Introduction
The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg unveils ultra-realistic VR display prototypes. He has been spending billions of dollars a quarter on the metaverse, which has shifted fast from science fiction to reality in the eyes of prominent tech leaders like Zuckerberg. And now, Zuckerberg is revealing some of the progress the company is producing in high-end ultra-realistic VR displays for virtual reality experiences.
Mark Zuckerberg revealed a high-end prototype.
At a press event, he revealed a high-end prototype called Half Dome 3. He also unveiled off headsets dubbed Butterscotch, Starburst, Holocake 2, and Mirror Lake to lay out exactly how deadly serious Meta is about delivering the metaverse to us — no matter what the cost.
While others scoff at Zuckerberg’s try to do the impossible, given the exchanges among research vectors like high-quality, ultra-realistic VR display, costs, battery life, and weight — Zuckerberg’s information of such challenges in the name of delivering the next generation of computing technology.
Meta is showing off this technology now, maybe to prove that Zuckerberg isn’t a devil for spending so much on the metaverse. Pieces of this will be in Project Cambria, a high-end professional and consumer headset, which debuts after this year, but other parts are likely to be in the headsets that come in the future.
Meta wants to make an unknown type of VR display system.
Now’s, ultra-realistic VR display headsets deliver good 3D visual experiences, but the experience entirely differs in multiple ways from what we see in the real world, Zuckerberg said in a press briefing. To fulfill the word of the metaverse that Zuckerberg shared last fall, Meta wants to make an unknown type of VR display system — a lightweight display that’s so advanced that it can deliver visual experiences that are every bit as graphic and detailed as the physical world.
“Making 3D displays that are as visual and realistic as the physical world will bear some fundamental challenges,” Zuckerberg said. “There are effects on how we physically perceive things, how our brains and our eyes process visual signals, and how our brains interpret them to construct a model of the world. Some of the capability gets quite deep.”
Zuckerberg said this matters because displays that match the total capacity of human vision can make a realistic sense of presence or the feeling that an animated experience is immersive enough to make you sense like you’re physically there.
“You all can presumably imagine what that would be like if someone in your family who lives far hence, or someone who you’re collaborating with on a design or, indeed, an artist that you like would taste like if you’re exactly there physically together. And that’s truly the feeling of presence I’m talking about,” Zuckerberg said.
You’re going to be able to feel like you’re in it.
“We’re in the middle of a big step forward towards realism. I don’t allow
it’s going to be that long until we can produce scenes with mainly perfect dedication,” Zuckerberg said. “Only instead of just looking at a scene, you’re going to be able to feel like you’re in it, having effects that you’d not get a chance to experience.
That feeling, the humor of his experience, the type of expression, and the type of culture around that. That’s one of the reasons why realism matters too. Current VR systems can only give you a feeling that you’re in another place. It’s hard to describe with words truly. You know how deep that is. You need to experience it for yourself, and I conceive a lot of you have, but we still have a long road to get to this position of visual realism.”
He added, “You need realistic motion tracing with low latency so that when you turn your head, everything feels positionally correct. To power all those pixels, you claim to be able to make a new graphics pipeline that can get the stylish performance out of CPUs and GPUs, that are limited by what we can fit on a headset.”
Battery life will also limit the size of a device that will work on your head, as you can’t have heavy batteries or have the storms induce such significant heat that they get too hot and harsh on your face.
The device is comfortable enough comfortable for you to wear.
The device must be comfortable enough to wear on your face for a long time. However, if any of these vectors falls short, it degrades the feeling of immersion. That’s why we don’t have it in working products at the request moment. And it’s presumably why rivals like Apple, Sony, and Microsoft don’t have similar high-end display products in demand today. On top of these challenges is the tech that has to do with software, silicon, sensors, and craft to make it all flawless.
The visual Turing test
Zuckerberg and Mike Abrash, the chief scientist at Meta’s Reality Labs division, want the display to pass the “visual Turing test,” where animated ultra-realistic VR display guests will give for the real thing. That’s the holy grail of ultra-realistic VR display research, Abrash said.
It’s named after Alan Turing, the mathematician who led a team of cryptanalysts who broke the Germans’ notorious Enigma law, helping the British turn the drift of World War II. I just watched the excellent 2014 film The reproduction Game, a Netflix movie about the heroic and woeful Turing. The father of ultramodern computing, Turing, created the Turing Test in 1950 to determine how long a mortal would take to figure out they were talking to a computer before figuring it out.
