WEBVTT

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I'm Dan Ackerman,

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and this is my Letter From the Editor.
Watching the Meta Quest 3 being announced

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by Meta made me realize something. The
hardware connected to virtual, augmented,

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and mixed reality,

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it might finally be catching up with
the idea of the metaverse that everybody

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was pitching a couple of years ago. Seeing
this $500 headset from a product line

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formerly known as Oculus by a company
formerly known as Facebook shows,

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how close we've come to achieving this
sci-fi dream of mixing the real world

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and the virtual world in a way
that people feel comfortable in it,

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and not just for playing games,

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but also for maybe doing office work
and getting together with friends.

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That's kind of what the
concept of the Metaverse was.

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All these things together and hopefully
some way to sell you some extra stuff

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within that.
But before I oversell the idea,

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the Quest 3 is still mainly going
to get treated as a gaming machine,

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especially because there's a deal with
Microsoft to allow you to play Xbox Game

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Pass games within the Quest environment.
And I know in my household that Quest

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2 only comes out of mothballs when
there's some interesting new free game to

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play.

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My 12 year old and his
friends are currently obsessed
with a game called Gorilla

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Tag. Besides being smaller with better
controllers and higher resolution screens

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inside,

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the real advantage of the Quest 3 is
that it has a color pass through camera.

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And that's what enables you to see the
real world outside and mix it with what

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you're seeing in the headset and hopefully
overlay something digital onto the

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real world.
Now, previously,

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the Quest two had a very grainy black
and white view of the real world outside

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that you could access,

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and that was only good for
basically making sure you
didn't trip over your couch

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while you were playing.

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Having tested nearly every consumer VR
headset going all the way back to 2012

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when I saw an early Oculus prototype
built into a pair of ski goggles,

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I can say that this ability to not
feel like you are trapped inside,

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that you actually have
interaction with the real world,

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you're not cut off from reality,

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is what all these previous generations
have been missing. And that's what the

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Quest 3 and some of the other really
high-end headsets like the Quest Pro and

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the Apple Vision Pro offer, that's
different from what we've had before.

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And that's the real strength of this
Apple Vision Pro headset that I got to try

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earlier this year. When you put it on,

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you really almost feel like you're seeing
the real world through a transparent

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headset. You're not seeing a video
representation of it. Almost, not quite,

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but almost. There's only the slightest
bit of detachment from reality there,

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but the effect is really
jarring and really effective,

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especially if you've only used 300, 500,

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$700 consumer headsets before that.
Now,

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the Quest 3 headset color pass through
by all accounts is not nearly as clear

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and detailed,

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but consider this is a $500
piece of equipment versus the

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$3,500 Apple Vision Pro,

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which is not going to be available
to at least next year anyway.

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And you can see why the Quest 3 is really
positioned well to be the big gaming

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hardware gift of 2023.

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After renaming his entire company
and pouring billions into Metaverse

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projects that were mostly scoffed at,

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Mark Zuckerberg might finally have the
last laugh and be able to bring people

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into his Metaverse dream.
At the very least,

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the $500 Quest three is going to be the
Apple Vision Pro for the rest of us.