Mark Zuckerberg showed these prototype headsets to build support for his $10 billion metaverse bet

The company is going to spend $10 billion on research and development on virtual reality and augmented reality technologies.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, showed off how much progress the company has made towards that goal by showing off many of the unfinished headset prototypes the company has built in its labs.

Virtual reality, which immerses users in a computer-generated world, and augmented reality, which superimposes computer-generated objects over the real world, are the future of the social networking company he founded. The company changed its name to Meta in order to highlight its new emphasis on the metaverse, a virtual world where people will spend increasing amounts of time.

Meta would have a new revenue stream and control of its hardware platform if it succeeds in making head-worn computers mainstream. Meta said on its last earnings call that recent privacy changes Apple made to the iPhone could cost it $10 billion in foregone revenue this year, as it hamper the company's ability to target ads to precise audiences.

There are questions about the size of the market for virtual reality. Meta currently dominates headset sales, with its current $299 Quest 2 accounting 22% of all headset sales in 2021, according to an estimate from the International Data Corporation. The total number of virtual reality headsets sold was less than 10 million.

Meta has pivoted away from its core business of ads and apps. Fears of growing expenses, light growth forecasts, increased competition from TikTok, and effects from Apple's iPhone privacy change are some of the factors that have caused the stock to fall over the course of the next four years.

Despite a broader rally in tech stocks, Meta's stock closed down more than 4% Tuesday. Markets were closed for the Juneteenth holiday.

Meta is working on a virtual reality display that will allow users to feel like they are in the same room with other virtual people. Current displays can't be worn for long periods of time.

It won't be that long before we can create scenes in perfect fidelity. You won't feel like you're there if you look at them on a screen.

The issue today is that the vividness of screens that we have now compared to what your eye sees in the physical world is off.

For the past few years Meta has shown its progress working on virtual reality headsets and augmented reality glasses to partners and the press in order to encourage investors to regard the project as worthwhile and to help recruit highly-paid developers and executives with experience in virtual reality and augmented reality.

Meta frequently shows unfinished prototypes for use in research in these presentations. Before talking about gadgets with the press, companies like to complete them and figure out how they will be made. Apple doesn't show off prototypes for its headsets.

The prototypes are custom and bespoke models that were built in the lab.

The prototypes were shown.

There is butterscotch The human eye can't tell the difference between high-resolution displays and smaller ones. Butterscotch has a new lens that limits the headset's field of view, making it possible to present fine text and show increased realism.

The prototype is heavy and bulky, so it is not near shippable.

The dome is half dome. Meta has been working on Half Dome headsets for more than a year in order to test a display that can shift the focus point of the headset. Meta says that the resolution and image quality could be improved enough for users to make giant computer monitors inside a headset. The liquid crystal lens version 3 replaces mechanical parts.

The second iteration of Holocake. Meta says that it is the lightest and most capable of running any virtual reality software if it is connected to a PC. It requires special lasers that are too expensive for consumers to use.

The lens of a virtual reality headset needs to be positioned a few inches from the display so it can focus and direct light into your eyes. Meta uses a flat lens to reduce bulk.

There is a large object in the sky. High-dynamic range displays which are brighter and show a wider range of colors are what Starburst is focused on. According to Meta, the single technology that is most linked to realism and depth isHDR.

The goal is to identify which technical paths will allow us to meaningfully improve in ways that start to approach the visual realism that we need.

The lake is named mirror lake. The idea of a ski-goggle style headset was shown off by Meta. The goal of Mirror Lake is to combine all the different headset technologies into a single display.

The mirror lake concept is promising, but it is only a concept with no fully functional headset yet built to prove out the architecture. It will be a game-changer for the virtual reality experience if it pans out.