Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth revealed last week a mysterious wide field-of-view (FOV) headset prototyped in the Redmond, Washington-based Reality Labs offices. Bosworth now reveals the research prototype had something close to a 210-degree FOV, however wide FOV displays are a critical tradeoff the company isn’t ready to make.

And if you were hoping this was the wide FOV Quest yet to come, you’ll probably be disappointed. Bosworth revealed in a recent Instagram Q&A the device is actually a mixed reality headset, however he tempered expectations by calling the prototype “very, very, very low resolution,” which notably featured “giant gaps in the display where there was no image at all.”

Bosworth intimated Meta won’t be chasing after such a wide FOV because there are simply too many conflicting tradeoffs.

“I know how much ya’ll love field-of-view and want more. I’m with you. I like it. I get it, I do. The tradeoffs are so bad. The tradeoffs on weight, form factor, compute, thermals… it’s all bad,” Bosworth said in the Q&A.

Image courtesy Andrew Bosworth

Enthusiast-grade, wide 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 much, as they rely on dedicated GPUs and typically don’t need to fit into the sort of tight compute and power envelopes as Quest. And as we know, Meta doesn’t produce PC VR-only headsets anymore either.

Bosworth boils it down to price, since producing a significantly larger FOV in a standalone beyond the typical 110-degree horizontal increases the costs of all associated components.

“Field-of-view is one of the most expensive things you can add to a headset. And by definition, and all that cost—that quadratic cost—is going to the least important pixels,” Bosworth said, referring the display’s periphery.

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Even so, Meta doesn’t seem ready to revisit higher price points just yet—at least not after retiring Quest Pro, which released only two years ago for an eye-watering $1,500 before being reduced to $1,000 less than a year after launch. In the near-term, the company is pinning its hopes on the most affordable mixed reality standalone yet, Quest 3S.

“It’s a really tough trade to embrace. We care about field-of-view, and that’s why we do this research. We look at different ways to approach it, and attack it, and make it cheaper […] and more affordable, and not make it so expensive,” Bosworth said.

Summing up the subject on wide FOV headsets, Bosworth maintains “there is a practical reason that we end up in the space that we do.”

The prototype was developed by the company’s Display Systems Research (DSR) team led by Doug Lanman, who is also known for his work on varifocal prototypes. In 2020, DSR said its then-latest varifocal prototype, which featured static varifocal displays and folded optics, was “almost ready for primetime.” The team also showed off display prototypes capable of higher display ranges, providing better contrast for more immersive visuals. None of those technologies have made it out of the lab yet.

Instead, Meta appears to be continuing its march to reach the masses with mixed reality, acting as the lower-cost foil to Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro—an emerging XR competition with battle lines that are still unclear.

– – — – –

A recent report from The Information maintains Meta may launch a Quest 4 sometime in 2026, which will give us a better idea of how Apple hopes to respond to similar reports of a cheaper follow-up to Vision Pro, reportedly coming sometime in late 2025.

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Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • MosBen

    This makes sense to me. I haven't purchased a wide FOV HMD largely because the reviews are so very mixed. Yes, it can be done, but it feels like wide FOV is just something that we'll have to wait another 10 years before it really works great.

    • In an affordable AIO, probably yes.

  • 3872Orcs

    Hopefully Valve then, I've dreamed about a very large FOV headset for ages now. I pretty much only trust Valve and Meta to make good headsets, so if not Meta it has to be Valve. I bought one of the older Pimax models and that thing was a train wreck, only thing it had going for it was the large FOV.

    • Blurry-At-the-Edges, heavy, poorly-built & lousily-serviced HMDs is precisely what the XR masses is clamoring for …. /s

    • flynnstigator

      TLDR; Valve is not going to release headsets on a schedule to compete with Meta as a manufacturer, it’s not what they do.

      The problem with Valve’s approach from an enthusiast’s point of view is they only release something to try to steer the industry in a direction that benefits their Steam revenues. The Index and HL:Alyx existed to establish a benchmark for what Valve considered good VR in 2019 in the hopes that other manufacturers would follow suite. If the VR market really took off, Steam would be established as the first-mover platform and would have so much gravity that it would always be the dominant marketplace and no latecomer would be able to dislodge Steam. This was the Half-Life 2 playbook that made Steam so dominant in flatscreen.

