Meta Quest 3 is not a 'finished' product, and that is a good thing
Meta Quest 3 will unfold its full potential gradually. Just like Meta Quest 2, where prominent features were introduced later.
Meta Quest 3 goes on sale next week. But some of the best new features won't roll out until the end of the year or beyond.
First, there's the inside out upper body tracking, a feature that no other standalone headset offers in this form. It can track your arms and torso without external cameras, potentially allowing for greater immersion, more natural avatars, and new gameplay mechanics. Upper body tracking and AI-generated legs will be rolled out to developers in December.
The device's much-improved Mixed Reality is missing an important feature at launch: Dynamic Occlusion. Digital objects, such as a virtual pet, are not occluded by physical objects, people, or your own hands, destroying the illusion that they are in front of you.
The Depth API, which enables Dynamic Occlusion, will be available later this year and could look something like this.
The so-called Augments, which are interactive mixed reality objects and mini-apps that you can permanently anchor in your physical space, won't even come out until 2024.
Meta Quest 3 will get better and better
There are certainly more features in the pipeline that we don't even know about at launch.
That's not uncommon: Over the years, Meta Quest 2 has received a lot of significant features that have made it the headset it is today. I'm thinking of features like hand tracking, PC VR streaming, Oculus Move, a social Horizon Home, and passthrough for apps.
The hardware grows with the software, making it better and more versatile even years after its release. As such, Meta Quest 3 at launch is just a hint of what it could become, especially in the mixed reality area.
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