For years, the biggest drawback of VR and mixed reality headsets has been their size. While augmented reality glasses are getting sleeker and almost indistinguishable from everyday eyewear, devices like the Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro still feel bulky on the face. The main culprit isn’t the electronics—it’s the lenses.

The Quest 3 slimmed down slightly compared to the Quest 2 by switching from Fresnel to pancake optics. But that’s still a long way from glasses. Now, researchers at Meta and Stanford University say they’ve developed an ultra-thin holographic system that could one day change the game.

A new kind of holographic display

Published in Nature Photonics, their design ditches the flat stereoscopic images used in today’s headsets. Instead, it relies on a custom waveguide, where tiny red, green, and blue lasers are directed by miniature mirrors (MEMS). The light then passes through a spatial light modulator (SLM) before reaching the lens. The result: a system just three millimeters thick.

Unlike today’s headsets, this creates a hologram with genuine depth, solving the issue of fixed focal distances. Artificial intelligence fine-tunes the SLM to cut down on visual artifacts. Still, it’s not perfect—the field of view is narrow, just 38 degrees diagonally (compared to the Quest 3’s 100 by 96 degrees).

How it compares and what’s next

This isn’t the first attempt at holographic optics. Back in 2022, Nvidia unveiled a 2.5 mm prototype with a field of view of only 23 degrees. The Meta-Stanford design improves on that, showing progress toward mixed reality glasses that could one day replace heavy headsets.

For now, though, the technology isn’t ready for consumer rollout. The field of view remains too limited, and scaling the system for mass production will take time. But the research makes one thing clear: the future of mixed reality is slimmer, lighter, and far closer to a pair of glasses than the boxy headsets we know today.