Category: Technology

The Meta Quest 3 proves that the Meta Ques 2 was just an impossibly good deal. When that VR headset arrived for just $300 three years ago, it was the perfect gateway to VR for most people. You didn’t need to hook it up to anything, you just flipped it on and stepped into virtual reality. But then Meta raised the price to $400 last year, and the entire VR industry just started to feel very stale.

It’s no wonder the $1,500 Meta Quest Pro completely flopped – VR was already struggling, and few people actually needed something so expensive.

The $500 Quest 3 likely won’t tempt over as many VR newcomers as the Quest 2, but it’s still a solid step forward for Meta. It has all of the upgrades you’d expect, and it also has full color mixed reality cameras, which let you use VR apps alongside a view of the real world. Squint a bit, and you can almost see what Apple is going for with the Vision Pro (though with far less fidelity).

Despite all those improvements though, the Quest 3 makes me marvel even more at what Meta accomplished with the Quest 2, which is still available at its original $299 price. That headset is still the best VR entry point for newbies, though I wish it were a bit cheaper by now. The Quest 3, meanwhile, is the logical upgrade once you’ve caught the VR bug.

Here’s what makes it special: It’s significantly thinner and lighter than the Quest 2, thanks to a new set of pancake lenses. Those also help to produce a sharper image from the new displays, which deliver 2,064 by 2,208 pixels per eye. That’s even better than the PlayStation VR 2, which wowed us earlier this year.

The Quest 3 is also running Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip, which offers double the GPU power of the Quest 2, according to Meta. Up front, there are two full color cameras for mixed reality, along with a depth sensor in the middle to help map your space and avoid obstacles. That’s notable, since it was a feature Meta completely dropped from the Quest Pro. When it comes to storage, you’ve got your choice between the 128GB $500 model and a 512GB option for $650.

Now for what the Quest 3 doesn’t have: There’s no face or eye tracking, or cameras on the controllers like the Quest Pro. Though, at least they’ve lost the annoying rings from the Quest 2 gamepads. I don’t think you’ll miss any of the Quest Pro’s features – they’re potentially cool, but developers haven’t really taken advantage of them.

Meta already proved it can make a solid standalone VR headset, but can it really bring mixed reality to everyone? That seems to be the driving force behind the Quest 3. Apple’s Vision Pro showed us a genuinely promising vision of spatial computing, one where the digital and physical worlds can comfortably coexist. But that thing also costs $3,499. Trying to accomplish something similar for a fraction of the price seems impossible.

The Quest 3’s attempt at mixed reality is far from perfect – the color cameras deliver a fuzzy and pixelated view of the world, as if you’re in a drug-fueled haze. But it’s still pretty useful. A double tap on the side of the Quest 3 is all it takes to flip between immersive VR and the real world.

That’s something I ended up using frequently to check on text and Slack messages, grab information from my computer, and chat with people around me. Doing any of those things in the past would have required either completely removing the headset, or flipping up the visor.

The Quest 3 also goes beyond just letting you see the real world: You can also do some basic mixed reality multi-tasking. You can arrange up to three windowed Quest apps, like WhatsApp and the Quest Store, on a translucent virtual tray that sits in front of you. Even better, you can move that tray anywhere in your space. That’s not something I’d use a lot, but the fact that I could create this environment, anchor it to a specific point in the real world, and walk around it simply blew me away.

It also helps that the Quest 3 makes every virtual element look incredibly sharp. Looking at WhatsApp chats in the headset was no different than on my gaming monitor. Meta still has to work on actually making the Quest’s apps more useful though: I could only reply to WhatsApp chats by awkwardly pecking away at the Quest’s virtual keyboard, leaving voice messages or attaching media from the headset. (Let’s just hope that tabletop virtual keyboard that Mark Zuckerberg showed off actually becomes a reality.)

A glimpse of the Quest 3’s mixed reality view from my family room.

