Meta’s Orion AR Glasses
Meta (via Hacker News, MacRumors):
Today, we unveiled Orion, previously codenamed Project Nazare, which we believe is the most advanced pair of AR glasses ever made.
Orion combines the look and feel of a regular pair of glasses with the immersive capabilities of augmented reality – and it’s the result of breakthrough inventions in virtually every field of modern computing.
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While Orion won’t make its way into the hands of consumers, make no mistake: this is not a research prototype. It’s one of the most polished product prototypes we’ve ever developed, and is truly representative of something that could ship to consumers. Rather than rushing to put it on shelves, we decided to focus on internal development first, which means we can keep building quickly and continue to push the boundaries of the technology, helping us arrive at an even better consumer product faster.
They look almost like a normal pair of glasses.
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Zuckerberg imagines that people will want to use AR glasses like Orion for two primary purposes: communicating with each other through digital information overlaid on the real world — which he calls “holograms” — and interacting with AI.
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The hardware for Orion exists in three parts: the glasses themselves; a “neural wristband” for controlling them; and a wireless compute puck that resembles a large battery pack for a phone. The glasses don’t need a phone or laptop to work, but if they’re separated from the puck by more than 12 feet or so, they become useless.
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At 98 grams, the glasses weigh significantly more than a normal pair but also far less than mixed reality headsets like the Meta Quest or Apple’s Vision Pro.
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As Meta’s executives retell it, the decision to shelve Orion mostly came down to the device’s astronomical cost to build, which is in the ballpark of $10,000 per unit. Most of that cost is due to how difficult and expensive it is to reliably manufacture the silicon carbide lenses. When it started designing Orion, Meta expected the material to become more commonly used across the industry and therefore cheaper, but that didn’t happen.
Meta has decided to hold off on shipping a consumer version until they can bring the price down. That will be a tall order, and that challenge should be kept in mind with everything that follows.
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What follows is unadulterated praise. Orion makes every other VR or AR device I have tried feel like a mistake — including the Apple Vision Pro. It is incredibly comfortable to wear, for one. What was the most striking to me, however, is that the obvious limitations — particularly low resolution — felt immaterial. The difference from the Quest or Vision Pro is that actually looking at reality is so dramatically different from even the best-in-class pass-through capabilities of the Vision Pro, that the holographic video quality doesn’t really matter. Even the highest quality presentation layer will pale in comparison to reality; this, counter-intuitively, gives a lot more freedom of movement in terms of what constitutes “good enough”. Orion’s image quality — thanks in part to its shockingly large 70 degree field of view — is good enough. It’s awesome, actually. In fact — and I don’t say this lightly — it is good enough that, for the first time ever, I felt like I could envision a world where I don’t carry a smartphone.
Meta still hasn’t posted today’s keynote address on YouTube; best I’ve found is this recording of the livestream, starting around the 43m:20s mark. I watched the most of the keynote live and found it engaging. Just 45 minutes long — partly because it was information dense, and partly because Mark Zuckerberg hosted the entire thing himself.
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In terms of actual products that will actually ship, Meta announced the $300 Quest 3S. That’s more than an entire order of magnitude lower-priced than Vision Pro. Vision Pro might be more than 10× more capable than Quest 3S, but I’m not sure it’s 10× better for just playing games and watching movies, which might be the only things people want to do with headsets at the moment. They also launched a 7,500-unit limited edition of their $430 actually-somewhat-popular Ray-Ban Wayfarer “smart” glasses made with translucent plastic, iMac-style.
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It really is true that Meta’s Ray-Ban Wayfarers are nearly indistinguishable from just plain Wayfarers. Orion isn’t like that at all. If you went out in public with these — which you can’t, because they’re internal prototypes — everyone would notice that you’re wearing some sort of tech glasses, or perhaps think you walked out of a movie theater without returning the 3D goggles. But: you could wear them in public if you wanted to, and unlike going out in public wearing a VR headset, you’d just look like a nerd, not a jackass. They’re close to something. But how close to something that would actually matter, especially price-wise, is debatable.
The end goal was always glasses – never VR headsets.
I’m incredibly excited about a near future where AR glasses look like regular glasses we can wear.
Previously:
- Glowtime Ennui
- Takeaways From the Vision Pro After 6 Months
- Can Anyone But a Tech Giant Build the Next Big Thing?
- Humane Ai Pin Reviews
- John Carmack Is Leaving Meta
- Apple’s Next Big Thing: Augmented Reality
Update (2024-09-30): Jason Snell:
It’s a real punch to Apple’s jaw, one that makes the Vision Pro look dowdy and pointless. Media coverage of Orion has been really strong. People who tried it were impressed. It’s a win for Meta.
But look closer, and you can see exactly what game Meta is playing. Meta says that Orion would cost about $10,000 today, and that the company couldn’t see itself shipping the product. Orion, as used this week by various media influencers, is a tech demo—not a product that will ever ship. Meta says that it has backed off any plans to ship it and instead expects that it will ship a product sort of like it between 2027 and 2029.
