Meta is releasing an update for Quest 3 that aims to fix one of the most irksome issues with the headset’s passthrough function: its terrible visual warping.
Using passthrough on Quest 3 has been somewhat of a blessing and curse. It’s great to have color passthrough for mixed reality games, and also for just keeping an eye on your surroundings. But ever since it launched in 2023, the headset has suffered some very apparent warping that can cause motion sickness in users since the world isn’t nearly as ‘solid’ as it should be.
Meta is now rolling out its v66 update which looks to fix this in Quest 3—said to improve image quality beyond the company’sbig v64 update in April, which brought with itbetter color accuracy, exposure, contrast, and dynamic range.
The company says in a blog postthat the new update“significantly reduce[s] image distortion in Passthrough, so that your hands and other objects look more natural in Mixed Reality. This improvement also reduces the warping effect around these objects while in motion.”
Check out a comparison between the v65 update and the new and improved passthrough in v66:
Meta says users will probably also notice that their virtual hands will now align better with the image of their real-world hands, which has always been a bit of a immersion breaker since the mismatch draws your attention away from MR content.
Additionally, the new v66 update is also slated to includean improvement to how background audio works for 2D apps on Quest, and a new experimental feature that adds a wrist-mounted menu button.
As with all Quest updates, Meta says it’s rolling out the passthrough improvement feature gradually, which may even come as an independent follow-on update after you’ve actually installed v66. In the meantime, make sure to keep your eyes peeled on your hands to see if you’ve gotten the update or not—which should be very apparent.
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Stephen Bard
I have to wonder if this visual warping would have been improved if the comparison with the AVP hadn't so called attention to it. I am thankful every day that this insultingly overpriced device with claustrophobic FOVs and a ridiculous dangling brick didn't exist to further motivate Meta.
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eadVrim
Nice, That Q3 annoying boundary should be improved too, I would like to take on the headset and voila!, why the fk* should set boundary when I am going to play a MR game.
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We need new Virtual Enviornments more than the frequency of once a year.
And do we need to complain AGAIN about not being able to have guests …??
[]^ (-
sfmike
New virtual environments might mean they would have to spend some money and that's a no-no in the corporate world these days when customer service is a concept from the past and is now being left to AI to deal with.
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ViRGiN
Following the Steam playbook?
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ViRGiN
I'm a funny guy.
I have a cult following you know- look at the many upvotes on here for a start.
I have no friends.
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Robert Smith
Yeah, we can tell.
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ViRGiN
And a very small male generative member.
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Stephen Bard
Virtual environments cost virtually nothing compared to what Meta throws away every day on other stuff, so maybe you should find some specific R&D subject to complain about that they actually spend millions on.
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philingreat
New Environments is a nice to have, but I would put the priority on a UI that works reliable. Most of the time I go in and I can't click anything in the menu. Need to put the headset to sleep and start again to make it work. With hand tracking, so many times I bring up the UI by accident just by pinching while gesturing with my hands. Why can't I have more then 1 pinned app? Why can't I have a favorite folder of games? Why stay the games even if I uninstalled them? That's just the beginning of the list…
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Stephen Bard
For some reason, I never have any problem clicking on anything in this UI, because the controllers "always" work and even make a satisfying click that I can actually feel. Since you are so enamored with the unnecessary uncertainty of hand-tracking, in order to fully feel frustration, you obviously need an overpriced AVP instead!
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Ardra Diva
yes i don't seem to have any of those problems. it is definitely nice to filter by installed and no longer see uninstalled apps.
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Stephen Bard
So yes, your ability to segregate your different Library apps has been rather limited to "All", "Installed" and "Not Installed", and the actual "unwanted" uninstalled apps are are currently a place-holder that is undeletable. Fortunately for you, this admittedly weak part of your UI will be improved somewhat in a few days with a new folder where you can hide stuff. "You" can call it "Favorites", but I will be using it for those dreadful undeletable apps that I don' t want to see any more in the "All" folder. For years I have spent alot of time finding potentially "interesting" apps in the App Lab via Sidequest (as opposed to the obviously bad ones, like hundreds of GorillaTag clones). Unfortunately, 95% of even the apps that emanate a little potential in the description/reviews do not long survive the test of install and are promptly uninstalled. So anyway, this new Library category is particularly useful for me, so 90% of the 2441 apps in my Quest 3 Library as of today will disappear into this new Hidden folder. This will be useful since some day some miniscule % of those dead apps might be revised and actually have become interesting.
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Stephen Bard
The latest, Lakeside Peak, looks pretty good, with lots of animations, on Quest 3, but I don't understand why they aren't at least double the current resolution on Quest 3. I was sure that the much-touted hi-res photogrammetry environments in the silly AVP would here again have motivated Meta to finally release Quest hi-res environments. Meanwhile, you can just open your Brink Traveler app on Quest 3 to get 28 much higher resolution animated environments, and you can fully use your Browser or any other window surrounded by the Brink scenes.
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WRIST MOUNTED MENU, LESGOOOO
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I'm pretty sure they didn't improve it, so much as simply turn it off. They couldn't magically enhance the 3D SLAM modeling of the room. That's what the distortion is: Video being texture mapped on a model of what the Quest is seeing.
I suppose there's no good reason to see that anyways. It was always just a little "look behind the curtains". At some point, it's suppose to provide occlusion for the virtual world, although it seems far too low resolution for hands in it's current iteration.
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Ardra Diva
everything could always be better, and tech will always improve. but right now it's good enough i can read texts on my phone while wearing the visor, so it's pretty good already.
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Wow… FINALLY
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Rupert Jung
I wish they would just stop displaying the virtual hand over the real one. It just causes distraction IHMO.
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Dennis Tman
Need better link support
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Ardra Diva
Still waiting for it, stuck on v65. Annoying, because I play with it daily just about.
