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The new VR Glasses of Meta: What will we see in the future of Meta?

Meta's Reality Labs division has unveiled new prototypes that are on the roadmap to lightweight, hyper-realistic Virtual Reality graphics. The glasses are far from being fully developed and ready for sale, but the designs - with the codenames Butterscotch, starburst, holocake 2, and Mirror Lake - should lead to a slim Headset with more realistic color that supports finer details than current Quest 2 displays.

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Reality Labs chief scientist Michael Abrash, along with 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": extensive proofs of concept intended for testing one specific function, such as a super bright backlight or a with super high resolution screen. "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 with basically perfect fidelity." Display technology is not the only piece of the puzzle to achieve that, but it's an area where Meta's intensive VR hardware research gives it a head start.

Meta

Zuckerberg once again reiterated his plans to release a high-end Headset with codenamed Project Cambria in 2022, following the initial announcement last year. Cambria supports both full VR and Mixed Reality, thanks to high-resolution cameras that can pass a video feed to the screen. It will also be coming with eye tracking, an important feature for future Meta headsets. Zuckerberg indicated that Meta has two lines of VR headsets planned: one that will remain cheap and consumer-oriented, like today's Quest 2, and one that will feature the company's latest technology, aimed at a "prosumer and the professional market. That seems consistent with with reports that the company is already planning updates for Cambria and the Quest 2, though those prototypes were not discussed during the call.

What is Meta's Butterscotch Project?

Meta's VR headsets sit alongside another line of extended Reality goggles, namely the augmented reality glasses, which are intended to project images into the real world rather than exclude it by screen with only Virtual Reality content. Meta recently postponed the launch of its first-generation AR glasses. In general, VR screens have reached the Consumer much faster than AR glasses. But the AR prototypes of Meta show how far the company thinks it can go.

Meta project Butterscotch

What is Meta's Starburst project?

The Starburst is even further away from a release to the public than the Butterscotch, but includes a similarly impressive upgrade. The somewhat bulky design uses a powerful lamp - requiring handles to support the weight - producing HDR (high dynamic range) lighting with 20,000 nits of brightness. "This Headset is obviously very impractical, but we're using it as a testing platform for further research and studies," Zuckerberg says. "The goal of all this work is to help us identify which technical directions will allow us to make meaningful improvements so that we can begin to approach visual realism."

Meta project Starburst

What is Meta's Holocake 2 project?

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

Meta project Holocake

What is Meta's Half Dome project?

The presentation also discussed Half Dome, a series of prototypes that allow vocal focal planes to shift depending on what users are looking at. This varifocal optical technology was introduced in 2017 as a clunky mechanical system and later switched to a liquid crystal lens system. According to internal meta research, this allows them to create a convincing (and physically comfortable) illusion of depth in VR.

Meta described Half Dome's technology as "almost ready for release to the public" back in 2020, but today Zuckerberg was a lot less optimistic. "This stuff, this technology is still a long way off," he said in response to a question about his earlier comment in 2020, that "this technology was almost ready for the market." "We're working on it, we really want to get it in one of the next headsets, I'm confident we'll do that at some point, But I won't be announcing more about lead times today."

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

In addition to these features, Mirror Lake would include an outward-facing screen that projects an image of the user's eyes onto the outside of the Headset, reducing the sense of closure for people outside the Headset. Meta already showed this somewhat creepy feature in a prototype last year, 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 that Meta wants to invest heavily in - but today the company is emphasizing the small steps towards it.

Watch videos of the interview with Mark Zuckerberg?

Diederik Hermsen- XR Product Specialist

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