Every so often, Meta will showcase some of its prototype VR headsets – models which aren’t for public release like its fully fledged Meta Quest 3, but allow its researchers to test attributes when they’re pushed too far beyond current commercial headset limits. Like the Starburst headset, which offered a peak brightness of 20,000 nits.

Tiramisu and Boba 3 – two more of its prototypes – are more concerned with offering “retinal resolution” and an extremely wide field of view rather than just boasting incredible brightness, but like Starburster, Meta is giving folks the chance to demo these usually lab-exclusive headsets.

That is, if you happen to be attending SIGGRAPH 2025 in Vancouver.

I’ve been to SIGGRAPH previously, and it’s full of futuristic XR tech and demos that companies like Meta and its Reality Labs have been cooking up.

Though usually the prototypes look just like Tiramasu. That is to say, a little impractical.

Tiramisu does at least seem to be a headset you can wear normally, even if it does look like a Meta Quest 2 that has been comically stretched – Starburst, for example, had to be suspended from a metal frame as it was far too heavy to wear.

But Tiramasu doesn’t look like the most practical model. The trade-off is that Meta can outfit the headset with µOLED displays and other tech like custom lenses to deliver high contrast and resolution – 3x and 3.6x respectively of what the Meta Quest 3 offers.

As a result, Tiramasu is the closest Meta has got to achieving the “visual Turing test”, virtual visuals that are indistinguishable from real ones.

Boba 3, on the other hand, looks like a headset you could buy tomorrow, and the way Meta talks about it, it does feel like something inspired by it could arrive at some point in the future.

That’s because it looks surprisingly compact – apparently it weighs just 660g, a little less than a Quest 3 with Elite strap at 698g. It also has a 4k by 4k resolution, and – the reason this headset is special – it boasts a horizontal field of view of 180° and a vertical field of view of 120°.

That’s significantly more than the 110° and 96°, respectively, offered by the Meta Quest 3, and while the 3 covers about 46% of a person’s field of view, Boba 3 captures about 90%.

The only issue is Boba 3 does require a “top-of-the-line GPU and PC system”, according to Display Systems Research Optical Scientist Yang Zhao. That’s because it needs to fill in the extra space the larger field of view creates, leading to higher compute requirements.

Though Zhao did note that Boba 3 is “something that we wanted to send out into the world as soon as possible”, and it does resemble goggles in a way – the design direction Meta’s next headset is said to be taking.

So we’ll have to keep our eyes peeled to see what Meta launches next, but while only a few lucky folks will get to try Boba 3 at Siggraph, I’m hoping many more of us will get to experience the next-gen VR headsets it inspires.

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