Meta today revealed a prototype of its first pair of AR glasses, codenamed Orion. The glasses are impressively compact, have a class-leading field-of-view, but also relies on a wireless compute unit that goes in your pocket.

Although Meta has been selling its Ray-Ban smartglasses for several years now, the company hasn’t actually shown any glasses-sized device with a display—until now.

Meta says it has been working on Orion for years to make something that’s truly glasses-sized, while still retaining a wide field-of-view, and the performance necessary to drive the display and processing.

The purported 70 degree field-of-view is class-leading for something in this form-factor, but still small compared to typical VR headsets. In order to achieve this wide field-of-view, the company says it had to use silicon carbide for its lenses instead of glass or polymer. From the description, it sounds like the Orion AR glasses are using a diffractive waveguide, with silicon carbide as the underlying medium. While other glasses have used diffractive waveguides, using silicon carbide as the underlying medium allows for a higher refractive index, allowing light to be directed into a wider field-of-view.

Image courtesy Meta

Achieving this properly glasses-sized device does require a bit of a ‘cheat’—much of the headset’s computing power is off-loaded into a compute unit designed to slip into your pocket. However, the company has made the compute puck wireless which eliminates a core complaint: the bothersome cable that would have to run from the glasses to the puck.

Image courtesy Meta

While the glasses are said to handle core capabilities like head-tracking, the compute puck takes on the work of rendering the content. Off-loading that rendering power to the puck means the headset can not only be smaller, but cooler too, relieving the key issue of heat dissipation on such a compact device.

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And Orion leans on yet another device to complete its experience: a wristband loaded with sensors. The EMG wristband can detect subtle movements of the user’s hand and fingers, allowing for precise input without the users needing to hold their hands up in front of them.

Image courtesy Meta

Meta is also making sure that AI is built-in from the start, allowing functionality similar to Meta Ray-Ban, but with the benefit of a display.

With a 70 degree field-of-view, immersive content isn’t the focus. Instead, the underlying OS and capabilities are leaning mostly into flat panels and spatial computing.

Meta is clear that the Orion glasses are still just a prototype, but “not a research prototype”. That means the company actually thinks it can bring a comparable device to market—using these very technologies. The company says it will be mostly using the device internally to continue to hone its size, performance, and cost.

Image courtesy Meta

“While Orion won’t make its way into the hands of consumers, make no mistake: This is not a research prototype. It’s the most polished product prototype we’ve ever developed—and it’s truly representative of something that could ship to consumers. Rather than rushing to put it on shelves, we decided to focus on internal development first, which means we can keep building quickly and continue to push the boundaries of the technology and experiences,” the company wrote in its Orion announcement.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • ViRGiN

    Looking good!

  • The most exciting announcement at Meta Connect… together with Camera Access for us developers!

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      It provides a template not only for AR glasses, but also lighter HMDs. One problem with reducing weight is that the sensors need to stay on the HMD, and due to their huge bandwidth needs, so must the signal processing.The Bigscreen avoids this by using only the most essential sensors and no cameras, allowing all data to be send to the PC over USB. Orion puts (only) the compute for sensor data processing onto the HMD, sending tracking results and preprocessed/compressed images to the compute puck, which then returns a rendered video stream.

      One can easily imagine a small, closed microOLED VR HMD like the Beyond, but including a similar set of sensors plus signal processor. Connected to either a similar compute puck worn at the belt, or with a halo strap using the compute pack as counter balance, or only the light HMD connected wirelessly to a computerY

      You'd get a single HMD with multiple possible configurations. Either as a well balanced, head worn standalone. Or like Beyond with a simple strap and a belt worn compute that could be faster/heavier than what could be comfortably worn on the head, but together still mobile. Or wirelessly connected to a fast VR PC for maximum performance. A modular design, allowing for more use cases and choice regarding weight, comfort and performance.

  • Ondrej

    Very impressive achievement, but 70 deg FOV may be still be below the minimum viable threshold for consumers.

    Wireless puck is a huge problem, because doing raw video at resolution and framerate needed in XR is only possible with high frequency connection, but that requires line of sight and is not reliable.

