Quest 3S also ships with the same Touch Plus controllers as Quest 3, which are an awesome improvement over the bulky controllers shipped with Quest 2, offering better tracking and improved haptics—we’re big fans of these controllers! Indeed, the 3rd-party manufacturers behind the Surreal Touch controllers for Apple’s Vision Pro seem to have drawn inspiration from Meta here (at least in form factor).

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Developers (like us) are free to experiment on their journey to official stores, while players can safely explore thousands of apps across the wonderful world of VR — the biggest collection all in one place.

Pancake lens vs fresnelcost

That sounds like a genius idea, especially since most of the allen keys are small enough that it's going to be a relatively cheap set...

I just bought a second electronic vernier that does depth as well as internal /external in metric/ imperial decimal/ expressed as fractions. In stainless steel for £20 at an autojumble

Additionally, and speaking of extra accessories, almost every third-party—and first-party—accessories that are compatible with Quest 3 will also be compatible with Quest 3S. This is good to

If the VR industry is going to grow and thrive, we need to bring the very best of what we have to a broader audience—and Quest 3S might just be the best way to do that right now.

However, we sympathize with the frustrations of anyone who bought a Quest 3 shortly before Connect this year. Not only did they have to purchase at the higher original price, but they also wouldn’t have got their hands on that free copy of Batman: Arkham Shadow. While this is a case of poor timing, it is incredibly frustrating—so, as a PSA for the future, we’d always recommend waiting until after Connect to pick up a new headset from Meta to both see what new tech they reveal and avoid disappointment.

The Quest 3S launch and simultaneous price cut for Quest 3 means Meta is currently offering the best price-to-value ratio for standalone VR on the market—not just with individual headsets; we’re talking about the whole range! And this is a big deal for their competitors. If they can’t match or beat Meta’s prices—while offering similar technical specs and VR experiences—Meta could both retain the standalone VR crown and have something of a monopoly on it (at least in the US and Europe).

Thanks for all the replies. I've already got a set of digital callipers, Dave M's model sounds better, but I've found it a bit of a fiddle especially when there's a good quantity of keys to sift through. Poking through holes like we do with the drill gauge seems a lot quicker.

This means the original Quest 3 is now cheaper than ever, but also firmly positioned as the premium device in the range, offering some better specs and greater storage capacity at a price point that feels much more attractive than its original cost.

With that in mind—and the proportion of PCVR gamers using Quest headsets only growing over time—we’re keen to see how the Quest 3S changes these rankings over the next few months. It’s a more powerful headset than Quest 2, so will these users jump ship and upgrade to this new device for $299? Only time will tell.

I ended up with one of those "penknife-with-multiblade" sets from Stanley and gave all my rusty ones away. For £4 you can get a set of 10 on a keyring like we had in the dark ages before plastic. These things are so cheap today it is hardly worth the labour cost of messing around.

Pancake lens vs fresnelreddit

It also has (albeit in a different—and arguably cooler—configuration) the same dual RGB camera system, allowing for full-color passthrough and unlocking amazing Mixed Reality experiences. The perfect game to put this to the test is the brand-new Starship Home, an amazing Mixed Reality experience built from the ground up for Quest 3, and now, the 3S.

Thorlabs' Fused Silica Broadband Dielectric Mirrors offer excellent reflectance over four different spectral ranges. Due to run-to-run coating variations, ...

I do have a set that are in a plastic roll like spanners. Once you get a size , a bit of tape with the size on it might help keep order.

Whether we like it or not, the VR industry is plagued with naysayers and people who think it’s just a gimmick—a niche experience that’s ‘pretty cool’ for folks who can afford it, but not truly meaningful for the future. After all, until now, the best way to experience what VR can really do is by spending either $3,500 on a Vision Pro or $600 on a Quest 3.

SideQuest is the ultimate community in standalone VR. A place where devs and players around the globe can create, share, and get excited about the Virtual Reality apps we love.

While the Quest 3S fresnel lenses offer lower visual fidelity than Quest 3’s pancakes, you’ll still get superior image quality on Quest 3S over Quest 2 due to that extra processing power allowing for improved performance—and thus, an improved gaming experience. Early reviewers have praised the 3S for a smoother and less jagged visual experience than Quest 2 despite those ancient lenses. Additionally, loads of older games, including Hubris, Red Matter 2, The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners, and Pistol Whip all got substantial Quest 3 performance and graphical updates—and these updates will carry over to Quest 3S, too!

Asphericvs pancakelenses

In an unexpected, but brilliant, move alongside the Quest 3S announcement, Meta has also dropped the price of the Quest 3 to $499 for the 512GB model, scrapping the 128GB model in the process.

Personally I just keep all my standard right angle Allen keys in a drawer ( small flat store form style filing cabinet) and grab a likely selection to try.Unless you know the size of the socket, knowing the size of the tool isn't much help.

