The Meta Quest 2 has an Invisible Button that Magically Appears!

The Meta Quest 2's passthrough button melts away to quickly check back in with reality

Virtual reality is for checking out. But as VR is becoming mainstream, there requires to be a way to quickly check back in with reality. A safe word, so to speak, to pull you out of VR, whether you're feeling overwhelmed by a game or if you want to feel more present. And that is what the passthrough button offers on Meta Quest 2. 

Meta's Quest and Quest 2 are both safety tools and practical ones to let you see what is happening outside of the headset without putting effort to take it off. After firmly double-tapping on either side of the headset where the straps attach to it, a view of your room, albeit a pixelated, monochromatic feed as taken through a handful of low-megapixel cameras — will appear on the display. This button eradicates the requirement of taking off the VR headset for small interruptions. the requirement of taking off the VR headset will be only for those times when you need to gather yourself when someone's calling for you across the room or if you want to grab a snack on your desk without making a mess. It also gets bonus points for making you look futuristic while you tap your headset.

But the interesting part of Meta Quest 2 is that the button is invisible — it is not a physical button, just a specific spot on the headset waiting for a gesture to respond. An invisible button being overlooked, and the opaqueness of activating passthrough mode could bury it out of sight for some users. That intention is important, though: being yanked out of an immersive VR session because of a misfired gesture or Meta Quest 2's passthrough button would not be perfect. Meta has traveled a long way to require you to manually enable the button. All you have to do is to flip a switch within the settings, where it is positioned as a safety tool to make sure you are not about to endanger yourself or others.