Today at Meta Connect 2024, the Facebook company's long-anticipated Project Orion prototype was finally unveiled to the world.
It's official – this is how Meta envisions the future of personal, mobile technology, and it's looking quite exciting.
"Full holographic AR glasses", Mark Zuckerberg called them.
The official Meta Orion glasses
It's quite evident these glasses are meant to be the next evolutionary step from the bulky Quest headsets – AR glasses that you can see the real world through, with your own eyes, while having holographic images overlaid over it.
The computing power required for these would be quite a challenge to fit into a sunglasses-looking device like Orion, but it appears Meta figured it out. Whether with an external mini-PC attachment, akin to what we saw from the Xreal Beam Pro, or they're fully standalone, we're yet to concretely confirm.
For interacting with the device, Zuckerberg says they'll support hand tracking, voice commands, and... hold your breaths... a neural interface!
A wrist-based neural interface, to be exact, in order for Orion glasses users to be able to interact with them in a low-key way.
The Meta Orion glasses will come with this wristband-like device for interfacing
What can you do with the Meta Orion glasses (when you can actually own them)?
Unlike the Meta Quest headsets, it's quite apparent that the Facebook company wants their Orion AR glasses to be something you'll want to wear outside, everyday, and use primarily as your phone replacement, of sorts.
As expected from a Meta (Facebook) product, Orion is focused on delivering new ways for people to connect. Meta showcased how a live call would work through the glasses, where a realistic hologram of each person in said call (from the shoulders up) appeared, creating a pretty convincing eye-to-eye interaction.
We've seen Meta test photorealistic avatars before with the Quest, but this is pretty next-level, as you're far less detached from the real world, since you actually see it through just your own eyes, and not through cameras. And seeing the real world, and a hologram of a close one talking to you seemingly within it, is going to be quite trippy.
In addition, we can expect a lot of integrated AI features, live translation, live navigation, all the social media integration we could expect (including Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram, plus their respective notifications), and other smartphone features, but now in mixed reality.
When is the Meta Orion AR glasses release date, officially?
Currently Meta Orion is expected to release as a devkit, meaning the first iteration will be aimed at developers only. The second version, however, will be Meta's first consumer holographic AR glasses.
For now, this is what Meta has to say on a release date: "We’re giving Meta employees and select external audiences access to Orion, so our team can learn, iterate and build towards our consumer AR glasses product line."
Since this is pretty vague, we can only speculate (optimistically) that a consumer version of Orion may come out in 2025, about the same time in September.
Meta's Orion AR glasses as showcased during Connect 2024
AR glasses already exist, and we've reviewed them, so if you're interested in seeing what's out today…
It's worth pointing out that AR glasses have obviously existed for a while already. They may not be as sophisticated as what Meta envisions its own final rendition to be, but regardless, the ones we already have available are still quite fun and useful for the right person.
If you're interested in checking out some of our favorite AR glasses that are available today, consider diving into these reviews:
Rado, a tech enthusiast with a love for mobile devices, brings his passion for Android and iPadOS to PhoneArena. His tech journey began with MP3 players and has evolved to include tinkering with Android tablets and iPads, even running Linux and Windows 95 on them. Beyond tech, Rado is a published author, music producer, and PC game developer. His professional work on iPads, from producing songs to editing videos, showcases his belief in their capabilities. Rado looks forward to the future of mobile tech, particularly in augmented reality and multi-screen smartphones.
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