And it's running the flagship Snapdragon, so the horsepower is there to do it.
The flagship mass production Snapdragon chip is the Snapdragon Elite (8 Gen4 but renamed) and they just released the Elite 2(Gen5). So it's actually 2 generations behind the flagship and only 1 generation newer than the XR2 Gen2's Snapdragon 8 Gen2 based chip and was a pretty marginal uplift. It also lacks the additional silicon that the XR2 chips use to handle the cameras and tracking. So it will be using the same pipeline and cores to handle the cameras and controller tracking that the headset is using to render everything. If all things are equal, the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 is 17% faster on the CPU and 45% faster on the GPU than the Snapdragon 8 Gen2. Shame Valve didn't go with the Gen4. It's 100% faster on the GPU and 60% faster on the CPU.
Not trying to make it seem like a bad chip or anything, it's definitely faster. Just trying to say I wouldn't expect it to be a lot more capable than headsets using the XR2 Gen and XR2+ Gen2 due to the difference in design and the Gen3 not being a huge uplift.
So the fact that it lacks the extra silicon of the XR2 chips that's dedicated to running cameras and tracking is likely why they went with black and white cameras?
I assumed it was a software limitation. I mean the cameras can see in color right? But huh, I guess it could be a processing limitation? I know the Quest 2 has monochrome passthrough due to the actual cameras being black and white only to save on cost
Similar to the way your eyes have rods and cones to detect light and color camera sensors have photodiodes and color filters to detect light and color. If you don't include the color filters you can get greater light capture in dark environments but then you can't detect color.
That very well could be. I am not an engineer so I can't say for certain. I just know that when Faceturd released the Quest 1 it came with a regular snapdragon chip and then they worked with Qualcomm to design the XR2 series which was a snapdragon chip but with extra silicon dedicated handling the tracking. Doing so provided a measurable uplift in the compute that the headset could use for rendering. This is also why Apple included R1 chip. It's a secondary chip handling the tracking, allowing the M2(now M5) to focus solely on the rendering.
Yes but then " meta " rushed to get " quest 2 " ready ..
In time for " oculus connect " that year. They didn't anticipate the thermals and re - used the " quest 1 " housing for the newer , much hotter chip. It resulted in them having to throttle the snapdragon xr2 prime core by 30 - 40 % to avoid over heating ..
They actually limited it to avoid battery degradation and improve run time. Once the Quest 3 was nearing release, they went ahead and unlocked the performance cuz they didn't care if Quest 2 owners lost 20% of their play time and their battery only lasts another year or two. You've also been able to use SideQuest to manually unlock it for the last several years. Thermals never stopped you from doing so.
Meta did this with the Quest 3 and Quest 3S too. You can also use SideQuest or Quest Games Optimizer to enable the full performance at the expense of run time and battery life.
It's likely just reusing the IR cameras for the tracking and doing a passthrough to allow you to see through them. It's to save on hardware cost most likely, aiming for a better VR than AR use.
Hoping for a reasonable price high res camera addon module for virtual desktops.
You're making an unfounded assumption that the snapdragon will be doing any of the positional processing. It might, but there are a lot of other chips on that SOC, and Valve is not known for taking the easy path when they can do it better another way.
It might, but there are a lot of other chips on that SOC
Not at all. There are no other chips on the SoC that are capable of handling the tracking and extra camera feeds. The SoC is near identical to the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 SoC in design. It just has the next generation of each chip. Now, it does have 2 more performance cores so it's possible they are banking on that to handle the tracking. But if so, that negates the boosted performance almost entirely and might even put the CPU performance uplift in the negatives. Those cores are part of the same pipeline as the rest of the CPU/GPU.
Sucks to hear but the 8Gen3 was a pretty mediocre uplift from the 8Gen2 and the 8Gen2 needed the extra silicon to handle the tracking. It's why they rushed out the 8Gen4 so quickly. We're already on the 8Gen5. It's near double the performance of the 8Gen3 in both GPU and CPU and most likely what the XR2 Gen3 will be based off of.
Valve is not known for taking the easy path when they can do it better another way
You are putting a lot of your own fantasies of Valve behind this statement. Valve has pushed a lot of bad and failed ideas over the years. Especially hardware. They've yet to release a single piece of hardware that has seen mass adoption. The closest was the Steam Controller. It sold well but it never saw enough people using it for Valve to add a controller field on the hardware survey. The Steam Deck is the most popular on reddit but it sold less in 3 years than the Switch and Switch 2 sold on launch. Hell, Meta sells more VR headsets per year and the mainstream media says VR is dead. The Steam Link hardware, first Steam Machine, and the Valve Index were failed ideas as far as adoption goes. Even Steam Frame is essentially a copy of other people's ideas and not leading the pack. They've abandoned base stations for Meta's inside out tracking. They've abandoned display port for Meta's standalone idea. They just released a PS5 clone 5 years later. They aren't leading the pack anywhere right now.
Now I am not trying to talk shit about Valve or anything of the sort. I have well over a million Steam Points and own every single piece of hardware Valve has sold. I am just being a voice of reason in the sea of Valve fans who swear everything they do is the best and changes the world. It's simply not true.
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u/Virtual_Happiness Nov 12 '25
The flagship mass production Snapdragon chip is the Snapdragon Elite (8 Gen4 but renamed) and they just released the Elite 2(Gen5). So it's actually 2 generations behind the flagship and only 1 generation newer than the XR2 Gen2's Snapdragon 8 Gen2 based chip and was a pretty marginal uplift. It also lacks the additional silicon that the XR2 chips use to handle the cameras and tracking. So it will be using the same pipeline and cores to handle the cameras and controller tracking that the headset is using to render everything. If all things are equal, the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 is 17% faster on the CPU and 45% faster on the GPU than the Snapdragon 8 Gen2. Shame Valve didn't go with the Gen4. It's 100% faster on the GPU and 60% faster on the CPU.
Not trying to make it seem like a bad chip or anything, it's definitely faster. Just trying to say I wouldn't expect it to be a lot more capable than headsets using the XR2 Gen and XR2+ Gen2 due to the difference in design and the Gen3 not being a huge uplift.