How To Turn Your Quest 3 Into The Ultimate VR Movie Theatre
Use Quest 3’s Theatre View to get the big screen experience when watching video content in VR
Watching video content on Quest headsets has always been a delight, but Meta’s latest updates (version 67, version 68, and apparently version 69, too) have taken the experience to the next level.
Meta has now added an immersive Theater View, giving you a big screen experience—complete with dimming effects for your surroundings!—taking your viewing experience to the next level.
What is Quest 3’s Theater Mode?
Introduced in update v67, Theater Mode is an experimental setting (likely to become standard sometime very soon) that you can activate when watching video content on your Quest 2, Quest Pro, or Quest 3 headset.
It allows the panel displaying video content like YouTube or Netflix, for example, to take center stage, becoming maximized in size to give you that big screen experience. Update v67 also introduced the ability to dim your surroundings while in immersive view, deepening that feeling of immersion and further drawing you in to the content on that massive central panel.
Of course, you can use this for more than movies and video content—you can blow up any window you choose to Theater View, meaning you can also use it as a productivity panel if you enjoy working in VR, granting you a bigger panel and greater focus by dimming your surrounds in immersive view.
But we wanted more… And Meta delivered soon after!
Update v68 gave us the ability to dim our surroundings while in passthrough, meaning that immersive Theater View could remain equally immersive, however you want to watch. Being able to do this in immersive view and not in passthrough felt odd—and a bit limiting for all of us who enjoy using our Quest 3 in passthrough—so the fact that they pushed this update out less than a month after v67 was a lovely little surprise!
This feature also brought the Quest 3 one step closer to Apple’s rival Vision Pro headset, which included this feature natively.
How to use Quest 3 Theater View
You’re probably itching to give Theater View a go for yourself—so, queue up some quality video content and get ready for the big screen. Here’s how it’s done:
Step 1: Make sure you’ve installed the latest update
You’ll need to have at least v67 installed to enjoy Theater View. You can check your current version—and update to the latest—by going to: Settings––>System––>Software update.
Step 2: Choose what you want to watch and expand the window
Now, you can bring any window into Theater View if you have v68 enabled, but we’d recommend opening up your browser and choosing your fave streaming service to get the best experience up-front.
Once your window is ready, head to the top right corner and click the small icon that looks like 4 expanding arrows.
Step 3: Experiment with the settings
Once you’re in Theater View, you can play with the settings to customize your experience. When you hover your cursor near the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a menu bar appear with 5 options. From left to right, these are:
- Change your display mode between 2D, 3D, and various others
- Toggle between a wrapped or flat panel view
- Toggle between passthrough or immersive view
- Brighten or dim your surroundings in either passthrough or immersive
- Return to a normal window view
Step 4: Resize (and re-shape) your view
If you’re in version 67, you’ll see the option to do this in the menu bar—and it’ll let you choose between: small, medium, large, or jumbo!
If you’re rocking v68, you can pinch the corner of the screen and resize it however you like. That means, if you’re watching an older bit of content (I was watching season 1 of It’s Always Sunny, for example), you can reshape the window to fit a 4:3 aspect ratio and then blow it up. This level of control is really great.
Step 5: Enjoy the show!
With those steps complete, you’re ready to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show—or work away on a huge screen. Your choice!
We’d recommend plugging your Quest in while watching. Nothing worse than running out of juice in the middle of a classic movie!
You can also watch videos on Quest while gaming
As if that weren’t enough, the incoming v69 update promises an expansion of the ability from v68 to pin windows, allowing you to pin a window in your game screen to help you catch up on a Twitch chat, check out a podcast, watch a video tutorial while you solve a pesky puzzle, or even catch a movie while you play—if you’re a master multitasker!
We’re enjoying Meta’s current focus on productivity and functionality—and they certainly seemed to have grapsed the fact that loads of us love watching movies and videos in VR. So, the more ways we have to digest that glorious content, the better!
Check out our v69 roundup article for more details on that!
Limitations of Theater View and Quest 3
Now, this wouldn’t be a fair analysis if we didn’t discuss a couple of drawbacks—and there are three principal ones you should be aware of:
1. The limited field of view (FOV)
VR lenses have come a long way, but they still have their limits. And FOV is one of them. This can be pretty noticeable when you blow a window up to Theater View size—and especially when you drag that window to as big as it can get!
Now, it’s not a game-breaker by any means, but it’s worth mentioning if you’re sensitive to this sort of thing. You may notice a little loss of clarity at the screen edges and you may need to slightly turn your head to catch everything happening on screen.
2. The audio
It goes without saying that unless you can supplement the Quest 3 with a decent pair of headphones, then the audio will not be cinema-quality. In fact, this is a major hurdle for almost every VR headset on the market. The Vision Pro’s audio is very good—but again, not theater quality. But hey, they’re all still ‘good enough’. And, that’s a sacrifice we’re willing to make.
3. The headset strapped to your face
At the end of the day, you’ve still got a headset strapped to your face, which can get uncomfortable for some folks over extended periods — periods like, say, the length of a modern, 2 hour plus movie.
While you should probably go into the experience expecting this, we’d be foolish not to remind you of the fact. If you feel yourself getting sore or feel your eyes getting strained, don’t forget to take regular breaks. Every 30 mins or so should do the trick.
Is Quest 3 the best home theater headset?
With the addition of Theater View, Quest 3 has become our go-to headset for watching movies and other long-form content in VR—giving you one of the very best VR home theater experiences for its price. And, let’s not forget about Quest 3’s spatial video capabilities to boot! It’s a great all-rounder for video viewing in VR.
But there are, of course, other options out there.
If you can pick up a Quest Pro, it will do an excellent job as a home theater device—and pretty much anything else the Quest 3 can do, but with a greater focus on productivity (and eye tracking, which is lovely)! It’s a fair bit more expensive (and harder to get hold of), though, so if your main concern is gaming and video viewing it might not be the best option.
A clear contender is the Vision Pro. It’s got a hefty price tag of $3,499 vs the Quest 3’s $499.99 for the base model, but that does also represent a jump in quality. It was marketed heavily as a video viewing and productivity device, so we’d expect it to perform well. And perform it does—in both the audio and video departments! If you have that kind of scratch and you’re looking for a VR home theater, then the Vision Pro should be in the running.
Another upcoming contender could be the Quest 3S, a more budget-friendly version of Quest 3 that—fingers crossed—should have these Theater View capabilities baked in from the beginning thanks to the recent updates. We’re hoping the device (and a price tag) will be revealed in Spetember.
However, in all, Quest 3 is a great choice—and has access to a vast library of VR games in addition to its home theater capabilities.
And *SHAMELESS PLUG* you can get a whole bunch of those apps and games—including experimental titles you can’t get anywhere else—right here with us on SideQuest.
About SideQuest
SideQuest represents the ultimate community in standalone VR. A place where developers and players around the globe can create, share, and get excited about the virtual reality apps they love.
Developers (like us) are free to experiment with mechanics and modes on their journey to official stores, while players can safely explore thousands of apps across the wonderful world of VR — the biggest collection all in one place, actually.
Because who needs limits, right?
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