Meta CEO displays prototype headsets to support $10 billion research funds
Meta, previously Facebook, promises to spend at least $10 billion this year on virtual reality and augmented reality research and development. On Monday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated the company’s development by unveiling many of the incomplete headgear prototypes it has produced in its laboratories.
Zuckerberg has staked his company’s future on virtual reality, which immerses users in a computer-generated environment, and augmented reality, which superimposes computer-generated things over the actual world. Last year, the business renamed itself Meta to reflect its new emphasis on the metaverse, a virtual realm in which Zuckerberg envisions people spending growing amounts of time — ideally, through improved digital spectacles.
For the past few years, Meta has regularly demonstrated its progress on virtual reality headsets and augmented reality glasses to partners and the press in order to persuade investors that the project is worthwhile and to assist in the recruitment of highly paid developers and executives with VR and AR experience.
“It’s not going to be that long before we can create scenes in perfect fidelity,” Zuckerberg said on a call with media about the company’s virtual reality efforts. “Only instead of looking at them on a screen, you’ll feel like you’re there. The issue today is that the vividness of screens that we have now compared to what your eye sees in the physical world is off by an order of magnitude or more.”
Meta frequently displays unfinished prototypes for use in research during these roundtable sessions, which is unique in consumer electronics. Before communicating to the press about a product, gadget businesses want to finish it and work out how it will be made. For example, Apple, which is developing its own headgear, never displays prototypes.
The prototypes he showed were – Butterscotch, Half Dome 3, Holocake 2, Starburst, and Mirror Lake. “These prototypes, they’re custom and bespoke models that we built in our lab, so they’re not products that are ready to ship,” Zuckerberg said.
