Meta Quest gets its most advanced home environment yet
UPDATEIf you're wondering why you can't access Lakeside Peak (anymore): Meta rolled back the home environment shortly after it was released due to crashes (see post on X). They are currently working on a fix.
The Lakeside Peak home environment arrives on Quest half a year after it was announced. Was it worth the wait?
Lakeside Peak was announced as part of the v60 system update that was rolled out to Quest devices in December 2023.
Six months later, the latest home environment is finally reaching Quest users. I took a look at it with Meta Quest 3 and recorded a video to give you a first impression.
Lakeside Peak is probably the most graphically advanced home environment to date. You find yourself at a rest area in the middle of an idyllic mountain landscape. While the world in the distance is still static, you are surrounded by numerous animated elements: the tent flutters in the wind, smoke rises over the fireplace, you can see a waterfall and the flow of a nearby river and lake.
The soft transparency of the trees and the sunlight breaking through a conifer are also nice to look at. Overall, Lakeside Peak has a richer and better 3D feel than previous home environments.
One drawback is the resolution, which even on Quest 3 is not high enough to completely avoid aliasing, which means that Lakeside Peak looks better in videos and pictures than in the headset. Another drawback is that you can only move around in a very limited area, similar to other home environments.
Both limitations are due to the limited resources of the headset, as Quest has to handle all system tasks in addition to rendering the home environment.
Fancy more?
If Lakeside Peak has whetted your appetite for realistic VR environments, check out the Brink Traveler travel app. It features 3D reconstructions of 28 travel destinations around the world, many of which surpass Lakeside Peak in realism and resolution. Brink Traveler also features a multiplayer mode and an AI travel guide that answers your questions.
I can also recommend the free hyper-realistic VR demo Oniri Forest, which shows what is graphically possible when the range of movement is limited.
Note: Links to online stores in articles can be so-called affiliate links. If you buy through this link, MIXED receives a commission from the provider. For you the price does not change.
