Meta Quest gets its most advanced home environment yet

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The Lakeside Peak home environment comes to Quest half a year after it was announced. Was it worth the wait?

FACTS

Lakeside Peak was announced as part of the v60 system update that rolled out to Quest devices in December 2023.

Six months later, the latest home environment is finally reaching Quest users. I took a look at Meta Quest 3 and recorded a video to give you a first impression.

Lakeside Peak is probably the most graphically advanced home environment to date. You find yourself in a rest area in the middle of an idyllic mountain landscape. While the world in the distance is still static, you are surrounded by many animated elements: the tent flies in the wind, smoke rises from the chimney, you can see a waterfall and the flow of a nearby river and lake.

The soft transparency of the trees and the sunlight penetrating through a coniferous tree are also pleasant to look at. Overall, Lakeside Peak has a richer and better 3D feel than previous home environments.

One drawback is the resolution, which even on the Quest 3 isn’t high enough to completely avoid aliasing, meaning Lakeside Peak looks better in video and photos than it does on headphones. Another drawback is that you can only move in a very limited area, similar to other home environments.

Both limitations are due to the headset’s limited resources, as the Quest must handle all system tasks other than rendering the home environment.

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Want more?

If Lakeside Peak has whetted your appetite for realistic VR environments, check out the travel app Brink Traveler. It features 3D reconstructions of 28 travel destinations around the world, many of which surpass Lakeside Peak in realism and resolution. Brink Traveler also features a multiplayer mode and an AI travel guide that answers your questions.

I can also recommend the free hyper-realistic Oniri Forest VR demo, which shows what is graphically possible when the range of motion is limited.

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