At Wednesday’s Meta Connect event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Orion, which he described as “the most advanced glasses the world has ever seen.” The augmented reality (AR) glasses are noticeably smaller than Snap’s recent Spectacles 5. They use tiny projectors embedded in the arms to create a heads-up display, sort of like a 2024 version of Google Glasses.
Advanced display and neural interface control
Orion’s display is a significant step forward. It was custom-designed by Meta and features LED micro-projectors inside the frame that project graphics in front of your eyes via waveguides in the lenses. These lenses are made of silicon carbide, not plastic or glass. Meta chose silicon carbide for its durability, light weight, and ultra-high refractive index, which allows the light projected by the projectors to fill more of your field of vision.
In addition to standard voice commands, Orion will be controlled by a “neural interface” via a wearable device that came from Meta’s acquisition of CTRL-Labs in 2019. The glasses also pack some impressive AI features. In a demo, Meta’s AI in Orion was able to identify ingredients laid out on a table to create a smoothie recipe. Within seconds, it correctly placed labels on the ingredients and generated instructions in a floating window above them.
Not a product yet, but a glimpse of the future
Orion isn’t a mirage, but it’s not a finished product either. It’s somewhere in between. The hardware comes in three parts: the glasses themselves, a “neural wristband” to control them, and a wireless computing box that looks like a big phone power bank.
Zuckerberg acknowledges that before Orion can be launched as a consumer product, it will still need to shrink the size, increase the brightness and resolution, and, most importantly, significantly reduce production costs. But he is confident that he will achieve this in the coming years.
With Orion, Meta gives us a tangible and impressive glimpse of his vision of the future of computing worn on the face. Now the hard part remains: turning this vision into reality on a large scale.
The race for the glasses of the future has begun
As Meta unveils a preview of its upcoming AR glasses with Orion, competition is raging in this promising field. Apple is preparing an improvement to its Vision Pro headset combining AR and VR, while Google, Snap and other players are also working on smart glasses projects.
While the approaches differ, the goal is the same: to offer a new type of device that could one day replace our smartphones. But the road is still long and strewn with pitfalls, between technological challenges, high prices and privacy issues.
Despite everything, the craze is real and progress is accelerating. The impressive demos of Orion and Vision Pro give a tangible taste of what the computing of the future could be, a fusion of the real and the virtual. All that remains is to transform these visions into affordable and desirable consumer products. The race has only just begun, but one thing is certain: the future is fast approaching, and it is on the nose.
