The new VR headsets from Meta

The headsets are far from being fully developed and ready for sale, but the designs - with the codenames Butterscotch, Starburst, Holocake 2, and Mirror Lake - aim to lead to a sleek headset with more realistic colours that support finer details than the current Quest 2-schermen.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Reality Labs chief scientist Michael Abrash, along with other Reality Labs members, presented their work last week during a virtual roundtable discussion. The event focused on designs that Meta calls "time machines": bulky proofs of concept intended to test a single specific feature, such as super-bright backlighting or a super-high-resolution display. "I think we are now in the middle of a big step forward towards realism," Zuckerberg told reporters. "I don't think it will be long before we can create scenes with essentially perfect fidelity." Display technology is not the only piece of the puzzle to achieve that, but it is an area where Meta's intensive VR hardware research gives a significant lead.

Zuckerberg reiterated his plans to release a high-end headset with the codename Project Cambria in 2022, following the initial announcement last year. Cambria supports both full VR and mixed reality, thanks to hoge-resolutie cameras that can pass a video feed to the display. It will also come with eye-tracking, an important feature for future Meta headsets. Zuckerberg indicated that Meta has planned two lines of VR-headsets: one that will remain affordable and consumer-oriented, like today's Quest 2, and one that will feature the company's latest technology, aimed at a "prosumer and professional market." This seems to align with reports that the company is already planning updates for Cambria and the Quest 2, although those prototypes were not discussed during the conversation.

Meta's VR-headsets stand alongside another line of extended reality headsets, namely the augmented reality-brillen, which are designed to project images onto the real world rather than excluding it with a screen filled with only virtual reality content. Meta recently delayed the launch of its first-generation AR-brillen. Generally, VR-schermen have reached consumers much faster than AR-brillen. But Meta's AR prototypes show how far the company thinks it can still go.

The Starburst is even further from a public release than the Butterscotch but features a similarly impressive upgrade. The somewhat bulky design uses a powerful lamp - that requires handles to support the weight - it produces HDR-verlichting (high dynamic range) with 20,000 nits of brightness. "This headset is obviously hugely impractical, but we use it as a test platform for further research and studies," says Zuckerberg. "The goal of all this work is to help us identify which technical directions will enable us to make meaningful improvements so that we can approach visual realism."

Holocake 2 takes a different direction and explores Meta's possibilities to make VR-headsets thinner and lighter. It is the successor to a design dating back to 2020 and is based on holographic optics, a light-bending technique where an almost flat panel replaces the current thick lens. The result could be as thin as sunglasses, but Meta is still working on the suitable light source to power the sunglasses - almost certainly this will be a laser and not OLEDs, which are commonly used today. "We still have a lot of research to do to come up with a consumer-viable laser that meets our specifications: safe, low-cost, and efficient, and that can fit into a thin VR-headset," says Zuckerberg.

The presentation also discussed Half Dome, a series of prototypes that shift focal planes depending on where users are looking. This varifocal optical technology was introduced in 2017 as a cumbersome mechanical system and later switched to a system of liquid crystal lenses. According to internal Meta-onderzoek, they can create a convincing (and physically comfortable) illusion of depth in VR.

Meta described the Half Dome technology as "almost ready for public release" in 2020, but today Zuckerberg was much less optimistic. "This stuff, this technology is still far away," he said in response to a question about his earlier comment in 2020 that "this technology was almost ready for the market." "We are working on it, we really want to get it into one of the upcoming headsets, I am confident that we will do that at some point, but I am not going to announce any timelines today."

Reality Labs will reveal more details of the research at the SIGGRAPH-beurs in August this year, including how they will more accurately capture real-world recordings for mixed reality. The designs above are actual hardware prototypes that Zuckerberg briefly showed during the event. But Meta also unveiled a prototype, called Mirror Lake, which is still just an idea and has not yet been built. The design looks more like ski goggles than Meta's current Quest-hardware. It includes the thin optics of Holocake 2, the HDR-mogelijkheden of Starburst, and the resolution of Butterscotch. "It shows what a complete next-gen display system could look like," said Abrash.

On top of these features, Mirror Lake would include an outward-facing display that projects an image of the user's eyes on the outside of the headset, reducing the sense of isolation for people outside the headset. Meta showed this somewhat eerie feature last year in a prototype, and it may not be the only company interested in the concept: Apple has considered a similar feature for its headset. The idea is interesting for the mixed reality world where Meta wants to invest heavily - but today the company is emphasising the small steps towards it.

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