What We NEED in Facebook’s Oculus Quest 3
The Oculus Quest was a marvel, but it wasn’t enough for me to upgrade from my Rift CV1. The Quest had by far the better software and dozens of quality-of-life upgrades, but I’m a fan of not needing to worry about batteries and the inside-out tracking of standalone headsets is not up to snuff with the Rift’s outside-in tracking. As a PC VR player, these things have been rather important to me. However, Quest 2 is such a massive improvement for such a great price, it’s hard to ignore. With little to no sign of any screen door effect and all the benefits of a standalone headset for such a low starting price of $300 USD, it’s huge for consumers and the VR industry. But I’m not here to talk about the Quest 2, I am already thinking of what I want in with the Quest 3.
Optional Outside-in tracking
Would it be so hard to sell similar cameras to track your head and controllers for a standalone headset for PC gaming? With a headset like the Quest, you could have the Quest track your room and keep track of your playspace and still move around these sensors at will, without the need to reset your playspace. Also, this could allow us to still use the VR headset as a standalone device when on the go or while in other areas, but this way for more series VR gaming on PC I could have better and more responsive tracking in a specific area. Of course, these would be best as an optional addition for us more dedicated VR users. But it could easily be the best of both worlds for a little extra money to those willing to spend it.
Eye-Tracking
The feature of Eye-tracking is crucial for the future of VR. For those who don’t know, when the headset can track where your eye is looking, the software then renders where you are looking at a higher resolution, and lowers the resolution where you’re not looking. This means the display can be more clear and render things more efficiently, taking the load off your Graphics card and Processor. Eye-tracking also helps with seeing depth in VR. If you are looking at something close up, then the background blurs, if you stare at something far away then the foreground blurs. Eye-tracking can also give your in-game avatar eyes that move as yours do. This means you can make eye contact or other small eye gestures, like rolling your eyes.
Face Tracking
Face tracking is already a feature in the latest VR accessory made by HTC for their Vive headset. However, according to tech enthusiasts, you can use the accessory with any VR headset. However, this should become an industry standard along with eye-tracking. Making facial expressions to more naturally express yourself or just make goofy faces for fun, would be a much-appreciated feature. It could also be more practical if you’re playing a co-op stealth game and instead of speaking loudly to give orders or warn friends of danger, you could mouth the words to them silently. Giving players a more human feel could also help us tell who is who, just based on what their character’s face looks like, and how it moves.
More pixels, and then add even more pixels.
The Quest 2 is just shy of the HP Reverb 2 which has 2160x2160, the highest a VR headset has had that is affordable. Unlike the Pimax 8K and 8K Plus which cost more than a new gaming PC and instead of using those extra pixels for clarity, they use it for the field of view (FOV). But I want to ask that the Quest 3 has enough pixels to improve both, even if it’s just by a little bit. A wider FOV would be better for any full VR experience like Onward, Racing Sims, and just about any VR game that has an environment around you for you to explore freely. This is why so many VR games have everything directly in front of you, like Beatsaber, because this means we never really have to question our FOV and therefore not really notice that it’s smaller than our FOV in real life, adding to the immersion. Anyway, if the Quest 3 could add even more pixels to help the clarity be really nice and extend the FOV, that would obviously be a big bonus.
