Meta Quest 3 announced with colour passthrough cameras – coming later this year

Ahead of WWDC next week where Apple is rumoured to launch their first foray into VR, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has unveiled the Meta Quest 3 virtual and mixed reality headset which is set to ship later this year.

Similar to the Quest Pro announced last year, the Meta Quest 3 will be completely wire-free and include higher resolution displays than previous generations, as well as colour passthrough cameras to support Mixed Reality which Meta says will ‘let you interact with virtual content and the physical world simultaneously, creating limitless possibilities to explore’.

The Meta Quest 3 headset has been redesigned to be up to 40% slimmer and comes in a more comfortable form factor than the previous generation. Meta has also redesigned Quest 3’s Touch Plus controllers with ‘a more streamlined and ergonomic form factor’ that also include TrueTouch Haptics, or you can choose to use the ‘Meta Quest Touch Pro Controllers’ which are also compatible – and failing that, Meta says that hand tracking will be supported out of the box.

Meta says that the headset includes a more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon processor which will offer ‘more than twice the graphical performance as the previous generation Snapdragon GPU in Quest 2’.

Meta have also announced that they see the Quest 2 as the entry point for VR in their range and will continue to sell the Quest 2, though at a discounted price. As of June 4, Meta say they will be lowering the price of the Quest 2 to $299.99 USD for the 128GB version, while the 256GB model will drop to $349.99 USD – but we’ll have to wait for the AU pricing with the 128GB Quest 2 currently selling for $629.99 AU, while the 256GB model sells for $719.99.

The Meta Quest 3 will ship later this year in ‘Fall’ in the US, presumably Spring here in Australia starting from A$829.99 and we’ll be checking in for local availability. In the meantime you can sign up to hear about any news on the Meta Quest 3 launch on the Meta website.