      Fast forward 5 years, and high-end VR’s trajectory is a lot slower than those 2016-2019 predictions. The Quest platform took off because it offered “good enough” performance that ticked all of the necessary boxes for a good experience in a standalone package for an affordable price, but it remains a casual-focused experience. Even the biggest standalone VR games don’t compare to a Skyrim or a GTA 5.

      PCVR has the hardware to push the boundaries, but it’s a small market due to a lot of factors that include foundational mistakes by the early players. Microsoft spent a lot of money and made a big push to get hardware manufacturers involved in their Mixed Reality platform, a platform which never decided whether it wanted to be a walled garden or an open ecosystem so it kludged together the worst aspects of both and IMO muddied the waters for PCVR. Oculus went with a successful walled garden on the Rift platform that was basically abandoned in favor of a standalone garden when the Quest 2 took off. The Oculus store was implemented in a much more thoughtful way than Microsoft’s MR, and it showed, but it never quite gained enough gravity to sustain itself because PCVR itself remained so small. Then there was Valve pushing an open standard, but with themselves positioned to own the platform and rake in the lion’s share of the profit. HTC balked at that idea and tried to go it alone, not realizing that a medium-sized latecomer simply can’t establish a successful software store without writing huge checks or having muscle in related industries to coerce publishers onto the platform.

      Around 2020 Valve seemed to realize that it was too early to keep spending big money on VR. High-end hardware was not coming down to mass-market prices anytime soon, there was too much confusion about which PC components could support a good VR experience, there were too many conflicts and incompatibilities and not enough adherence to open standards, and too many companies (HTC, Pico, Pimax, etc) deluded themselves into thinking they were going to establish their own successful software stores so they didn’t rally around a single open platform (a “VHS” alternative to Meta’s “Betamax” for fellow old-timers).

      Valve is not interested in being a headset manufacturer unless it establishes the dominance of Steam in a market they want to conquer, so they’re not going to release another headset unless they think it will further that goal. Maybe they’re waiting for an x86 SoC that can deliver a good standalone PCVR experience at a mass market price, or maybe they want to show that a high-end, full-fidelity wireless PCVR experience is possible with no jank or incompatibilities (Deckard). But they’re not going to release headsets on a schedule to compete with Meta as a manufacturer, it’s not what they do.

      • MosBen

        Another good example of this is the Steamdeck. Valve kickstarted several other manufacturers into building PC gaming handhelds based on the then-new generation of CPUs with integrated graphics and now that sub-industry is humming along with new devices coming on a regular release schedule. I'm sure that the Steamdeck 2 will come eventually, but Valve is clearly not in a hurry because the first one achieved what they wanted it to do.

        I'm sure that at some point Valve will release another headset, but as with everything they have so much money and have so much more money coming in from Steam that they simply don't need to release anything if it doesn't fit into their broader goals.

        • ViRGiN

          Valve didn't kickstart handheld PCs, those existed for years prior. Valve simply sold it at or below manufacturing cost, knowing very well they have 100% monopoly on PC gaming, and they don't pay any Windows license fees. Claiming that it is an "open" device is insiginificant, "nobody" buying steam deck is really putting any other store on that, BECAUSE NOBODY BUYS FROM OTHER STORES ANYWAY.

          Valve never cared about VR, never did and never will. As simple as that.

          • MosBen

            First, I didn't say that Valve created an open device, which you seem to have acknowledged because you made the same comment to flynnstigator. The idea that Valve didn't kickstart a handheld gaming PC market is asinine. Asus, MSI, Lenovo, they're all chasing the Steamdeck.

          • ViRGiN

            OpenVR and “open Steam Deck” are two different things.
            Steam Deck is open in a way that you can install a different store, Valve isn’t forcing you to use Steam. That’s cool, but they allow that exactly because they know that 99.9% of people will stick to Steam, because that where they have been shopping for the past 20 years.

            Asus, MSI, Lenovo are chasing what exactly? They are basically Nintedo Switch, just running PC games. Valve just rolled their own at the right time and the right price, but there is nothing inventive here, they didn’t invent any breakthroughs to play PC games on the go.

