Meta, the artist formerly known as Facebook, has unveiled the Quest 3 headset, a $500 unit that features full video pass-through for mixed reality experiences. Much cheaper than Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro, its main pass-through rival, the device promises to bring metaverse-ish capabilities to a much larger audience, but consumers remain skeptical. Most metaverse pitches attempt to sell the audience on a world where users simply strap on a headset and can get lost in different worlds – interconnected by some sort of backend that allows for persistent experiences across different instances. Of course, we have heard this pitch before, and while there might be some improvements in the user experiences, which are currently rather janky, the key enabling technology…