Meta Quest 3 News & Reviews

While Meta’s Quest has always relied heavily on cameras for tracking location of the headset, controllers, and the world around the user, developers haven’t had the same privileged access to the headset’s cameras. Earlier this year Meta gave developers the ability to experiment with direct access to the headset’s cameras in private projects; starting this week developers can now publicly release apps that make use of the new feature.

This week’s update of the Passthrough Camera API for Quest means that developers can now publish apps to the Horizon store that directly access the front-facing cameras of Quest 3 and 3S. This opens the door to third-party applications which can scan the world around the user to understand more about it. For instance, developers could add computer-vision capabilities to track objects or people in the scene, or to build a map of the environment for analysis and interaction.

For a long time this was impossible due to limitations Meta placed on what developers could and couldn’t do with the headset’s hardware. Despite computer-vision capabilities being widely available to developers on smartphones, Meta was hesitant to allow the same on its headsets, apparently due to privacy concerns (and surely amplified by the many privacy controversies the company has faced in the past).

Previously, third-party apps could learn some information about the world around the user—like the shape of the room and objects within it—but this information was provided by the system in a way that prevented apps from directly seeing what the cameras could see. This made it possible for developers to build mixed reality applications that were, to some extent, aware of the space around the user. But it made some use-cases difficult or even impossible; for example, tracking a specific object held by the user.

Last year Meta announced it would finally unlock direct access to the headset’s cameras. In March, it began offering an experimental version of the capability to developers, allowing them to build apps that accessed the headset’s cameras. But they weren’t allowed to publish those apps to the public, until now.

The company has also specified the technical capabilities and performance of the cameras that the developers can access on Quest 3 and 3S:

• Image capture latency: 40-60ms
• GPU overhead: ~1-2% per streamed camera
• Memory overhead: ~45MB
• Data rate: 30Hz
• Max resolution: 1280×960
• Internal data format YUV420

Meta says that a developer’s use of camera data on Quest is covered under its Developer Data Use Policy, including a section on “Prohibited Uses of User Data,” which prohibits certain uses of data, including to “perform, facilitate, or provide tools for surveillance,” and “uniquely identifying a device or user, except as permitted [in the policy].”

Meta is reportedly working on a version of its Ray-Ban smart glasses which will include a single display for viewing photos and apps. Now, according to a new Bloomberg report from Mark Gurman, the company is aiming to introduce it sometime later this year alongside its wrist-worn XR controller for hand-gesture input.

As per a previous Bloomberg report from January, the device is allegedly codenamed ‘Hypernova’. Citing Meta employees, the device could cost between $1,000 and $1,400, although the final price likely still hasn’t been decided.

The price increase over the company’s $300 Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, which don’t include displays of any sort, is reportedly driven by the inclusion of a single display visible in the lower-right quadrant of the right lens.

Unlike augmented reality glasses, which correctly place digital images in the user’s field-of-view, the device as described would be closer to Google Glass in function. Find out more about the differences between Smart Glasses and AR Glasses in our full explainer.

Bloomberg’s latest report now maintains Hypernova will include dedicated apps for taking pictures, viewing photos and accessing maps. This also includes notifications from phone apps, such as Messenger and WhatsApp, the report maintains.

It’s said Hypenova will rely “heavily on the Meta View phone app,” and may not include its own on-board app store despite running a customized version of Android—suggesting it’s more akin to a smartphone peripheral and not a standalone platform as such.

It is however said to include many of the same features of Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, such as capturing images and video, accessing AI via built-in microphones and pairing with a phone for calls and music playback.

Additionally, it’s said Hypernova is getting a spec bump in the camera department. The latest version of Meta Ray-Ban comes with a 12-megapixel camera, similar to an iPhone 11 (2019) in quality. Instead, Hypernova is hoping to “rival the iPhone 13 from 2021,” according to people familiar with the matter.

Like the company’s display-less Ray-Ban Glasses, the report maintains users can control Hypernova using capacitive touch controls located on the temples, allowing to scroll through media.

It seems however Meta is looking to finally productize its wrist-worn XR controller, which uses electromyography (EMG) sensors to detect things such pinching and hand rotation for UI selection. Hypernova is said to come bundled in the box with the wrist-worn controller, which we’ve also seen in action with the company’s internal Orion AR glasses.

Bloomberg maintains a second-gen ‘Hypernova 2’ is already in the works, which is said to include a binocular heads-up display system (again, smart glasses, not AR) with people familiar with the matter maintaining it’s currently planned for release in 2027.

Granted, anything could happen. Meta regularly shelves products late in development, such as its allegedly canceled variant the device without a camera—a move targeting lower costs and increased user privacy.