    Using normal wifi frequency range solves LoS and reliability problem, but it's an order of magnitude lower bandwidth than what's needed.
    So I assume they temporally compress the rendered video like in Air Link etc.
    If true then it's kinda crazy that native mode is already compressed.

    • flynnstigator

      I also question the viability of the wireless puck, but it’s also the most promising part. I would even say they buried the lead. AR glasses are cool, but a rock-solid, high-bandwidth wireless puck would be transformative. Not only can you lighten the visual hardware and increase the compute power, but it could even serve as a DisplayPort docking station. Huge improvements for both stand-alone and PCVR are possible. The only question is whether it will be possible to deliver such a thing in ~5 years, and I have my doubts about that, but would love to be surprised.

  • ApocalypseShadow

    These I like. That's tech moving forward. Not backward. AR in small form. Good job.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    I'm impressed. Orion is mostly what I expected, but in a sleeker form than I dared to hope for. If they sold them and I had a huge pile of money to spare, I'd buy one not only experimentation, but actual productivity use, where 70° FoV should be fine. My sole issue is the "less than 100g" weight, aka more than 90g. My prescripton glasses weigh 31g and I dislike the pressure on my nose enough to wear them only while driving, otherwise preferring a slightly blurry world. So three times that weight sounds uncomfortable.

    While in glasses most weight comes from the lenses, on Orion the heavy batteries most likely sit at the the end of the arms, reducing discomfort with better weight balance between nose bridge and ears. Squeezing the tech into less than 100g is quite a feat, significantly reducing it even harder, so maybe AR glasses should adopt the custom face pads from the 127g Bigscreen Beyond for comfort.

    Not as one massive block of foam like on Beyond, instead two 5mm wide ridges, one sitting on cheeks and nose, the other on the brows, hidden behind Orion's thick frame. And not closed from frame to face, but held against the face on slightly downwards stilts, making it mostly invisible to both the person wearing it and others. This could provide at least 20 times the contact surface for weight distribution compared to Orion's regular sized nose pads. No need to custom 3D print them, bendable wire encased in soft plastic with a thin foam layer should allow everyone to quickly fit it exactly onto their face.

    • Arno van Wingerde

      I join your awe, but I am for the initial versions less worried about the weight. Perhaps we cannot achieve this in strict glasses form but might have to shift to an elastic band like AVP. For this weight and distribution that might be a solution. Size & weight will come down further if your other demands are low, or you go for a bulkier size a la Beyond to get more sensors etc.
      It will be a while before this hits the market at a bearable price – but it seems closer than I had thought possible now!

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        I've never seen any market research about this, but I'd guess that the moment you switch the form factor from glasses to something vaguely HMD-like with a strap, user acceptance drops by 90%. Not among VR users, but those are a very tiny minority.

        It's indeed very doubtful that "thick glasses" is the most suitable form factor here, but it is the most unnoticeable one that won't make the wearer look like a dork with something strange and unfamiliar sitting on the face. More hassle with a strap and the strap messing up hair would be other factors, so the 90% could be 30% look, 30% inconvenience, 30% hair interference.

        The first could be solved with time and people getting used to it, the second and third by not using a full strap, but longer arms that curve inwards behind the back of the head. Sort of a partial halo strap, still providing better stability and pressure distribution, something HTC already tried with partial success on the Flow also going for a thick glasses style, looking like large glacier goggles.

  • rabs

    Would be interesting to know the battery life of the glasses.

    • Blaexe

      It's 2 to 3 hours.

      • rabs

        I also found more information since then, that's awesome they were able to go that far.

        Hope they can get even more when it will release, because I would end up wired to an external battery anyway and I'd like lighter glasses then.

  • xyzs

    I am curious to see how the display compares to the Lumus Maximus.

    Anyway, here is the product Meta truly cares about.

    I wish them success before Apple release their Apple Vision Unlimited AR glasses.

