Meta Ray-Ban Display
Meta (Hacker News):
The wait is over. Meta Ray-Ban Display hits shelves in the US today! Priced at $799 USD, which includes the Meta Neural Band, these breakthrough AI glasses let you interact with digital content while staying fully present in the physical world.
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Today at Connect, Mark Zuckerberg debuted the next exciting evolution of AI glasses: the all-new Meta Ray-Ban Display and Meta Neural Band.
Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses are designed to help you look up and stay present. With a quick glance at the in-lens display, you can accomplish everyday tasks—like checking messages, previewing photos, and collaborating with visual Meta AI prompts — all without needing to pull out your phone. It’s technology that keeps you tuned in to the world around you, not distracted from it.
Meta placed the display off to the side to prevent it from obstructing the view through the glasses, and the display is also not designed to be on constantly. It is meant for short interactions.
The AI glasses are meant to be used with the Meta Neural Band, a wristband that interprets signals created by muscle activity to navigate the features of the glasses. With the band, you can control the glasses with subtle hand movements, similar to how Apple Vision Pro control works.
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The AI glasses have a six hour battery life, but that can be extended to up to 30 hours with an included charging case. The Neural Band has an 18-hour battery life.
Juli Clover (Hacker News, Slashdot):
Apple has decided to stop work on a cheaper, lighter version of the $3,499 Vision Pro to instead focus its resources on smart glasses, reports Bloomberg. Apple wants to speed up development on a glasses product to better compete with Meta.
There were rumors that Apple was developing a a much lighter, more affordable “Vision Air” for launch in 2027, but Apple is now transitioning engineers from that project to its smart glasses project.
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While work on a lighter version of the Vision Pro has been paused for now, Apple still plans to refresh the current model with an M5 chip later this year.
Anyway, admitting – again, even if implicitly – that the Vision Pro strategy to date has been a mistake is a good first step here. It’s too bad because they were starting to seesome success, making the device actually start to make some sense. But the hardware reality remains what it is. And what it is, remains far away.
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With Meta now seemingly continuing to back off their VR strategy as well in favor of smart glasses, they’re sort of forcing Apple’s hand here. And Meta remains dangerous because they need this market to happen, whereas Apple does not.
Previously:
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It’s too bad Apple is pausing work on the new Apple Vision, because I really want one but can’t justify spending $3500.
I don’t see me using the glasses but who knows.
The Vision Pro is largely a flop because it lacks the precise positioning afforded by lighthouses, which is necessary in serious production environments, especially film where HTC's MARS system is used to connect and synchronise cameras, VR headsets for previs, and video wall rear projection.
It then combines that lack of pro positioning, with a processor / GPU from a three year old iPad, and expensive optics from a high-end tethered headset, which even an Nvidia 5090 would have trouble feeding.
The result is a toasterfridge product: the performance and utility of a disposable self-contained headset, and the price of a professional training / simulator headset. So expensive due to the optics that it can't be replaced every year or two as graphics enhancements come to the GPU, and so burdened by the obsolete processor and lack of professional features that no one is going to port existing VR apps to it.
The latest software update brought off-device remote rendering, but that's a kludge to cover up for what the headset should have been - a dumb tethered peripheral driven by a Mac; a proper VR headset with AR passthrough. Granted, that was always going to be difficult, because Apple Silicon is garbage at realtime high resolution, high framerate 3D, which is what headsets require, and is why a large proportion of headsets, especially in the high end are Nvidia-only.
By trying to make AR a thing before it was ready and cheap to make, they've marooned a bunch of users with an iPad you stick to your face, thinking that Apple Vision was going to be a platform, rather than a peripheral.