“What’s important here’s the natural experience rather than technical measures. And it’s a trial that no VR technology can pass today,” Abrash said in the press briefing. “ultra-realistic VR display already created this presence of being in virtual places authentically convincing way. It’s not yet in the position where anyone would wonder whether what they’re looking at is real or virtual.”
Butterscotch
Zuckerberg held out a prototype called Butterscotch. Designed to demonstrate the experience of retinal resolution for ultra-realistic VR display, which is the gold standard for any product with a screen. Products like TVs and mobile phones have long surpassed the 60 pixels per degree
PP) standard.
“It has a high enough resolution to read the20/20 vision line on an eye map in ultra-realistic VR display. And we substantially modified a bunch of parts to this,” Zuckerberg said. “This isn’t a consumer product, but this is working. And it’s pretty, pretty amazing to check out.”
VR lags because the immersive field of view spreads available pixels out over a larger area, lowering the resolution. This limits perceived realism and the capability to present fine text, which is
Critical to passing the visual Turing test.
What is Butterscotch?
“Butterscotch is the rearmost and the most advanced of our retinal resolution prototypes. And it creates the experience of near retinal resolution for ultra-realistic VR display at 55 pixels per degree, about2.5 times the resolution of the Meta Quest 2,” Abrash said. “The Butterscotch platoon shrank the field of view to about half the Quest 2 and also developed a new mongrel lens that would completely resolve that advanced resolution.
And as you can see, and as Mark noted, that performing prototype is nowhere near transmittable. I mean, it’s not only big, but it’s also heavy. But it does a great job of showing how important a difference advanced resolution makes for the ultra-realistic VR display experience.”
Butterscotch testing showed that true literalism demands this high level of resolution.
The depth of focus problem
And we hope the display panel technology is going to keep improving. And in the coming years, we suppose there’s a good shot of getting there,” Zuckerberg said. “But the verity is that if we had a retinal resolution, ultra-realistic VR display panel right now, the rest of the staff wouldn’t be suitable to deliver realistic visuals.
And that goes for some of the other challenges that are just as important then. The major challenge we’ve to break is the depth of focus.”
That means you take a retinal resolution display that supports depth of focus to hit that 60 pixels per degree at all distances, from near to far in the direction. So this is another example of how the structure of 3D headsets is so different from 2D displays and quite a bit more challenging, Zuckerberg said.
Holocake 2
Creating the holographic lens was a new approach to reducing form factors representing a significant step forward for VR display systems. That is our first attempt at an utterly functional ultra-realistic VR display, a headset that leverages holographic optics, and we believe that further miniaturization of the headset is possible.
“It’s the thinnest and lightest ultra-realistic VR display, headset that we’ve ever erected. And it works if it can take typically run any living PC ultra-realistic VR display, title, or app. In utmost ultra-realistic VR display headsets, the lenses are thick. And they’ve to be deposited many elevations from the display so it can duly concentrate and direct light into the eye,” Zuckerberg said. “This is what gives a lot of headsets that that kind of frontal-heavy look public to introduce these two technologies to get around this.”
The pioneer solution is by transferring light through a lens. Meta sends it through a hologram of a lens. Holograms are principally just recordings of what happens when light hits a commodity. And they’re just like a hologram is essential to flatter the thing itself. Holographic optics are significant and lighter than the lenses that they model. But they affect the incoming light in the same way.
The big picture
Overall, Zuckerberg said he’s optimistic. Abrash showed one further prototype that integrates everything demanded to pass the visual Turing test in a lightweight, compact, power-effective form factor.
“We’ve designed the Mirror Lake prototype right now to take a big step in that direction,” Abrash said.
This concept has been in the works for seven years, but no utterly functional headset exists.
“The conception is promising. But now, it’s only a conception with no completely functional headset yet built to prove this architecture. However, if it does pan out, it’ll be a game-changer for the VR visual experience.
Zuckerberg said it was exciting because it’s genuinely new technology.
“We’re researching new motives for how physical systems work and how we perceive the world,” Zuckerberg said. “I allow that augmented mixed and virtual fact is these are important technologies, and we’re starting to taste them come to life. And if we can make progress on the kinds of enhancements that we’ve been talking about here, also that’s going to lead to a future where computing is built and centered more around people and how we know the world. And that’s going to be better than any of the computing platforms that we’ve presented.”
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