Fb has demonstrated off a new evidence-of-principle virtual reality headset, and it has a totally distinctive design and style than most other VR units on the market today. As a substitute of a bulky contraption that covers up the major 50 percent of your experience and has to be strapped to your head, this proof-of-concept headset appears to be form of like a pair of substantial sun shades that can sit easily on your ears.

Still Fb is billing this new system as not a pair of augmented fact eyeglasses, as typical conceptions of AR devices go, but a legit VR product. They are quite skinny, with a exhibit thickness of much less than 9mm, and Fb statements they have a area of see that’s “comparable to today’s shopper VR products and solutions.” Here’s a major-down view:

The evidence-of-thought eyeglasses aren’t just thin for looks, even though — they also apparently beam photos to your eyes in a way that is different than regular VR headsets on the industry these days. I’ll let Facebook’s research team describe one particular of people procedures, named “holographic optics:”

Most VR shows share a frequent viewing optic: a simple refractive lens composed of a thick, curved piece or glass or plastic. We propose changing this bulky component with holographic optics. You may well be acquainted with holographic visuals witnessed at a science museum or on your credit rating card, which look to be 3-dimensional with practical depth in or out of the website page. Like these holographic visuals, our holographic optics are a recording of the interaction of laser light-weight with objects, but in this case the object is a lens somewhat than a 3D scene. The consequence is a extraordinary reduction in thickness and excess weight: The holographic optic bends gentle like a lens but appears like a slim, transparent sticker.

The evidence-of-notion headset also employs a system Fb phone calls “polarization-based optical folding” to aid lessen the quantity of area amongst the true display and the lens that focuses the picture. With polarization-primarily based optical folding, “light can be managed to move each forward and backward within the lens so that this vacant space can be traversed a number of instances, collapsing it to a portion of the authentic volume.”

This GIF from Facebook helps visualize how both equally methods get the job done together:

These eyeglasses are just a evidence-of-concept, while, so it’s unclear if they’ll at any time come to marketplace. “While it details toward the future improvement of light-weight, comfy, and higher-efficiency AR/VR know-how, at present our get the job done is purely research,” Facebook’s investigation staff writes in its weblog post.

Numerous businesses are circling about the plan of glasses-like AR/VR headsets that mix the finest of equally technologies into a single unit, but it normally ends up as a bulkier VR-centric headset that works by using outward-going through cameras to also carry out mild AR. Intel and Microsoft, each of which use the phrase mixed reality to explain devices like the HoloLens, have been investing in this idea for some time.

But much more providers are now performing powering-the-scenes to make a scaled-down, truly hybrid unit a fact. Apple has reportedly been performing on a little something like this for a long time, and Google just these days bought AR eyeglasses corporation North, an acquisition that may let the enterprise to revive its dream of a customer Google Glass-type heads-up display screen.

While we cannot be certain if any of the tech giants will launch combination AR/VR eyeglasses, the proof-of-thought Fb is showing off could provide a glimpse at what these a unit may well glimpse like at some place in the future.

Test out this whitepaper from Andrew Maimone and Junren Wang on the Facebook Actuality Labs workforce if you want to study additional about Facebook’s evidence-of-principle.