The Quest 3 also marks the first time I’ve genuinely enjoyed using Meta’s finger tracking. It was an intriguing feature when it arrived on the original Quest, but it wasn’t alway accurate, so I preferred using the Quest’s controllers instead. Now, thanks to the depth sensor and full color cameras, the Quest 3 does a far better job at recognizing every finger gesture. I found myself letting my controllers rest far more often, since it was so easy to navigate through apps by swiping and virtually pointing.

Now given just how well the Quest 2 excelled at being a standalone VR headset, I wasn’t very surprised that the Quest 3 was even better. Everything loaded faster thanks to its increased RAM. The controllers felt far more precise, especially for games that demanded accuracy, like the upcoming Samba de Amigo and the VR mainstay Beat Saber.

The Quest 3’s higher resolution display also makes games look far better than the Quest 2, but I was more impressed by the handful of titles that were optimized for its faster hardware. Red Matter 2 practically looked like a full-fledged PC VR title, thanks to its incredibly detailed textures and character models. The Kurzgesagt game, Out of Scale, made me feel like I was living inside of one of its gorgeously animated YouTube videos .

Quest 3 owners will still have access to the hundreds of games that also work on the Quest 2, but it’s nice to see some new titles arriving alongside fresh hardware. It doesn’t look like anything will be exclusive to Quest 3 yet, but that could easily change down the line. For now, I’d expect new games will have an extra layer of polish, while the Quest 2 will get a more basic experience.

I didn’t get to try First Encounters, the Quest 3 mixed reality tutorial that was shown off during our initial preview, but I’m hoping more developers start building similar experiences for the Quest 3. There are a handful of truly “mixed reality” titles already, like Zombies Noir and Figmin XR, but they’re mostly just interesting experiments instead of anything truly groundbreaking. There’s room for the Quest 3 to deliver the sort of reality-bending experiences initially promised devices like the Magic Leap and HoloLens. 

After testing the Quest 3 for a week, I’ve noticed something surprising: It’s the first headset that doesn’t make me feel trapped while using it. Since the real world is easily accessible, I feel far more comfortable sitting and enjoying a movie on Netflix, or a 360-degree video on YouTube. And thanks to its lighter frame and additional room for glasses, I can also play VR games far longer than I used to.

I only wish the Quest 3’s battery life lasted longer. Depending on what you’re doing, it can go for two to three hours, just like the Quest 2. At least you can still use it while charging the headset though, and it also stays powered when connected to a PC for beefier experiences, like Google Earth VR.

If you’ve seen my PlayStation VR 2 review, you’ll know I’m pretty ambivalent about the state of VR at the moment. The headsets are getting better, but the games and industry just feels stagnant. The Meta Quest 3, at the very least, seems like a better option for VR newcomers than the $550 PlayStation VR 2. It’s pricey, but it delivers solid VR without a PlayStation 5. While it’s no Vision Pro, the Quest 3’s stab at mixed reality makes it a headset you’ll likely use long after your VR honeymoon is over.

And if a $500 headset is too expensive, I’m sure you can find a used Quest 2 for a steal.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-quest-3-review-mixed-reality-vr-150009788.html?src=rss 

According to Reuters, OpenAI is exploring making its own artificial intelligence chips, even looking into an acquisition. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously blamed GPU shortages for users’ concerns regarding the company API’s speed and reliability, leading to these moves. OpenAI using its own chips could reduce its costs too. Based on analysis by Bernstein Research, each ChatGPT query costs the company around four cents.

At the moment, NVIDIA controls the market for chips that power AI applications. The Microsoft supercomputer OpenAI used to develop its technology, for instance, uses 10,000 NVIDIA GPUs. Microsoft, OpenAI’s biggest backer, has been working on its own AI chip since 2019.

— Mat Smith

The biggest stories you might have missed

The Talos Principle 2 is the ideal blend of puzzle and story

Amazon’s first internet satellite launch was a success

iOS 17 review: Notable new features and streamlined touches

Hitting the Books: NASA’s Kathy Sullivan and advances in orbital personal hygiene

UK regulator says Snap’s AI chatbot may put kids’ privacy at risk

​​You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!​​

NASA will reveal on Wednesday what OSIRIS-REx brought back from asteroid Bennu

A first look at its asteroid sample.

