At Wednesday’s Meta Connect event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Orion, what he described as “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen.”
The glasses, which are notably significantly smaller than Snap’s recently announced Spectacles 5, are true AR. Orion utilize tiny projects built into the glasses temples to create a heads-up display; think the 2024 version of Google Glass.
The glasses, which Zuckerberg said were a decade in the making, don’t appear to be too far beyond the concept phase at this point. “These glasses exist, they are awesome, and they are a glimpse of a future that I think will be exciting,” the executive noted during the presentation. He added that the team still has a good bit of “fine-tuning” before Meta is ready to turn them into an official consumer product.
Notably, along with the standard voice prompts, Orion will be controlled through a “neural interface” That arrives by way of Meta’s 2019 acquisition of CTRL-Labs, which makes a wrist band that will be compatible with the devices.
The company is positioning the upcoming glasses as a kind of successor to its current livestream product, Meta Ray-Bans. It notes,
Yet while Ray-Ban Meta opened up an entirely new category of display-less glasses super-charged by AI, the XR industry has long dreamt of true AR glasses — a product that combines the benefits of a large holographic display and personalized AI assistance in a comfortable, all-day wearable form factor. Orion rises to the challenge.
There are a lot of claims at the moment, such “as Orion has the largest field of view in the smallest AR glasses form to date,” but we’re far too early for any specifics at this point. That can, however, be seen as a dig at the new Spectacles, which are extremely large with a very narrow FOV.
“That field of view unlocks truly immersive use cases for Orion, from multitasking windows and big-screen entertainment to life-size holograms of people,” Meta notes, “all digital content that can seamlessly blend with your view of the physical world.”
One key thing Orion does have in common with the new Spectacles is that it will initially be available for developers only. This is, of course, a common move in this world. Companies treat these announcements as a kind of proof-of-concept to get folks excited to develop for the platform.
Meta Ray-Bans were a bit of a surprise hit for the company, especially in the wake of stead — if slow — growth around the Quest line. If the product hews closely to the demos, it’s hard to accuse Zuckerberg of hyperbole, when compared to the likes of Snapchat Spectacles on one end and Apple’s Vision Pro on the other.
The recent addition of Meta AI to Ray-Bans can also been seen as a stepping stone to more fully realized augmented reality glasses. Features like translation and navigation would be even more powerful with a visual element in play.
There were unsurprisingly bumps along the road getting to this stage. According to one recent report, building Orion cost in the neighborhood of $10,000 per unit. We know that Meta has gotten in the habit of losing money on Quest headsets, but nothing nearly that astronomical.
The same report also suggest that Meta will deliver a version of the glasses with a significantly smaller HUD when it ships the wrist band ahead of Orion’s eventual arrival.
“In the next few years, you can expect to see new devices from us that build on our R&D efforts,” Meta writes. “Orion isn’t just a window into the future – it’s a look at the very real possibilities within reach today. From Ray-Ban Meta glasses to Orion, we’ve seen the good that can come from letting people stay more present and empowered in the physical world, while tapping into all that the digital world has to offer.”