We praised Quest 3 as an excellent VR headset, but harshly criticized its "barely passable" mixed reality. But as with its previous standalone headsets, Meta has released a number of system software and developer tool updates in Quest 3's first six months on the market. Here's what they are, and how they change our verdict on whether you should buy it.
Mixed Reality Is Better, But Not Significantly
Meta markets Quest 3 as the "first mainstream mixed reality headset". Given this, in our review we harshly criticized the lack of dynamic occlusion and the significant warping geometric distortion of the passthrough.
In December Meta released the Depth API allowing developers to add dynamic occlusion. However, it requires complex developer integration and is thus supported in almost no apps so far. Further, the depth map driving it is very low resolution, leading to pretty awful-looking results.
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UploadVR testing Depth API occlusion.
The passthrough was updated earlier this month with improved dynamic range and exposure control, making it easier to view physical screens like monitors and phones. The graininess was also slightly reduced. However, this all comes at the cost of a slightly darker and less vibrant looking image. Interestingly, this new passthrough tuning, including the darkness and vibrancy tradeoff, is closer to Apple Vision Pro's, as we noted in our review of it.
Meta has also solved one of the complaints about passthrough in our review: that it didn't appear in all system interfaces and wasn't supported for loading screens. Apps can now use passthrough on their loading screen and Meta has added passthrough to system interfaces like the lock screen and power-off menu.
These changes may seem somewhat small, but together they allow you to remain in uninterupted passthrough from around five seconds after you put Quest 3 on until you take it off, making it feel more like a mixed reality headset and less like a VR headset with mixed reality poorly tacked on.
Meta is also allowing some mixed reality apps to disable the VR-centric safety boundary, letting you use the full space around you, and since v62 the headset can remember multiple mixed reality rooms instead of needing to redo setup every time you move to a different room.
Inside-Out Body Tracking Arrived, But Is Barely Used
Quest 3 was announced with a major feature coming post-launch, inside-out upper body tracking (IOBT).
Inside-Out Body Tracking (IOBT) uses Quest 3's side cameras, which face downward, to track your wrist, elbows, shoulder, and torso using advanced computer vision algorithms. It prevents the issues with inverse kinematics (IK) estimated arms, which are often incorrect and feel uncomfortable because the system is just making guesses from the location of your head and hands. When developers integrate IOBT, you'll see your arms and toro in their actual positions - not an estimate.
IOBT shipped in December. However, four months later it's still only used by a tiny handful of standalone apps, including Swordsman VR, Drunkn Bar Fight, and XRWorkout.
The biggest use for IOBT currently is in Virtual Desktop, which uses it to emulate worn Vive Trackers to enable body tracked avatar movement in the PC VR version of VRChat.
Spatial Videos & Panoramas Are Easily Viewable
Two of the key use cases of Apple Vision Pro, viewing panoramas and 3D "spatial videos" captured by your iPhone, are now easily doable on Quest 3.
This means you can view this content on a headset for one seventh the price of Apple Vision Pro. If you're the kind of person who captures a lot of photos and videos and deeply enjoys viewing them to look back at memories, it could even be a reason to buy a headset.
External Microphones Are Supported
When Quest 3 launched I was initially excited to use it on our weekly VR Download podcast but found its microphone had the same annoying plosives popping issue as Quest Pro, so I still use Quest 2.
The v62 update in February brought some improvements to Quest 3's microphone quality, including specifically to the plosives issue. However, I tested and found it still isn't good enough for VR Download, and still sounds noticeably worse than Quest 2.
In what may be an admission that the microphone hardware just isn't good enough, the v64 update earlier this month added the ability to use an external microphone on Quest 3 via the USB-C port. This can include a mic with a USB-C connector or any mic via a USB-C adapter.
Accessing SteamVR Is Easier For Free
At launch using SteamVR required using Meta's free (Air) Link feature or buying Guy Godin's Virtual Desktop. Air Link didn't support 120Hz refresh rate on Quest 3 and had inferior battery life to Virtual Desktop.
Meta fixed both of these Link issues in the v62 update in February. But more notably, Valve released a free official Steam Link PC VR streaming app on the Quest Store, making it almost frictionless to connect directly to SteamVR.
At launch we noted that while Quest 3 was a greatly superior headset, Quest 2 still played all the same games for $200 less.
That gap increased to $300 in March when Quest 2 was cut to $200. But what's also changed is the first games that will run on Quest 3 but not Quest 2 have been announced.
Starship Home will utilize the 3D scene mesh generated by Quest 3 during mixed reality room setup to position virtual objects on your walls and furniture.
Last week Alien: Rogue Incursion was announced for Quest 3, PlayStation VR2, and PC VR. Survios hasn't said why it isn't set to launch on Quest 2, but it's likely the kind of game that previously wouldn't come to a standalone headset at all.
The Verdict: Quest 3 Six Months Later
Quest 3 is still an excellent VR headset, the headset that most people looking for a VR headset should buy, with no meaningful competition. Its spatial video and panorama support even make it a good purchase for certain iPhone owners not interested in gaming or fitness.
While Meta has made strides in polishing its mixed reality capabilities, it still suffers from the warping passthrough and rare dynamic occlusion, and thus we'd still describe its mixed reality as barely passable.
While Quest 2 has dropped to $200, developers are starting to build around the capabilities of Quest 3's much more powerful GPU, and graphics updates for existing games have become a common occurance. And for gaming PC owners, Virtual Desktop's new runtime and the release of Steam Link has made wireless PC VR better and more convenient than ever on a standalone headset.
The Meta Quest v65 system software update is starting to roll out.
The Quest v65 update lets you easily view panoramas captured by your iPhone, brings passthrough to all system UI panels, lets any iPhone upload spatial videos, and prevents hand tracking from interfering with mouse and keyboard usage.
As always, keep in mind that Quest system software updates "roll out" gradually, so it may take days or even weeks for your headset to get the Quest v65 update.
View Panoramas From Your iPhone
Since v62 the Meta Quest iOS app has let iPhone 15 Pro owners upload 3D 'spatial videos' to show up in the headset for playback. With v65 any iPhone model can now do this, letting you for example upload spatial videos sent to you by iPhone 15 Pro owners or downloaded from Safari.
