Meta Quest 3’s next-gen AR upgrade delayed

What do you want to know

• Augments are digital objects that can be placed in the real world, viewable through a Meta Quest 3 headset.
• Andrew Bosworth, CTO of Meta, said Augments went back to the drawing board in January because they “weren’t good enough.”
• The improvements were originally supposed to release this year, but will likely launch next year.

When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially laid out the vision for Meta Quest 3, it included a lot of mixed reality content. At the center of this vision was Augments, a series of digital objects that could be placed around your home – on walls, ceiling, floor, tables or even floating in the air – that would encourage users to keep their headsets on Longer. giving them practical utilities and works of art to admire.

However, Andrew Bostoworth, CTO of Meta, said during a June 17 Instagram AMA that the feature didn’t turn out the way it was originally envisioned, forcing it to be sent back to the drawing board. Part of the problem, like DownloadVR The point is that the Augments feature was originally built on Meta’s Spark Studio platform, but Quest’s newer AR tools are much better suited to what Meta originally wanted to do with Augments.

The improvements were first demonstrated at Meta Connect 2023, as seen in the GIF above, with Zuckerberg explaining how digital photo frames could be placed on walls with Facebook image feeds. Zuckerberg also explained how a “mirror” could be installed in your workout space, allowing you to quickly start Supernatural or one of the other best exercise apps for Meta Quest contextually.

Bosworth hasn’t given any hints as to what the Augments might look like in their remodeled form, but the latest Meta Quest ads give us an idea of ​​what to expect. Meta has overhauled much of the operating system that runs the Quest experience, called Meta Horizon OS, as it appears companies like ASUS ROG and Xbox are releasing their own VR headsets with Meta software.

We expect the original vision for Augments to remain in its final form when the feature finally launches (likely next year) and could even move to Meta’s upcoming AR glasses when that product launches in a few years.

Many of Meta’s upgrades for the Quest, especially the mixed reality functionality, seem to have been made ahead of better, more comfortable hardware that people would want to wear all day. The improvements could be a huge paradigm shift in how people get their daily information instead of turning to smartphone apps.