Saudi Arabia’s Ceer, KAUST Partner for Breakthroughs in Smart Mobility

Saudi Arabia’s Ceer, KAUST Partner for Breakthroughs in Smart Mobility

With Meta’s Quest 3, Mixed Reality Is Here. So Now What?

The New York Times columnist Brian X. Chen tests the Quest 3, which Meta is marketing as the first mainstream mixed-reality headset (Via Meta)

By Brian X. Chen

Last week, I spent several hours trying Meta’s latest goggles, the Quest 3. They ship next month. The headset runs virtual reality games with a novel twist: While shooting a blaster gun, snatching bats from midair and controlling a robot, I could see the real world through built-in cameras.

This is what Meta and its new rival, Apple, which recently unveiled the $3,500 Vision Pro headset, call “mixed reality” or “spatial computing,” interchangeable terms to describe computers that blend digital data with the physical world.

These immersive computers, the companies say, could eventually become indispensable tools that change the way we live. Imagine reading a holographic recipe in the corner of your eye while cooking, for example, or staring at furniture parts with digital assembly instructions overlaid on them.

But for now, the devices are primarily used for playing games, and killer apps have yet to surface.

Meta’s $500 Quest 3 headset, arriving in stores on Oct. 10 (pre-orders start on Wednesday), has sharper graphics than its predecessor,