Additionally, v65 allows any iPhone to upload panoramas. Like with spatial videos, you'll then find them in the Files app inside the headset. Meta claims "it’s almost like you’re there again, taking in the sights".
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Viewing iPhone-captured panoramas is a key use case of Apple Vision Pro.
Viewing iPhone-captured panoramas is a key use case of Apple Vision Pro, so Meta is likely hoping making this easy on Quest will make for yet another reason for iPhone users to buy one instead of Apple's own much more expensive headset.
There's no word on the feature supporting Android phones.
Passthrough Throughout The System UI
Quest headsets have been able to use passthrough instead of a virtual home environment since a year after the original Quest launched. But some system interfaces like the lock screen and power-off menu always showed a VR void.
The v65 update brings passthrough to these interfaces, which Meta says enables you to "remain entirely in MR from the moment you power on Meta Quest 3 until you put it down again".
Mouse & Keyboard Improvements
Finally, v65 reduces accidental activations of hand tracking gestures when using a physical mouse & keyboard. We've found this to be a significant problem when trying to use Quest for productivity in the past.
Meta isn't going into specifics about how it achieved this, but says it should work regardless of whether the keyboard is connected to the headset itself, meaning the improvement also applies when using a PC via Remote Display.
Star Wars Vader Immortal is a three-episode experience that’s not only one of Quest’s best immersive narrative experiences, but also an awesome introduction to VR for any Star Wars fan. While you’ll soon be able to pick up the trilogy at a steep discount, it’s a real shame the series isn’t tapping Quest 3’s potential.
With Star Wars Day (‘May the 4th’) fast approaching, Meta shared an interview with one of the developers behind the Vader Immortal games, and confirmed the trilogy is getting huge 66% discount from May 4th through the end of May 5th. If you’ve ever considered playing the series, this is the moment! You’ll be able to get all three episodes basically for the price of just one—the best discount the series has seen.
Even without any visual upgrades that are specific to Quest 3, the Vader Immortal games are still among the best looking titles on the platform. That’s no doubt thanks to the work of ILM Immersive, the interactive entertainment division of Lucasfilm, which has a high bar for authenticity when it comes to Star Wars content—not to mention access to the vast archives of assets that have made the franchise’s works so iconic.
The Vader Immortal series—consisting of a trio of hour-long-ish episodes—looks, sounds, and feels like Star Wars. Rather than the typical ‘run, gun, rinse-and-repeat’ games you’ll often find on Quest, the narrative is really infused into the experience. The games do a great job of creating moments that are both fun and intuitive, making the series an excellent introduction to VR for Star Wars fans, even for people who wouldn’t consider themselves gamers.
And it’s for exactly those reasons that it’s a serious shame the Vader Immortal games haven’t been given a proper Quest 3 upgrade.
Quest 3 not only has much more power than its predecessor, it also has a generational leap in clarity thanks to higher resolution and incredible lenses. But very few Quest games are visually matching the headset’s potential.
Because the Vader Immortal games basically run thinking they’re still on a Quest 2, it’s easy to see that the game hasn’t been optimized for these improvements. Textures and text clearly aren’t as sharp as they should be, and the game isn’t using any advanced graphical effects that would be possible with Quest 3’s extra processing power.
Not having these optimizations for the newest headset isn’t a deal breaker; Vader Immortal is still worth playing. But now that Quest 3 has the potential to make these detailed worlds and characters look even better, it’s starting to feel like these gems have been left to dull, despite still being some of the most polished content on the platform.
It’s especially strange that we haven’t seen a Quest 3 upgrade for Vader Immortal considering there’s already PSVR and PC VR versions of the game with improved visuals. Leaning on those improved assets and visual effects would make a Quest 3 upgrade much easier than doing things from scratch.
But there’s a hundred possible reasons why the games haven’t gotten a Quest 3 upgrade yet. Maybe Meta doesn’t want to pay for it. Maybe ILM Immersive doesn’t see the value proposition in it. Maybe the teams that originally built the Vader Immortal games have gone on to bigger things, and familiarizing new people with the game’s code base and asset pipeline would be too costly. Maybe ILM Immersive’s team is busy working on a newer VR project and simply doesn’t have bandwidth even if everyone wanted to give Vader Immortal the Quest 3 upgrade it deserves.
If there was going to be a proper Quest 3 upgrade for Vader Immortal, the interview Meta shared with the developer seemingly would have been the time to announce it; as mentioned, May 21st will be the five year anniversary of the first episode of Vader Immortal. Alas, while the text has some interesting behind-the-scenes development tidbits, there’s not even a tease that the games could one day see an upgrade for Quest 3, let alone even an acknowledgement that such an upgrade would be desirable.
Get the Most Out of Quest
The Best Quest 3 Accessories: Quest 3 is a great headset but there's a few areas where accessoires can really improve the experience, especially the headstrap!
The Very Best Quest Games: The Quest library can be daunting, here's our quick guide to the best games.
Essential Quest Tips, Tricks, and Settings: If you're just diving into VR as a new Quest owner, you should absolutely check out our Quest Tips & Tricks Guide for a heap of useful tricks and settings everyone should know about.
Fitness and Fun on Quest: For fitness in VR that's as fun as it is physical, check out our suggestion for a VR Workout Routine.
Relaxing in VR: Are you less of a competitive gamer and more interested in how you can use VR to chill out? We have a great list of VR Games for Relaxation and Meditation.
Flex Your Creativity in VR: And last but not least, if you're a creative type looking to express yourself in VR, our list of Tools for Painting, Modeling, Designing & Animating in VR offers a huge range of artful activities, with something for everyone from fiddlers to professionals.
EA Sports WRC brings the FIA World Rally Championship to PC VR today.
Released last November for flatscreen platforms, EA Sports WRC is the latest racing game from Codemasters based on the FIA World Rally Championship. Featuring over 200 rally stages across 18 official WRC locations, 78 real-world cars from the last 60 years and customizable rally cars, PC VR support will become available as a free update for all existing owners on Steam, EGS and the EA App. Here's the new gameplay trailer.
