Mark Zuckerberg has so many VR headset prototypes to show us

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New prototypes for lightweight, hyper- realistic virtual reality graphics have been revealed. While the designs are far from consumer ready, they could add up to a slender, brightly lit headset that supports fine detail.

Mark and Michael were among the Reality Labs members who presented their work at a virtual roundtable. Time machines are bulky proof of concept meant for testing one specific feature, like a super-high-resolution screen. "I think we're in the middle of a big step forward towards realism." It won't be that long until we can create scenes with perfect fidelity. Meta has a leg up on the rest of the puzzle because of its intensive VR hardware research.

The initial announcement last year that a high-end headset would be shipped in 2022, was not the last word on the project. Thanks to high-resolution cameras, a video feed can be passed to an internal screen. Eye tracking is one of the key features for future Meta headsets. Meta is planning two lines of virtual reality headsets, one that will remain cheap and consumer focused, and one that will incorporate the company's newest technology, aimed at a "prosumer or professional grade" market. There are reports that the company is planning updates to Cambria and the Quest 2.

The augmented reality smart glasses are meant to project images onto the real world instead of blocking it with a screen. Meta recently scaled back the launch of its first-generation augmented reality glasses, and in general, virtual reality has reached consumers more quickly than augmented reality. The company thinks it has more to offer.

Butterscotch is an attempt at a near-retina-quality headset display, but not the current Meta lineup. The design requires halving the Meta Quest 2's field of view. It has about 2.5 times the resolution of the Quest 2, which allows users to see the vision line on an eye chart. Meta has a 60-pixel-per-degree standard and Varjo has a 64pixel-per-degree standard.

Butterscotch is more shippable than Starburst. The bulky design uses a powerful lamp to produce high dynamic range lighting with 20,000 nits of brightness. It is impractical to think of this as a product direction for the first generation, but we are using it as a testbed for further research and studies. The goal of all this work is to help us identify which technical paths are going to allow us to make meaningful enough improvements that we can begin to approach visual realism.

Meta has options for making virtual reality headsets thinner and lighter. The 2020 design used a light-bending technique that let a nearly flat panel stand in for a thick Refractive lens. The result could be as thin as sunglasses, but Meta is still working on a self-contained light source that could power them. It will take a lot of engineering to get a laser that can fit a slim virtual reality headset. The jury is still out on a suitable laser source

Half Dome is a series of prototypes that can change focal planes depending on where users are. According to internal Meta research, the varifocal optics can create a more convincing illusion of depth in the virtual world.

Back in 2020, Meta said Half Dome was almost ready for prime time. He said in response to a question that it was far off. I am confident that we will get it into one of the upcoming headsets, but I am not going to announce it today.

Reality Labs will talk about how to more accurately capture real-world footage for mixed reality at August's SIGGRAPH trade show.

During the event, the designs above were shown off. The prototype called Mirror Lake has never been built. The design looks more like a pair of ski goggles than Meta's bulky Quest hardware, and it would incorporate the thin optics of Holocake 2. It shows what a full next-gen display system would look like.

A display that shows an image of the user's eyes would reduce the sense of physical separation for people outside the headset. Meta showed this feature off in a prototype last year, and it's possible that Apple has considered a similar feature for its rumored headset. The idea is tailored for a mixed reality world where Meta has staked a lot of its future.