This isn’t accessible, and money worries are real right now, so this viewpoint is entirely understandable. VR and MR in their current, more feature-rich forms haven’t been very accessible.

Finally, let’s talk about the versatility of Quest headsets in general—beyond standalone gaming, entertainment, and productivity enhancements.

Quest 2 was originally priced at $299 and shipped more than 1 million units in its debut quarter, followed by over 20 million units worldwide up to the time of writing—that’s a vast number. One of the main reasons for this incredible sales record is the Quest 2’s aforementioned value proposition —something that the Quest 3S also has in spades. People are clearly ready to spend $299 on a VR headset… Will they spend it on a headset that does more?

Quest 3pancakelenses

You know what? There’s a lot of good things to say about Quest 3S, so let’s get the bad outta the way first—and we’ve got one thing firmly in our sights:

Feb 23, 2009 — Phase Contrast is a contrast enhancing optical microscopy technique in which an unstained transparent sample is seen with high brightness by ...

I'll try it out later on. Next challenge will be stopping any of the sockets from getting pinched to do jobs elsewhere...

Circling back to our earlier point on price, Meta’s Quest 2 is the best-selling VR headset ever made—standalone, PCVR, or otherwise.

Clear all. Bury St Edmunds Audi. Create alert. Postcode. Postcode. Postcode. Price. Only show discounted cars. Total price. Monthly. Min. Min. Max. Max. (207)

This means it has a greater ability to bend light rays to provide clear vision for people with stronger prescription glasses. But that's the technical ...

But why have they dropped the Quest 3 price alongside the 3S launch? Well, we can only speculate—but it seems Meta has a grand plan…

Quest 3S (especially at 128GB) represents the best value for money you’ll find in standalone VR, offering the latest gaming experiences, entertainment features, and productivity assistance in VR for the most reasonable price out there.

I'm on a mission to tidy up our workshop, which has not been helped by an influx of tools that we recently acquired from a liquidation auction. One of the niggling problems is a large collection of random allen keys.

Since they share the same Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 processor and 8GB RAM, the Quest 3S can handle all the same apps, games, tasks, and more just as well as Quest 3.

Pancake lensVR

Vernier caliper. It will allow you to distinguish between metric and imperial size hex keys and you can use it to measure lots of other things like drill sizes etc.

With over 25 years of laser safety experience and NATO certification, DiOptika can provide you with expert assistance on your laser & IPL safety glasses ...

Compare Sensor Sizes is a free, open source tool to easily compare multiple digital camera sensor sizes, celluloid film formats and lens image circles – ...

This is easily the biggest disappointment of Quest 3S. We know they’ve done it to keep costs down, but the Quest 3S is shipping with the same fresnel lenses used by the Quest 2—and this device is now 4 years old! And in VR-tech terms… Yeah, that’s OLD.

According to the Steam Hardware and Software Survey, the Quest 2 and Quest 3 are (respectively) the two most-used VR headsets to play PCVR games through SteamVR.

Another shame is that, as usual, Meta has opted to kit the base Quest 3S headset out with accessories that are just functional. The out-of-the-box head strap and facial interface designs of Quest 2, Quest 3, and now Quest 3S, have long been thorns in our side—and they still are! You’ll need to upgrade these if you want improved comfort from your VR experiences—fortunately, most of the upgrades available for Quest 3 will also be 3S compatible.

A spectrophotometer or photo spectrometer medical equipment is a versatile tool with applications spanning research, quality control, environmental monitoring, ...

Pancake lens vs fresnelvr headset

Meta’s endgame is mass VR adoption. And the 3S is a key part of their plan to reach that goal. While we’re not expecting it to pull off the same sales figures as Quest 2 in its debut quarter, it’s only a matter of time because people will need to upgrade! Quest 2 isn’t being discontinued yet, but it will be soon—the original Quest is now officially unsupported by Meta, after all—and that means the Quest 3 line is poised to be the biggest in the industry.

100 bonus marks for Dave M. Who can tell what size Allen key is needed from staring down a hole and why bother becoming an expert anyway?

FOV stands for Field of View, which is the width of the observable area that can be seen through an optical device, such as binoculars or a monocular.

Let that sink in. Standalone headsets are out-performing dedicated PCVR headsets as gaming platforms for the medium on Steam.

Sure, purists will say the Quest 3 is better… And it certainly is. But honestly, you’re getting almost all of the best Quest 3 features for $299 (the same price as Quest 2 when it launched in 2020—we’ll come back to this later). And that’s a freakin’ bargain! Quest 3 is great, but Quest 3S 100% competes.

