UploadVR received our Quest 3S review unit from Meta earlier today, and we put it through a full review.
Why hasn’t UploadVR for Quest 3S been reviewed yet?
UploadVR has been receiving review units several days before launch under the Oculus/Facebook/Meta embargo for 8 years now: all of the Rift headsets, the Touch controllers, the Oculus Go, and every Quest game to date – until now.
With the Quest 3S, we received the headset at 4pm UK time today, just one day before launch, after the review embargo had already ended. This made it impossible for us to give you a review alongside other reviews you may have read today.
We’re still not entirely sure why this happens. UploadVR remains, from a reader perspective, the leading VR-focused news publication in the world, and a much smaller outlet than we received days ago, so our fame and reach shouldn’t be the issue. We have also always respected every ban imposed by every company we deal with, so this cannot be a matter of trust.
We won’t publicly speculate on the reasoning behind Meta’s decision, but we have asked the company for an explanation and will provide it to you 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 evident during controlled hands-on sessions in well-lit environments: While the Quest 3S is a cheaper headset with lower quality lenses and screen, it does In fact with superior head and hand tracking in low light compared to the Quest 3.
I started testing in complete darkness, and found that Task 3 and Task 2 couldn’t track my head or hands at all. On both headsets, a message appeared telling me that tracking was unable to initialize, and offering to disable tracking. The new Quest 3S, on the other hand, continues to track my head and hands as long as I’m near a wall or other geometric shape, with some minor jitter.
Cubism in the total Darkness on Quest 3S. The background here is transit, not VR.
In low light, rather than complete darkness, the difference is more subtle but still significant; The hand tracking quality is noticeably superior. The type of situation that people often play in the evening. Some people may use their headphones in a large room with a small light in the corner, while others may rely on moonlight from a window.
In these conditions, the Quest 3S’s hand tracking kicks in faster, handles fast movements better without losing track, and produces false positive frames (your hand, but at the wrong angle or with the wrong finger positions) much less frequently.
Meta reveals how Quest 3 controllers are tracked
Meta’s CTO explained how to track Touch Plus controllers in Quest 3, and the Beat Saber co-founder gave his opinion.
Given how it works on Quest 3 and Quest 3S, this also has a subtle impact on controller tracking. The Quest 3S uses the exact same Touch Plus controllers as the Quest 3, which has a constellation of infrared LEDs underneath the plastic that pulse in sync with the exposure of the headset’s tracking cameras. This aspect of the console’s tracking works even in complete darkness. But unlike the Quest 2, the Quest 3 and Quest 3S also turn on hand tracking continuously, and when the infrared LEDs are blocked, they temporarily infer the controller’s positions from your hand positions. Because of this, in the rare case that the lighting is low with the IR LEDs obscured, the Quest 3S actually has better controller tracking as well. But again, this is a rare case.
How and why: infrared illuminators
The reason the Quest 3S has better low-light tracking than all previous Quest headsets, and why the tracking works even in the dark, is the same reason we tested it: it has infrared lights on the front.
There are two infrared lights on the Quest 3S, placed alongside traffic and trail cameras on the front of the headset. They act as infrared spotlights, helping trail cameras, which see infrared, get a bright view of your hands and other nearby objects.
You can also see the Quest 3S’s infrared lights in action with your own eyes, as they appear as two red glowing dots.
It’s not a meta-invented technology by any means. Leap Motion (now known as Ultraleap) has been using infrared lights for hand tracking in VR for a decade, and the Apple Vision Pro has two infrared lights on the front as well.
The more expensive Quest 3 doesn’t have infrared lights. It has an infrared depth monitor (sometimes called a structured scanner), in the center bar. But this appears to be only used during retinal scanning of a mixed reality scene, to highlight the spartan room geometry with not much texture. They don’t seem to activate in low light — or if they do, they’re clearly not as bright or effective as the Quest 3S’s simpler infrared lights.
But if you own a Quest 3, don’t worry. You can add your own External infrared lamps into your room to improve low-light tracking on your 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 Screenshots of the Quest 3 depth monitor, from reddit user nicburyak.
We’ll have more details on the exact differences between Quest 3S, Quest 3 and Quest 2 in our full Quest 3S review, including some surprises. As noted above, we received our unit much later than other outlets, so we’ll need to spend at least a few extra days with the Quest 3S before we can give you a final verdict.
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