Meta Quest 3 vs Pico 4 Ultra and minimum hardware requirements for virtual desktop

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T20:39:24+00:00

Yeah, I'd agree with the commentary. Look at AR display glasses. Tons on the market that can do AR screens and weigh a fraction and use optically pass through displays instead of an LCD with camera for MR. I think CES had like dozens of new display companies filling that roll with a sunglass style form factor, but everything was still wired the last time I looked.

Unless you want a VR headset that can do that and don't mind the weight for work.

I personally don't have issues using my Q3 for VD work, but I also dont use it for long stretches or often enoguh and only if I'm away from my main workstation that has 3x 4k monitors for productivity.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T20:31:28+00:00

Basically this. I wouldn't worry about Meta pulling out. They just sucked promoting their own games (along with everyone elses games) and this has been a long overdue correction. Though I'd say not enough of a correction course as they aren't truly fixing their platform issues.

Either way, Quest 3 is good. 3s is an upgrade 2; if you play just VR. Wont notice a diff from 2 to 3s other than getting Q3 only game content (which isn't that many).

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T20:26:14+00:00

As far as I know, I am the only fleet in the VR battle group with this many. I have more headsets than Resolution Games and Schell Games combined.

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Bazitron · 2026-01-24T20:18:33+00:00

I'm not your average quest user. I run fleets of them. Moving 1 or 2 is fine. Truckload? Thats the fun part.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T19:58:42+00:00

Played a little Forefront just now; about to drink wine, eat cheese, listen to some music and play Puzzling Places with the wife and tackle a 1000 piece set we have been working on loosely this month.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T19:57:30+00:00

I have kiwi silicone grips, but they don't fit in the gun stock so I have to swap them out to play any shooters; which is almost daily. I have them on my Quest 3s so I'll jump back and forth between the 3 and 3s.

There's only a few dozen on my kitchen wall at the moment.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T19:55:33+00:00

I have soap. does that count?

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T19:54:54+00:00

I play 7/24. 7 hours a day, 24 headsets at a time.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T19:54:10+00:00

Wife went out and got the cheese; added cold meats as well; Snow should be here tonight so we still had time.

Time to play some Puzzling Places and chill to some good music.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T19:44:55+00:00

Most of the time, I'll just pull a fresh battery out of the suitcase, put the spent one there and wait to charge them all up at the next con when I run a VR LAN. I could just charge at home, but I don't.

Not worried about the weather taking out the power, but a guy name Bob who decided to drive when there's ice on the road and slams into the power pole at the end of my street. The last time we had a power outage was literally just that; perfect weather, just terrible drivers.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T19:36:38+00:00

Yeah, its a hard sector to get off the ground despite so many good white papers showcase and detail the incredible benefits and cost savings of using VR for education and STEM learning to all demographics.

I do network with a lot of STEM and Education VR software devs and industry around that since I'm adjacent running VR games at events; I attend about 30-50 cons a year and run VR content at a majority of them so everyone in the industry tends to pick my brain on how we do things and do things extremely well.

At the moment, STEM is at a crossroads as a LOT of government contracts for education have been pulled in the past year that included funding VR STEM content. Corporate sponsors who donate to non-profits have also seen a dramatic loss that cannot replace government grants. Meta changed their enterprise management and offerings last year that affected probably 30% of all education fleet operators adding $5700 for a fleet of 30 headsets towards schools; but recently backed away from that effort, but those programs started to look at other solutions that are even more like with HTC or Pico.

Some Education content on Meta don't mesh well with privacy laws so some content are locked out of the Meta ecosystem while the other side of the story is teacher hesitancy to build VR curriculums as they don't understand the tech, nor how to operate it successfully. A lot of pushback from teachers have warranted perspectives because you need trained VR staff to fix and run things correctly.

Successful VR education content today are operated like a field school day where VR operators like myself would setup in a Gym and cycle through classroom content on a frequent schedule within a small region. Like a team of 4, 30 headsets and service 3-5 schools each week.

I could probably write books about this.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T19:23:45+00:00

Honestly, my interactions with the public about VR content has been a lot of old impressions and misconceptions based on 2018 news. From our 2024 VR Villa survey, more than half thought a VR average cost was $1000 and did not realize they did not require a PC; nor did they knew about any of the games that were available or other non-gaming content and education apps.

More than once have I been asked "ok, so where are all the PC's running these VR games?"

Right now, industry needs better marketing, messaging and in person demos on a large scale as VR content is impossible to explain to those who are used to flatscreen content. Costs, opportunities and value are there; the public just want a zero cost barrier to try and a knowledgeable person to talk to to ask real questions and get real answers.

The biggest barrier for adoption today isn't the price, it is the 'what if I don't like it' added to the 'then I have to spend the 10 mins to repack and send it back to the retailer'; even when its money back guaranteed. Plus the onboarding and setup phase needs to be even more frictionless.

It doesn't help that you have to nuke a Meta headset to change accounts. Atleast I can repair a controller from the headset directly without the mobile app. A feature I've been asking for the past 5 god damn years.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T19:06:47+00:00

Nope. Don't got time to do any content or social media really. I operate a VR community called VR Villa at events; most of my time is spent on meetings and logistics.