NASA will give the public a look at the asteroid sample brought back to Earth by its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. A livestream of the reveal is set for 11 AM ET on Wednesday, October 11. OSIRIS-REx grabbed its sample from Bennu back in 2020, then spent a year-and-a-half observing the asteroid before returning to Earth in May 2021. “The very best ‘problem’ to have is that there is so much material, it’s taking longer than we expected to collect it,” said Christopher Snead, NASA’s deputy OSIRIS-REx curation lead.

Continue reading.

Atari is releasing a new cartridge for its 46-year-old 2600 console

Save Mary never hit store shelves.

Atari just announced pre-orders for a physical cartridge of the company’s once-ubiquitous 2600 console. The game, Save Mary, was developed during the console’s golden years, before being shelved when the 2600 went the way of the dodo. If you want to play it, you don’t need to dust down your old 2600. Conveniently, Atari sells an upgraded version of the console, called the 2600+. What a relief.

Continue reading.

X tests three paid subscription tiers

It looks like this will determine how many ads you see.

Bloomberg reports that X is testing a trio of subscription tiers to help solve its financial woes. Details are scant, but these paid subscription options are likely to impact the number of ads you might see when using the platform. It looks like it’ll break down into Basic, Standard and Plus. Basic users will continue to see the regular number of ads, while standard users will see half, equivalent to what folks who pay $8 each month get at the moment. Plus users will see no ads whatsoever, for however much that might cost.

Continue reading.

Engadget Podcast: Google’s Pixel 8 phones and Pixel Watch 2

And Samsung launched even more devices.

This week, Cherlynn and Devindra chat with Engadget’s Sam Rutherford about everything from the Made by Google event. That includes the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Watch 2. We give Google credit for leaning on AI long before it was trendy, but we wonder if the Pixel 8 Pro’s temperature sensor will actually be useful.

Listen here.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-chatgpt-creator-openai-might-start-making-its-own-ai-chips-111521672.html?src=rss 

For the first couple decades of its existence, NASA was the epitome of an Old Boys Club; its astronaut ranks pulled exclusively from the Armed Services’ test pilot programs which, at that time, were exclusively staffed by men. Glass ceilings weren’t the only things broken when Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Kathy Sullivan, Anna Fisher, Margaret “Rhea” Seddon and Shannon Lucid were admitted to the program in 1978 — numerous spaceflight systems had to be reassessed to accommodate a more diverse workforce. In The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts, journalist Loren Grush chronicles the numerous trials and challenges these women faced — from institutional sexism to enduring survival training to navigating the personal pressures that the public life of an astronaut entails — in their efforts to reach orbit.

Adapted from The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts by Loren Grush. Copyright © 2023 by Loren Grush. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Above the Chisos Mountains sprawling across Big Bend National Park in West Texas, Kathy [Sullivan, PhD, third woman to fly in space and future head of the NOAA] sat in the back seat of NASA’s WB-57F reconnaissance aircraft as it climbed higher into the sky. The pilot, Jim Korkowski, kept his eye on the jet’s altimeter as they ascended. They’d just passed sixty thousand feet, and they weren’t done rising. It was a dizzyingly high altitude, but the plane was made to handle such extremes.

Inside the cockpit, both Kathy and Jim were prepared. They were fully outfitted in the air force’s high-altitude pressure suits. To the untrained observer, the gear looked almost like actual space suits. Each ensemble consisted of a bulky dark onesie, with thick gloves and a thick helmet. The combination was designed to apply pressure to the body as the high-altitude air thinned away and made it almost impossible for the human body to function.

The duo eventually reached their target height: 63,300 feet. At that altitude, their pressure suits were a matter of life and death. The surrounding air pressure was so low that their blood could start to boil if their bodies were left unprotected. But with the suits on, it was an uneventful research expedition. Kathy took images with a specialized infrared camera that could produce color photos, and she also scanned the distant terrain in various wavelengths of light.

