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A hands-on look at the Meta Quest 3 reveals a massive set of improvements to the Meta mixed reality headset, as detailed in Mark Gurman\u2019s Power On<\/em> newsletter<\/a> for Bloomberg<\/em> this morning. Gurman says the Quest 3, now codenamed Eureka, is \u201cfar lighter and thinner\u201d than the original Quest 2, which bodes well for its comfort during extended usage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In February, Meta VR exec Mark Rabkin told employees<\/a> the Quest 3 would be more expensive than its predecessor and that \u201cWe have to prove to people that all this power, all these new features are worth it.\u201d He said Meta had sold 20 million Quest headsets so far.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He also previewed the lighter design, explaining that \u201cThe main north star for the team was from the moment you put on this headset, the mixed reality has to make it feel better, easier, more natural… You can walk effortlessly through your house knowing you can see perfectly well. You can put anchors and things on your desktop. You can take your coffee. You can stay in there much longer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The report confirms some of the other big improvements<\/a> we\u2019ve been expecting, like a second-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chip, with much better performance overall as a result. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The report also talked about what the Quest 3 won\u2019t<\/em> have, namely, eye-tracking. That means games can\u2019t use foveated rendering, a feature present in Sony\u2019s PSVR 2<\/a> that adjusts based on where a player is looking and allows the system to concentrate processing power on the graphics in those places and pull back elsewhere. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Design upgrades from the Quest 2 include more sensors inside three pill-shaped areas that contain four cameras, two of which are color cameras for passthrough video. It also features an improved system for adjusting the lenses\u2019 inter-pupillary distance \u2014 the distance between your eyes \u2014 with a wheel you can turn while wearing it instead of taking the headset off and moving the display manually.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A depth sensor in the middle of the device could improve AR performance compared to the Quest Pro\u2019s camera-only approach. Redesigned controllers ditch the Quest 2\u2019s rings, but the depth sensor may help to keep costs down by tracking the controller’s position without requiring cameras like the Quest Pro\u2019s controllers. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg actually said the Quest Pro would get a depth sensor in a Protocol<\/em> interview<\/a>, but the feature didn\u2019t make it to the final version<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gurman called the pass-through video \u201calmost lifelike,\u201d a good sign after my colleague Adi Robertson called AR mode \u201cmurky in low light, washed-out or flickery in bright light, and sometimes luridly saturated in between\u201d in her review of the Quest Pro<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It sounds like improvements there come mainly down to how the headset\u2019s cameras handle light and color, as Gurman didn\u2019t think it looked noticeably sharper, despite rumors of a higher-resolution display.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n