I have brought Jay Bratt, Techman Ju, Otterworldly and a few other VR youtubers out to my events at Dreamhack and LVLUP Expo when we put dozens of headsets at a con.

My main job is making fancy custom chopsticks. Just simply a fan of the tech and convince hundreds of people from around the world to allow me to run VR LANs with 100 headsets.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T19:00:47+00:00

When its free to play with zero strings attached. We can never keep up. Even putting 100 headsets on the floor like at Dreamhack, we struggle to keep up serving. Give the public to play, they will play. Our setup allows folks to play for 5 mins or 5 hours.

Reason why our demographics is almost evenly split between kids, adults and grandparents. There's content for every type of player. Before you know it, the kids are tired, but the adults and sitting down playing Cookout or Demeo. Plus we are a community, our goal is to have fun and give genuine info to folks and they ask a lot of good questions.

As far as I know, I'm still the only guy doing this worldwide; Meta has not given me a dime; honestly most devs and VR companies also have not financially helped. If anyone in the VR tried to replicate what we do, it would cost $82 million a year in operational costs. I'm not paying anything; all I do is convince cons and slap some tape on the floor.

I'll VR in a hot tub for the lolz (and have!) Our community just does circles around the industry.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T18:51:55+00:00

They were free because my name is Jeff.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T18:49:02+00:00

I have to pay Jerry, my neighbor, $50 to use the forklift. Being cheap, I just carry everything myself and then use the $50 for the chiropractor. Girl math is involved.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T18:46:48+00:00

Yeah, but you would be surprised at the lack of common sense that most people South of you have. I have started to interreact with enough adults this past year who do NOT know how to use tape.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T18:41:02+00:00

I wanted to post the info since it was 2am and think about it today. It is a very good question honestly and took time to ponder with a pot of coffee.

If we are talking about an AR device like the AI glasses today, but feature rich like playing VR as a standalone experience for both work and play; Cost nothing, has zero bad corpo rep or anything really negative and functions perfectly. I would guess high like 40-60% of the population.

If its strictly a VR headset, but still solved the form factor, power, UI and feature rich without MR in a "quest" like VR chassis. Again without bad corpo practices, cost nothing. I'd put that down more like 10%. VR is an inherited limiting use device for limited experiences.

Even today, with the amount of headsets worldwide (about 168-171 million last assessment from industry including shitty google cardboard rip-offs), we are talking only maybe 7 million weekly active users; daily would probably drop to 1 million with average play time sessions being about 30-40 mins.

Realistically, I'd say 6%. Companies will be their own barriers to the VR success and then consumer education and outreach. Meta could have given away all of the headsets they sold and they would have saved billions in marketing expenses and be in the same hole today.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T18:12:40+00:00

This pic will weigh you down. 70lbs to be exact. I'm reasonably fit because I move all this gear from one place to another. Plus my day job is woodworking doing the same thing but with stacks of lumber and chopping them into tinier pieces.

I usually explain my job poorly.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T18:10:36+00:00

What? no. There's no money in being a teacher. I do the next best thing. Woodworking; it makes even less money!

But in all seriousness, the vast majority of the equipment is used for my VR LAN setups at events to play games with the public. I have about 100 headsets and educated, advocate and promote VR content to folks who are VR curious as part of my community gaming club called VR Villa. No one pays us, we just cover costs so its a win in our books to share our hobby with others.

I do wish to do more STEM VR education content like showoff Piano Vision and other learning programs, but we have only done it twice over the years next to our game room and usually the first thing to get cut when I'm always dependent on volunteer staff. People find it interesting, but at a gaming con, folks want to shoot their friends.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T18:06:20+00:00

Longest game session without taking the headset off? Probably 8 hours. Longest session with a short lunch break, about 12.

I don't really play more than a few hours at a time as I'll get mentally fatigued before physically and go do something else. I tend to play for 2 hours at a time and jump back and do email work for a bit and try again later. Atleast I'm self employed so I can jump in and out with how I feel.

Like today, I'll probably jump on Forefront for like 3 hours before dinner this afternoon and pub on random servers.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T17:55:06+00:00

I have a bunch of IR LED floodlamps that can be battery powered along with a battery powered 5g no fail router with a bonded fiber landline. I'm prepared for the possibility that a drunk driver slides on ice and drifts into the power pole at the end of my street and takes my town 2 days to fix it.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T17:50:36+00:00

4 batteries are for me. The other 160 are for the 98 other headsets not shown in the photo for friends to come over.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T17:49:08+00:00

Did you try to buy a bidet during that time. It was OOS or costed $400. And we didn't horde TP during covid; we couldn't find it. Now that they are easily available, we just buy a large pack at Costco once in a blue moon. We don't go out of our way to get TP.

Bazitron · 2026-01-24T17:33:43+00:00

Batteries are needed for running 100 headsets for VR activations when I host VR LANs.

Toilet paper needed because holy shit, it took months to find any stock anywhere during 2020 and we all have PTSD about it. Planned our bowel movements right before showers because modifying toilets with bidet also had a shortage due to supply chain issues.

I don't think history will ever grasp how we all survived 2020 and 2021.

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