As long as we’ve had VR headsets, we’ve been waiting for a company to crack the code on making the altered reality capabilities small and light enough to fit onto a pair of glasses. Meta claims it’s the first one to get there with “Orion,” a prototype pair of thick-rimmed AR glasses that can show content in front of your eyes and can be controlled with your voice, gestures, or even your brain.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg brought them out onstage at Meta Connect 2024, calling them “the first prototype of full holographic AR.” They project onto a waveguide-type screen housed on the left-side lens. The battery is housed on the arm of the glasses, which is why they fold partway down the glasses rather than being hinged next to the lenses.
The glasses are akin to devices like those made by XReal, though these will use Meta’s in-house software and will ostensibly offer a range of capabilities from simple gaming to watching content in front of your eyes. At one point in the demo, Zuckerberg showed how you could present a “hologram” of another person in front of you like Zordon from Power Rangers suddenly appearing out of your dresser.
The glasses include a 70-degree FOV on a micro-LED display and speakers housed in a magnesium alloy frame. Orion includes a variety of sensors for eye and hand tracking, but the device also needs to be combined with an electromyography (EMG) wristband. This separate device includes several EMG sensors and an onboard processor for interpreting them. The wristband has a haptic engine for feedback during use.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg already spilled the beans that we’d see the company’s first true AR glasses. At its event, Meta showcased only a taste of what it’s working on, but Orion shares only a few similarities with the company’s existing Meta Ray-Bans. For one, they don’t bear the expensive Ray-Bans logo and have a more typical glasses look than the stylish sunglasses of Meta’s wearable.
This is a developing story. We will update the piece as more information becomes available.
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