Mark Zuckerberg testing a prototype headset. Image: supplied
When the power of social media Facebook changed its name to Meta last October, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was trying to stay ahead of his company’s biggest problems.
Facebook’s user base was declining and Apple’s privacy changes were negatively impacting its advertising revenue.
The brand change was a way to move the company away from Facebook – and all the connotations that that name entails – and into “metavers,” a term coined by science fiction writer Noel Stephensen to describe a world. virtual reality (VR) in the beginning. 1990s.
At the heart of this change is Reality Labs, Meta’s own research and development team working on technology to literally read the mind in order to build its augmented and virtual reality hardware.
Last week, a panel of Meta’s Reality Labs reported to the media how their teams were trying to solve the “Turing visual test.”
This is the phrase used internally as an abbreviation for photorealism because Meta’s stated goal is to show totally immersive virtual environments that are indistinguishable from reality.
“Screens that match the full capacity of human vision will unlock some really important things,” Zuckerberg said.
“The first thing is the realistic feeling of presence: that’s the feeling of being with someone or in some places like you’re physically there.”
Zuckerberg presents the next generation of video calling in which mixed or virtual reality devices allow you to feel like you’re in a room with someone else, or at least with your “photorealistic avatar.”
In your future “metavers”, you and your family or colleagues will share the same virtual space while geographically isolated.
Technology company Cisco is trying to make the same vision a reality with its Hologram video calls, a piece of technology that, in its attempts to make someone else feel “closer”, now makes them feel more isolated and ethereal. than video calls. we are used to doing it every day.
For Meta, the main problem of modern virtual reality is its fidelity and it is mainly a hardware problem.
“Virtual reality introduces a lot of new problems that just don’t exist with 2D screens,” said Michael Abrash, chief scientist at Reality Labs.
“[Things like] Verbena accommodation conflict, chromatic aberration, eye parallax, student swimming, and before we get there, there is the challenge of having our screens fit into compact, lightweight headphones and work during long periods without batteries in these headphones.
The Starburst prototype is an impractical concept test device. Image: supplied
As such, the development of photorealistic VR headsets is not just a matter of shrinking existing screens to fit a headset.
An interesting problem is the approach.
Your eyes naturally focus on objects differently, depending on how close or far they are.
This is not a problem for fixed-distance 2D displays, such as the phone or laptop monitor, but in VR it means a greater need to dynamically represent all objects based on where your eyes look.
Meta’s solution is to experiment with varifocal lenses that automatically adjust as you look at virtual worlds.
Similarly, modern VR headsets aren’t particularly bright, so Meta started looking for ways to go beyond LEDs and is trying to make small, cheap lasers that will significantly increase the brightness of headphones.
Meta has a long way to go before it can fit all of its photorealistic solutions, such as lasers and varifocal lenses, into a single headset.
In fact, Meta is expected to delay its next generation of headphones and glasses for at least a couple more years.