Snap unveiled its own pair of AR glasses earlier this month, but is only releasing them to developers.

Eventually, Meta executives believe they will be able to make the glasses thin and powerful enough that general consumers will buy them. The goal is to bring Orion to market in the “next few years” for the price of a “high-end laptop or smartphone,” said Rahul Prasad, a senior director of product management at Meta.

“Any kind of prior attempt at AR has been a headset, goggles, helmets,” he said. “We want to get to glasses.”

For now, Meta will continue to build and refine the glasses internally until they are ready for public sale. Hundreds of Meta employees have been testing the Orion glasses. The company plans to expand that group considerably now that they’ve been debuted publicly.

Unlike competing products, such as Apple’s Vision Pro headset, Meta’s Orion glasses don’t require a bulky head strap or battery pack to operate. Orion has seven cameras, including two for tracking eye movements, which allow users to control the display using visible hand gestures. Orion works best, though, when paired with an accompanying wristband, which uses electromyography to detect much more subtle hand movements so users can control the glasses with minor finger movements.

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Meta designed and produced more than 10 different computer chips embedded in Orion, part of a plan to reduce energy consumption for the glasses but also to decrease the amount of heat generated so that they aren’t warm to the touch. Instead of glass, Orion’s lenses are made of silicon carbide, a material popular in some electric vehicles, which is lighter than glass and also helps bend light at extreme angles, Prasad said.

New Quest VR headset

Meta also announced a new, cheaper version of its Quest virtual reality headset, freshening its effort to persuade consumers to spend more time using virtual and augmented reality to play games, watch videos and chat with others.

The Quest 3S headset has much of the same functionality as the existing Quest 3 device but offers less memory and is several hundred dollars cheaper. The headset will be available in the US beginning October 15 and will cost as little as $US300, compared to the $US500 Quest 3 devices.

Bloomberg, AP

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