They spent just an hour and a half over Big Bend, and the flight lasted just four hours in total. While it may have seemed a quick and easy flight, Kathy made history when she reached that final altitude above West Texas on July 1, 1979. In that moment, she flew higher than any woman ever had, setting an unofficial world aviation record.

The assignment to train with the WB-57 had scared her at first, but Kathy wound up loving those high-flying planes. “That was very fun, other than this little bit of vague concern that, ‘Hope this doesn’t mean I’m falling off the face of the Earth,’” Kathy said. The assignment took her on flights up north to Alaska and down south to Peru. As she’d hoped, she received full qualification to wear the air force’s pressure suits, becoming the first woman to do so. Soon, donning a full-body suit designed to keep her alive became second nature to her.

NASA officials had also sought her out to test a new piece of equipment they were developing for future Shuttle astronauts, one that would let people relieve themselves while in space. During the Apollo and Gemini eras, NASA developed a relatively complex apparatus for astronauts to pee in their flight suits. It was, in essence, a flexible rubber cuff that fit around the penis, which then attached to a collection bag. The condom-like cuffs came in “small,” “medium,” and “large” (though Michael Collins claimed the astronauts gave them their own terms: “extra large,” “immense,” and “unbelievable”). It was certainly not a foolproof system. Urine often escaped from beneath the sheath.

Cuffs certainly weren’t going to work once women entered the astronaut corps. While the Space Shuttle had a fancy new toilet for both men and women to use, the astronauts still needed some outlet for when they were strapped to their seats for hours, awaiting launch or reentry. And if one of the women was to do a spacewalk, she’d need some kind of device during those hours afloat. So, NASA engineers created the Disposable Absorption Containment Trunk (DACT). In its most basic form it was . . . a diaper. It was an easy fix in case astronauts needed to urinate while out of reach of the toilet. It was designed to absorb fecal matter, too, though the women probably opted to wait until they reached orbit for that.

Kathy was the best person to test it out. Often during her high-altitude flights, she’d be trapped in her pressure suit for hours on end, creating the perfect testing conditions to analyze the DACT’s durability. It worked like a charm. And although the first male Shuttle fliers stuck to the cuffs, eventually the DACT became standard equipment for everyone.

After accumulating hundreds of hours in these pressure suits, Kathy hoped to leverage her experience into a flight assignment, one that might let her take a walk outside the Space Shuttle one day. As luck would have it, she ran into Bruce McCandless II in the JSC gym one afternoon. He was the guy to know when it came to spacewalks. NASA officials had put him in charge of developing all the spacewalk procedures and protocols, and at times he seemed to live in the NASA pools. Plus, he was always conscripting one of Kathy’s classmates to do simulated runs with him in the tanks. Kathy wanted to be next. Projecting as much confidence as she could, she asked him to consider her for his next training run.

It worked. Bruce invited Kathy to accompany him to Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama to take a dive in the tank there. The two would be working on spacewalk techniques that might be used one day to assemble a space station. However, the Space Shuttle suits still weren’t ready to use yet. Kathy had to wear Apollo moonwalker Pete Conrad’s suit, just like Anna had done during her spacewalk simulations. But while the suit swallowed tiny Anna, it was just slightly too small for Kathy, by about an inch. When she put it on, the suit stabbed her shoulders, while parts of it seemed to dig into her chest and back. She tried to stand up and nearly passed out. It took all her strength to walk over to the pool before she flopped into the tank. In the simulated weightless environment, the pain immediately evaporated. But it was still a crucial lesson in space-suit sizes. The suits have to fit their wearers perfectly if the spacewalk is going to work. 

The session may have started off painfully, but once she began tinkering with tools and understanding how to maneuver her arms to shift the rest of her body, she was hooked. She loved spacewalking so much that she’d go on to do dozens more practice dives throughout training.

But it wasn’t enough to practice in the pool. She wanted to go orbital. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-the-six-loren-grush-scribner-143032524.html?src=rss