          • MosBen

            I don’t care about your openness argument. It has nothing to do with my point. Talk about it to the guy that made the point you’re responding to.

            Again, I didn’t say that Valve invented anything. I said that they kick-started the PC handheld segment, which they inarguably did. What was previously a tiny niche segment now has millions of people and a steady stream of new products from several vendors.

      • ViRGiN

        Then there was Valve pushing an open standard

        There was nothing open about OpenVR. It's a way to brainwash fanboys, and it worked, it was the lazy developers not supporting open standard.

        • ZarathustraDK

          Khronos Group's OpenXR wasn't ready for primetime when the HTC Vive first hit the market, and so Valve had to come up with their own implementation. SteamVR itself allows you to change the runtime away from OpenVR to some other implementation like Monado if you so wish, but a lot of games get designed with OpenVR in mind so it's not always a viable option.
          Not to mention, HMD's designed for SteamVR are a cinch to get working on fully open source stacks like Envision's Opencomposite+Monado that bypass SteamVR altogether, in contrast to WMR and Meta headsets where all sorts of secret sauce has to be decrypted and approximated because their respective companies don't give a damn about helping OSS bypass their builtin storefronts.

    • Gonzax

      The Index already has a very wide FOV, so it can be done but it's a wired headset connected to a PC. Doing that on standalone is another story altogether.

      • XRC

        Index maximum rendered fov (you cannot see more than this, but will often see slightly less depending on your fit):-

        Native mode = horizontal 108.06° x vertical 109.16°

        Parallel Projection mode = horizontal 109.26° x vertical 108.47°

        its a noticeable improvement on many headsets but not very wide fov, you would need to look at Pimax 8K, StarVR One, etc. for very wide/ultra wide.

        • Gonzax

          It’s much wider than Quest 3’s which is already quite good, unlike Quest 2’s which was too narrow

          • XRC

            Quest 3:-

            Horizontal 108.00° x vertical 98.25°

            Quest 2:-

            horizontal 104.00° x vertical 98.00°

          • Gonzax

            I have both and Index’s is much bigger, very noticeable. Numbers are just that, numbers, the experience will be different for every person, though.

          • XRC

            This may be because of the way Valve designed the Index, it aims to deliver as much of the rendered fov as possible to the widest group of through some smart choices including adjustable eye relief, lens canting and lens geometry:

            from their fov deep dive:

            "Surveying where HMD designs were when we started designing Index, we had observed that it was common for a user to get less (even much less) than the theoretical maximum FOV due to the fit of the headset and their individual facial geometry."

            Conversely you may not be getting the full fov on your Quests.

            the numbers I provided are the maximum rendered fov you could possibly get with optimum fitting, it cannot be more than this.

          • Gonzax

            Yeah, the eye relief was a fantastic idea. The Index is a great headset, very well designed. Its lenses are outdated now but other than that it’s still a terrific headset.

  • Andrey

    Yay, another 10 years with 110 degrees FOV!
    Apparently, according to Meta, we don't need:
    1. Eye tracking (not enough gains in perfomace with foveated eye tracking rendering on standalone, especially with current FOV where fixed foveated rendering works fine)
    2. Foot tracking via separate trackers (because there are no applications for it as for now and, according to Boz, people generally don't need it)
    3. OLED displays (because it is not bright enough to work with pancake lenses) or MicroOLED displays (because it's too expensive as of now)
    4. Proper finger tracking while using controllers
    5. And, of course, wide FOV, both vertical and horizontal
    And things "we need" – like varifocal lenses, retina displays, etc. – are still not ready even closely to appear in a real product.
    So, in Q3's case roughly x2 more powerful chip and pancake lenses can be treated as "new generation features" compared to Q2 (there is also ringless controllers too and totally not needed mixed reality capabilities). But they won't be able to add to Q4 what became standard with Q3. And I am very intrigued to see how they will try to sell Q4 with just x2 more performance, LCD screens, the same FOV and no eye-tracking once again in 2026.

    • What I don't get is why Meta so heavily touts Quest 3's MR capabilities,
      yet here we are a year into it
      and there's ZERO promotion of it in the Shoppe ….
      Software-wise Zuck is running a real shitshow over there ….
      []^ (

      • Yeah? How's that VisionPro doing for ya?

