Meta unveils Orion AR glasses as eventual smartphone rival

Mark Zuckerberg wears Orion augmented reality glasses during an event in Menlo Park, California. Bloomberg

Meta Platforms unveiled its first pair of augmented reality glasses, which show a combined view of the digital and physical worlds, in a key step in chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s goal of one day offering a hands-free alternative to the smartphone.

The glasses, introduced on Wednesday and called Orion, look like thick, black reading glasses, but have lenses that can display text messages, video calls and even YouTube videos on to the user’s field of vision. They are prototypes that are not for sale, but will be used internally at Meta for testing and improvements.

An accompanying wristband that detects nerve stimulation and cameras built into the frames that track eye movement allow Orion wearers to “click” or “scroll” on the display using just their hands.

The glasses represent nearly a decade of technological advancement and significant financial investment at Meta. They also offer a glimpse into Mr Zuckerberg’s vision for the future of technology, which has cost the company tens of billions of dollars over the past four years.

Meta is already selling Ray-Ban branded smart glasses equipped with cameras and speakers, but Mr Zuckerberg believes that AR glasses will become a kind of mobile, hands-free computer that could one day rival smartphones as the preferred way to communicate and interact online.

If smart glasses eventually become mainstream, Meta hopes to be a major player in that industry, which would also help the company to reduce its reliance on competitors such as Apple and Alphabet’s Google to deliver its products to consumers.

That goal is still years away despite the Orion prototype, which was unveiled at Meta’s annual Connect conference in Menlo Park, California. The company had hoped to make this version of the device available to the public, but executives said it is not yet small or stylish enough. Those same challenges have plagued similar efforts by other tech companies over the years, including Google and Microsoft.

Snap unveiled its own pair of AR glasses this month, but is only releasing them to developers.

Eventually, Meta executives believe they will be able to make the glasses so thin and powerful that general users will buy them. The goal is to bring Orion to market in the “next few years” for the price of a “high-end laptop or smartphone”, said Rahul Prasad, a senior director of product management at Meta.

“Any kind of prior attempt at AR has been a headset, goggles, helmets,” Mr Prasad said. “We want to get to glasses.”

For now, Meta will continue to build and refine the glasses internally until they are ready for public sale. Hundreds of Meta employees have been testing the Orion glasses. The company plans to expand that group considerably now that the device has been unveiled to the public.

Unlike competing products, such as Apple’s Vision Pro headset, Meta’s Orion glasses do not require a bulky head strap or battery pack to operate. Orion has seven cameras, including two for tracking eye movements, which allow users to control the display using visible hand gestures.

Orion works best, though, when paired with the accompanying wristband, which uses electromyography to detect much more subtle hand movements so users can control the glasses with minor finger movements.

Meta designed and produced more than 10 different computer chips embedded in Orion, as part of a plan to reduce energy consumption for the glasses but also to decrease the amount of heat generated so that they are not warm to the touch.

Instead of glass, Orion’s lenses are made of silicon carbide, a material popular in some electric vehicles, which is lighter than glass and also helps to bend light at extreme angles, Mr Prasad said.

The company also announced a new, cheaper version of its Quest virtual reality headset, freshening its effort to persuade consumers to spend more time using virtual and augmented reality to play games, watch videos and chat with others.

The Quest 3S headset has much of the same functionality as the existing Quest 3 device but offers less memory and is cheaper.

The headset will be available in stores starting from October 15 and will cost as little as $300, compared to the $500 Quest 3 devices.