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.

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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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Scott Hayden
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.

    • 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.

  • 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 ….
      []^ (

    • 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.

  • 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.

  • Sofian

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