Meta Unveils Compact VR & MR Headsets with Ultra-wide Field of View

Sure thing, buckle up:

Alright, so Meta’s Reality Labs are up to some wizardry again. They’ve cooked up these VR and MR headsets that are like peering through a fish-eye lens—180 degrees of visual madness (which is wild compared to the Quest 3’s usual 100-ish degrees). This was all laid out before some fancy conference, SIGGRAPH 2025 or something—bit of a mouthful, right?

Anyway, so there’s this VR headset they’re all excited about. Uses these “high-curvature reflective polarizers.” Yeah, I don’t really get it either, but it’s supposed to keep things compact, so no walking around looking like a space cadet—maybe?

Now, they’ve also got this MR (Mixed Reality, if you’re wondering) headset. It’s got four cameras for passthrough, totaling 80MP and going at 60 FPS. That’s a lot of alphabet soup and numbers, but imagine seeing everything around you while not getting whiplash. You could actually spot someone chilling in the chair next to you or, you know, see a stray snack on your lap.

Oh, and that tracking tech, Constellation, is making a comeback from the old Oculus Rift days. Nifty for quick prototypes or something. Not sure why we’re not all using it now, but hey, maybe there’s a reason.

Side note—there are headsets out there like Pimax’s that already offer a wide view, but they’re chunky as heck. Meta’s aiming for something sleeker. Experimental, they say, with ambitions to make it consumer-friendly. Sounds like they want the best of both worlds.

They’re claiming it’s a brand new thing in immersive experiences. Maybe it’s the holy grail of VR headsets? But don’t get too excited about this showing up in your local tech store just yet. Remember the varifocal tech from years back? Yeah, still waiting.

Anyway, the Meta folks seem to love pushing boundaries, but their CTO, Bosworth—cool name, by the way—reckons wider view stuff can get heavy, pricy, and drain batteries faster than my phone on a bad day. So, will they pivot? Who knows. But hey, never say never in tech, right?

That’s the scoop… or at least what I think it is.