving my head for everything. No sweet spot (edge-to-edge) clarity is amazing, and makes the default headstrap much more tolerable since positioning isn’t nearly as sensitive - Screen: Not much to report here. They’re a tiny bit sharper, its not super noticeable in practice - Performance: This is where the device SHINES. The extra performance lets me run heresphere at 90hz with both sharpening AND autofocus enabled at 1.75 resolution, without dropping frames. Very nice. - Color Passthrough: Some people say it isn’t good, my experience has been exactly the opposite, I LOVE it. It’s obviously a little grainy, and a digital/mildly pixelated image, but it feels WAY more natural. I was able to use passthrough to grab my Handy’s connection key off my main monitor without taking the headset off (albeit after increasing the font size a bit), and switching to a color view of my environment has greatly reduced the urge to rip off the headset the moment I’m done using it.
All in all, I think it was very worth it. It’s not a night and day upgrade, and if you can get a killer deal on a Quest 2 that will still give you a great gaming/handy experience, but I 100% feel I got a very meaningful upgrade. Looking forward to SLR’s Alpha Passthrough stuff once I can get that working!
Would love to hear others thoughts here too. I have a quest 2 that I got for a steal and am wondering if it’s worth the upgrade to quest 3. Right now I’m seeing tons of used quest 2s selling for $150, so a bit hard to justify the $500 for the 3.
Having full focus all the time regardless of where you look at is the killer feature. Everything else is great too and the passthrough under the right conditions is awesome. For that money there won’t be anything better for a long time I guess also absolutely agree on the performance part. Really Quest 2 imo feels ancient now in comparison. Gaming performance is great too.
Just to chime in. I agree with dingle. The headset is much more responsive and the screen is better.
Only word of caution I would add is that the strap that comes with it is still pretty crap. Same issue as the quest 2 where you have to tense your forehead to keep it steady and that causes a headache. The cheap third party strap works great though just make sure you get a quest 3 one as they are not cross compatible.
Screen good. Clarity good. Contrast good. No more god rays good.
Strap bad. Face interface bad. Battery life bad. Heat bad.
Printed out an adapter so I could port over my Quest 2 elite strap - that helped a ton with comfort. Have some more facial interfaces coming to test out. Will definitely be keeping this - everything looks much better.
The lenses alone justify the cost. They are unreal.
I’d say the comfort of the stock strap is better than the Q2’s, but yeah, it’s definitely not up to heavy gaming. Overall though, the Q3 feels a LOT better on my face, everyone’s face is a bit different, so this is likely a very subjective point.
I have a pretty cool (temperature-wise) room for VR, so I don’t have any issues with heat on my face.
The controllers track better than the Q2 variant, but I miss the rings (they made it easier to place the controllers on the desk or floor without accidentally hitting a button).
The details you see in video and in VR are so much better. I didn’t notice any screen door artifacts or blurry fuzzy text and images in my peripheral vision. Just an amazing experience for an all-in-one headset.
The ability to dial in your specific IPD is also a welcome feature.
As far as Color Passthrough, it was a LOT better than I expected since I was disappointed with the Q2’s. But, with the Q3, I was able to answer texts on my phone. Crazy.
I’m a bit irritated at the decision to place the headset port on the Right side since every headset seems to have the cord on the left. However, this isn’t an issue if you use buds.
Overall, I’d say it’s a worthy upgrade to the Q2 in just about every aspect.
I have mine already ordered but it’s gonna take some time to get here (I’m not from the USA). I hope it’s not hard-locked at a minimum of 90hz. I know this is gonna sound counter-intuitive, but I like watching my videos at 60hz since they are at 60fps. I’ve never quite liked the feeling of the mismatch between refresh rate and framerate because the frametime is not steady. I know there’s flicker at 60hz but it doesn’t bother me and after a few minutes I forget about it, the smoothness is just perfect.
Went ahead and tested for ya - There is regrettably no 60hz option anymore… HOWEVER, the headset does appear to be able to handle 120hz (which would avoid the flicker and give you consistent 2:1 frame pacing) as long as you dont mind having sharpening off. Alternatively you can use sharpening + autofocus + 120hz if you lower the resolution to the default 1.35x. It was almost able to do it @ 1.5 but was bouncing between 115-120fps. Minimum is 72hz.
Well, I don’t use the mobile version of Heresphere, I use the Steam version through Virtual Desktop, so I don’t have the issue of choosing between sharpness, refresh rate and autofocus; the RTX 3080 can handle everything.
Based on your answer, it means Airlink won’t go down to 60HZ but hopefully Virtual Desktop can still do it.
About 120HZ, right, it also produces perfect pacing for a 60fps video just like 60HZ but it drains the battery of the headset too fast. I heard the battery of the Quest 3 can last even less than that of the Quest 2 due to the increased resolution (probably).
Interesting! I’ll have to give this a shot and compare visual fidelity/battery use compared to running native on the headset.
I have yet to run it out, but I definitely see it going down faster than the Q2, and my Q2’s battery wasn’t even in perfect shape after the years. I generally don’t play (or “play”) for more than 1hr so its a non-issue for me, and have a conversion kit for my battery strap on the way so it will probably be a non-issue at that point, but it definitely seems worse. I know a big part of it is the pancake lenses, the screens have to be WAY brighter compared to Fresnel, in addition to the higher resolution.
Would you fellas be so kind as to post some nsfw pics of the pass through? I’ve been looking and have yet to find any pics showing off the new color pass through.
I could do it with chroma-keying, but I cant figure out how to make alpha channel (the real passthrough hotness) work with local files, starting to think it isn’t possible in Deo for some reason…
Maybe someone with an active streaming SLR membership can?
I got mine on release day and generally I would say it is a great headset having come from the Pico 4. The only thing I would say that is potentially an issue is the binocular overlap. I’ve owned a couple headsets, and this is the first where the binocular overlap was apparent. You will want to try the headset first if you have a high IPD because the overlap could be problematic. The binocular overlap is obvious during the bootscreen but once I’m viewing content it is not that noticeable.
On the Quest 3 I’ve been using it standalone with Heresphere + XBVR as opposed to my old setup using PCVR via VD + Pico 4/Quest 2. No framerate drops or stutter on the Quest 3.
This must be down to head/face shape and IPD. You two aren’t the first I’ve heard mention it, but I can’t see it at all. That would definitely be annoying Hopefully it’s something that can be addressed with a corrective facial interface/etc.
Maybe the combination of upper-range (not abnormal but the high-end of the supported IPD range) + high peripheral vision. Another user I saw on reddit reported relatively low IPD, but also within spec, I wonder if they also have increased peripheral vision.
I assume so, but have you tried setting the facial interface to the closest setting, to bring the lenses as close to your eyes as possible? It seems like with those big honkin pancakes they should be less visible, just in terms of lens:retina ratio
DLNA was my achilles heel - I had assumed this would work the same as any local file. I loaded a few alpha scenes direct on the headset and they worked immediately. I am now setting up XBVR since that seems to work as well. Weird that DLNA was an issue.
Hopefully it’s something that can be addressed with a corrective facial interface/etc.