Meta reveals AR glasses to rival Apple’s Vision Pro

• Meta has revealed Orion, a brand new AI-powered smart glasses it calls the “most advanced in the world.”
• The glasses combine a small, and lightweight form factor with generative AI features and AR visuals.
• Meta says Orion is still a prototype, so the final version may look and offer features that are quite different.

At its developer-aimed Meta Connect 2024 event, social media giant Meta revealed the next major piece of hardware from its VR and AR department, the so-called Orion – “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen,” the company says in a blog post.

Orion is a smart glasses prototype from Meta that offers advanced AR features, while also being more accessible than AR/VR competitors from Apple like the Vision Pro headset.

The device appears as a thick pair of black glasses, with slightly tinted lenses. According to Meta, the pair has been in development for the last five years.

“Orion bridges the physical and virtual worlds, putting people at the centre so they can be more present, connected and empowered in the world,” Meta explains.

It adds that the glasses enable a smartphone experience without having to use a smartphone. “With large holographic displays, you can use the physical world as your canvas, placing 2D and 3D content and experiences anywhere you want.”

The company also says “They’re lightweight and great for both indoor and outdoor use, and they let people see each other’s face, eyes and expressions.” This may be a dig at Apple, whose much bulkier device has seen users complain of discomfort and pain after prolonged use and which contains cameras that reproduce images of users’ eyes for other people to see.

Another feature of the Orion smart glasses is, of course, integrated AI that apparently “sense and understands” the world around the user. This AI can anticipate and proactively address what a user wants to do.

For Meta, the glasses combine its own metaverse aspirations with the wider craze of generative AI in the tech industry. Orion, then, should be a foolproof device to sell, all depending on the price which the company has yet to reveal, calling Orion a “prototype.”

What makes the Meta smart glasses different this time around?

Unlike other smart glasses, including Meta’s own Ray-Ban smart glasses, the Orion represents “a product that combines the benefits of a large holographic display and personalized AI assistance in a comfortable, all-day wearable form factor.”

It has AR, it has AI and it is easy to wear and wear for a long time. Bad news for the expected price point of the device, Meta says that its development was one of the most difficult projects it ever undertook.

“Orion is a feat of miniaturization – the components are packed down to a fraction of a millimeter. Dozens of innovations were required to get the design down to a contemporary form that you’d be comfortable wearing every day,” it explains.

It claims that the glasses have the largest field of view for glasses with such a small form factor. It allows users to see multi-tasking windows and big-screen entertainment. It also allows “life-size holograms” of people.

The company gives mock-up examples of what it is offering with Orion. In on, it shows a user wearing the glasses using the in-built AI to identify ingredients and then offer a recipe for a smoothie, in real time. It also look like users will be able to then follow the recipe in real-time while they cook.

In another, it shows a users communicating with others across multiple tabs at once. For something like this, running multiple processes, the Orion would require a suitable cooling system.

Finally, Meta says that it’s still working on Orion. It still wants to make the AR display visuals sharper. It still wants to optimise the form factor, so that the final version of the glasses may be even smaller, and finally it wants to organise its supply chain and manufacturing to “make them more affordable.”

“In the next few years, you can expect to see new devices from us that build on our R&D efforts. Orion isn’t just a window into the future – it’s a look at the very real possibilities within reach today,” it says.

“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.”

This final line gives us a feeling that maybe the Orion glasses will never really be a sellable product, or rather, it was never meant to be. Instead, like the TECNO Phantom Ultimate 3, it is a very cool display prototype.

However, it is important to keep in mind that sometimes prototypes do end up eventually becoming products, though they are hardly ever cheap.

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