To achieve the metaverse dreamed up by Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta teams are working to create and improve the devices that will serve as its gateway. During a remote press conference on June 17, the founder of Facebook and his teams unveiled their various areas of work to improve the realism and comfort of the company’s virtual reality headsets.
Confusing virtual and reality
” Pass the Turing Visual Test is Meta’s ultimate goal. The Turing test, created by the mathematician of the same name in 1950, aims to detect a computer’s ability to impersonate a human being. Its visual version is to create a virtual image that can be confused with the real world.
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Michael Abrash, chief scientist of Meta’s Reality Labs, makes no bones about it. It’s a test that no VR technology currently passes “. According to the teams of the American giant, the existing technology is still far from achieving this.
According to Meta, there are various obstacles to overcome before adapting to the complexity of human sight: image resolution, focus, image distortion, “High Dynamic Range” (HDR) , that is, the brightness and overall contrast of a screen, all in a compact and comfortable headset. The company presented the prototypes it is working on for the VR headset of the future.
Meta’s main lines of research for the future of VR. Image: Meta
As many prototypes as difficulties to overcome
A virtual reality headset must reproduce the width of the field of vision which makes the current most powerful consumer resolutions, 8k, insufficient to reach a realistic level. About 60 pixels per degree of screen, to have a resolution at the height of the retina, is necessary. A performance however limited to where the gaze lands, peripheral vision does not require the same effort.
For the moment, the printed circuits are apparent. Image Provided by Meta
Meta presented a prototype called Butterscotch which allows to approach it, with a resolution 2.5 times higher than the Quest 2 helmet. As for the other prototypes presented by Meta, this one has defects, in particular its volume and its weight. The other axis Meta works on is focus.
Conventional screens, being at a fixed distance, do not need to adapt to the user. It is different in a virtual reality helmet where the latter will approach objects with his eyes, look at them at different distances. A problem that emerged in 2015 with the appearance of “hand” in VR.
Current technologies, with fixed or inflexible lenses, do not allow this focusing, resulting in eye fatigue which has difficulty in interpreting this inconsistency. A first prototype called Half Dome was created in this sense in 2017 and is regularly improved thanks to an autofocus system, like a camera.
The different prototypes of the Half Dome. Image courtesy of Meta
This system, “varifocal”, has the perverse effect of accentuating the problem of optical distortion, already problematic in VR. Distortion during head movements detracts from the realism of the experience. It involves finding new optical designs and height correction algorithms.
Stay Stardust. The prototype VR headset that looks the most like a prototype since it stands like binoculars. Its function is to introduce HDR technology into a virtual reality headset. Meta touts it as one of the screens ” the brightest ever built “, but recognizes that it is currently far too bulky and heavy.
Mark Zuckerberg at the presentation. Image courtesy of Meta
To remedy this difficulty, recurring among the prototypes unveiled, Meta is counting on the Holocake 2, “ the thinnest and lightest VR headset we’ve ever made “. To achieve this result, two solutions were used. One is polarization-based optical folding, which helps reduce the gap between the display and the lens. The second is to replace the classic curved lens with a thinner and flatter holographic lens. The company ensures that this prototype is fully functional.
An ideal format for future Meta VR headsets? Image courtesy of Meta.
Meta engineers have their work cut out for them
Mark Zuckerberg admitted it himself, we still have a long way to go in terms of display and graphics stack before we achieve visual realism “. The latest helmet shown to the press, the Mirror Lake, brings together all the technologies put forward in a compact, light and energy-efficient version… But only exists in concept form.
The Meta teams still have work to do before recreating the hoped-for realism, which will help ” people to make connections as Mark Zuckerberg promises. The Facebook founder, however, wanted to show that his company is making progress on its metaverse promise. He reiterated his belief that his ” augmented, mixed and virtual reality will become fundamentally important technologies, in particular to offer this feeling of presence and to improve our social interactions “.