Until now, Meta’s money-losing Reality Labs division has focused primarily on bulky virtual reality headsets (and some weird, screen-less Ray-Ban sunglasses). So when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg busted out a 100g pair of transparent augmented reality glasses at this year’s Meta Connect keynote, it marked a new direction for the company.
The prototype of the Orion augmented reality glasses that Zuckerberg showed off today doesn't mean Meta is ready to release a pair of AR glasses for consumers anytime soon. But the demonstration does represent a new vision for the lightweight, wide-ranging, see-through smart glasses that Zuckerberg calls “a glimpse into the future” and “the dream of Reality Labs.”
It's not an ordinary screen
According to Zuckerberg, the main challenge in creating a comfortable pair of AR glasses is that they “have to be glasses.” That means they shouldn’t have bulky headsets (as with the Quest), no wires (as with the Apple Vision Pro), and they should weigh less than 100 grams (compared to 515 grams for the Meta Quest 3). While these lightweight glasses have a tiny battery and “custom silicone,” Zuckerberg admitted that some of the processing is done on a “little puck” that wirelessly connects to the glasses.
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Orion is a little thicker than real glasses, but much smaller than VR headsets.
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A wireless “puck” helps somewhat with Orion's processing, while a wristband provides the “neural interface.”
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Goodbye screens, hello waveguides.
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You too could look just as stylish wearing an AR headset.
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Average Orion user shown at actual size.
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The “neural interface” wristband allows Orion users to interact without vocal commands or big, awkward hand gestures.
To achieve true augmented reality, Zuckerberg said Orion uses a display that “isn’t actually a display.” Instead, the glasses use tiny projectors built into the temples, which project light into specially designed waveguides. From there, the light hits “nanoscale, three-dimensional structures etched into the lenses” to display holographic images that can be overlaid in various depths and sizes on top of a natural view of the real world as seen through transparent lenses.
Zuckerberg said it's been a challenge to make sure those images are sharp enough to capture fine details and bright enough to be viewed in all kinds of lighting conditions. “This is not a pass-through technology,” Zuckerberg stressed during the presentation. “This is the physical world with holograms displayed in it.”
Orion’s microprojection technology enables a field of view that Meta says is “the largest… in the smallest AR headset form factor to date.” In live demonstrations for the press, Meta said the field of view reaches 70 degrees, compared to 52 degrees on Microsoft’s older Hololens 2 or 50 degrees on the Magic Leap One, to name a few more limited examples of consumer AR.
To control these holograms, Orion users can use voice commands or hand and eye tracking like that already seen on Quest VR headsets. But Zuckerberg also talked about a “neural interface” wristband (which the company has previously announced) that can read tiny wrist and finger movements even without line of sight to the headset. That will let you interact with what’s in your headset without having to awkwardly speak out loud or hold your hands in front of you like a zombie, Zuckerberg said.