Codemasters states they're calling this a beta because it's "a new project for our development team," explaining that VR support for Dirt Rally 2.0 used external partners while WRC is an internal effort. They also note that due to the wide range of VR headsets and PC hardware specifications currently available, it cannot test for all scenarios and configurations. Headset support is listed for Quest 2/Pro/3, Valve Index, Rift S, Oculus CV1 and HTC Vive.
It's a busy time for VR racers. Alongside the upcoming EXOcars and F1 24, publisher 505 Games and developer Kunos Simulazioni recently confirmed that Assetto Corsa Evo will launch this year. However, little else is known beyond a brief teaser trailer; platforms and VR support are currently unconfirmed. We'll keep you updated if we learn more.
EA Sports WRC is available now on Steam. As for other platforms, the publisher confirmed that "there are currently no plans to add VR to EA Sports WRC on console in any capacity, beta or otherwise."
Notice: This article was originally published on April 8, 2024. It was revised on April 30 to reflect the PC VR update's release for EA Sports WRC.
Helldivers 2 (2024) doesn’t have VR support yet, official or otherwise, although this new fan-made trailer shows just how immersive it could be.
Created by YouTuber ‘DemoAkuroVR‘, the unofficial cinematic trailer reimagines the squad-based shooter action in a modded version of Blade & Sorcery, the viral VR combat sandbox that is all about taking on waves of baddies and, as you’ve probably seen, decapitating them in style using melee and magic.
Check out DemoAkuroVR’s take on Devil May Cry (built in Blade & Sorcery) to see what we mean:
As you might have guessed, Blade & Sorcery is extremely moddable, letting you import anything from custom Star Wars maps and weapons, to the entirety of San Andreas from GTA, which basically lets you go ham on whatever, however, and wherever—making for a pretty interesting test bed for your own ‘what if this was actually in VR’ dreams.
And DemoAkuroVR is all about modding Blade & Sorcery to make a host of similarly cool ‘what-if’ VR trailers, including non-VR games like God of War and Metal Gear Rising, but also games that already happen to have VR mods too—the difference being they’re all captured in Blade & Sorcery.
While there are a lot of VR mods out there, thanks to groups like Flat2VR, Team Beef, and Praydog’s UEVR mod, which allows you to inject VR support to games built in Unreal Engine 4 and 5, it may be some time before we actually get any sort of unofficial VR mod for Helldivers 2 since the game is built in the obscure and rarely used Autodesk Stingray game engine.
Even so, such a mod likely couldn’t include the intense physics-based interactions you see in DemoAkuroVR’s trailer, although we can always dream. Who knows, maybe developers Arrowhead Game Studios will take notice, and implement their own VR support?
Tilt Five’s tabletop AR glasses system is on sale for a limited time.
The bundle for two players is priced $389, roughly 40 percent off its typical price, though you’ll need a high-powered Android phone or a PC to drive the AR glasses.
A single headset is discounted to $249 with game board, glasses, wand, kickstand, cleaning cloth, USB cable and USB Type-C to A adapter. 3 pairs of glasses are priced $539 for the sale and, with a decently powerful enough gaming PC, you could conceivably run all three glasses from a single computer.
Tilt Five is based on Jeri Ellsworth technology’s she exfiltrated more than a decade ago from Valve. It features an innovative approach to AR that works within current constraints to provide wide field of view visuals centered above and below a game board. The startup leans into board game replacement or augmentation where its predecessor, CastAR, lost footing trying to do too many different things.
We’ve been impressed by Tilt Five’s effort, though the startup likely still needs a massive funding injection to lure in development partners, reach store shelves, build a second generation and keep pace with the current rate of investment by tech giants like Apple, Meta, and Google. A partner like Nintendo, for example, could provide the missing content for Tilt Five’s platform while the hardware would give the giant exactly the sort of differentiated low-cost gaming experience it sells by the millions.
Right now, we can’t recommend Tilt Five as either a gaming or development platform partially because we lack significant time with the system, but like Meta cutting prices off Quest 2, this is still a steep discount for a unique technology that might interest curious hobbyists or experimental developers interested in exploring a new way of expressing or enjoying their content with AR.
In fact, the way AR content is centered around Tilt Five’s board is similar to the way Apple Vision Pro sometimes centers content in SharePlay. When viewed that way, an enterprising developer using multiple Tilt Five glasses from a single PC in the same room could affordably test out a multiplayer gaming idea that might translate to other headsets.
We’ll be curious to see what happens with Tilt Five over the course of the year and hope an investor or buyer like Nintendo can help the startup execute its vision for around-the-table shared multiplayer AR gaming.
VR veteran studio Survios finally revealed Alien: Rogue Incursion, the upcoming single-player horror game that’s sure to pit you against some nasty Xenomorphs. The officially branded tie-in game is coming to Quest 3 later this year, but not any other Quest headset, which could signal waning developer interest in supporting Quest 2 and Quest Pro.
In addition to launching on PSVR 2 and SteamVR, a Survios spokesperson told Road to VR that Alien: Rogue Incursion is indeed “native to Meta Quest 3 only,” i.e. not Quest 2 or Quest Pro. Given what we know about where standalone headsets are headed, there’s a fair bit we can tease from that statement.
And it case you misses it, here’s the Alien: Rogue Incursion announcement trailer:
Alien: Rogue Incursion is slated to launch Holiday 2024, putting release somewhere around eight months out from the recent Quest 2 fire sale, which slashed the company’s last-gen VR headset to just $200, and discounted a ton of official Quest 2 accessories.
Now almost four years old, Quest 2 has been supported by practically all games available on the platform since the VR headset’s release in October 2020. The same goes for Quest Pro, the company’s first true mixed reality headset which launched in October 2022 for an eye-watering $1,500—later lowered to $1,000.
Both were timed around Meta’s respective Connect developer conferences for those years. However now rumors maintain Meta is currently working on some sort of ‘Quest 3 Lite’ follow-up that would imply a cheaper version of the company’s flagship, which would conceptually displace Quest 2 in its lineup. Maybe in… October 2024? We simply don’t know.
