Quest Pro users blast Meta after v79 update brings crazy artifacting

Quest Pro users are up in arms, and for good reason. A recent software update, v79, has apparently turned their virtual reality experience into a glitchy mess, sparking a wave of frustration across online communities. Many users are reporting severe “artifacting” — those annoying visual distortions like rainbow sparkles and diagonal tearing — that make their expensive headsets borderline unusable.

This isn’t just a minor hiccup. For many, the v79 update has amplified existing issues to an unbearable degree. It seems Meta pushed out an update that has made things significantly worse, especially for those who use their headsets for PCVR with Virtual Desktop. The complaints are piling up on platforms like Reddit and Meta’s own community forums, with users expressing disbelief at the state of the software.

One user on Reddit, Kyan31, stated, “Don’t update to v79. The artifacting is atrocious now. What is Meta doing?” They added, “I didn’t think they could re-fu*k up the headset so soon lol. Hasn’t even been 2 weeks of v78 finally fixing most of the issues and they drop this sh*t.” This sentiment is echoed by others who had just started to see improvements with the previous v78 update, only to be hit with a fresh wave of problems.

The artifacting isn’t a completely new phenomenon for Quest Pro users. Reports indicate that sporadic visual glitches have been present for over a year. However, things took a turn for the worse with the “navigator” UI update, which many users received around v77. Now, with v79, these issues have reportedly become constant and far more intense.

I spotted one comment under the official post about the new update on Meta’s community forums where user bowow said:

v79 has broken PCVR with Virtual Desktop yet again on the Quest Pro. The compositor artifacts (rainbow sparkles, diagonal ‘tearing’) which have been a constant visual presence since the new ‘navigator’ UI rolled out are now 1000x worse.

They too shared a video highlighting the problem. Check it out below:

Another user, BigSoulja, also posted on the Meta community forums, stating, 

You guys seriously need to test these updates out before pushing them to users. I get that it’s PTC, but some of these problems are visible immediately and I don’t understand how it manages to leave the Meta oven like this.

The core of the frustration seems to stem from a perceived lack of proper testing before these updates are rolled out. Users are questioning why such significant bugs are making it past internal quality checks, especially when they appear immediately upon updating. There’s a growing concern that the Quest Pro’s hardware is being pushed too hard by unoptimized software, leading to these graphical anomalies. Some even speculate that the new UI itself is causing an excessive GPU workload.

Many users are now wary of future updates, with some vowing to turn off automatic updates entirely. The inability to easily downgrade to a previous, more stable version only adds to the exasperation. While some users have found temporary workarounds, like restarting the headset or adjusting settings in Virtual Desktop, these are seen as band-aid solutions for a problem that Meta should be addressing directly.

As usual, we’ll keep track of the situation and will update the article if there’s something to share. In the meantime, feel free to share your experience with the update in the comments below.