The new VR glasses Facebook is developing look like a pair of sunglasses
The new virtual reality glasses use a holographic display, which features 3D objects with no optical tricks. And with a lens less than 9mm thick - the thickness of your smartphone.
One of the major problems for the distribution of virtual reality technologies is the need to put on a pair of bulky glasses to use. The development of easy-to-use glasses has become a holy grail for most companies operating in the field.
Facebook, which is very active in VR through its Oculus division, has introduced a prototype development program of virtual reality glasses that look and feel like simple sunglasses we wear every day.
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The fresh glasses use a holographic view, which means you can view 3D objects with no optical tricks. Its major advantage is that it uses a lens that is much thinner than traditional VR glasses.
While the existing glasses use OLED or LCD screens to show the environment to the user, this is a fine material that is glued onto the lenses that allow the lens to be less than 9mm thick. As for the thickness of your smartphone.
Meanwhile, the glasses that Facebook has produced can only display in monochrome (black and white), but the company promises that when the development is complete, the display will radiate much better colors than the existing screens. In addition, developers say it is a technology that will allow a display resolution very close to that of the human eye and eliminate the granularity of a pixel-based display. However, the angle of view will probably continue to be parallel to the one we know today.
But the interesting part of the glasses is their design. While they may not win fashion awards, in terms of their size and structure, they are very similar to ordinary sunglasses. But this is also a problem. Because within their framework, Facebook engineers will need to compress battery, processors, communication chips and control interface. Also, what would regular glasses wearers do? If the company addresses these issues, it will probably be the first to introduce a VR product that the public can use.