Quest 2 (left) & Quest Pro (right) | Photo by Road to VR
If this article were published a month ago, it would have been pretty straight forward story: Meta is ostensibly getting ready to sunset Quest 2 and Quest Pro to make way for Quest 3 Lite…or whatever it will be called, and has tipped off Survios to let them know to not waste time or effort on making sure their fairly big budget official Alien game runs on older hardware.
Survios hasn’t said as much, but that “native to Meta Quest 3 only” caveat probably only applies to the Meta’s specific Quest first-party product line since it’s obviously supporting SteamVR headsets and PSVR 2, meaning we may see a wider distribution across headsets built by ASUS and Lenovo, and the Xbox-branded Quest hardware—whenever those arrive.
A few things are certain though: as one of the most veteran VR studios out there, Survios has created a dizzying number of games over the years, including Creed: Rise to Glory, Puzzle Bobble 3D: Vacation Odyssey, The Walking Dead: Onslaught, Electronauts, Sprint Vector, Raw Data, and Battlewake. And if such a prolific studio thinks its time to shelve Quest 2 and Quest Pro to get the best possible reach out of its official Alien IP game, it’s likely other developers will follow suit.
Insta360 X4 is a new $500 360° camera that can record 8K at 30fps, 5.7K at 60fps, or 4K at 100fps.
The device is 200 grams and fits in your pocket. The company claims its internal battery lasts for over 2 hours of recording time at 5K or over 2 hours at 8K, and charges to 100% in less than 1 hour via USB-C.
At 8K resolution, 2D 360° videos have enough pixels to almost match a Meta Quest 3's display angular resolution but will still fall far short of Apple Vision Pro's.
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The X4 features two F1.9 aperture lenses with 1/2'' sensors and records at up to 200 Mbps bitrate to an up to 1TB microSD card. The four microphone array features automatic active wind reduction thanks to an onboard 5nm chipset.
The footage is stabilized by a six-axis gyroscope which the company claims "keeps the horizon level even when completely rotating the camera".
Insta360 claims the camera is rated for temperatures between -20°C and +40°C (-4°F to 104°F) and is waterproof down to 33ft deep, with the $100 Invisible Dive Case accessory increasing this to 164ft.
The device can be controlled by the integrated 2.5" touchscreen, the smartphone app, hand gestures, or voice commands. The company then provides a Insta360 Studio PC application for reviewing and editing captured footage.
Previous 8K 360° cameras cost thousands of dollars, so Insta360 X4 makes 8K 360° recording available to a much wider market. While the footage won't be 3D, it can still make for compelling playback in a VR headset, especially given you'll be watching your own memories and experiences.
Insta360 X4 is arriving just as YouTube added support for 8K video playback on Quest 3, making it an ideal way to share videos captured with this device.
Vision Pro 2 is set for late 2026 and Apple is struggling to make a cheaper headset first, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports.
Gurman has a strong track record of reporting on Apple's future plans. He reliably reported many details of Vision Pro before it was officially revealed or even acknowledged to exist by Apple.
In his latest newsletter, Gurman writes that Apple's roadmap "doesn’t currently call for a second-generation model until the end of 2026, though the company is trying to figure out a way to bring a cheaper version to market before then".
But regarding that cheaper version, he claims Apple is "still flummoxed by how exactly to bring down the cost".
Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo first reported that Apple was working on a cheaper headset a full year before Vision Pro was even revealed, with Kuo at the time saying Apple aimed to launch it in 2025.
Last year Gurman too reported on the existence of this cheaper headset, saying it will feature an A-series chipset (used in iPhones) instead of an M-series chipset and "likely" drop the EyeSight front display. The A17 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro models has a GPU with 6 cores that's roughly 60% as powerful as the M2's GPU, so it seems reasonable an A18 Pro or A19 Pro might close the gap.
In that same report last year, Gurman said Apple "discussed prices ranging from $1500 to $2500". That he now says Apple is "flummoxed" by how to bring the price down suggests either these downgrades won't be sufficient to meet that price range, or Apple simply doesn't want to sacrifice features like EyeSight in any headset.
The largest cost by far in Vision Pro is its near-4K micro-OLED displays from Sony. Estimates place the cost to Apple at $350 each, meaning $700 per headset. Using small LCD displays would significantly reduce cost, but would result in inferior contrast and necessitate either significantly reduced resolution or a much bulkier design, so it's extremely unlikely Apple would take this path.
The real path to a much cheaper Vision headset relies on the price of high resolution micro-OLED displays falling over time.
Micro-OLED are manufactured directly onto silicon wafers with a process very different to regular OLED. While the technology itself isn't new, it was mainly only used in low volume products like high-end camera viewfinders and in some industrial smart glasses, and not at this kind of resolution. Mass production of micro-OLED of this resolution only just came online this year. Sony is reportedly Apple's sole supplier, but can only produce enough for 500,000 headsets this year.
Last year The Information's Wayne Ma reported that Apple was testing micro-OLED microdisplays from two additional suppliers, both Chinese, BOE and SeeYa Technology. If the samples meet Apple's standards, Ma wrote, displays from these companies could be used in both Vision Pro 2 and the cheaper headset.
Apple bringing in new suppliers could enable much larger production volumes than the current Vision Pro, and thus more affordable Vision headset prices. But micro-OLED displays are extremely difficult to manufacture at high yield, so it's still unclear exactly which companies can manage to supply them at scale while meeting the quality standards companies like Apple expect. Difficulties with BOE and SeeYa samples be contributing to Apple's struggle to bring a more affordable Vision headset to market.
The long-awaited VR mod for World of Warcraft (2004) is here, bringing full PC VR support to players grinding the vast lands of Azeroth.
Created by Flat2VR community members ‘Streetrat’ and ‘Marulu’, the long-time modders have finally brought full 6DOF VR support to World of Warcraft in the aptly named WoVR mod.
According to the Github, where you can download WoVR for free, it also includes directional audio, synced eye rendering, the ability to switch between third and first person, motion controls and a floating UI.
While couched as an “experimental release,” WoVR aims to add PC VR support to 3.3.5a, the last patch of the second expansion of the game.
