The Meta Quest 3’s next-gen AR upgrade has been delayed

What you need to know

• Augments are digital objects that can be placed in the real world, viewable through a Meta Quest 3 headset.
• Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said Augments went back to the drawing board back in January because they “weren’t good enough.”
• Augments were originally supposed to come out this year but will likely launch next year instead.

When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg originally laid out the vision of the Meta Quest 3, it included plenty of mixed reality content. At the center of that vision was Augments, a series of digital items that could be placed in your home — on the walls, ceiling, floor, tables, or even floating in the air — that would encourage users to keep their headsets on for longer by giving them handy utilities and artwork to admire.

However, Meta CTO Andrew Bostoworth said on a June 17 Instagram AMA that the feature didn’t quite turn out the way it was originally envisioned, causing it to be sent back to the drawing board. Part of the problem, as UploadVR points out, is that the Augments feature was originally built upon Meta’s Spark Studio platform but the Quest’s newest AR tools are a far better fit for what Meta originally wanted to do with Augments.

Augments were first shown off at Meta Connect 2023, as seen in the GIF above, with Zuckerberg talking about how digital picture frames could be placed on the walls with Facebook picture feeds. Zuckerberg also talked about how a “mirror” could be setup in your workout space, letting you quickly start up Supernatural or one of the other best exercise apps for Meta Quest in a context-sensitive way.