Zuckerberg: These Prototypes Will Help Us Create Next-Gen, Lifelike VR

pcmag.com:

Imagine wearing a VR headset that’s so good it can generate images indistinguishable from reality. It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but Mark Zuckerberg is working on a plan to make the technology real. 

Last week, Meta’s CEO gave journalists a peek of the various headset prototypes his company has been developing to bring an uncanny sense of realism to VR experiences. “I think we are the company that is the most serious and committed to basically looking at where VR and AR need to be 10 years from now,” Zuckerberg said in a video conference call.

To pull this off, Meta has been identifying (and trying to solve) all the issues preventing VR from producing a lifelike realism. The R&D effort has spawned a growing number of headset prototypes, each of which has been designed to tackle and overcome a specific barrier on the road to achieving realistic VR experiences. 

One of the prototypes is Butterscotch, a VR headset that has 2.5 times the video resolution of the Meta Quest 2 headset.

The aim of Butterscotch is to create a “retinal resolution headset,” where even the smallest details look clear rather than pixelated at 20/20 vision. The problem is that the VR headset would need an internal display higher than an 8K panel, according to Zuckerberg.

“You don't actually need all those pixels all the time because our eyes don't perceive things in high resolution across the field of view. But this is still way beyond what any display panel currently available will put out,” he said. 

However, the company found a way to boost the resolution in the Butterscotch prototype by shrinking the field of view and developing “a new hybrid lens” for the headset. The resulting device can project a 20/20 vision line eye chart