Take a look at it in action below:
“This mod is a experimental release intended to be played seated with VR motion controllers. Currently we do not have plans for active continued development, if there is enough support and interested from the community we could look into first person mount visibility and player character IK,” the creators say.
It’s been a long road to get there too. WoVR has been in on and off development for over the past ten years, as it was originally conceived on the original Oculus Rift DK1 back in 2013.
“In January 2024 after a 4 year long hiatus we decided to restart development from scratch with everything we learned from creating XIVR,” the creators say. “This mod not only converts the game to be playable with motion controllers but also aims to add quality of life improvements from FF14.”
The modders are also known for having brought a similar VR mod to MMO Final Fantasy XIV (2010), which was initially released in 2022.
If you want to grab the WoVR mod, you can either do so by following the Github link above, or by visiting the Flat2VR Discord (invite link) where you can find precompiled versions for easier installation.
Editor's Note: Amanda Watson joined Oculus VR in 2015 and took a cubicle outside John Carmack's office in Dallas where she worked late nights on the mobile SDK. Later in California, she worked on Oculus Link and Air Link before leaving Oculus in 2022. In early 2024, Watson released CitraVRon Github. This letter was written "as an apology I never sent" to Carnegie Mellon University for an incident that happened in her final year there in 2014.
To Whom It May Concern,
I know this probably comes to you a little late. I’m notorious for putting things off (as you may know by now), but I still feel compelled to send this note. I told the University I was willing to apologize to anyone our actions may have hurt, and I fully intended to do it. I hope that the time, if anything, helps give context to my note.
I don’t actually get to know the affected parties to whom this letter is addressed, so I’m going to cover my bases and outline exactly what this apology is about. Last fall, a friend and I spent some time in front of an empty booth at the Technical Opportunities Conference (TOC). We collected resumes from students, and the administration became concerned that, possibly, we may have been mistaken as recruiters for the company of that booth. It was then brought to our attention that, while we may have meant well, this created trouble for students attending the career fair, as well as the staff who were in charge of organizing the event. Something we never intended, and something we would of course be very sorry to have caused.
I now understand that actions and intentions are not really as relevant as impressions, reactions and consequences of what transpired. That said, as long as I’m here, I figure some of you wouldn’t mind hearing the full story, as I remember it. Not to excuse my actions, but to grant insight into what motivated my friend and I, and why I am truly sorry for what happened.
On the morning of the incident, I was at the TOC 20 minutes before it opened. Normally, I’m not nearly this much of a try-hard, and honestly, suit-wearing try-hards make terrible impressions in tech culture. Yet I was going to risk it because, more than anything else in the entire world, I wanted to work at Oculus VR. As a computer science and drama major with a background in high-performance graphics and systems design, there aren’t a lot of obvious career paths for me. Last spring, I listened to a talk given by Oculus researcher Michael Abrash, and, as he explained the types of engineers they were looking for, I heard him describe me. To me, Oculus VR seemed like my one shot at validation, at doing my thing and making new technology happen as a result.
Also, to be honest, I wasn’t doing very well in my regular-job search. Places I’d gotten internship offers from in past years were now turning me down in the last stages of the interviews. I don’t really know why. The ones I asked gave vague answers about my just not being a good fit. Maybe I sounded like a jerk? Honestly, if anything in this apology seems like the kind of personality flaw that would prevent employment, please let me know. All I can say is that I was starting to get scared and bitter. I built up this meeting with Oculus at the TOC to be my one shot at making things right. I told myself again and again that I was going to do whatever it took to get myself noticed – for which I am, in retrospect, very, very sorry.
Of course, when the doors finally open and I make my way to the Oculus booth, it’s totally empty. The signs aren’t up, the complimentary water bottles sit untouched in the middle of the table. To say this was a disappointment would be a gross understatement. For maybe an hour – well into my next class – I just paced the TOC, hoping Oculus would show up. Of course, as we now know, other than one small blip later in the day, the Oculus VR booth would remain unstaffed.
Finally, I gave up and headed to my next class. I was crushed. CMU has a strong alumni footing in most tech companies you’d want to work for, some pipeline for resumes outside of events like these. But not Oculus. Oculus is too new for me to really know anyone who could push a resume along. I knew that if I could just get my foot in the door they’d be interested, right? I was desperate to talk to someone, anyone with connections. Honestly, I might have loitered around even longer if I hadn’t figured my best chance for getting in touch with Oculus was going to be sitting next to me in my next class.
In theory, having a friend like George would be the perfect solution to a problem like mine. He’s like a minor celebrity in the tech world, and has all sorts of connections in silicon valley. He even knows Palmer Luckey, the guy who founded Oculus VR. But if you honestly thought this was going to be my salvation, you don’t know George very well.
“What, I’m just going to email Palmer and be like ‘yo, I know this girl, she’s talented, you should hire her’? No, of course I’m not going to do that. You’re not exactly John Carmack. What do you think I’m supposed to do?” George speaks with a strong, high-pitched Jersey accent, which I think amplifies the amused condescension in everything he says.
“I...I dunno, tell him to leave my resume under a door somewhere? I just need it to get to a recruiter, not the CEO.”
“Look, if we’re all ever in the same place, I’ll get us together some night, and the three of us will go drinking. But I’m not just going to send him an email out of the blue vouching for you.”
You know what? Fair enough. Having a direct line of communication to the company’s founder isn’t really a great way to get a job through honorable means. It was agonizing to be this close, though. I just needed an in. Somehow, I was going to get noticed.
It’s at this point where people start blaming George for what transpired. I try not to get too insulted by this. “Elite Hacker Gains Privileged Access to University Gym, Exposes Vulnerabilities in Career Fair Security” makes for a better head canon than my soppy rant about unemployment, certainly, and doesn’t require nearly this level of exposition. In truth, it was me, embittered with my futility and disappointment, who convinced George to come with me to visit the Oculus booth after class. Some of our classmates would later claim they heard George say to me as we were leaving, “wanna go to the Oculus Booth and impersonate some recruiters?”, but I maintain that this does not make sense and is not true.
When we arrived at the TOC this second time, the event was in full swing. The once-empty booths were now being mobbed by kids in suits, and so I hoped Oculus would be the same. Of course, when we arrived, there was no one there because they were never there because no one showed up. We wandered around the event for a couple minutes before finally planting in one of the TOC’s few free spaces – in front of the Oculus VR booth – to regroup.
