Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth unveiled last week a stunning field-of-view (FOV) title captured in the offices of Redmond, Washington-based Reality Labs. Bosworth now reveals that the probe had something close to a 210-degree FOV, however large FOV displays are a challenge the company isn’t ready to build.
And if you’re hoping this is the next big FOV Quest, you might be disappointed. Bosworth revealed in a recent Instagram Q&A that the device is mixed reality headset, however he tempered expectations by calling the image “very, very, very much low,” which had “huge gaps in the display where there was no image at all.”
Bosworth pointed out that the Meta isn’t chasing a large FOV because there’s too much inconsistency.
“I know how you can love to watch and want more. I’m with you. I love it. I feel it, I feel it. The variety is therefore bad. The tradeoffs on weight, form factor, compute, thermals … and everything bad,” Bosworth said in a Q&A.
High FOV PC VR headsets like Pimax Crystal Light ($699), Pimax Crystal Super QLED ($1,799), and Somnium VR1 (€1,900/$2,050) don’t need to worry about those things, as they rely on it. dedicated GPUs and generally do not need to be compatible with hard envelopes and dynamic envelopes such as Demand. And as we know, Meta doesn’t just make PC VR headsets either.
Bosworth boils it down to value, as creating a vertical FOV larger than 110 degrees horizontally increases the cost of all the components involved.
“Field-view is one of the most expensive things you can add to a headset. And by definition, and all the cost – the quadratic cost – is going to the most important pixels,” Bosworth said, referring to the display aspect.
Even so, Meta doesn’t seem ready to revisit the price tag just yet — at least after retiring the Quest Pro, which launched two years ago for an eye-watering $1,500 before being dropped to $1,000 less than a year after launch. Most recently, the company is pinning its hopes on a low-cost hybrid stand-alone model, the Quest 3S.
“It’s a very difficult product to receive. We care about their perception, that’s why we do this research. We look at different ways to reach it, attack it, and make it affordable. […] it’s cheaper, and it doesn’t make it more expensive,” said Bosworth.
In summarizing the main theme of FOV, Bosworth says “there’s a good reason we end up in the places we do.”
The model was developed by the company’s Display Systems Research (DSR) team led by Doug Lanman, who is also known for his work on different models. In 2020, DSR said that its latest model, which had a flexible and flexible display, “is almost ready.” The team also showed off prototypes with a higher resolution, which provides better contrast for high-quality visuals. None of those technologies have come out of the lab yet.
Instead, the Meta seems to be continuing its march to reach the masses with mixed reality, acting as a cheap clone of Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro—a competition for the upcoming XR with battle lines that are still unknown.
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The latest report from The Information Meta maintains that the Quest 4 could launch sometime in 2026, which would give us a better idea of ​​how Apple hopes to respond to similar reports of lower prices following the Vision Pro, said to be coming at the end of 2025.
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