The socalled Elitestrap+Battery for the Quest 3 arrived yesterday. It repalces the somewhat provisional default strap.
The battery extends the live time by multiplying that of the standalone mask by two, give and take. So, 4-4.5 hours.
The masks sits extrenly good with that strap, and is easier to adjust and to tak eon and off. Also, the facial part sits rocksolid on your face, even if you moe the had quickly. The things alltogether is a bit heavier now, of course, but that is compensated for by a better balance. A wheel in the neck tieghtens and loosens the fit. Very well-thought out desiogn, and all silikon wher eit touches the back of your head. That is good to know, because I use the headset last but not least for quite physical and sporting purposes, and so loose quite some sweat.
The battery in the back gets connected via a short cable into the only USB-C connector. Now, there is two things to consider that are not ideal. The backsid ebattery will emopty first when you play, until it ha sreached nil and then the mask's battery takes over. I do not like lithium ion batteies being emptied to zero, I never do that with my abtteries and bike batteries, but chnage when they are down to 20%. Vice versa, when loadingkt he powerplug goes now into the back battery, and through it first the mask gets loaded to 100%, and then the rear end battery. Thats also what I avoid with lithium batteires, I do not charge above 80% or so. Having batteries like this altering between 100% and 0% shortens their longevity, it sbetter to have lithium batteries opertaign between 80 and 20% charging status. You can do this with the Quest 3 only manually by pulling the connectur plug between both batteries.
An alternative to this - quit eexpensive - pack is to use a normal powerbank and a sufficnetly long cable. You carry the powerbank in a small picket on your belt for exmaple, and arrange the cable so that it does not get in your arm's way. A cable with a USB-C plug at a 90° angle would be recommended.
The Elitestrap strap is also availabe without a battery.
Afte r ore days of testing I think of the Quest 3 really as a game changer in VR. You get the superb display quality, the movement independence due to no cable to PC, excellent hand tracking even without holding the controllers (just make sure your plac eis sufficiently lit), and the Passthrough, which I found to be available in more games than I expected. I still start to giggle when I play table tennis with the table standing in my room and on my balcony.
The Quest has some really good hit-ball-with-racket sort of games, and severla also well-done sports and workout apps. With one of these I cardiacally attacked myself yesterday afternoon, and after 30, 35 minutes I was worn out and done and swam in my sweat.
I got a small,lbrary of games, soem I knew form before, some were new to me, and I gave back just one, a lousy pool game, the metastore runs a policy comparable to that of Steam, giving something back just takes more time to process.
With the crispy display, I got myself also two pistols-guns-and-rifles games, and while you miss the weight of the weapons and the stability that provides, aiming with various visors works surprisingly well, with the first Rift that was an exercise in futility.
I havent played First Person Tennis sn etwo years, the game has quite developed and I have a fantastic time with it. Its one of those must-have games, better it does not get. Eleven and Racket NX also are fantastic of course. Long live cable-free VR!
Yesterday I saw a 360° video, beautiful natgure impressions form Austria in autumn, that guy films 360° opften in 8K quality and that really makes a diference (uusally, older 360° films are quite blurry), I provide the link so that you can chekc it out if you want. Note: there are TWO youtube apps for the Quest, Yotuube, and Youtube VR. To comfortably watch 360° via Stream, you need Youtube VR.
And the app Wander is a beautiful replacement for the absence of Googl Earth, and works as smooth as the Googole software does. I can only recommend it fullheartedly. With softweares like these, you can do real magic with VR. Magic. I swear it.
https://www.youtube.com/@KarolGazdikCreatorFromTyrol
This movie yesterday caught me with my emoritonal guards down. I stopod in all that beuaty that spanned out before my eyes, and could ntio beleive it and also relfetc about this modenr tehcnological mircale I currntl ywas expeirncien - that these thigns are possibel that we cna do such things. When i took off the mask after the film, I had tears in my eyes, emotional secuirity valves had opened up. Beauty can be overwhelming when it comes at this size.