That’s when I saw it: a pile of papers sitting at the back of the table I hadn’t seen before. “Hey, look at this!” I called to George.
“Yeah, so?”
“I don’t remember seeing this pile before.”
“No, I saw it from before. It’s probably the resumes of all the kids that wanted to see Oculus…You think the recruiters will come back to pick them up?”
“Honestly? They’re just gonna get thrown out at the end of the day.”
Damn. The only thing worse than not being in the pipeline is not knowing you’re not in the pipeline. Honestly, when I looked at those resumes, I felt a lot of sympathy for those other kids. Like me, they probably were desperate to talk to Oculus, and didn’t have another way to do so. They’d probably been as crushed as I was when they saw the empty booth. And now their resumes wouldn’t even be seen! I wished I knew something I could do for them -- for us.
It was at that moment one of the suited kids approached the booth, shook George’s hand and introduced himself. After a 20-second monologue about his education, research and career aspirations, he gave us a resume. It was surreal.
George was blindsided. “Sorry, I don’t actually work for Oculus VR. If you want, I can put this resume on the table behind me. That’s what a lot of students have been doing.”
It was THE most awkward moment. Suddenly, all of suit kid’s enthusiasm vanished, and was he just staring back at us, unsure of what he’d done wrong.
“If I put my resume on the table...it gets to Oculus?” “I’m honestly not sure.”
Hesitantly, he placed his resume on the pile and left. “That was fucking tragic” I mumbled only moments before I was greeted by a smiling suit girl of my own. In a tiny, tiny voice I could barely make out, she asked if we worked for Oculus. This time, I cut her off as quickly as possible, giving the same explanation George did. Like the last guy, she was confused. “But recruiters pick up these resumes at the end?”
“Honestly, probably not? But hey, don’t take my word for it.”
After some hesitation, she just shuffled away, deciding not to part with her resume.
George and I broke the weirdness with some laughter. It was amusing, honestly. But more than amusing, it was refreshing, too. I’d spent the entire morning worrying about what I would look like to these recruiters, how they’d judge me. Now, I was that recruiter, and it all seemed so low-key. The fear - my fear – I was seeing on student’s faces seemed so unnecessary, their posturing so...counterproductive. It was like I could see right through it, look past their spiel and know with deadly accuracy who was worth spending time on. I was seeing behind the curtain, and it felt great.
I don’t want to make it sound like what happened next was motivated by this indulgence or my desire to “play God.” Honestly, at no point did we make any plans for impersonation.
I simply said to George, “Hey. ‘We’ know people at Oculus, right?”
“Sure.”
“If these resumes are just going into the trash anyway, maybe we can do something. Collect them and send them off to Palmer or someone he recommends.”
George claims that he never agreed to this, and I guess it’s possible I made it all up. But in any case, he went ahead with the plan. We had more students come up and ask if we worked for Oculus. Each time, we would say no, and direct them to the pile of resumes on the table. This time, however, we also said we would try and forward them, because we knew people at Oculus who might be able to help. These students, while still confused, seemed a lot happier than the first ones. They handed us resumes, shook our hands, and wandered back into the bowels of the career fair.
Now I can imagine what it must have looked like: two geeky-looking types standing in front of an otherwise empty booth, shaking hands, saying words, collecting resumes. I can understand, then, why the line of students may have started to form in front of us. It’s worth pointing out, though, that it’s really a stretch to say we looked like recruiters. The signs and water bottles still sat on the table, no one stood behind the table the way recruiters usually do, and we weren’t even wearing name tags (at some point George picked up a sticker that said “Full-Time Positions” and stuck it on his chest, but that was hardly an attempt at impersonation – he’s just an idiot). There was literally no Oculus insignia anywhere – the only corporate logos on our persons were George’s Google sweatshirt and my Palantir book-bag. It’s been said that a line formed because students were being misled, but if you ask me, they didn’t see us as recruiters. Like me, they were desperate for any contact at all with this company, and wanted exactly what we had to offer: any chance at all at being in touch with Oculus VR.
Again, I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to make excuses for myself. Student Life informed us later that, even if our impersonation wasn’t particularly believable, we should be held accountable nonetheless for “wasting student time”, an offense that, while not actually against the rules, is an interesting idea for a rule and might be fun to cite now and again. This may also be one of the points where intent and consequence didn’t align, because honestly, I didn’t think student time was being wasted. We gave those students a handshake and about 20 seconds of monologue time before telling each one, without exception, that we did not work for Oculus VR. Each time it was explained that we planned to forward resumes, as well as any notes they thought would be helpful to recruiting (I thought this was a nice touch, so as not to squander their chance at having a real human interaction).
Most students seemed to understand and still give us their resumes, sometimes hesitantly asking one of us what we might know about the company and its trajectory. I didn’t have much to say other than the research I’d gathered by googling Oculus VR on my phone. George, on the other hand, would happily launch into his own dystopian vision of VR’s future, where headsets have become mandatory for human interaction and images are projected onto your retina, paving the way for bionic eyes and, more than likely, the singularity. If anyone at that point thought that George was a real recruiter, I truly am being sincere when I say that I am really honestly sorry.
You’d think this would be a lot of fun. Yet, as nice as it was to play the part of the resume collector students had been so desperate to find, something didn’t feel right. We’d never intended to create such a scene. As nice as it might have been to stick to our principals and collect as many resumes as possible from the students who needed it, the attention we were getting was quickly becoming too much, and in 10 minutes it was all over. I turned to George and saw he was thinking the same thing. “Let’s get out of here”, he said. We picked up the resumes from the table, pushed through the crowd and left the career fair, as clandestinely as we’d arrived.
This is where a lot of people say I got in trouble. Remember what I said about putting things off? Well, I initially had trouble making good on that promise to get those resumes to Oculus. I asked George how we should go about sending them, and initially, he said we could get the contact info for the recruiting office and fax them. Later in the day, however, he was expressing doubts. First he claimed we hadn’t met anyone he thought was qualified to work at Oculus (a judgment he had no business making, because we never really took a hard look at any resumes). Finally, he admitted he was nervous about talking to Palmer. He had a lot of respect for the guy, and it would be “awkward” to have to explain the situation to him. Ok, fine. Without an immediate plan B, I decided to put it off and let it sit until I got back from my onsite with Nvidia four days later.
