At Meta Connect 2024 Mark Zuckerberg gave us our first look at Meta’s first fully functioning holographic AR glasses prototype codenamed Orion. And they look pretty damn cool.
As a one more thing end to his section of the presentation which also introduced us to the Meta Quest 3S, new Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses features, and Meta AI updates including voice, Zuckerberg gave us a first look at his company’s AR glasses efforts. The culmination of what he says is over a decade’s work.
Even at this prototype stage Orion looks pretty damn impressive. Acting just like you might expect these glasses can provide a virtual overlay to augment what you see in the real world; this includes highlighting certain objects, letting you video chat with another person’s life-like persona and browse the web.
And all of this comes in specs that look pretty normal and are lightweight coming in at under 100g, though Zuckerberg himself admitted the design isn’t yet finalized as they aren’t as fashionable as he wants them to be (and I’ll be the first to agree that fashion is vital for tech wearables).
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While you and I might not be able to get our hands on Orion unless we’re lucky enough to try a demo of them (Meta, hit me up please) some developers will apparently get some Orion glasses as dev kits. Zuckerberg explained this should help give them enough time to create exciting AR experiences in time for when the consumer version arrives.
When that launch will come however is anyone’s guess. Zuckerberg hasn’t offered any kind of timeframe for when a publicly available version of Orion will launch. A leaked internal road map from The Verge shared in early 2023 suggested 2027 as a launch year, and this certainly makes sense but I for one am desperately hoping they come a lot quicker than that.
