Welcome to Lowpass! This week: The Quest 3s as a mixed reality enabler, and a sponsored guest post about Tom Emrich’s new book.

Please note: Lowpass will be off for Thanksgiving next week.

The Quest 3s is mixed reality’s coming-out moment 

Imagine you had a time machine, and you could beam yourself twenty years into the future. In that future, you’d stroll to a bookstore, and pick up a book about the history of spatial computing. What do you expect to find in that book?

Some mention of the original Oculus Rift, for sure. Also Apple’s first Vision Pro. Perhaps even a joke about Google Glass. Good times!

But I’d wager that there’s a good chance that you’ll also find a mention of Meta’s Quest 3s. Not because it had cutting-edge specs when it was released in 2024. Instead, the Quest 3s was a headset that met its moment, with a price point that screamed mass market, and the ability to introduce those masses to the world of mixed reality.

Back in the present, I’ve been testing a review unit of the Quest 3s I got loaned by Meta for a few weeks now. I’ve really been enjoying using the device, despite some notable shortcomings. One reason I’ve been so impressed by it: Squint a little when you play a game in mixed reality, and you can see that potential to make history.

How the Quest 3s fits into Meta’s VR hardware lineup. At the most basic level, the Quest 3s is a mashup of two previously-released devices. It has the same lenses and displays as the Quest 2, and combines them with the same compute power, pass-through cameras and controllers as the Quest 3. 

Others have said a lot about these differences, so I won’t bore you with specs, but here’s what it comes down to: If you want to spend a lot of time reading text in VR, you might want to consider getting a Quest 3. But if all you want to do is play some VR games – and if those games are captivating and engaging – you won’t notice all that much of a difference between those three devices. Beat Saber will be just as much fun with any of them, as is paling around in your favorite social VR game.

That’s if you don’t accidentally bump up against your guardian, or return to your home screen after you’re done playing. Do any of those things with the Quest 3s, and you get to experience the magic of mixed reality – something the Quest 2 with its washed-out black-and-white pass-through cameras simply can’t offer.

Mixed reality makes all the difference. I’ve said it before: Mixed reality is magic. The ability to superimpose VR elements over a view of the real world not only shows what AR can and will be one day, it also has the potential to become a medium in its own right.

I wrote about a few of those magical early mixed reality games and experiences in February. With the release of the Quest 3s, there are plenty more available. One of the most awe-inspiring experiences I’ve seen in some time is Impulse: Playing with Reality, an interactive narrative experience that shines a light on mental health issues. Impulse makes use of the Quest’s spatial data, and cleverly overlays your walls, floors and furniture with graphic layers, only to pull back the curtain to the real world when it matters. At times, it also uses mixed reality in a very subtle fashion, projecting shadows onto your walls that are hard to distinguish from the real thing.

There’s also a growing number of room replacement-type games, which project VR elements on physical things. An ordinary interior door becomes a medieval castle gate in Guardian of Realms, and your windows are nailed shut with pieces of wood in Home Invasion. Incorporating this kind of additional spatial info makes these games a lot more immersive and believable. I audibly gasped the first time a severed head fell onto my family’s dining room table.

On the other end of the spectrum are a growing number of apps and games that simply use mixed reality as an enabler for more active gameplay. Because, let’s face it: Accidents happen, and VR to the E.R. is a real thing. Not everyone has a dedicated VR room, and games like Spinball: 360 Tennis simply wouldn't be safe to play in full immersion for most people.

Being more aware of your body can also help with a growing crop of fitness and wellness apps. StretchLab, for instance, uses a clever kind of bifocal approach to VR: Players can replace their ordinary surroundings with the view of a fitness studio in the top of their field of view, while keeping their own body and a fitness mat in view in the bottom half. I expect that we will see a lot more of these apps make use of physical props and workout gear, thanks to mixed reality.

The floodgates are open. Granted, you can use all of those apps with the Quest 3 as well. However, that headset costs $500. Not quite in Vision Pro territory, but still a lot of money. To put it another way: The Quest 3s is Nintendo Switch-priced, while the Quest 3 price puts it in Xbox X territory. Guess which of those consoles sold many more units?

Meta clearly knows that it has a potential hit on its hands with the Quest 3s. Not only did the company optimize the headset’s packaging to ship as many units as possible, it also prepared for an influx of many new users with widely varying interests by opening up its app store earlier this year. Since then, thousands of apps have been released on the Quest store, with a growing chunk of them extending to mixed reality.

Especially intriguing has been the number of non-gaming apps that have been released on the Quest store in recent months. There are now mixed reality apps that help you teach your students, explain how to use a fire extinguisher, project the night sky onto your ceiling, teach you how to dance salsa, let you view SketchUp content in mixed reality, turn your VR headset into an overhead projector to copy images onto real-world surfaces, and so much more. The sheer breadth of content is impressive – and key to securing the Quest 3s’ place in mixed reality history.

What else

The Trade Desk confirms it’s building a TV OS. The ad tech giant officially announced its smart TV operating system three months after I broke the news.

Sonos is first in line to use The Trade Desk’s OS. Sonos CEO Patrick Spence was quoted in the announcement as being “excited to explore the integration of premium audio and video with The Trade Desk.” I had the scoop on this in September. The Verge’s resident Sonos expert Chris Welch has questions.

Why Comcast is spinning off its cable networks. Comcast announced this week that it wants to put its cable networks, including CNBC and MSNBC, under the umbrella of a new company. CNBC’s Alex Sherman believes the move is about protecting Comcast’s stock price, and signals a need for cable network consolidation.

Samsung may be working on a Ray-Ban Meta copycat. The company is reportedly working on its own smart glasses; I’d take this with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to implications for Samsung’s previously-announced XR headset.

108 million people watched Jake Paul fight Mike Tyson. That’s according to Netflix, which calls the fight the most-streamed sporting event ever. Apparently, it was also the most-complained about, with 500,000 viewers reporting outages.

PBS brings local stations to Amazon’s FAST service. Live, linear feeds from 150 local stations, as well as PBS Kids, will be available for free as part of the deal.

Amazon made a 21 inch Echo Show. The TV-sized smart display doubles as a smart TV, thanks to its Fire TV integration.

That’s it

I just found the warranty for my first computer. I still remember that it had a “turbo” button to switch between 8 and 16 MHz CPU speed. I do not remember it ever running on 8 MHz, and still don’t quite understand why that was even an option. If I had only kept the manual!

Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!

And thanks to The Next Dimension for sponsoring this issue of Lowpass.