At Meta Connect's big Quest 3S reveal yesterday, where the company introduced the $300 headset for the first time, Meta also announced that it's releasing a new app for the Quest 3 that lets you explore photorealistic spaces. And these aren't the 360-degree photos you'd see in Google Street View; these are full-on photogrammetric scenes that you can actually walk through.
Calls the meta application Horizon HyperscapeAvailable for free to Quest 3 and Quest 3S users in the US.
The company noted that its photorealistic environments were created using mobile phone scans and cloud-based rendering, emphasizing: Horizon Hyperscape “A demo experience to showcase our vision of photorealism, a deeply new way to feel like you're physically there.”
While users can't upload their own photo scans “today,” Connect CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on stage that “you can use your phone to scan and recreate a room or go into a room that someone else has scanned and shared,” suggesting that this functionality could be coming at some point in the future.
For now, the app includes a handful of large-scale photogrammetry scenes, including explorable spaces like EastWest Studios in Hollywood and artist-intensive workshops by Daniel Arsham, Rebecca Fox, and Gil Bruvel.
This all feels like Valve is out of whack. Goals Workshop PC VR tools that were released in 2016 that allow users to explore and upload photogrammetry scenes in a similar way. We're betting Meta wants to make it happen A little But when it comes to capturing and processing the sheer number of photos needed to create such a detailed environment, it's simpler for the end user.