Meta's myriad VR prototypes prove the metaverse is a long way off

pcgamer.com:

I know it ain't fashionable, but I actually like VR. My Quest 2(opens in new tab) is hanging right next to my monitor, and I've almost finished Half-Life: Alyx(opens in new tab) just two years after launch. Yet I am far from convinced in the metaverse as a tangible concept in my lifetime. And that hasn't changed despite Zuckerberg's recent attempts(opens in new tab) to prove just how far along Meta is in its quest to create the game-changing goggles that will make virtual a reality by showing off its current prototypes.

I mean, one of the prototypes he briefly unveiled to journalists could burn off your retinas and actually requires «wildly impractical» handles to support the weight of its 20,000cd/m² lamp. That's Starburst (previously known as Opal Fruits). At the other end of the scale an alternative prototype, sporting folded, holographic lenses, needs a laser that hasn't been invented yet in order to achieve a far more lightweight approach.

That's the far-off magic of the second-gen Holocake prototype and it looks great. Even if it is just holographic, I am very much in favour of cake.

The only one that looks vaguely feasible today is the Butterscotch prototype, which is some bastardised Quest headset, still with the Oculus branding, that is able to offer 20/20 visual fidelity. It's sporting around two and a half times the per-eye resolution of the current Quest 2 screen, and the through-the-lens captured image comparing it to the Rift and Quest 2 do look damned impressive.

The issue is that it's currently only capable of delivering half the field of view of the current headset, making it pretty far off passing what Zuck's calling the «visual Turing test» needed to convince your eyeballs what they're peeping is