        • wcalderini

          Not answering for CaryMGVR, but for me the Vision Pro is working out spectacularly. I use it most days for 8-10 hours in Graphic Design. Working with one Huge A** 4kMonitor that's crisper than real life, and have Split Screen on hand for my Secondary, "keep track o sh**" monitor. (and Teams and Mail running in their own second window. The only thing I'm feeling foolish about is dropping over $500 on a 32in 4K monitor that is hardly ever used anymore. For off times I also enjoy the best movie watching experience I've ever had, with you TubePremium thrown in for good measure. (Wish it had a dedicated app though). Lots of folks like to trash the AVP, but for me it's been a life changer. Not only do I get to do what I do better, I can also just carry my work around the house with me if needed. For games, well, when I DO play games I have my toys. Quest 3 and Big Screen Beyond, that actually works quite well now with the deluxe Audio strap. (IF we can get my IPD finally figured out). But the Quest 3 does give me a really good stand in for PCVR when needed, and really does the job with the quest cartoon games.
          The AVP, for ME, is some of the best money I've ever spent and I can't wait to watch the new immersive movie short "Submerged". It's supposed to be kind of breathtaking.

          • ViRGiN

            8-10 hours of work in a headset?
            This just proves you don't know how to build a proper workstation lol. And or are hindered by Mac limitations. A single ~48" + OLED monitor will always surpass any amount of virtual displays. Always. Screen crisper than real life? AVP isn't even full 4k per eye, and it's far less for virtual screen alone. It's a cool toy, and power to you if you want to watch movies this way, but whenever i hear bs about productivity, it's laughable. You wouldn't be more productive working in IMAX either, unless it had infinite resolution.

          • wcalderini

            Dude, I’m just saying what is true for ME. It ain’t for everyone. And I have made some comfort mods, so after a bit I kind of forget I have it on. (Keep in mind I am stationary most of the day). I sure the foveated rendering helps and it sure SEEMS like 4k, but I do work on it better than on my MSI 32 inch 4k IPD Monitor.(With a secondary 32 inch Dell 2k) And I know how to build a proper workstation. Been in the biz for over 40 years. The workstation I have is pretty good. (Great for PC Gaming, but tied to MAC for work so KVM does happen). So….um…I guess I’m glad I made you laugh? Humor is a good thing. Be well. :)

          • ZarathustraDK

            If you work out of office or on-the-go having the ability to lean back and have 3-5 big screens floating in front of you sure as hell beats shrimping up with a 14" laptop screen at a library-table.

          • ViRGiN

            Assuming you are so mobile, maybe yes, a headset might be a solution to get large screen on the go. But by being mobile, you also give up on having proper workstation in the first place – and a ton of of Mac users stick to built in flat keyboard and touchpad. Imo large screen here negates the limitations of user input – I find even typing an email on a laptop keyboard a disgusting experience.
            But the guy said 8-10 hours a day, it doesn’t sound like he is very mobile.
            Besides, it’s not really about amount of screens, but resolution. For productivity you wouldn’t want to be surrounded by windows, but rather have them more or less in front of you. And a big 4k screen achieves that, paired with some window snapping tools – it just can’t be beaten, especially when you factor in not having to wear a headset, no matter how hard someone might say how they don’t feel it at all. Plus the battery life itself, it means you have to be plugged in.
            Even with a small 14″ laptop I’d rather just use a tablet as extended display.

    • NotMikeD

      Easily: with another Arkham-level exclusive tied to the Q4.

    • Cl

      Imo quest 3 is finally where I don't feel like it's has some glaring issue. Really happy with it.

      of course it can always get better. Main change I'd like to see on the next one is microled for better contrast. I'd pay double.

    • TheDude

      Quest 3 is the best value for money headset. Q3S probably as well. You can get everything you ask for if you have deep pockets, which most people don't.

    • Hussain X

      "totally not needed mixed reality capabilities"

      IMO an even higher resolution passthrough in Quest 4 would be a good upgrade too.

