Meta’s new lightweight AR prototype shows a future beyond bulky VR headsets

100g "Orion" prototype offers 70-degree FOV, could hit market "in the next few years."

Thus far, Meta's heavily money-losing Reality Labs division has been primarily focused on bulky virtual reality headsets (and some odd, display-free Ray-Ban branded sunglasses). So when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg pulled out a 100 g pair of see-through, augmented-reality glasses at this year's Meta Connect keynote, it represented a bit of a new direction for the company.

The prototype Orion AR glasses Zuckerberg showed off today don't mean Meta will be ready to release a pair of consumer AR glasses anytime soon. But the demo represents a new vision for lightweight, wide-ranging, see-through smartglasses that Zuckerberg calls "a glimpse of the future" and "the dream of Reality Labs."

Not your average screen

The core challenge of building a pair of comfortable augmented-reality glasses, Zuckerberg said, is that "they have to be glasses." That means no bulky headset (a la Quest), no wires (a la Apple Vision Pro), and a weight of less than 100 grams (compared to a full 515 g for the Meta Quest 3). While there's a tiny battery and "custom silicon" in those lightweight glasses, Zuckerberg admitted that some processing is done in a "small puck" that connects wirelessly to the glasses themselves.

To achieve true augmented reality, Zuckerberg said Orion uses a screen that "is not actually a screen." Instead, the glasses use tiny projectors embedded in the arms, which shoot light into specially designed waveguides. From there, the light hits "nanoscale 3D structures etched into the lenses" to show holographic images that can be layered at various depths and sizes on top of a natural view of the real world as seen through transparent lenses.

Zuckerberg said it has been a challenge making sure those images are sharp enough to capture fine details and bright enough to be seen in all sorts of lighting conditions. "This isn't passthrough," Zuckerberg stressed during the keynote. "This is the physical world with holograms displayed on it."

Orion's microprojection technology allows for a field of view that Meta says is "the largest... in the smallest AR glasses form to date." In live demos to press, Meta said that the field of view reaches 70 degrees, compared to just 52 degrees for Microsoft's older Hololens 2 or 50 degrees for the Magic Leap One, to cite some more limited examples of consumer AR.

To control these holograms, Orion users can use voice commands or hand- and eye-tracking like that already seen on Quest VR headsets. But Zuckerberg also talked up a "neural interface" wristband—which the company has teased previously—that can read tiny wrist and finger movements even without line of sight to the glasses themselves. That will let you interact with what's on your glasses without having to awkwardly speak out loud or hold your hands in front of you like a zombie, Zuckerberg said.

So far, Meta seems to have a pretty limited vision of what can be done with this new kind of display. Zuckerberg mentioned answering a text without having to pull out your phone, playing "holographic Ping-Pong" with others in the room, or talking to "life-sized holograms of people" who appear in the same space with you (which looked pretty lumpy and odd in the on-stage demo). A Meta blog post about Orion suggested "multitasking windows" of floating translucent screens, hands-free video calls "while you wash the dishes," or glancing at a pantry full of food and letting AI craft you a recipe.

As with smartphones, it will probably take a while for developers to really figure out what to do with this new mode of computer interaction. But unlike bulky VR headsets or "passthrough" mixed-reality experiences, truly lightweight AR glasses like these seem like they could be much easier to integrate into everyday tasks without awkwardness or discomfort.

Still years away

Meta's interest in augmented reality isn't exactly new—the company announced plans for a device like this publicly in 2019. Now that we're at the public prototype phase, though, the finish line of an actual consumer AR product seems more within sight for Meta.

In a blog post discussing Orion, Meta says it is "one of the most polished product prototypes we’ve ever developed, and is truly representative of something that could ship to consumers." But The Verge notes that constructing that prototype currently runs Meta a whopping $10,000 per unit, which is far from a consumer-friendly price point.

At Connect, Zuckerberg said the team is working to scale things up on the manufacturing side to make things more affordable, as well as aiming for a sharper display and sleeker, more fashionable design. That effort could culminate in products based on this prototype "in the next few years," according to Meta's blog post. That would align with a leaked 2023 Meta hardware roadmap that projected its first AR glasses to launch in 2027.

In the meantime, Zuckerberg said Orion would be used as an internal prototype for Meta to build its AR operating system and loaned to "a handful of external partners" to start working on software. "This is where we are going," Zuckerberg said. "These glasses exist, they are awesome, and they are... a glimpse of a future that I think is going to be pretty exciting."