Andrew Bosworth, Meta CTO, described what a Meta headset will look like in 2031. He outlined the field of vision, resolution, refresh rate and weight. Quest 3 has a thinner design with pancake lenses and 2K resolution per eye, 120Hz refresh rates, mixed reality color passthrough, and ringless controls. Bosworth answered a series of questions in a long interview with Matthew Ball. The author of
The Metaverse – And How it Will Revolutionize Everything
, including what specifications Meta might offer in seven years. Here’s how he responded:
“So when I’m looking seven years into the future, which is probably about as far as I can credibly glimpse anyways, we’re thinking on pixels per degree you really want to get up to at least 45, where text gets really good. You won’t be able tell the difference between 60 and half-retina resolution for a variety of reasons that I will not go into. You want pixels per degree to be in the range of 50s or 60s. After 40, it starts to look pretty decent. We’ve all seen it with Varjo and Apple Vision Pro. You can see the price you pay for that resolution and how much you give up in terms of brightness, field of vision, etc. Those are real tradeoffs.You want to get there with a decent field of view. If you go much smaller than the Quest 3’s current size, immersion is really affected. If you go smaller than the Quest 2, you will notice. Your eyes have cells that can detect changes in vertical motion. You want a wide field of view so that you don’t have to constantly look at the edges. For immersion, I think a taller field view is more important than a wider one. Certainly wider field of view is more important for us as a species in terms of information density, because our eyes do see more horizontal, but vertical is a good way of convincing you that you’re immersed in a space, in a way that’s kind of deceptive.The compute to run all this stuff thermally, in my opinion, has to be standalone, no wires. The compute to run all this stuff thermally, in my opinion, has to be standalone. No wires. You can imagine industrial applications. You can certainly imagine industrial applications.
The joke, by the way of the PC-standalone divide, is that we’ve actually now built the best, most popular PC headsets – and it’s the same one. Air Link or a cable is all you need. It would be nice to see weights pushed lower. It’s important to note that it is not only the weight in grams. The weight is not everything. The way you balance the headset on your head and how near the eyepieces can be, as well as the lever on your nose that goes out from the side of the device to control the pressure you feel on your face, your cheeks or your forehead depends on which strap you are using. You can adjust the stack a bit. This is a big change from Quest 2 and Quest 3. The distance between them is a lot closer, so you feel more comfortable. The audio is improving. The stereoscopic sound will get better and better. Open ear has some limitations. You could also do the closed-ear. We’ll give them the choice in time. What am I missing? Yeah. Yeah. Here’s another example where 120 feels good. I understand that gamers who are pushing PC games to 240 fps or higher would disagree. They love the buttery smoothness and I can respect them for that. I am sceptical that in seven years we will make this trade. For example, there are four times more pixels on the edges of the field than at its center. These pixels have a much lower value than you would expect. They are the pixels that you find least valuable. You’re paying quadratic amounts more for pixels that have a lower value, and this is why it’s difficult to justify increasing field of view within these compute budgets. I also think that frame rate is similar. I don’t say 240 PPD or 120 PPD aren’t superior, and I agree with you. But within the limited computing budgets, there is no generational improvement. You’re witnessing a great deal more intelligence. Gaze foveated render, i think has a great deal of promise in unlocking higher resolutions. Imagine a system where you can achieve a high frame rate on the screen, but have to sacrifice other features. You’ll be unable to multitask and you will boot into one unit. Yes, these things are possible, particularly for industrial applications. It depends a lot on the panels. It’s not something I think we will optimize for. John Carmack, one of our engineers, was shocked to learn that the panel could handle it. We did it, and the result has been very well received. We know that some of these tales are myths, and you have to build to a specific spec to get a particular power. But we want consumers to be able to decide how to use their power. We continue to add more flexibility into our systems. If we understand him correctly, then the headset Bosworth described would include:
An angle resolution of minimum 40 pixels per degrees (PPD) and possibly 50-60 PPD. Quest 3’s center has 25 PPD, while Oculus Go from six years back had 15 PPD. For reference, Quest 3 has a vertical field of view of 96deg, while humans can see between 135deg and 150deg vertically.
100-200 grams less weight. Meta will not focus on higher refresh rates, although they may be available as an option. Meta will not be focusing on higher refresh rates, although they may be an option. Meta’s focus, strategy and leadership may change by then. The technology that is available could also evolve. Bosworth may be wrong about some specs, but unforeseen obstacles could stop others.