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It’s been eight months since Facebook name was changed to Meta, making the company’s commitment to a new virtual universe very clear. What has happened since then? The harsh reality is that the metaverseit’s not that close as it might seem. In a presentation to media around the world, attended by ABC, Mark Zuckerberg has shown all the advances they have reached so far in Meta, developing the technology necessary to achieve high fidelity virtual and augmented reality.
Far from showing an optimistic horizon, the entire presentation showed multiple problems which are clearly a long way from being resolved. Ultimately, Meta’s goal is to create an ultra-realistic mixed reality experience, to the point of not being able to distinguish reality from the virtualpassing the visual Touring test.
“In the future there will be less need to have physical objects, why would you need a television, if your glasses will be able to give a better experience at a lower cost,” Zuckerberg explained about the company’s plan. The same would happen with any decorative element, augmented reality glasses, as conceived by Meta, could project any object on the physical environment.
Problems with the resolution
We rarely stop to think about the components of virtual reality glasses, especially the main one, the screen. “The experience of a virtual reality screen is totally different from that of a traditional one, they need more pixels, more brightness, motion tracking, and a graphics system that can move those pixels without the device getting hot, weighing, or battery runs out in minutes. We have a long-term plan to achieve this”, pointed out the technical director of Meta.
The first problem to be overcome is the distortion caused by any lens used by the glasses. Right now the Oculus Quest fixes it with AI, but it’s not a perfect system because it doesn’t fix focus, which is why a lot of people get dizzy and tired trying to focus on a screen that’s inches from their eye.
It is also a resolution problem, they need the screen of the glasses to exceed 8K or 60 pixels per degree of movement, six times the current one. The maximum they have come to is 50 pixels per degree, with a prototype called ‘Butterscotch’.
Lenses that function as eyes
With good resolution, the focus problem would still not be solved, since solid lenses are fixed and do not move like our eyes do. The solution are dynamically moving lenses with eye tracking, that is, that they move depending on the direction where we look to simulate the focus and the distortion that distance creates. But they have a big problem, the human physiognomy is different in each of us, so it is difficult to achieve a system that works for everyone.
The HDR and brightness level of today’s screens are also insufficient to achieve hyperrealism that pursues goal. To get an idea of the order of magnitude, they need 10,000 nits of screen brightness, but the Oculus Quest 2 now only reaches 100 nits. The prototype they have built places two lamps in front of the screens to increase brightness. But of course, the brighter the more battery consumption, the more heat and the more weight.
“Each prototype is an advance, but you also have to sacrifice something,” Zuckerberg explained.
Another way they have tried to fix the display issue is use lasers that create holograms in front of the eye, as with the prototype Holocake 2, thinner and lighter, and capable of playing any computer game. It has many advantages, because it makes the glasses very light, but they do not know which laser to use.
It seems that for every solution the Meta team finds, a new hurdle appears in the progress towards the metaverse. If they succeed, they will undoubtedly change the world and the phone will go down in history in favor of augmented reality devices. The question is whether we are five, ten or fifty years away from it.
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