Facebook-made Virtual Reality Glasses With Casual Designs

JAKARTA - Recently, Facebook showed off a prototype of the virtual reality (VR) headset it has developed. Different from most other VR devices, this Facebook VR device looks more casual like glasses in general.

Reporting from Mashable, the VR glasses developed by Facebook Reality Labs look like sunglasses compared to VR devices. Overall the thickness of this Facebook-owned VR device is less than 9mm.

Prototype of VR Glasses made by Facebook (doc. Facebook Reality Labs)

Even though it looks thin, Facebook claims its device is able to reflect images better than current VR products. This is possible thanks to 'optical floding' which helps reduce the amount of space between the image display and the lens.

"Most VR screens share common viewing optics, simple refractive lenses consisting of thick, glass or plastic pieces. We propose to replace this large element with holographic optics," Facebook said as quoted on its blog page, Wednesday, July 1.

The result is holographic optics can display a much more focused image. Plus this design allows VR devices to have a lighter size with a thinner lens size.

Unfortunately, these VR glasses are still prototypes and still need further development. It is not yet known when Facebook will release or market this product.

"Although this has led to the development of lightweight, comfortable, and high-performance AR / VR technology, currently our work is purely research," said Facebook.

So far, Facebook has teamed up with Oculus to produce VR devices. Intel and Microsoft, are also developing new devices for the Hololens VR device.

Even Apple is secretly working on its smart glasses project. Meanwhile, Google plans to revive the Google Lens project that it had developed several years ago.