Valve Indexpancakelenses

Meta officially revealed the Quest 3S during the keynote address at Connect on September 25, 2024. Though leaks about the device have been rampant for a while now, it still caused quite a stir with many VR fans concerned about whether it presents good value for money.

Quest 3S takes the best parts of Quest 3, drives down that cost, and makes VR more accessible to the widest audience. Sure, we have to compromise on some things (we really wish those fresnel lenses were pancakes!), but visual fidelity aside, new and upgrading users now have access to the latest and greatest VR features and games at a cost that doesn’t make you want to vomit.

Finally, Quest 3 has seen a whole slew of updates this summer that have added incredible new features to the device, such as Theater Mode, pinnable windows, AI integration, performance boosts, and much more. So, Quest 3S will ship with all of these recent Quest 3 updates baked in—you won’t miss any of the latest and greatest productivity, entertainment, or gaming features!

If you still love your Quest 2 and haven’t been impressed enough by Quest 3 to upgrade yet—this could be the perfect chance! Plus, the re-sale market for Quest 2 is very much alive and well.

In workshops flat trays or old plastic drill boxes are handy but the main thing is to have sets without duplicates which can then be removed and kept in a box under the sink (proverbial sink). Sorting them into sizes using sockets is an old mechanic wheeze and something done once in a blue moon to remove those doubles.

2x Barlow with built-in photo adapter. 39.95 $ Add to cart · Antares 2xTL ... X-CEL LX 1.25″ 3X BARLOW LENS. 159.95 $ Add to cart · 2x Focal Extender (Barlow) ...

Perhaps, a better name would have been Quest 3 ‘Lite’. It’s certainly more positive to think of it in this way, clearly outlining expectations for the device. It’s not as good as a Quest 3, but it still has the same powerful performance, full-color passthrough capabilities, and access to all the same apps and games Quest 3 does.

Our very own Tetiana (aka DiscoVR) made it to Meta’s Connect event this year and was able to get hands-on time with the Quest 3S. You can catch her thoughts and a closer look at the device itself right here:

A while ago I discovered Drill Gauges which have made organising our drill bits much easier. I figure that something similar must exist for allen keys. The drill gauge won't work because the holes are round, so the diameter won't match, but I do wonder if there's something similar which I could repurpose.

Quest 3S is packed with features, making its price-to-value ratio one of the very best—if not the best—in the industry right now.

It’s an excellent package that presents great value—especially at the 128GB price point. And in a still-emerging market, that could be what really counts.

So, we’re here to weigh up the Quest 3S pros and cons, take a closer look at some of the more polarizing features, and discuss why it could be the most important VR headset to launch this year, actually.

An antireflective, antiglare or anti-reflection (AR) coating is a type of optical coating applied to the surface of lenses, other optical elements, ...

Sir Oliver's Horse says that if an allen key fit's exactly to the edges of a drill hole, then it is 0.87 of the size. So easy to make a quick reference chart.

Quest 3's pancake lenses, while more expensive, are superior in practically every way and represent the current gold standard of standalone VR lenses. They also allow for a slimmer form factor and a more comfortable user experience. So, it’s a huge shame that Quest 3S does not have pancake lenses.

However, I note that real life allen keys have rounded edges, and the exact fit is never going to happen anyway. However - you may well find that for all but the very smallest ones, that's good enough.

Fresnel lens

Due to the Quest 3S using the same fresnel lenses as Quest 2, there won’t be any upgrade in terms of visual fidelity due to hardware—though the more powerful processor does help to create a smoother experience. However, the 3S is launching at the same $299 price tag as Quest 2 back in 2020, with more power, better passthrough, and better controllers—all of which contribute to a better user experience, however you want to use it!

Moreover, (and coming FREE when you buy either a Quest 3S or Quest 3 right now) you’ll be able to play Batman: Arkham Shadow—and all other standalone VR games coming soon. Quest 2 will not be able to play these games at all—it lacks the processing power to handle it—so, Quest 3S and Quest 3 will be essential if you want to play the very latest games in VR.

Which one you pick doesn’t matter—on a content basis, they both provide the same. However, if you have the money to spend, we’d recommend the premium Quest 3 simply due to the clarity and fidelity benefits of pancake lenses over fresnel lenses. However, if you’re on more of a budget but itching to get into VR—or introduce a younger family member—then you won’t be missing out by choosing Quest 3S.

My problem with this approach is that Murphy's Law comes into play, and if you grab a handful of, say, five keys three out of the five will be the same size and none will be the size you need. At least if they're organised by size I can grab a spread of sizes.

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However, while this is bad news for their competition, it’s pretty good news for standalone VR fans, new and old, and Meta themselves as they seek to accomplish their goals.

It really helped with the drill bits to have something that will work quickly and simply so I'm hoping someone will have a suggestion? Otherwise it'll probably be a case of resorting to callipers which seems cumbersome and time consuming.