  • Scientism

    A product such as this would sell as phone replacemnt even with a wire going to the compute/battery puck. All they need is to perfect the quality of see through displays, the quality of controls (it must be controllable without doing weird gestures in front of yourself), a whole day battery life, keep it light weight, approaching the weight of glasses. If making it as light weight as glasses is impossible then they should consider Vision Pro type strap, which would work much better with 60-90 g headset, and would still sell. Keeping it 1000$ is also a must.

    Another consideration is privacy – for such an intrusive device, if it's privacy levels are worse than the current IPhone ones, this would be a no go, for me at least. It means on device AI, and I doubt Facebook, a surveillance-based company is capable of restraining itself.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      You had me until your list went to whole day battery life at the weight of glasses, because this is quickly entering far, far away fantasy land. The Apple Watch has been around for ten years, the lightest one weights 40g, as much as one heavy or two light pairs of glasses. It still doesn't offer whole day battery life, and it doesn't have to non-stop process seven camera feeds for tracking. With everyone wanting a glasses form factor for the familiar look and ease-of-use, I'd also expect any strap to seriously drive down sales for non-professional use.

      Let's first hope they manage to release it by 2030 at all for much more than USD 1000, instead of immediately going down the path of people praising the Bigscreen Beyond for its light weight and comfort, then in the next sentence adding that Bigscreen of course still has to add the missing hand and inside-out tracking, passthrough and a good audio solution, and while they're at it, could they please make it standalone or at least wirelessly connected.

      First get it to work at all, then to work good and only then try to get it cheap, as going by any other order usually messes things up.

      • Scientism

        >at the weight of glasses

        I think I was very explicit that I discuss the wired scenario.

  • WiggedMite

    I wonder if it's worthwhile adapting this tech for full VR. If the lenses become the screens and possess the ability to introduce perception of dept via holographic means you could imagine a super thin headset with the brains in front of you and passthrough via cameras. Obviously depends on resolution but it sounds interesting.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      In theory yes, but what you suggest will add at least another decade. See-through glasses need to have the virtual image projected at a similar focal length to what our eyes normally see, passthrough HMDs instead have screens sitting at very short focal length with strong lenses then again correcting it to look normal. There is currently no way to toggle between see-through and pass-through due to this.

      So you'd need dynamic lenses, which could be realized as holograms, but we are still not even close to have properly working fixed holographic lenses for XR. And all holograms need coherent light from red, green and blue lasers, you cannot use a holographic lens for see-through, only for a dedicated display. There may be other solutions using a set of pancaked lenses with altering distance, but then you get a rather thick optical stack, not somewhat thin glasses.

      The aspect that should be worth adapting for VR is the light display part with sensors and signal processing, but moving all other computation somewhere else. The optical part of Orion is pretty much as good as it currently gets, with the lenses made of silicon carbide not only expensive, but underlying serious export restrictions due to military use.

  • PerpetuallySkeptical

    Imagine having unskippable ads that you literally can't look away from.

    • Nevets

      It'll be worth it, Mr Glass Half Empty.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      This reminds me of the many YouTube videos showing people for the first time trying out early headsets with experiences largely relying on shock effects. Loudly screaming, fighting things back with their hands, grabbing their chair or in some cases running straight into the next wall to escape. After a couple of these one starts to question why these people don't realize that all they'd have to do is close their eyes. It's not even necessary to remove the headset to escape the horror, let alone to run away.

    • Oh God no ….
      []^ (

  • MosBen

    What I like about this is that it's fairly impressive now, but they're being upfront in saying that it's not coming to market for several more years. Hopefully that means that they'll be able to tweak the FOV up a bit, but even if they aren't that will still allow whatever the final version is to have more powerful and energy efficient hardware in the compute unit and a faster/more stable wireless connection between the glasses and the compute unit. I've been a proponent of having compute pucks for HMDs for a long time, and this just makes so much sense. The human head just isn't set up to carry significant amounts of weight over long periods of time, and it's extra problematic if you're adding a bunch of heat too. Offloading a bunch of weight and heat into someone's pocket is a much better solution.

  • I hope Orion illustrates to the AR dummies out there
    just how far away, and WHY, so-called "true AR" is ….