Meta Quest’s new Travel Mode will put more glassholes on your next flight

Meta Quest headsets are ready to go on flights with you as Meta has announced a new Travel Mode. The company is rolling out the experimental feature to Quest 2 and 3 headsets running Quest software version 65 or later, allowing owners to use the headset in passthrough on a flight without windows drifting away from them.

To try it, opt in under Settings > Experimental features. Then the new mode will live in the Quick settings panel, where you can toggle it from the Quest’s universal menu. Travel Mode isn’t without limitations — it’s not designed to account for the motion of a car or train, for instance; Meta says support for other transportation methods is coming. Also, if a game or app requires an internet connection, your plane will still need to offer Wi-Fi.

Quest headsets could already be used on flights, but doing it required turning off positional tracking, which also disables passthrough, as UploadVR notes.

The new mode seems aimed straight at Apple’s Vision Pro, which launched with a similar travel mode (and similar caveats). I’ve tried the headset in a car — as a passenger, of course; I’m not a monster — and it still mostly worked as long as the car wasn’t stopping and going a lot, and tracking failed if I looked out the side windows. Depending on how the Meta Quest’s new mode works, that could be the case for it as well, or it could be that it simply refuses to work if it doesn’t think you’re on a plane.

The new Travel Mode joins a growing list of Vision Pro-style features that Meta has added to its headset that debuted on Apple’s $3,500 headset earlier this year. This includes more expansive pinch controls as well as the ability to use it lying down and play back spatial videos recorded on an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max.