Meta's hyper-realistic Quest environments are no longer exclusive to the US
Meta's impressive Hyperscape demo is now available outside the US. We tried it from Europe.
At Meta Connect in September, Mark Zuckerberg announced the Hyperscape demo, which offers photorealistic duplicates of real-world environments on Quest 3 and Quest 3S.
Previously, this demo was only available to US citizens, but that restriction seems to have been lifted. I was able to download and test the Hyperscape demo both from Croatia, where I live, and via VPN with a German IP address. You can find my first impressions and a video below.
The pre-scanned environments, including an artist's studio, a recording studio, a workshop, and a conference room at Meta's headquarters, are rendered in the VR headset using Gaussian Splatting and cloud streaming. Gaussian splatting is an AI-based scanning and rendering technique that uses photographs to create a walk-through digital replica of a real location.
You can download the Hyperscape demo from the Horizon Store, if you own a Quest 3 or 3S.
The Hyperscape demo uses cloud streaming, so the first thing it does after starting is to check the bandwidth of your internet connection. Mine is about 230 Mbps. I also live in Croatia, a country that is not supported by Meta Quest. So the distance between me and Meta's server must be quite long. I was not surprised when the application reported that I had poor network performance. However, I was still able to move on and try out the demo.
As you can see from my hands-on video, the environments, which are packed with an insane number of objects and detail, are realistically rendered. The lighting feels real, and the rooms are walkable and mostly artifact-free, regardless of which way you look at them.
Only the resolution is disappointing, but that is probably due to my low internet bandwidth. In any case, the environments looked washed out, and as soon as I got close to objects, the illusion of presence was lost. Let us know in the comments if you live in Europe and get a better result with your internet connection and location.
Meta also suggests that one day you will be able to scan and upload your own room with a smartphone and share it with other people. This way it would be possible, for example, to visit your friends' homes in VR.
The Hyperscape demo gives a first glimpse of the direction this promising technology could take.
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