By then, I’m now told, alarm bells had started to go off in the bowels of the TOC administration. Still unaware of any of this, on my return, I flagged down an SCS professor I trusted and asked him what the best thing to do with the resumes would be. He said I could give them to him, and he would figure out what to do with them.
Again, I have this unfortunate habit of putting things off. It took me two days to come back with the resumes, during which time, an email was sent out to both students and non-students, warning that a pair of unidentified, unaffiliated suspects had entered the TOC, impersonated recruiters, and later left with a stack of student information. While this email was addressed to a large percentage of the student body, alumni network and industry partners, it was not actually addressed to me. George and I eventually heard about the email through a friend, and this was the first time I realized that other parties were not only aware of our actions, but had been alarmed by them such that it had become necessary to inform the university and the industry of the threat our actions posed. It was at this point that I finally handed the resumes off to our professor, made sure they had been seen by the concerned parties at the TOC, and figured that was the end of it.
As we all know now, this was only to be the beginning of the actions I was to feel very, very sorry to have caused. Apparently, the return of the resumes and the promise from our professor that we were undergrads and not terrorists prompted a rather large investigation, internal and external, to determine our identities. I heard the Pittsburgh PD got involved. I heard CMU’s detectives were put on the case to track us down. I, for one, didn’t know that CMU had detectives! What do they do all day? George dug up a case where the detectives got called to investigate a student who had brought three girls into his dorm room to “help assemble furniture”. At the end of the day, I like to think the CMU detectives appreciated having a real live mystery to solve. I’m not going to apologize for that.
At this point, we would have happily given ourselves up and prevented the ultimate scale of this investigation had it not been for two things:
First, something about George: George is very, very, very sensitive about the subject of cops. Between getting sued by Sony, going to court for some nasty marijuana possession charges, and just general, anti authoritarian personality traits, George doesn’t have a very good image of cops. In fact, I would go so far as to say he fears them. On the first day we heard there was an investigation, I got an email essay from George on what one should or should not say in an interrogation room, and he was making preliminary conversations with his team of lawyers. You need to understand, it isn’t enough to tell George that nothing bad is going to happen. For George, the American criminal justice system will take your tiniest infraction and use it as a chance to screw you.
Second, I guess I just sorta figured the detectives would find us. Honestly, we weren’t exactly trying to hide ourselves, and in a school of only 400 or so, it wouldn’t be hard to question a couple of SCS students and discover our identities. Besides, George is one of the most famous people in the entire university. Once we learned they had a photo of us, it seemed like only a matter of time before someone figured us out. So we waited. We put off doing anything about it.
As the days went by, however, the knowledge that he was being searched for began to take a toll on George. He wasn’t attending class, and would instead send me emails planning our strategy or the next session with his lawyers. When I finally saw him again, he looked shaken. “I can’t do this much longer. I think I need to get my lawyers together and turn myself in.”
“Well wait a second. You still know the CEO of Oculus. Couldn’t you get in touch with him, and have him tell the TOC folk he doesn’t care? I mean, he probably doesn’t, right?”
George thought about it. “No. Like I said, I really don’t want to bother him about something this silly. Like, I’m really going to ask the founder of a company to bail me out of what basically amounts to a dumb college prank?”
“What else are we going to do?”
Eventually, George gave in and sent Palmer Luckey an email. To our surprise, he responded almost immediately – he’d heard of the incident, and thought it was hilarious. At the end, he just said, “I’ll take care of it”.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know, and we’re not going to find out, because I’m not emailing him again.”
We didn’t hear from Palmer for a really long time. Maybe he puts things off, too. In any case, this was too long for George. Only a few days later, he called me at 6am, panic-stricken. “I can’t take this any longer. The pressure’s too much. I’m going to turn myself in”.
I wasn’t there to see George come forward. According to George, he walked into CIT, greeted the TOC’s organizers pleasantly, and listened with patience and maturity as he was brutally chastised for all the damage we had caused. According to the administration, George was rude and combative, his coming forward serving only to make relations worse. I heard all this from our professor, who encouraged me to come forward as well, but to maybe try a little less “sass".
And so, after only a few days of putting things off this time, I drafted my first apology letter, outing myself and expressing regret for any damage my actions had caused the administration. I sent it to my professor, who forwarded it to the appropriate people. I’d hoped it would provide these people with closure, giving them information they needed to understand our actions and motivations, and to realize that we were in no way a threat to students or to the TOC. I was sincere when I said I felt bad about the reactions we had evoked, and now wanted to volunteer this information in the hopes of helping everyone finally rest easy.
Of course, as George and I had yet to understand, there would be a lot more repentance required from us before the TOC’s organizers could once again feel safe and secure.
A few days later, I received an email with the subject line: “Interview”. Nothing out of the ordinary for CS majors in the fall semester, though I couldn’t figure out who this interview was with. Finally, when the last lines specified the location of our interview – Craig St, between Quiznos and Razzy Fresh – it clicked: that’s where the police station is – this was going to be an “interview” with the police!
As you might be able to guess, George was having none of that. “There is no way I am talking to a cop! Their whole goal is to hang you with your own testimony! Goddammit, I really didn’t want to hire lawyers for this!” Our professor, who has legal experience himself, agreed. Cops were bad news, and any interaction with cops meant having expensive lawyers. So I replied to the police, saying we were refusing to speak with any cops, which is how we got directed to the offices of Student Life for our disciplinary hearing.
By now, George was really starting to lose it. He’d stopped attending classes 6 weeks ago, and was making plans to drop out once again. “I’ve been taking road trips to Ohio and listening to Hardcore History podcasts,” he told me. “That’s what’s making life worthwhile." He said that while his plans to drop out were motivated by the investigation, I shouldn’t see it as my fault. “If I’d seen this happen to someone else from afar, you bet I would’ve gotten as far away from this nightmare university as possible.”
