We received Quest 3S at 4pm UK Time today, one day after launch. The review embargo was already over. We were unable to publish a full review with the other reviews you’ve read. We’ve always respected any embargo from companies we work with, so it can’t have been a trust issue. We’ve also always respected every embargo from every company we interact with, so it can’t be an issue of trust.
We won’t publicly speculate on what the reason for Meta’s decision may be, but we’ve asked the company for an explanation and will bring you it if we receive a response.
Before our full review is ready, we wanted to share a notable difference we’ve noticed so far between the two headsets that wasn’t apparent during
in well-lit environments: while Quest 3S is a cheaper headset with inferior lenses and display, it actually features superior low-light head and hand tracking compared to Quest 3.
I started by testing in total darkness, finding that Quest 3 and Quest 2 were unable to track either my head or hands at all. Both headsets displayed a message that tracking could not be initialized and offered to turn off tracking. The new Quest 3S, on the other hand, continues to track both my head and hands as long as I’m near a wall or other geometry, though with some minor jitter.
Cubism in
total
darkness on Quest 3S. This is a passthrough background, not VR. This is the kind of environment people play in at night. Some people may use their headset in a large room with a small light on in the corner, while others might rely on the moonlight from a window.controlled hands-on sessionsIn these conditions, hand tracking initializes faster on Quest 3S, handles fast motions better without losing track, and produces false positive frames (your hand, but at the wrong angle or with wrong finger positions) far less often.
Because of
on Quest 3 and Quest 3S, this also has a subtle effect on controller tracking. Quest 3S utilizes the same Touch Plus Controllers that Quest 3 used. These controllers have infrared leds embedded under the plastic, which pulses in time with the tracking camera exposure. The controller tracking feature works in complete darkness. Quest 3S and Quest 3 also run continuous hand tracking. When the infrared leds are blocked, the game temporarily determines the controller position from the hand. But again, that’s a rare situation. But again, that’s a rare case.The How & Why: IR IlluminatorsThe reason why Quest 3S has better low-light tracking than all previous Quest headsets, and why its tracking even works in the dark, is the same reason why we knew to test for it: it has infrared illuminators on the front.
The two Quest 3S sensor clusters consist of a passthrough camera (top), tracking camera (bottom), and infrared illuminator (right).
There are two IR illuminators on Quest 3S, positioned alongside the passthrough cameras and tracking cameras on the front of the headset. The IR illuminators act as IR Floodlights to help the tracking cameras see objects in infrared. Leap Motion, now
Meta Reveals How Quest 3’s Controllers Are Tracked
Meta’s CTO explained how Quest 3’s Touch Plus controllers track, and Beat Saber’s co-founder gave his take.
, has used IR illuminators to track VR hands for ten year. how it works also has two IR illuminators in the front. The center bar has an infrared projector, also known as a structured-light scanner. This appears to only be used for mixed reality scene scanning to differentiate the geometry of rooms with little texture. If you have a Quest 3 headset, don’t worry. You can add your own
to your room to improve low-light tracking on Quest 3, Quest 2, or any other headset that uses inside-out computer vision tracking, as some VR enthusiasts have been doing for years now.
2023 footage of Quest 3 depth projector, from reddit user
We’ll have more details about the subtle differences between Quest 3S, Quest 3, and Quest 2 in our full Quest 3S review, including some surprises. We received Quest 3S a little later than most outlets. This means that we will need a couple more days to give a final verdict.