Meta unveiled its new product – an augmented reality glass “Orion”, which the company has been working on for past 10 years and is highly optimistic about.
Meta was firm on its anticipation of how the world will look like in future, by renaming itself from Facebook to Meta (short-form of ‘Metaverse’). In a journey to blend technology with day-to-day life, to assist people in the best way, companies are exploring technologies and that’s how VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), XR (extended reality) and MR (mixed-reality) were born.
Each technology tackle different pain-points and Meta has come up with solutions for two pain-points so far – one for VR (Oculus VR headsets) and one for AR (Orion). Here’s everything to know about the new Orion AR Glass.
“Orion” AR Glass by Meta
Meta’s Orion is an augmented reality glass, capable of displaying holographs onto the real world you see and lets you interact with those floating virtual elements. The glass revolutionizes how we interact with the real world by bringing in AR experiences, and tries to eliminate the need of a smartphone. It’s a ‘creative destruction’ writes The Conversation.
Orion glass is a perfect merge of functionalities of AR with AI into a normal lightweight, stylish glasses, making it ‘smart’.
It combines the spatial experiences, and holographic displays into one product by creating a new human-computer (HCI) paradigms, which the company says as one of the most difficult challenges its industry has ever faced.
Another biggest feat of Orion is miniaturization, that is, bringing down the size of components to a fraction of a millimeter to fit everything from AR to AI into normal spectacles. Anyway, the frame is thick enough like Karan Johar’s (Indian Film director).
Orion Specifications
Unlike normal glasses made with glass or plastic, Orion glasses are made using a silicon carbide where tiny projections are beamed onto the lenses. The display has a 70-degree field of view which is fairly impressive when compared to new Meta Quest 3S headset offering 960 FOV.
Orion weighs only 100 grams (or 3.5 ounces), a little more than normal spectacles weight (45-60g), but much less than Apple’s Vision Pro (600-650g).
The company did not make any comments on the glass’ software but it did mention that the glass integrates Meta AI.
So, what can Orion do actually?
Orion glass provides you a way to handle technology while you do some other work. The easiest way currently to access technology or internet is through smartphones. Orion takes a step further and enables you to do so without even taking your smartphone, by just voice commands or spatial interaction. So, here’s a glimpse of what you can actually do with Orion glasses.
Example 1: Orion makes it easy to multitask with different windows, thanks to its display with the largest field of view in an AR glass. Its display lets you to multitask, enjoy movies in a big virtual-screen onto the wall.
Example 2: Orion is capable of rendering 3D holograms into the displays, which enables you to interact with life-size holograms of people while you are doing video-calls. That’s a techie-way to chill around with your friends or family, even if they are not around you.
You can take a hands-free video call to catch up with friends and family in real time, and you can stay connected on WhatsApp and Messenger to view and send messages. No need to pull out your phone, unlock it, find the right app and let your friend know you’re running late for dinner – you can do it all through your glasses. The field-of-view of the glass never blocks the real-world view, since it’s an AR tech.
Example 3: Orion can understand the real-world objects. This helps you to do variety of things and with help of Meta AI, the glass becomes like your personal-assistant. So when you open your refrigerator and look into it, Orion can understand what are all the products inside via its camera, and will suggest you a recipe from that. That’s a result of AR and AI technology coming in handy.
This “Orion” AR Glass is a full-fletched setback to all its past trolls of wasting billions of dollars on metaverse.
Orion: Coming soon
Meta has to do little more with Orion to make it more efficient before launching. Orion is currently available to Meta employees and select external audiences to gain the feedback. Meta plans to launch Orion for the general public in 2027.
The company plans to focus on tuning the AR display quality, optimizing the components and ways to make it affordable, though it didn’t say anything about its price.
What do you think of this Orion AR glass? Will it make Apple Vision Pro obsolete?
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