Meta is releasing an update for Quest 3 that aims to fix one of the most irksome issues with the headset’s passthrough function: its terrible visual warping.
Using passthrough on Quest 3 has been somewhat of a blessing and curse. It’s great to have color passthrough for mixed reality games, and also for just keeping an eye on your surroundings. But ever since it launched in 2023, the headset has suffered some very apparent warping that can cause motion sickness in users since the world isn’t nearly as ‘solid’ as it should be.
Meta is now rolling out its v66 update which looks to fix this in Quest 3—said to improve image quality beyond the company’s big v64 update in April, which brought with it better color accuracy, exposure, contrast, and dynamic range.
The company says in a blog post that the new update “significantly reduce[s] image distortion in Passthrough, so that your hands and other objects look more natural in Mixed Reality. This improvement also reduces the warping effect around these objects while in motion.”
Check out a comparison between the v65 update and the new and improved passthrough in v66:
Meta says users will probably also notice that their virtual hands will now align better with the image of their real-world hands, which has always been a bit of a immersion breaker since the mismatch draws your attention away from MR content.
Additionally, the new v66 update is also slated to include an improvement to how background audio works for 2D apps on Quest, and a new experimental feature that adds a wrist-mounted menu button.
As with all Quest updates, Meta says it’s rolling out the passthrough improvement feature gradually, which may even come as an independent follow-on update after you’ve actually installed v66. In the meantime, make sure to keep your eyes peeled on your hands to see if you’ve gotten the update or not—which should be very apparent.
