Meta’s Unnerving Holograms Might Just Break Your Brain

When I saw Meta’s VR glasses, I was ready to draw the most obvious parallel: Xreal and Google’s Aura. Both are a pair of glasses with XR passthrough; both are tethered to a compute puck; both offer a similar mix of entertainment and productivity. But when I actually tried them, I realized it was missing another, more unexpected, comparison—the Vision Pro. Not only do Meta VR Glasses have the same input method as the Vision Pro (a mix of hand and eye tracking) and a similar premium display (5K micro OLED), but Meta VR Glasses are also trying to steal the thunder from one of the Vision Pro’s most iconic features—Personas, aka digital avatars that you can use for immersive, 3D video calling. And the wild part isn’t that Meta is trying to challenge Vision Pro’s Personas in a big way; it’s that, based on my experience using them, they just might pull it off. Not Personas, holograms To be clear, Meta has been working on a Vision Pro-like version of Apple’s avatars since before Apple even released the Vision Pro. Meta first showed off “Codec Avatars” back in 2019, and now, after that very long wait, that idea is finally real—real enough that I got to try it out on Meta VR Glasses. Not a real person technically, but a hologram from my demo. © Meta But before I tell you what that’s like, let me just tell you what Meta means when they say “holograms.” They mean… holograms. When you put on the Meta VR Glasses, you can view the entire projected body of someone in front of you, right in the space you’re in. That virtual avatar (with legs!) is capable of rendering real-time expressions and gestures, leveraging the VR Glasses’ sensors to approximate what your face is doing. It sounds too good to be true, and in some ways it is, but in lots of other ways, it’s pretty amazing. I got to see the projection of a Meta employee in a hands-on demo and chat with them while wearing the VR Glasses, and the experience is… a little jarring. The holograms aren’t perfect, to be clear—they’re not entirely photorealistic as Meta would suggest. They’re a bit on the low-res side, to be honest, but still high-res enough that they achieve the “immersive” feel that Meta is going for. It was convincing enough for me that the experience felt borderline strange. I knew I was talking to a projection, but it felt almost like someone was in the room with me. Not uncanny valley, but maybe a small uncanny hill is how I would describe it. There are clear limitations right now. You shouldn’t move around too much—this ruins the illusion since holograms tend to track to your position like a low-poly PS1 game. The lighting is also tough. Holograms have a bright, CGI-like quality, which makes them silhouetted in your very not-digital environment. But despite those hurdles (which I’m sure Meta is aware of), the experience does feel shippable, though there’s work to be done before that happens. Legs and all—also from my demo. © Meta For one, in order to get a full-body projection, you need to scan your entire body. From the sense I got, Meta is still figuring this out. A Meta representative told me that the process for full-body scanning takes several minutes and involves using a phone camera. Sure, you could lean your phone somewhere and twirl for the camera, but that somehow feels a little less refined. Meta says holograms will roll out on day one in the Meta VR Glasses, which are slated to come out in Spring 2027, though it’s unclear if those will be full-body right away. That’s because there is an easier road to Meta’s hologram experience, and it’s coming to a device you can actually buy right now. Holograms: the Meta Ray-Ban Display version While a full-body projection is the pie-in-the-sky version of Meta’s hologram plans, there’s another kind of hologram experience that you’ll be able to experience sooner, and it’s being positioned as a feature built for Meta’s display smart glasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Display. I got to experience this other type of hologram as well, this time making a virtual projection of myself that can be used on video calls, including in WhatsApp and Zoom. In this hologram-lite, you use a phone to scan your face while following a script that Meta gives you to capture your voice. The whole process takes about five minutes and uses AI to recreate what feels more like a Persona in Apple’s visionOS. I will say a still photo of my hologram is more convincing. © James Pero / Gizmodo As Meta sees it, you can use this hologram to video call on the Meta Ray-Ban Display hands-free, allowing whoever you’re calling to interact with the recreated digital version of you. The bizarre part here is that unlike the bigger full-body projection in Meta VR Glasses, the Meta Ray-Ban Display can’t actually take in information from your face or your environment. That means, to recreate mannerisms, Meta is using generative AI to animate your digital avatar like a virtual puppet powered by Muse. It’s strange, to say the least, and maybe a little less compelling than full-on projections, but I guess it could be useful in work calls if you don’t want to put real clothes on? Or, I don’t know, you’re taking meetings from the beach, but you don’t want anyone to know? Meta pictures you walking around, video calling people in the Meta Ray-Ban Display using this hologram, but I’m not so sure it will resonate. For one, there’s some uncanniness here as well. Looking at the hologram of myself was jarring and a little off-putting, and while you may not notice strangeness if you’re talking to someone that you’re not super familiar with, you’ll more than likely notice it with someone that you see often. In my call with a hologram of one of Meta’s representatives, I was convinced, though looking at myself was on the creepy side—my smile wasn’t quite right, and my eyes were a little too wide, like I was shocked to have been uploaded into a cloud server. This is the hologram I spoke with. © James Pero Meta says that this is a good way to catch up with family and loved ones, but do you really want your mother staring down a slightly off virtual puppet of yourself while you catch up? I know my answer. There’s also the somewhat off-putting fact that you are putting your digital likeness in the hands of Meta, which isn’t always the most responsible with people’s data, though Meta assured me that my likeness stays private to me. Meta says this hologram experience will roll out sometime this fall. Cool, but strange. But cool! And so weird… I’m conflicted over holograms. The experience (especially the full-body projection) is unlike anything I’ve had before, and I can see people being excited to try it out, even if it’s not something that will change the world as we know it. As interesting and exciting as holograms might be, they’re also just generally jarring. Interacting with avatars can be off-putting, and the uncanniness can get to you. That being said, if Meta is really super serious about holograms (and I think it is), they could improve. I assume the more that people use them, the better the scanning process will become, and the final product will level up with it. That’s all very prospective, though, and for now full-body projecting feels like bleeding edge even if it’s technically on the horizon. Hey, at the bare minimum, they have legs.