Meta Quest v64 Update: Passthrough Improvements, External Mic Support, and More

Today we’ll begin rolling out the new Meta Quest v64 software update. Good news for MR fans, as we’ve upgraded the quality of Passthrough on Meta Quest 3. We’re also adding support for your fanciest external microphones, and updating a few existing features to improve the overall Meta Quest experience.

Read on for more details of what’s in store—and as always, we’ll be rolling this software update out gradually to more headsets over the course of a few weeks. If you don’t see it today, don’t panic! We’ll have it in your (virtual) hands shortly.

Passthrough Improvements

With v64, we’ve made a number of improvements to Passthrough on Meta Quest 3. Passthrough is now higher-fidelity than before, and better at adjusting color, exposure, contrast, and dynamic range to match your real-world surroundings.

Taken together, these improvements should make it easier to, for instance, see fine details (i.e. phone notifications and other small text) without removing your headset. Passthrough is also less grainy in low-light conditions, which should be helpful for late-night gaming.

Most importantly, Passthrough will feel more immersive whether you’re spending hours a day working in the Passthrough Home environment, battling foes in Asgard’s Wrath 2 and other MR-enabled games, or simply hopping in and out of Passthrough to check on your surroundings. These improvements are important as we work to eventually make Passthrough indistinguishable from reality—grab your Meta Quest 3 and check it out for yourself.

External Mic Support

We’re also launching support for external microphones under the Experimental Settings tab.

While Meta Quest 3’s built-in microphone is great for most people and occasions, we know some of you invest heavily in pro-grade microphones that make your voice sound like honey, and we want to support that. With this setting enabled, you can use an external microphone via the Quest USB-C port to capture audio during content creation, for in-game chat, and more.

Refining the Experience

Lastly, we’re refining some existing features in v64—including one from just last month.

Lying Down on Meta Quest 3: In v63, we enabled Meta Quest 2 users to better use their headset while lying down—and yes, we’re happy to announce that the feature is coming to Meta Quest 3 in v64.

Continuous Casting: Until now, if you removed your headset while casting it would stop the casting session. While there are times when this would be desirable, there are many more times when it is not. As such, we’ve changed the mobile casting feature to keep the stream alive when the headset is removed—so you can take a drink, take a break, or talk to your friends and family without worrying about the stream being cut short unintentionally. Just remember to stop casting when you’re done.

Check out the v64 Release Notes for a more comprehensive look at these features and more, and we’ll be back soon with another Meta Quest software update.