Meta Orion: The First True AR Glasses with Lots of Cool Features

On stage at Connect 2024, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg officially announced Orion, the company's first true AR glasses, previously codenamed Project Nazare. Meta believes these are the most advanced AR glasses ever made, packed with a host of groundbreaking technologies that Meta's Reality Labs has been working on for the past decade.

The Orion glasses incorporate the most advanced AR display ever assembled, offering a field of view of approximately 70 degrees, the largest of any small AR glasses on the market today. The lenses are made from silicon carbide instead of glass, making them extremely light. Meta has also successfully integrated the first ultra-small and extremely energy-efficient uLED projector technology into a compact AR model.

Meta has embedded a total of seven cameras and tiny sensors into the Orion’s frame, which is made from magnesium for durability while remaining lightweight. In addition to voice and eye input, Meta has developed a completely new control method with hand tracking and an EMG wristband. This allows you to swipe, click, and scroll content while keeping your arms comfortably at your sides.

Rather than using off-the-shelf processors, Meta developed a custom silicon chip specifically for the Orion that is extremely power-efficient and optimized for AI and graphics algorithms. Hand and eye tracking, along with simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), typically require hundreds of milliwatts of power and generate a lot of heat. Meta has reduced the power consumption to just tens of milliwatts, significantly reducing heat output.

To make the Orion truly wireless and compact, Meta built a dual-processor “mini-computer” that provides the computing power needed for low-latency graphics rendering, AI, and some additional perception algorithms. For a smoother experience, the glasses will run all the specialized AR hand-tracking, eye-tracking, SLAM, and world-locking graphics algorithms, while the computer runs the application logic.

So basically, Meta Orion is a tech-forward, compact fashion pair of glasses with a computer system, connectivity, camera and display.

Orion is still a prototype, not a commercial product. Starting today, Meta will share prototypes of Orion with internal employees and a few independent experts for in-depth testing. Before launching a commercial version, Meta will need to improve the AR display quality for sharper images, optimize the form factor to make the glasses even smaller, and figure out how to mass produce them at an affordable cost.