Hands-on with Meta Reality Labs’ Starburst prototype for HDR VR

What They Say

At Siggraph this year, Meta showed its ‘Starburst’ demonstration system that is intended to look at what you can do to achieve very good HDR in a headset, without worrying about other aspects. The firm recently showed off its prototypes, each of which is intended to address one of the challenges that the firm sees. The others are:

  • Varifocal (Half Dome 3)
  • Resolution at 55 pixels per degree (Butterscotch)
  • Size (Holocake 2)
  • Optical distortion – no prototype yet

The Starburst device weighs 2.5kg and so is suspended and is also tethered to allow power to be provided. The headset is said to reach a peak brightness of 20,000 cd/m² and 50% of the weight in the device is the aluminium heatsinks needed to keep temperatures under control. The resolutions is 2560 x 1620 and there is a dual panel structure with a monochrome panel modulating the backlight.

There’s a video ‘walkpast’ of the exploded version of the prototype here. The article describes the experience of looking at a scene with the full brightness.

What We Think

This is an example of the Maximal approach that was discussed in our Display Daily on Friday. (So what is it going to take to deliver all-day wearable AR glasses?) (BR)

Reality Labs Starburst HDR VR prototype proc