- Meta has two new VR headsets that you can try
- These are protyps that are generally not accessible to the public
- You will have to attend Siggraph 2025 to give them a whirlwind
From time to time, Meta will present some of her prototypes of VR headsets – models that are not intended for public release such as its meta quest 3 in its own right, but allow its researchers to test the attributes when they are pushed too far beyond the current limits of the commercial helmet. Like the Starburst helmet, which offered a brightness of 20,000 nits.
Tiramassu and Boba 3 – Two others of its prototypes – are more concerned with offering a “retinal resolution” and an extremely wide field of vision rather than boasting of incredible brightness, but like Starburster, Meta gives people the opportunity to demonstrate these generally exclusive helmets in the laboratory.
In other words, if you attend Siggraph 2025 in Vancouver.
I went to Siggraph before, and it is full of futuristic technologies and demos that companies like Meta and its reality laboratories have prepared.
Although generally prototypes look like Tiramasu. That is to say, a little impractical.
Tiramisu seems at least to be a helmet that you can wear normally, even if it looks like a meta quest 2 which has been comically stretched – Starburst, for example, had to be suspended from a metal frame because it was much too heavy to wear.
But Tiramasu does not look like the most practical model. The compromise is that Meta can equip the helmet with µOled screens and other technology objectives such as a high contrast and resolution – 3x and 3.6x respectively what the Meta Quest 3 offers.
Consequently, Tiramasu is the closest meta which has obtained the “visual turing test”, virtual visuals which are not distinguished from real.
Boba 3, on the other hand, looks like a helmet that you could buy tomorrow, and the way Meta talks about it, it seems that something inspired could happen at some point in the future.
This is because it seems surprisingly compact – apparently, it weighs only 660 g, a little less than a quest 3 with an elite strap at 698 g. It also has a 4K resolution by 4K and – the reason why this helmet is special – it has a 180 ° horizontal field of vision and a field of vertical vision of 120 °.
It is significantly more than 110 ° and 96 °, respectively, offered by the Meta Quest 3, and while the 3 cover around 46% of the field of vision of a person, Boba 3 captures approximately 90%.
The only problem is that Boba 3 requires a “high -end GPU and PC system”, according to the research scientist on Yang Zhao display systems. Indeed, it must fill the additional space that the largest field of vision creates, leading to higher calculation requirements.
Although Zhao noted that Boba 3 is “something we wanted to send into the world as soon as possible”, and it looks like glasses in a way – the next helmet of the design meta is supposed to take.
We will therefore have to keep our eyes open to see what Meta then launches, but while only a few lucky people will be able to try Boba 3 at Siggraph, I hope that many more of us will be able to discover the new generation VR headsets that he inspires.
