On stage at Connect yesterday, Meta introduced the Orion, an AR glasses prototype that, despite being impressively thin, won’t be leaving the Meta offices anytime soon. Still, Meta CTO and Reality Labs chief Andrew Bosworth says an AR device based on the Orion is coming this decade, and will likely reach a price point above the price of a smartphone.
In a Q&A on Instagram, Bosworth calls the Orion an “internal developer kit” that the company is using to improve the software, but also as a starting point for how to package the device into a more consumer-friendly budget.
Notably, Meta doesn't appear to be offering Orion for enterprise like Microsoft did with HoloLens, but instead is aimed directly at consumers. Bosworth says that will take “a few years, not decades.”
“They won't be cheap. They probably won't be sold at the Quest 3S price point [$300]or even a Mission 3 [$500] price point. But at least in the phone space, in the laptop space, we have a goal of making those affordable and accessible.”
That's a pretty wide price range, but considering that capable mid-range smartphones can be had for around the price of the Quest 3, it's more likely that Bosworth is looking at flagships priced around $1,000 today—I hope he's not talking about foldablesStill, the 13-inch M3 MacBook Air costs $1,500, which seems like a reasonable high-end to invest in.
When asked if there will be a consumer version of the Orion by 2030, Bosworth replied, “There won't be an Orion, because the Orion is this particular prototype, but yes.”
As seen above, the core of the headset’s processing power is housed in a pocket-sized compute unit that transmits wirelessly to the glasses—no connections required. It also includes a neural interface, thanks to a wrist-worn electromyography (EMG) band used for built-in eye tracking and hand tracking.
Additionally, Bosworth notes that the Orion does not run Horizon OS, the company's Android-based XR operating system, and that there are a few key differences between the Quest and the Orion that require AR glasses to have their own operating system.
“So we’re trying to invest as much as we can in shared technology stacks so that hand tracking, eye tracking, codec avatars, things like that can be shared between the Quest system and Orion at the same time,” Bosworth says. “We want each device to be its own best version and not be too dependent on shared technology that might limit it. And so a lot of the things you want to do in augmented reality are different. Your interaction design is different, you won’t have controllers. Ever. You’ll have this neural interface.”
He continues: “I think the interface and interaction design for AR will be so different, and the use cases will be so different, that it will have its own operating system.”
To learn more about Orion and its best-in-class field of view, you can check out yesterday's big reveal.