    • ViRGiN

      Aaaaand I'm fine with that. The hardware already went too far ahead compared to shitty VR gaming. Battlefield 3 is turning 13 years old in a few days, and I remember over a decade ago when DICE was reported to experiment with VR. Why we can't have games like this to this day? We don't even have Call of Duty 2 quality FPS. Entirety of VR is all made by indie developers. I don't need 500 FOV with toe tracking. Bring games first that makes me salivate just at the thought of having already good games expanded even more.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      One word for you: compromise.
      if we could add all your wishes for $0,10 per set Meta will do so. If it results in a MS AR headset of > 80 K then it won't. Same for stuff like weight, battery life etc.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    Yes, but … eye tracking with dynamic foveated rendering. With mobile performance still lacking, more FoV is the worst use for speed gains on new SoCs. But due to how our eyes/retinas works, we only see a clear picture when looking directly at something. We turn our head for reading, as reading with the eyes turned 15° is already taxing, and things at 45° are a blurry mush, with mostly movement/brightness changes noticed.

    We don't notice this as our brain reconstructs a mental image from lots of views. VR (ab)uses our "fake" vision with stereoscopy lacking true depth, blacked screens for low persistence, low edge resolution in FFR or snap turning to reduce nausea. Games add tricks like reduced details/"impostor" images/nothing for distant objects. IF the rendering follows the gaze fast enough, you won't notice the full resolution at the center getting drastically reduced towards the edge, down to only showing large color blobs.

    The problem: Fast enough ETFR is both difficult and compute heavy. It works decently on the fast PS5, where PSVR2 players won't notice the ETFR reductions clearly visible on a TV, while it's barely worth it on the slower Quest Pro with low performance gains and shortened battery life. The best chance for future higher mobile FoV is probably Meta training a network running on a cheap neural processor in future Quests to replace the compute heavy motion prediction. At least if this NPU isn't already occupied with improved graphics/photorealistic avatars, because then FoV again will get the lower priority for all the reasons Bosworth listed.

    • XRC

      ETFR is very impressive and useful, the Pimax runtime has a DX11 openVR injector which is working very well in compatible titles, I see a big difference in a title like Aircar or Into the Radius.

      It's fast enough (120hz) I haven't noticed any artifacts. I see a small burden on my CPU but a big reduction in my GPU load (RTX 4080).

      It's the difference between running 100% resolution at 72hz and dialling resolution down to 70% considering Crystal is 16.59 million pixels for both eyes (35ppd).

  • Sofian

    The choice is not either 110 or 210°, I would be fine with 140.

    • psuedonymous

      The diminishing returns for rectilinear rendering (everything that is not pure rasterless raytracing) are HARSH above 90°. And that ignores all the optical issues, like needing to trade off FoV for Etendue regardless of whatever weird lens formula you try and use to not waste all your display pixels on the periphery (e.g. LEEP and similar).
      This isn't a problem you can just throw "lol eye tracking" at and be done (ignoring the issues with eye-tracking for the moment). This requires advances in optics, displays, and a complete replacement of the rendering pipeline to all come together to work in a non-jank manner. VR is not an environment where brute-force solutions work well.

    • xyzs

      Exactly that.

      The example was extreme bad faith.

      Also the wider part of the FOV(on the sides) doesn't have to be as clear as the front part to do it's extended FOV job.
      When looking through glasses/sunglasses, the lens part is around 130 degree FOV only, and what give the full FOV feeling is actually some blurry out of sight light that doesn't need at all to be super sharp.

      • brandon9271

        I think even just faking ambient light with some RGB LEDs would help it not feel like tunnel vision

  • Korgen

    Il y connait rien ce gros débile profond.

  • XRC

    Should point out the Crystal doesn't have wide field of view, Pimax prioritised angular resolution, in comparison to their 8K series.

    Using wimfov I get 95 vertical and 103 horizontal on the Crystal. Testing my Index I get 109 vertical and 110 horizontal.

  • Alex Soler
  • Gonzax

    I stopped using it when Quest 3 came out because the pancake lenses are much better but I still love my Index, it is comfortable, sound is amazing, big FOV, eye relief, everything about it was really well designed. I with there was an Index 2 with new lenses, I’d buy that without hesitation.