Facebook’s new proof-of-concept VR headset looks like a pair of sunglasses

Facebook has unveiled a new proof-of-concept virtual reality headset, and it has a completely different design than most other virtual reality devices on the market today. Instead of a bulky contraption that covers the upper half of the face and has to be attached to the head, this proof-of-concept headset looks like a pair of large sunglasses that can be comfortably placed on the ears.

However, Facebook is billing this new device as not a pair of augmented reality glasses, as the common conceptions of AR devices say, but as a legitimate virtual reality product. They are very thin, with a screen thickness of less than 9mm, and Facebook claims they have a field of view that is “comparable to today’s consumer virtual reality products.” Here is a top-down view:

Image: Facebook

However, proof-of-concept glasses aren’t just skinny for looks – they apparently transmit images to your eyes in a way that’s different from standard virtual reality headsets on the market today. I’ll let the Facebook research team explain one of those techniques, called “holographic optics:”

Most virtual reality displays share a common viewing optics – a simple refractive lens made of a thick, curved, glass, or plastic piece. We propose to replace this bulky item with holographic optics. You may be familiar with the holographic images seen in a science museum or on your credit card, which appear to be three-dimensional with realistic depth on or off the page. Like these holographic images, our holographic optics is a recording of the interaction of laser light with objects, but in this case the object is a lens rather than a 3D scene. The result is a dramatic reduction in thickness and weight: Holographic optics bend light like a lens but look like a thin, transparent sticker.

The proof-of-concept headset also uses a technique Facebook calls “polarization-based optical folding” to help reduce the amount of space between the actual screen and the lens that focuses the image. With polarization-based optical folding, “light can be controlled to move back and forth within the lens so that this empty space can be traversed multiple times, collapsing to a fraction of the original volume.”

This Facebook GIF helps visualize how both techniques work together:

However, these glasses are only a proof of concept, making it unclear if they will ever hit the market. “While it points to the future development of lightweight, comfortable and high-performance AR / VR technology, our work today is purely investigative,” the Facebook research team writes in their blog post.

Many companies are circling around the idea of ​​glasses-shaped AR / VR headsets that combine the best of both technologies in a single device, but it generally ends up as a bulkier VR-centric headphone that uses outward-facing cameras to also perform lightweight AR. Intel and Microsoft, which use the phrase mixed reality to describe devices like HoloLens, have been investing in this idea for some time.

But now there are more companies working behind the scenes to make a truly smaller hybrid device a reality. Apple has reportedly been working on something like this for years, and Google just bought the eyewear company AR North today, an acquisition that may allow the company to relive its dream of a Google Glass display screen.

While we can’t be sure if any of the tech giants will launch AR / VR combo glasses, the proof-of-concept Facebook shows could offer an idea of ​​what that device might look like at some point in the future.

See this document by Andrew Maimone and Junren Wang on the Facebook Reality Labs team for more information on the Facebook proof of concept.