Meta could demo its Project Phoenix headset at Connect 2026 alongside “a full-body, photorealistic hologram call experience” leveraging Codec Avatars, The Information reports.
Multiple reputable sources have reported that Meta is working on a premium, ultralight, open-periphery headset with a tethered compute puck, intended to occupy a similar high-end position to Meta Quest Pro, but in a much sleeker form factor. The project and its underlying layers have appeared under the codenames Phoenix, Stanley, and Loma.
UploadVR published an extensive report on the device last month, and I highly recommend that you read it if you wish to know more. Official visuals of the device were also found in Horizon OS firmware earlier this month.
Everything We Know (So Far) About Meta’s Next Headset
Here’s everything we know (so far) about Project Phoenix, Meta’s next headset.
First Clear Visuals Of Meta’s Next Headset Found In Quest Firmware
The first visuals of Meta’s Project Phoenix headset have been found in Horizon OS firmware, revealing a slim design with a tether for the compute puck.
Now, The Information’s Jyoti Mann reports that Meta could showcase Phoenix during the Connect 2026 keynote alongside a full-body hologram call experience using Codec Avatars.
The report describes Phoenix as a “productivity and entertainment tool” consisting of glasses and a puck, and says Meta wants to market it for virtual screens and watching films.
It also appears to incorrectly describe Phoenix as “augmented reality glasses”, as UploadVR’s own reporting, previous reporting from The Information, and other reputable sources indicate that, on a technical level, Phoenix is a glasses-like Passthrough VR (Mixed Reality) headset, operating on the same basic principle as Meta Quest 3 and 3S. The company may choose to market it differently, though. Some firmware strings even refer to the device as “VR Glasses”, although that terminology is non-final.
The report also claims that earlier this month Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and CTO Andrew Bosworth reviewed the company’s work on hologram-like video calls. It says Meta has since decided to showcase “a full-body, photorealistic hologram call experience during a live Phoenix demo in the keynote speech at Connect next week, with Bosworth appearing as the hologram”, assuming Meta’s plans do not change. The experience would be powered by Codec Avatars.
Codec Avatars as shown during Meta Connect 2022.
Codec Avatars are Meta’s long-running research project aimed at achieving photorealistic spatial telepresence via Face Tracking sensors on VR/MR headsets and eventually glasses, broadly similar to Personas on visionOS and Likeness on Android XR.
Meta has showcased various versions of this work over the years, with the most well-known example being Mark Zuckerberg’s VR interview with Lex Fridman, where both used Meta’s prototype photorealistic Codec Avatars.
Watch Zuckerberg Interviewed In VR With Photoreal Avatars
Watch Mark Zuckerberg being interviewed in VR with prototype photorealistic Codec Avatars:
The versions used in the interview were captured via a specialized rig and rendered on high-end computers, but Meta has since demonstrated approaches to generating Codec Avatars from relatively sparse photos as well as running them on mobile-class hardware like Quest 3.
Earlier this year, the company expanded on this, publishing a research paper titled “Large-scale Codec Avatars: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Large-scale Avatar Pretraining”, which showcased a model that can generate full-body Codec Avatars from limited input and drive them via inward-facing and SLAM sensors on a headset.
Large-scale Codec Avatars, CVPR 2026, Codec Avatars Lab, Meta.
As of August 2026, Meta’s plans for Codec Avatars seem increasingly centered on video calls and telepresence for more versatile social experiences across the company’s family of apps, and the name Hologram appears to be heavily associated with this direction.
Seemingly AI-rendered “Hologram” product tour videos found in August 2026 builds of the Meta AI mobile app, showing the avatars on Ray-Ban Display-like Smart Glasses.
Multiple packages within Horizon OS contain what appear to be sub-frameworks for a broader “Hologram Calling” system, with those frameworks also containing extensive references to Codec Avatars.
Alongside this, strings within the Meta AI mobile app for the company’s Smart Glasses and other wearables describe the usage and setup process for a “Hologram” avatar, perhaps revealing the consumer-facing name for the long-in-development project.
Meta Connect 2026 takes place next week, September 23-24, and is set to showcase the company’s “latest breakthroughs in AI technologies, AI glasses and VR”.
