Meta Unveils New Orion AR Glasses with Promising Features

TapTechNews September 26th news, the tech media TheVerge yesterday (September 25th) released a blog post, reporting that Meta has launched a brand-new Orion augmented reality (AR) glasses. Its appearance is a bit like the black frame style of Superman Clark Kent, looking rather unremarkable, but it represents Mark Zuckerberg's multibillion-dollar bet on the post-smartphone era in the future.

Meta introduced that this Orion augmented reality (AR) glasses has a research and development time of 5 years and is very lightweight, very suitable for indoor and outdoor use.

Different from virtual reality (VR) headsets, AR glasses enhance the real world instead of isolating it, and the digital experience it provides is not limited by the display screen of a smartphone or headset. TapTechNews attached relevant pictures as follows, and the following图源 are all from The Verge.

Meta said: Orion has the largest field of view in the smallest AR glasses form so far. From multi-tasking windows and large-screen entertainment to life-sized holographic images - all digital content can seamlessly blend with the physical world you see.

Hardware

Orion hardware is divided into 3 parts, the glasses body, the neural wristband used to control the glasses, and a wireless computing ball similar to a large battery pack of a mobile phone.

The glasses can work without a mobile phone or laptop, but if the distance between the glasses and the computing ball exceeds 12 feet, the glasses won't work.

Orion has a field of view of 70 degrees, and the 7 cameras embedded in the frame are used to fix virtual objects in the real space, assist eye and hand tracking, and let Meta's artificial intelligence assistant know what you are looking at.

Material

Orion's screen is custom-designed by Meta, and there is a miniature LED projector in the glasses frame, which can project the graphics in front of your eyes through the waveguide on the lens.

The lens is not plastic or glass, but silicon carbide, which is durable, lightweight, has extremely high refractive index, and allows the light from the projector to provide a larger field of view.

The frame is made of magnesium, which is lighter than aluminum and is used for uniform heat dissipation.

Weight

This pair of glasses weighs 98 grams, which is much heavier than ordinary glasses, but also much lighter than mixed reality headsets such as MetaQuest or Apple VisionPro.

Application Ecosystem

Orion adopts the existing artificial intelligence generation function in Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and adds visual elements based on the content seen.

The media editor used the MetaAI in Orion to identify the ingredients placed on the table to make a smoothie recipe. A few seconds later, it correctly labeled the ingredients and generated recipe instructions in the floating window above the ingredients.

The editor also used the Messenger application version specifically built for glasses and had its first external video call with its colleague (using an iPhone).

Orion contains built-in situational artificial intelligence that can perceive and understand the world around the wearer, thereby predicting and proactively meeting the needs of the wearer.

Orion is not a consumer-centered product, but not just a research prototype. Meta will provide access to Orion to its employees and specific external audiences in order to use this data to learn, iterate and build the consumer AR glasses product line.