At Connect 2026, Meta unveiled Hologram, a photorealistic virtual avatar, and laid out its rollout: an early-access version arrives this fall on Ray-Ban Display smart glasses, powering WhatsApp video calls for users in the US. A full-body version follows in spring 2027 alongside the $1,299.99 Meta VR Glasses, before expanding to Quest 3.
The technology behind it is Codec Avatars, a Meta research project running for more than seven years. In 2019 it was still a lab prototype that required dedicated capture rigs; this marks the first time it has entered a product roadmap as a consumer-facing feature.
What the Other Side Sees Is a Generated Video
Hologram works very differently from a normal video call. According to hands-on reporting by UploadVR, the Ray-Ban Display version takes only the audio picked up by the glasses' microphone as input. A real-time generative diffusion model running on Meta's servers turns that audio into a 2D video stream, which is then sent to the other party. The speaker's lip movements, expressions, and head motion are all inferred by the model from voice alone — the camera plays no part.
I let out a slight gasp at what I was seeing. It was entirely plausible.
UploadVR editor David Heaney said he "let out a slight gasp" the first time he saw Hologram, describing the result as entirely plausible.
The VR headset version takes in more data: alongside audio, it uses the headset's inertial sensors and a downward-facing face-tracking camera on the temple, producing a masked, background-free stereoscopic video feed. The report specifically notes this is still a stereo video image, not a volumetric 3D model.
Modeling Takes Minutes — Clothes and Background Get Locked In
Creating an avatar happens inside the Meta AI app on a phone: users turn their head as prompted, smile, and answer a few open-ended questions at length, after which Meta's servers need only a few minutes to generate the model.
One detail affects everyday use — clothing and background are baked into the model at creation time. On the Ray-Ban Display version, the background is static, meaning the same outfit and the same backdrop appear in every call. Meta says future updates could add head-motion-driven dynamic backgrounds, camera-sampled live backgrounds, and text-prompt outfit changes, though no timeline has been announced.
The hands-on testing also revealed clear shortcomings. Heaney noted that fine details like the eyes can show blocky artifacts reminiscent of a low-bandwidth video call; in VR, turning too far to the side or moving close to the other person causes the avatar to rotate all at once like a billboard sprite from an old video game, breaking the illusion instantly.
Apple and Google Are Taking a Different Path
Lined up against the competition, the key difference comes down to what drives the face.
Apple's Persona on Vision Pro relies on cameras inside and outside the headset to track facial movement in real time, so the avatar's motion corresponds directly to the wearer's own. Google's Beam (formerly Project Starline) uses a multi-camera array to reconstruct a real 3D image of the person, requiring a dedicated display terminal. Both approaches aim to faithfully reproduce what the cameras actually capture.
Hologram on glasses takes the generative route instead: voice alone is enough, and the model fills in everything else. The upside is a low hardware bar — even a pair of glasses without a front-facing camera can make a "video call." The trade-off is that what the other person sees is the model's inference, not necessarily the wearer's actual reaction in that moment. Heaney also raised the question of whether friends and family will want to see a synthesized version of you on their phone screen.
On privacy, the reporting does not specify how modeling material and call audio are stored or used, and Meta's public materials leave that blank as well. Ray-Ban Display and WhatsApp are not officially available in mainland China, so for now Hologram mainly serves as a sample of how AI-driven video calling is taking shape overseas.
Sources: UploadVR hands-on testing, CocoLoop, Engadget, IT之家 (ITHome); verified Hologram's input method and server-side generation mechanism, the rollout timeline and $1,299.99 price for Ray-Ban Display and Meta VR Glasses, and the modeling process.