Mint explains why these glasses are a landmark evolution for AR—even though it is still some time away from being commercially mainstream.
What is Meta Orion?
The Meta Orion is a pair of AR glasses that looks nearly just like any other pair of spectacles. While the glasses are unusually thick, they may well pass off as an haute couture accessory. At the conference, Zuckerberg described Orion as Meta’s “first fully functioning prototype, and the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen.”
The Orion glasses offer a wide field of view and holographic interfaces, crucial for everyday usage. Meta also showed a partnership with Microsoft that will allow such a device to augment additional PC displays.
But its key strength is that it works just like Microsoft’s HoloLens or the Apple Vision Pro—without any attached wires, a factor that has long been considered as the holy grail of AR innovation.
“You need to be able to see through them, and people need to be able to see you through them too, to make eye contact. This is the real world, with holograms. It uses a new display architecture, with tiny projectors in the arms of the glasses, nano-scale 3D structures in the lenses… to put holograms in front of you. All of this is powered by a custom silicon, and a battery that fits in the arm,” Zuckerberg described.
Think of this as a display experience that you’ve seen in science fiction movies—only now, it’s happening for real.
Why has it been such a challenge to build these glasses?
The biggest challenge is engineering. In various media interactions following the showcase, Zuckerberg said Orion was developed through almost a decade.
The key challenge is that for such a product to work seamlessly, it needs a processor, battery, memory and storage, cameras, sensors to recognise hand, eye and face gestures, and a cooling mechanism too—in short, everything that’s in a smartphone. But all of this has to work in the body of a pair of spectacles and without any visible wires to really be intuitive.
The Meta Orion, on this note, has almost managed to fit everything into its own body. Early demos also showed it working smoothly. Mint could not independently verify this.
Why ‘almost’?
The Orion uses a spectacle casing-sized puck within 12 feet to offload some additional processing from the spectacles. The end result is visibly less intrusive than a wire dangling from it. Users will also need to wear a ‘neural’ wristband—which will recognise finger gestures and use them as inputs akin to a PC mouse.
Is this finally Sci-Fi’s reality moment?
Not right away. The Meta Orion glasses are not commercial, even though the company’s original plan was to sell them commercially.
A senior consultant who works with top technology firms in India said, requesting anonymity, “Meta couldn’t find a way to commercially scale a device such as the Orion. Look at Apple—it is struggling to convince people to pay a nearly-obscene amount of money for the Vision Pro. For Meta, which isn’t a hardware company, the costs of producing the Orion are likely far higher than even Apple’s—given the amount of advanced miniaturisation that it needed.”
As a result, Meta made only 1,000 units of the Orion and will use it as an advanced prototype to test for what Zuckerberg said will be a commercially viable and more refined device in future.
Early reviews from media reports in the US said that while the interface looks considerably polished for a prototype, rough edges remain around augmented video calls, movies and more. However, most reacted favourably to the product. In pre-market trading on Thursday, Meta’s shares rose 1.9% to $579 on the Nasdaq.
Kashyap Kompella, tech analyst and founder of AI consultancy firm RPA2AI Research, said, “Elements such as Orion are the key pieces to Zuckerberg’s eventual metaverse puzzle, which he’s gradually working towards. Going forward, AI-backed voice interfaces may not become immediately mainstream, but they’ll find a lot of niche applications and use-cases such as in engineering, physical rehabilitation and more.”
Have there been such glasses before?
From 2011 to 2015, the Google Glass project sought to achieve almost exactly what the Meta Orion has. While two enterprise versions of it lasted until last year, they were discontinued.
Other such examples, in a far more basic form, include Snapchat parent Snap’s ‘Spectacles’, as well as Meta’s own glasses built in partnership with Ray-Ban.
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