Meta Unveils Advanced VR Prototypes: Tiramisu & Boba 3
While Meta’s current lineup of consumer virtual reality headsets, particularly the Quest series, offers compelling experiences for their price points, the company is actively pushing the boundaries of immersive technology through advanced research. At the upcoming SIGGRAPH 2025 conference, Meta plans to unveil a series of impressive prototype headsets, offering a glimpse into the potential future of mixed reality. These experimental devices aim to address key limitations of existing VR hardware, promising significant leaps in visual realism and field of view.
Among the new prototypes is a headset dubbed “Tiramisu,” which Meta touts as a “new milestone for realism in VR.” This device dramatically enhances visual fidelity compared to the Quest 3. It boasts a contrast ratio approximately three times higher, an angular resolution of 90 pixels per degree (PPD) – a remarkable 3.6 times improvement over the Quest 3 – and a peak brightness of up to 1,400 nits, which is 14 times brighter. To put this in perspective, higher PPD translates to a sharper, more detailed image, while increased brightness and contrast contribute to a more vibrant and lifelike display, enhancing the sense of presence within virtual environments. Despite these impressive advancements, the Tiramisu prototype comes with trade-offs, notably being bulkier and heavier than current consumer headsets and featuring a more limited field of view. Nevertheless, Meta suggests that Tiramisu represents their closest achievement yet to a visual experience capable of passing the “visual Turing test,” a conceptual benchmark where a virtual scene becomes indistinguishable from reality.
Complementing the Tiramisu, Meta is also showcasing two other prototypes, the “Boba 3” and “Boba 3 VR” headsets, which prioritize an expansive field of view (FOV). While the Quest 3 offers a horizontal FOV of 110 degrees and a vertical FOV of 96 degrees, the Boba 3 series significantly broadens this to 180 degrees horizontally and 120 degrees vertically. This wider perspective brings the virtual experience much closer to the natural range of human peripheral vision, which Meta estimates to be roughly 200 degrees horizontally. The Boba 3 headsets achieve this while leveraging displays already in mass production and lens technologies similar to those found in the Quest 3. Furthermore, these prototypes feature a display resolution of 4K by 4K per eye, a substantial upgrade from the 3K by 3K resolution of last year’s Boba 2 prototype and the 2K by 1K resolution of the original Boba 1. Such high resolutions, combined with an expanded FOV, are crucial for creating truly immersive and believable virtual worlds.
It is important to note that Meta explicitly states these devices are “purely research prototypes” incorporating novel technologies that may never reach a consumer product. However, their development clearly illustrates the direction Meta is pursuing for future virtual and mixed reality experiences. By pushing the boundaries of visual realism, clarity, and immersion, these prototypes lay the groundwork for a future where virtual worlds are not just seen, but truly felt, blurring the lines between digital and physical reality.