This is all part of the game, of course. For decades now, competitors have made hay over Apple’s refusal to make public demonstrations of what it’s working on behind the scenes. Apple’s silence is assumed by many to indicate the company is behind on some innovation or another. And sometimes it’s actually behind—but other times, it’s not. It’s just keeping quiet.
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In other words, Meta and Apple—both committed to the idea that AR glasses we wear in our daily lives might be a huge part of future computing tech—tried to make the product happen, and realized that the time just wasn’t right. Apple didn’t say anything. Meta showed off a product that will never ship (but might lead to something that will ship at the end of the decade) and gained some nice press coverage this week.
But according to The Verge, these Orion prototypes only get 2 hours of battery life. And they’re too thick and chunky. You look weird, if not downright ugly, wearing them. So Meta not only needs to bring the price down by a factor of at least 3× (which would put it around the $3,500 price of Vision Pro, which most critics have positioned as too expensive), they also need to make the glasses smaller — more svelte — while increasing battery life significantly.
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It’s exciting that they showed Orion publicly, but I don’t think it helped Meta in any way going forward.
I think it helps in the sense that, based on what’s been shown publicly, it seems like Meta is on the right track and Apple may be pursuing a dead end.
One thing I found interesting about Apple Vision Pro is that it broke from Apple’s approach of building the polished version of a nerdy product and bringing it to the masses (e.g. iPod, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch).
The Vision Pro is more like the Lisa.
But let’s not grade on a curve here. Vision Pro gets a battery life of 2 hours. Vision Pro is too thick and chunky. Vision Pro looks weird and ugly.
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Thing is, Apple did ship their prototype
(Half the system apps aren’t even recompiled for visionOS, not even in visionOS 2. It’s been a long time since Apple shipped something this unfinished)
Vision Pro strategy is akin to the first iPhone being $3000, 4x the size and weight, requiring wall plug (so it doesn’t leave house), all to get a Retina screen.
Other reports about Meta’s AR work had noted that a separate puck outside of headsets was likely needed. And while I at first assumed this was similar to the way the Vision Pro needs its tethered battery pack or perhaps closer, the way the Magic Leap also had a tethered “Lightpack” puck, this news is seemingly a bit better as it’s a wireless device, no less than Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth noted in response on Threads. That’s because it’s not a battery – though presumably it has its own battery – it’s a computing device that transmits to the glasses.
And that got me thinking – why the hell didn’t Apple do this with the Vision Pro? […] Perhaps the single biggest complaint about the Vision Pro is its weight.
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It’s not just that it’s strange that Apple isn’t off-loading compute to their big brick battery, it’s arguably stranger that they’re not off-loading it to the insanely great computer any Vision Pro owner likely has in their pocket. The iPhone.
Update (2024-10-01): The Talk Show:
Jason Snell returns to the show to discuss Apple’s September product announcements, and Meta’s Orion prototype AR glasses.
Fast forward about eight months and the Vision Pro is… barely talked about any more. I’ve visited a number of Apple Stores in a number of different cities over these past many months and while the tables for the iPhones and iPads and Macs are generally busy, you rarely see anyone ogling the Vision Pro. It was and remains a rather incredible piece of technology, but it’s just not that interesting as a product right now. That’s Apple’s own fault. And recent unveilings by Snap and yes, Meta, showcase why.
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This looks pretty neat. Shame it's Facebook. Hopefully one won't need to be tracked to use it. Can this be used without an internet connection?
Orion means that facebook's metaverse strategy was a mistake, AR is the road ahead not VR.
Apple Vision Pro is shipping state of the art "virtual" AR, while Orion is research state of the art true AR, both companies will try to ship first true AR, but I think Apple is ahead.
Vision Pro being an actual product will nurture the ecosystem, while Orion being a demo will only amaze investors without actual advantages for Meta.
Actual Meta products are used as VR headset and can not develop an AR ecosystem of content and apps like Vision can for Apple.
Orion, a demo of a shelved product, is a cry for investors to believe Meta will be able to change course and follow Apple's lead in AR, we'll see.
I have an early pair of AR glasses, the RayNeo X2, and even with their limited functionality, I find them useful. Even basic features (like looking up to see the time and short-term weather forecast) quickly become second nature.
They're still too big, and the battery only lasts half a day, so they can't be worn all day long, but this does feel like the kind of technology that is on the verge of becoming both practical and also incredibly useful.
"Vision Pro being an actual product will nurture the ecosystem,"
lol...I'm sorry, just trying to picture modern Apple nurturing anything.
Right... The Meta Quest 3 does AR nearly as well as the Vision Pro. I know because I've tried them both. Floaty windows and things placed on flat surfaces? Check.
So the Quest 3 can be used as a dev kit just as the Vision PRO is clearly a dev kit. The armlet thingy looks cleverer than the costly array of cameras on the Vision Pro, it's also a clear road ahead towards smaller frames, where as a dozen well spaced cameras does the oposite.
Not saying Apple can't pull this off, but their VR helmet was a half measure at best.
I think a reason for Meta to show of their prototype is that they want to lower the price of that glass they're using.
As in get Apple to buy a shit ton of it.
Which kind of implies that Apple aren't on this track at all. Kremlinology at its finest.
