How to watch the Paris Olympics in MetaQuest 3

If you’re not lucky enough to be in Paris this month for the Olympics, the second-best way to watch the games is with a Meta Quest 3 headset, where you can watch Peacock’s coverage of the Olympics in a virtual cinema or on an augmented reality screen. You can stream everything Peacock has to offer from its app on your Quest 3, which means tons of live events, archived competitions, recaps, highlight reels, and more.

How to watch the Paris Olympics in MetaQuest 3

Here’s how to watch the Olympic Games in virtual reality with Meta Quest 3:

• Go to the Meta Horizon store.

• Search Peacock

• Download and install the Peacock app

• Sign in or sign up: Peacock’s premium plan is $7.99 per month and includes ads. The ad-free Premium Plus plan is $13.99 per month.

• Once the Peacock app is open, the Olympics coverage should be front and center. Click the “Olympics” tab and navigate to a city.

How good is the Olympic Games coverage in Meta Quest 3?

This morning I watched the Olympics on Peacock and was glad to have a floating window where I could watch the preliminary rounds of a sport I know nothing about while I do real-life stuff — the Olympics are great background entertainment for household chores. Here’s what it looks like when you watch women’s rugby while doing laundry:

Source: Stephen Johnson – Peacock

The room’s full-screen experience is great for my favorite use of VR video: lying in bed and having a video projected onto a virtual ceiling. This lazier-than-sitting-on-the-couch style of viewing things could prove to be a killer application for virtual and augmented reality, and the Olympics are a chance to try it out.

Another use for the VR Olympics is the ability to watch a different sport than everyone else at home. You can put on a headset and have the equestrian competitions displayed directly on the TV that’s showing gymnastics, and still (in a sense) spend time with your wife and watch the games “together.”

Unfortunately, Peacock VR’s Olympic coverage is limited to 2D streams of content available on their app, so it doesn’t take full advantage of VR’s capabilities with immersive, 3D, Olympic coverage, or anything like that. Hopefully, we’ll get something like that in 2028.