UploadVR received our Quest 3S review unit from Meta earlier today and we put it through its paces for a full review.
Why doesn’t UploadVR have a Quest 3S review yet?
UploadVR has been receiving embargoed review units from Oculus/Facebook/Meta for 8 years before launch: both Rift headsets, the Touch controllers, Oculus Go, and every Quest so far – until now.
With Quest 3S, we received the headset today at 4pm UK time, just one day before launch, after the review embargo had already expired. This made it impossible for us to give you a review alongside the others you may have read today.
We’re still not entirely sure why this happened. UploadVR remains, by readership, the leading VR-focused news publication in the world, and much smaller outlets than we received a few days ago, so our exposure and reach shouldn’t be the problem. We have also always respected any embargo from any company we work with, so it cannot be a matter of trust.
We won’t publicly speculate on what the reason for Meta’s decision might be, but we’ve asked the company for an explanation and will give you one if we receive a response.
Before our full review is done, we wanted to share a notable difference we’ve noticed between the two headsets so far that wasn’t apparent during controlled hands-on sessions in well-lit environments: while Quest 3S is a cheaper headset with inferior lenses and display, it actually features superior head and hand tracking in low light compared to Quest 3.
I started testing in total darkness and found that Quest 3 and Quest 2 couldn’t track my head or hands at all. A message appeared on both headsets stating that tracking could not be initialized, offering to disable tracking. The new Quest 3S, on the other hand, continues to track both my head and my hands as long as I’m near a wall or other geometry, albeit with some mild vibration.
Cubism in total darkness on Quest 3S. The background here is passthrough, not VR.
In low light, rather than total darkness, the difference is more subtle but still significant; the hand tracking quality is noticeably superior. The kind of state in which people often play at night. Some people might use their headset in a large room with a small lamp in the corner, while others might rely on the moonlight from a window.
Under these conditions, hand tracking initializes faster on Quest 3S, handles fast movements better without losing overview, and produces false positive frames (your hand, but at the wrong angle or with wrong finger positions) much less often.
Meta reveals how Quest 3’s controllers are tracked
Meta’s CTO explained how Quest 3’s Touch Plus controllers do the job, and Beat Saber’s co-founder gave his thoughts.
Due to the way it works on Quest 3 and Quest 3S, this also has a subtle effect on controller tracking. Quest 3S uses the exact same Touch Plus controllers as Quest 3, which have a constellation of infrared LEDs under their plastic that pulse in sync with the lighting from the headset’s tracking cameras. This aspect of controller tracking works even in total darkness. But unlike Quest 2, both Quest 3 and Quest 3S also perform continuous hand tracking, and when the infrared LEDs shut down, they temporarily infer controller positions based on your hand positions. This also allows Quest 3S to have better controller tracking in the rare event that there is low light and the IR LEDs are turned off. But again, that’s a rare case.
The how and why: IR lighting
The reason why Quest 3S has better low-light tracking than any previous Quest headset, and why the tracking works even in the dark, is the same reason we managed to test for it: it has infrared illuminators on the front.
There are two IR lights on the Quest 3S, in addition to the passthrough cameras and tracking cameras on the front of the headset. They act as IR spotlights and help the tracking cameras, which see infrared, get a clear view of your hands and other objects nearby.
You can even see Quest 3S’s infrared emitters in action with your own eyes, appearing as two red glowing dots.
It is in no way a technique that Meta invented. Leap Motion (now Ultraleap) has been using IR lights for VR hand tracking for a decade, and Apple Vision Pro also has two IR lights on the front.
The more expensive Quest 3 does not have infrared heaters. It has an infrared depth projector (also called a structured light scanner) in the center bar. But this only seems to be used during mesh scanning of mixed reality scenes, to distinguish the shape of the Spartan room geometry with not much texture. It doesn’t seem to activate in low light – or if it does, it’s clearly not as bright or effective as the simpler IR lighting in Quest 3S.
But if you own a Quest 3, don’t worry. You can add your own external IR lighting 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.
2023 images of Quest 3 depth projector, from reddit user Nickburyak.
We’ll provide more details on the subtle differences between Quest 3S, Quest 3 and Quest 2 in our full Quest 3S review, including a few surprises. As mentioned above, we received our device much later than other outlets, so we’ll have to spend at least a few more days with Quest 3S before we can give you a final verdict.
