Meta and Stanford Unveil Ultra-Thin Holographic XR Glasses Display

Hey, so I stumbled across this thing about some new tech from people over at Meta Reality Labs and Stanford. Honestly, I wasn’t even looking for it—it just kind of popped up. They’re all about this new holographic display that’s, like, supposed to step up the whole virtual and mixed reality game. And get this—it’s the size of regular glasses. Crazy, right?

So, apparently, they published a paper about it in Nature Photonics. I’m not sure why I know this, but it just stuck. Anyway, the brainy bunch—like Professor Gordon Wetzstein and the crew—put together this super thin gadget. It’s got some fancy waveguide holography thing going on with AI algorithms. Doesn’t that sound like something out of a sci-fi movie?

But wait, you’d think they’d be transparent like other techy glasses, right? Nope. These ones aren’t see-through like HoloLens 2 or whatever. So they call it a mixed reality display instead of augmented reality. Yeah, I’m as puzzled as you are.

Now here’s the kicker—this thing is only 3 millimeters thick. I mean, that’s like the thickness of a few human hairs stacked or something (I’m guessing here). It’s all about integrating a custom waveguide and some Spatial Light Modulator jazz to muster up what they call “full-resolution holographic light field rendering.” Sounds pretty fancy to me!

So here’s this picture—I think it’s supposed to help, but honestly, I was just distracted by the colors. The tech talk continued about how this system isn’t like the flat stuff we’re used to. It’s actual holograms! Yes, the “real deal”—which means they get the light field all wrapped around, so it looks natural. Wetzstein was chatting about how holography provides nifty features you can’t get anywhere else and in a smaller package. Man, it really makes me wonder where tech is heading.

Oh! And they’re talking about the field of view and “eyebox” stuff. Basically, it lets your eyeballs roam around without going blurry or anything. I didn’t even know that was a problem, but hey, I’ve learned something new today.

Why haven’t we seen these before? Well, something about “limited space–bandwidth” or “étendue.” Yeah, I don’t really get it, but it boils down to technical stuff restricting how broad the view is and how much eye movement it handles. But it sounds like they’re onto something big.

Apparently, this isn’t their first rodeo. Last year, they introduced this waveguide thing. Now they’ve got something actually working. But we’re still waiting for the final commercial product. Fingers crossed it doesn’t take forever!

They’re shooting for a “Visual Turing Test.” No idea what that is? It’s where you can’t tell reality from displays—mind-blowing if they nail it, right? And it’s not just Meta tinkering around; there were other things about VR and MR headsets going in a different direction with reflective polarizers. New age of tech wars, perhaps?

Wow, that felt like a whirlwind. Anyway—or, uh, whatever, this was just my take on some techy magic happening out there. Keep your eyes peeled… or don’t. Up to you.