Meta released a tech demo for Quest 3, and we gave it a try
Meta has released a VR experience designed to showcase the graphical capabilities of Quest 3. Read on to see what it has to offer.
The VR experience is called North Star and was released just before Christmas without Meta announcing it on the Quest Blog or anywhere else. I found out about it through a social network. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known the VR experience even existed.
North Star takes you back to the age of sail and exploration. After your ship sinks, you are the only survivor and are rescued by a passing sailing ship, the Polaris. Its three-man crew is on their way to recover a mythical treasure from the depths of the sea, and you are to help them.
Lots of interactions, but not much gameplay
Over the next 20 minutes, you will perform various tasks on the ship. You'll help load supplies, handle ropes, hoist and adjust sails, fire harpoons, and more. As is often the case, the use of hand tracking is more of a gimmick than a real addition to the experience. Despite a wide range of interactions, North Star offers very little gameplay.
I won't spoil any more of the story here, but if you want to know what to expect, you can watch the video below. I recorded the entire VR experience from beginning to end.
Meta describes North Star as a visual showcase that "demonstrates the stunning visual quality that’s achievable in Virtual Reality". Keywords Studios and Tantalus South are listed as the developing studios on the title screen, so I assume that North Star was developed with Meta's support, but not by Meta itself.
Impressive dynamic shadows
The VR experience has a number of unique graphical features, most notably the dynamic shadows, which have only been seen to this extent in Batman: Arkham Shadow. In the captain's cabin and on deck, just about every object casts a shadow, which is impressive. I also noticed a realistic simulation of the sails and the sea during a storm.
However, North Star as a whole is not outstanding, at least in the visual department. I've seen much more detailed and polished worlds, environments, and characters on Meta Quest 3, for example in Red Matter 2, or more recently, The House of Da Vinci VR. But to North Star's credit, these are dynamic rather than static scenes and environments with lots of things going on at once.
The visual experience is marred by the low resolution, which is countered by aggressive antialiasing that makes the image appear blurry. I'm also pretty sure that Application Spacewarp is used to artificially double the frame rate to 72 frames per second. North Star feels anything but optimized and smooth.
Technically, North Star is not a must-have experience. But it costs nothing, is a nice introduction to VR and hand tracking, and has some memorable scenes that will put a smile on your face.
You can download North Star from the Horizon Store. The VR experience only runs on Meta Quest 3 and 3S.
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