Still, Hypernova likely won’t be the next smart glasses device Meta releases. The report maintains Meta is finalizing ‘Supernova 2’, which function like Ray-Ban Meta Glasses, but houses inside a sportier Oakley design.

All of this is leading up to the release of Meta’s first true AR glasses. The company revealed its internal developer kit Orion in late 2024; Meta CTO and Reality Labs chief Andrew Bosworth has said an AR device based on their work with Orion could come before 2030, priced “at least in the space of phone, laptop territory.”

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth released an internal memo to employees, stating 2025 is going to be “the most critical year” for the company’s XR efforts yet, Business Insider reports.

Titled “2025: The Year of Greatness”, the memo (seen below) largely takes an inspirational tone, urging Reality Labs employees to do “the best work of your career right now.”

Bosworth, who also leads the company’s Reality Labs XR division, offers hope and motivation for teams to succeed, stating the company needs to “drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR.”

Bosworth also puts emphasis on the success of Horizon Worlds, Meta’s cross-platform social XR platform, noting the mobile version of the app “absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance.”

While inspirational, the memo also offers an existential warning:

“This year likely determines whether this entire [XR] effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure,” Bosworth says.

“On paper 2024 was our most successful year to date but we aren’t sitting around celebrating because know it isn’t enough,” he continues. “We haven’t actually made a dent in the world yet. The prize for good work is the opportunity to do great work.”

This follows news of a leadership shakeup at Reality Labs, announced by Bosworth last week in a leaked internal forum post obtained by Business Insider.

The post included info that Meta CTO Reality Labs COO Dan Reed is being replaced by Meta COO Javier Olivan, and that Reality Labs will work more closely with the company’s core business, as Bosworth stated the division has become “a positive driver for Meta’s overall brand.”

Late last month, Meta’s quarterly financial report revealed that Reality Lab saw its best ever Q4 revenue but, like in quarters past, it coincides with equally growing costs, which amounted to a record $1.08 billion in quarterly revenue, but also quarterly costs of $6.05 billion, making for quarterly loss of $4.97 billion.

Reality Labs is responsible not only for its Quest platform, its related services and research and development, but also Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, which are built in collaboration with EssilorLuxottica.

Now in its second generation, the device has proven successful it’s prompted Meta to not only extend its partnership with the French-Italian eyewear conglomerate into 2030, but also reportedly produce a premium pair of the smart glasses with a built-in display, tapped to launch sometime this year.

Here’s Bosworth’s full memo:

2025: The Year of Greatness

Next year is going to be the most critical year in my 8 years at Reality Labs. We have the best portfolio of products we’ve ever had in market and are pushing our advantage by launching half a dozen more AI powered wearables. We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR. And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance. If you don’t feel the weight of history on you then you aren’t paying attention. This year likely determines whether this entire effort will go down as the work of visionaries or a legendary misadventure.

I’ve been re-reading “Insanely Great,” Steven Levy’s history of the Macintosh computer. If you haven’t read it the book chronicles the incredible efforts of individuals working in teams of 1-3 to build a device that more than any other marked the consumer era of personal computing. What I find most fascinating about it is the way that even people who left the program on bad terms (it was not particularly well managed) speak about the work they did there with an immense sense of pride. There was a widespread cultural expectation, set by none other than a young Steve Jobs, that the work needed to be “insanely great.”

On paper 2024 was our most successful year to date but we aren’t sitting around celebrating because know it isn’t enough. We haven’t actually made a dent in the world yet. The prize for good work is the opportunity to do great work.

Greatness is our opportunity. We live in an incredible time of technological achievement and have placed ourselves at the center of it with our investments. There is a very good chance most of us will never get a chance like this again.

Greatness is a choice. Many people have ben at the precipice of opportunity and failed to achieve. For the most part they failed to even challenge themselves.
You should be doing the best work of your career right now. You should be pushing yourself to grow where needed and doubling down on your strengths. When you look back on this time I want you to feel like you did everything in your power to make the most of it.

You don’t need big teams to do great work. In fact, it may make it harder. One trend I’ve observed the last couple of years is that our smaller teams often go faster and achieve better results than our more generously funded teams. Not only that, they are much happier! In small teams there is no risk of falling into bad habits like design by committee. You should be so focused on results that being in a bunch of docs or meetings is too frustrating to bear.

The path is clear. You don’t need to come up with a bunch of new ideas to do this great work. Most people in the organization just need to execute on the work laid out before them to succeed. It is about operational excellence. It is about master craftsmanship. It is about filling our products with “Give A Damn”. This is about having pride in our work.

I will close with an Arnold Glasow quote: “Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.” 2025 is the year. Let’s be on fire.