The steps for Student Life’s disciplinary investigation would be as follows:
Step 1: they would collect testimony from me, George, and any students who were willing to come forward and describe their experience with us.
Step 2: they would bring me and George in for a meeting, where they would lay out the findings of the investigation and what rules in the CMU Student Conduct Handbook we were deemed to have violated.
Step 3: once all of us could agree on what the violations had been, they would dole out a punishment.
As their investigation proceeded, George and I would go over the CMU Student Conduct Handbook, trying to figure out what our violations would be. There are some really interesting ones, like disabling or altering a classmate’s life support device, or the violation for reverse-engineering and exploiting third party software. At the end of the day, however, we struggled to find a crime we’d committed during this incident. Sure, someone who hadn’t done an investigation might say ‘Impersonation of Another Person’, but that seemed weak, seeing as we’d made it clear who we were to everyone we met, and even if we hadn’t, we weren’t exactly trying to “impersonate” anyone in particular.
Finally, we got to the final violation: “Conduct Unbecoming of a Carnegie Mellon Student”. “What does that even mean?” I asked George.
“It’s like a catch-all, in case they want to tack something on. I don’t think they can just hit us with that. That seems too vague. I mean, you have to actually violate something to be in violation, right?”
Of course, we now understand how misguided we were in that moment. When asking why nothing we were being accused of actually fell in line with a real rule, we were informed that “We [CMU] didn’t think we needed one because we didn’t think anyone would ever do such a thing”, a perspective that resonated with George’s and my own backgrounds in computer security and systems software.
Student Life agreed that, while at first glance the incident had looked like impersonation, it wouldn’t meet the criteria for ‘Impersonation of Another Person’, since none of the students they’d interviewed had actually admitted they had felt misled. In fact, Student Life and I ended up agreeing on a lot of things: for the most part, students didn’t feel hurt, nor did Oculus VR, who had since gotten in touch with the University and given a statement.
However, Student Life also believed that we still ought to be punished for committing “Conduct Unbecoming of a Carnegie Mellon student” for the following reasons:
1. Wasting student time
2. Taking far too long to return the resumes and rectify the situation
3. Causing a reaction by the TOC that ultimately embarrassed them, exposing how easily impersonations could occur and creating a “blight” on their name.
I explained I was confused about how we could be guilty of standing in front of a booth and collecting the resumes students gave us with full information, especially since the fact that is wasn’t prevented by policy was the reason the TOC felt “blighted” in the first place. George, who’d recently listened to the Hardcore History podcast about WWI, compared the situation to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, and kept insisting he wouldn’t be satisfied until he understood “who we’re paying reparations to”. I understand that this took our interviewers by surprise and was, in their words, “memorable”. I’m not going to apologize for that.
Eventually, after a far longer process, we reached an agreement: 20 hours of community service for Conduct Unbecoming, a reflective essay and perhaps an apology. This was, of course, directed solely at me, since George had by now dropped out of school and moved on to California to pursue greater, weirder things.
Or at least, so I thought.
Three weeks after my sentencing, he was back, having scheduled yet another meeting with Student Life. “No more WWI, right?” I pleaded.
“No way,” he said with an alarming grin. “I’ve been reading up on Genghis Khan this time.”
I was sure that this meeting would spell death for me and yet, a few days later, I got another email from Student Life. All charges against me were dropped. To this day, I have no idea what he did.
Now all I would have to do was send them an apology. This wouldn’t be a requirement, the email said, but since we had claimed to express real regret, it seemed only fair that we compose a genuine apology for the affected parties.
Again, I am not told who these affected parties are, but by process of elimination, my guess would be organizers of the TOC, the ones who had been “blighted” by our actions. I can understand their perspective: perhaps my actions and the resultant reactions had forever damaged relations with Oculus, as we’d exposed “vulnerabilities” that would create distrust in their event. It would, of course, make sense that such individuals would feel threatened and insecure in absence of an apology.
Allow me to put those minds at ease. Earlier this month, I did it – I finally got my foot in the door with Oculus VR! I met an engineer named Rob at a party, and it turned out he worked there, and we struck up a conversation. I managed to pass my resume along to him and, as luck would have it, they were doing a new employee review the very next day! I got put on the pile, they looked at my resume and, just as I had imagined it, they, too, thought I would be a good fit. Less than one week after submitting my application, I had an offer in hand.
A few days later, I was approached by the real Oculus recruiter. They’d heard about my new offer, and of course knew all about the business at the TOC last fall. As luck would have it, they were going to be at the EOC two weeks later. They wanted to know if I, now an official Oculus employee, was interested in working at the event as an official recruiter. Honestly, I was elated. It felt great to be welcomed as a member of the company so quickly, and to actually provide a service for students who had been so disappointed the semester earlier. We joked that, as the senior Oculus recruiter, I was going to have to show them what to do – “help us figure out which of these students are legit.”
After months and months of contemplating unemployment, of having to explain myself to dozens and dozens of accusatory faces, I was finally on the other side. I watched neurotic try-hards like me and George line up in front of my booth, hand me their resumes, and give me some nervous spiel about why I, Oculus VR, should hire them. Some were good enough that all they needed to give me was their resume. Usually, the ones that had big, fancy monologues were trying too hard, and it took me only a glance at their work experiences and some quick questions to see why. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned from this whole experience, it’s to not try so damn hard to get what you want. If you’re bright-eyed, genuine and deserving, the world will eventually turn the way it needs to ensure things work out in the end.
So in the end, representatives of the TOC, I hope you don’t judge me or my new company too harshly. Last fall, neither of us really knew what we were doing. We were young, nervous, desperate to make a good impression. Somehow, we both ended up getting misunderstood. By the spring, though, we think we have it figured out, and look forward to working with you in TOC’s and EOC’s to come. At least, I certainly do.
Of course, if you want it from the horse’s mouth, I encourage you to send me your concerns directly, and I’ll be sure to forward them to my guy Palmer ASAP. I hear we’re all getting together for drinks soon.
Amanda Watson returning to the Technical Opportunities Conference at Carnegie Mellon University after "the incident" as an official representative of Oculus.
David Heaney
