I’ve been covering virtual reality for 12 years, ever since the category was rekindled by the Oculus Rift. I’ve used dozens of VR headsets and tried out all kinds of VR games, applications, and mixed-reality experiences. I’ve watched it pop off among enthusiasts and early adopters, attract curiosity from gamers and casual consumers, and get promoted as the future of all computing by manufacturers and developers.
I’ve also seen all of that enthusiasm fade among certain audiences. Now, with Meta and Microsoft announcing the Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition, I think it’s safe to say that the concept of virtual reality has lost a lot of the novel, high-tech charm that initially made it so interesting.
Virtual reality isn’t dead, but it isn’t enough to drive an entire device category, or to get people to regularly wear clunky headsets. The underlying technology still has a lot of utility, and Meta seems to have realized that with the Xbox Quest 3S. Virtual worlds are a novelty, but personal displays are useful and much easier to use.
The Xbox Quest 3S doesn’t focus on playing VR games, or even mixed reality (XR) games that put 3D, interactive objects in your surroundings. It gives you a big virtual 2D screen to play Xbox games. You sit down, and a big-screen monitor only you can see floats in front of you. Maybe you can see your room through the headset’s cameras, maybe you’re sitting in a virtual space rendered by the headset, but your focus is on the screen, not your surroundings.
The Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition lets you play Xbox games through cloud streaming. (Credit: Microsoft)
This has actually been available on the non-Xbox headset since its launch, with apps like Xbox Cloud Gaming and Steam Link letting you play games while wearing the headset. But for the Xbox Quest 3S, it’s the main draw, with an Xbox Wireless Controller and a three-month subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate included (along with the Elite Strap accessory). It’s asking you to spend $100 more than the standard Quest 3S to play Xbox games on a screen and not move around in virtual reality.
And you know what? That’s a pretty brilliant pivot. I don’t think it’s Meta abandoning VR. I think it’s Meta leaning into what can actually get more people to use the technology regularly. It’s showing off its headset not as a device primarily for putting you in a completely different setting to interact with motion controls as if you’re there, but as a personal XR display. I think that’s ultimately the future for any kind of headgear you can wear that projects an image into your eyes.
Smart Glasses: The New Wearable Display Challenger
Besides VR headsets, I also cover smart glasses, devices that are very similar in concept but completely different in execution. They’re still portable displays that put a bright, colorful picture right in front of your eyes, like VR headsets. However, they’re shaped like glasses, much lighter and easier to slip on and off. They also don’t completely cover the eyes; instead, they project their images on lenses that cover a part of your sight while letting you look through at your surroundings around the periphery. They can’t put you in a virtual world, only show you what amounts to a huge theater screen viewed from a comfortable distance away.
Smart glasses are a category that has been growing in the consumer space for a few years. They’re fundamentally limited compared with VR headsets because they don’t cover your entire field of view, but they’re much easier to use. Just plug in your favorite device and treat the glasses like an external monitor only you can see. You need a cable running to that device (wireless connectivity will probably eventually become the norm), but even with that, they’re so much more convenient. There are no strap adjustments, no significant weight or bulk on your head, and much less sweat after using them for any period of time. It’s almost as easy as putting on a pair of glasses.
XReal One Pro (Credit: Will Greenwald)
I use VR headsets sometimes for fun. I use smart glasses all the time for fun and work. My work laptop has a 14-inch screen, and that is not enough space for what I do. If I want to go to a coffee shop and get away from my ultrawide monitor to get some writing done, I put on some smart glasses, plug them into the computer, and get a much bigger screen to work with.
The most recent pair I tested, the Editors’ Choice XReal One Pro, even has an ultrawide option that gives me a 3,840-by-1,080 workspace. Since it’s plugged in, I don’t have to worry about battery life. Since it’s a pair of glasses, I can take them off and give my eyes a break without dealing with the bulk of the headset or the awkwardness of its straps. And if I want to have fun, I can just remove it from my work laptop and plug it into my gaming laptop, phone, tablet, or (with an HDMI-to-USB-C adapter) any of my game consoles. To my eyes, it’s a bigger screen than my 65-inch TV.
Get Our Best Stories!
Your Daily Dose of Our Top Tech News
By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Virtual Reality As a Fun Novelty
I still like playing in VR for some activities, like playing Beat Saber, wandering around in VRChat, and even practicing shooting in Ace Virtual Shooting Simulator. The immersiveness of an all-encompassing view and motion controls has value that doesn’t translate into a simple screen. Ace, for example, uses controller shells with the size, shape, and weight of actual pistols to develop the right grip and sighting habits with real things. You can’t get that with smart glasses.
VR’s immersiveness only goes so far, though, which is a big factor in its seemingly waning interest. Even when it completely takes over your vision and hearing, it doesn’t really give you the full experience of being somewhere else. Motion controls still require you to hold plastic handles and press buttons, even for the finger-tracking Valve Index Controllers, and full hand-tracking is very undercooked outside of the Apple Vision Pro. You also can’t move around realistically, forced to navigate in a limited space and using a jarring teleportation function or, at best, walking/slipping awkwardly on big, expensive 360-degree treadmills.
No matter how realistic everything looks, you’ll still feel the weight of the headset on your face. Oh, and you need to keep the headset charged because it will last about 2.5 hours at best.
Recommended by Our Editors
Give Us Screens, Not Worlds
Personal displays don’t demand nearly as much commitment, even if you use a headset instead of smart glasses. Sure, there’s the bulk, but if you’re sitting down and looking at a virtual monitor or TV you don’t need to clear any floor space and you can keep the headset plugged in. That’s the main use case of the Xbox Quest 3S. VR’s there if you want it, but the real reason you’ll be putting it on is to enjoy a big screen.
The Meta Quest 3S’ augmented reality view (Credit: Will Greenwald)
This is a pretty huge shift in Meta’s approach to VR headsets. Meta poured a lot of money into VR and held it up as the future of all computing. It promoted VR games, social playgrounds in Meta Horizon Worlds, and virtual offices and meeting rooms in Horizon Workrooms.
I use Horizon Worlds every time I test a Quest headset, and it’s always a ghost town; Horizon Workrooms still isn’t out of beta. They just haven’t caught on, and I think Meta has realized that. The full virtual experience is just too unwieldy to use daily (which is one of the reasons why VRChat, which has a non-VR client and doesn’t require a headset at all, is much more popular than Horizon Worlds ever was).
But a virtual screen before your eyes that you can treat like a monitor or a TV doesn’t require moving around, and you can interact with it using familiar tools like keyboards, mice, and gamepads. That’s something you can keep coming back to.
Apple seemed to be aware of this from the start, which is probably why it calls the Apple Vision Pro a “spatial computer.” It’s still the most advanced example of a VR/XR headset I’ve ever used, and it’s built around an augmented reality experience that gives you multiple apps and screens floating around you, that you can interact with using just your eyes and fingers. It’s an almost ideal example of what smart glasses and headsets could do, but the $3,500 headset is a few years away from being cheap enough and light enough for anyone to use.
The Apple Vision Pro’s spatial computing (Credit: Will Greenwald)
So here we are, with the Meta Quest 3S Xbox Edition and the mutating future of virtual reality. VR headsets are still fun and immersive, but they’re not simple or useful enough to use on a regular basis. Instead, give us a big virtual screen, or several. Let us work with multiple monitors that take up no desk space, and watch movies and play games on an IMAX theater screen from our couch. But full virtual reality is going to be relegated to an optional experience to sweeten the prospect of choosing a headset over smart glasses, and not the main appeal.
About Will Greenwald
Lead Analyst, Consumer Electronics
