In addition to the actual glasses, Orion uses two other pieces of kit: a 182-gram “wireless computing disk” that has to stay with the glasses, and an electromyography (EMG) wristband that lets you control the AR interface. series of hand gestures. The puck I saw was equipped with its own cameras and sensors, but Meta told me they’ve since simplified it to a remote-control-shaped device that’s mostly used for communication and processing.
When I first saw the three-piece Orion build on Connect, my first thought was that it was an interesting compromise to keep the glasses smaller. But after trying them all together, it doesn’t really feel like a compromise.
You control Orion’s interface through a combination of eye tracking and gestures. After a quick calibration the first time you put the glasses on, you can navigate through AR apps and menus by glancing at the interface and tapping your thumb and index finger together. Meta has been experimenting with wrist-based neural interfaces for years, and Orion’s EMG wristband is the result of that work. The band, which feels little more than a fabric watch band, uses sensors to detect electrical signals generated by even subtle movements of your wrist and fingers. Meta then uses machine learning to decode those signals and send them to the glasses.
It may sound complicated, but I was surprised by how intuitive the navigation felt. The combination of quick gestures and eye tracking felt more accurate than the hand tracking controls I’m used to in VR. While the Orion also has hand tracking, snapping your fingers together quickly feels more natural than holding your hands out in front of your face.
How to use Orion
Meta took me through a series of demos to show off Orion’s capabilities. I asked the Meta AI to create an image and create recipes based on a few ingredients on the shelf in front of me. The last one is my trick With the exception of the Orion, the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses were also able to project the Meta AI prescription steps onto the wall in front of me.
I also answered a few video calls, including one that was amazingly lively . I watched a YouTube video, scrolled through Instagram Reels and dictated a reply to an incoming message. Many of these will sound familiar if you’ve used mixed reality headsets, and many of them weren’t all that different from what you can do with a VR headset.
The magic of AR, though, is that everything you see is overlaid onto the world around you, and your surroundings are always fully visible. I especially appreciated this when I got to the game part of the research. I played a few rounds of a game created by Meta called Star trackerwhere players control a retro-looking spaceship by moving their head to avoid incoming obstacles while shooting enemies with swipe gestures. Throughout that game and the next phase of AR PongI was able to easily chat with people around me while playing. As someone who gets easily sick of VR games, I appreciated that I never felt disoriented or less aware of my surroundings.
Orion’s displays are based on silicon carbide lenses, micro-LED projectors and waveguides. The actual lenses are clear, although they may fade depending on your surroundings. One of the most impressive aspects is the 70-degree field of view. With a 46-degree field of view, it was noticeably wider and more impressive than what I experienced with Snap’s AR Glasses. At one point, I had three windows in a multitasking view: Instagram reels, a video call, and a messaging box. Knowing exactly the outer boundaries of the screen, I could easily see all three windows without moving my head or adjusting my position. It’s still not the all-out AR of sci-fi movies, but it was spacious enough that I never struggled to keep AR content in sight.
What was a little disappointing was the resolution of Orion’s visuals. At 13 pixels per degree, colors all looked a bit muted and projected text was noticeably fuzzy. None of these were hard to make out, but they were less vivid than what I had seen with 37 pixels per degree of resolution.
Ming Hua, Meta’s vice president of wearables, told me that one of the company’s top priorities is to increase the brightness and resolution of the Orion displays. He said he already has a version of the prototype with twice the pixel density, so there’s good reason to believe it will improve over time. He’s also optimistic that Meta can eventually drive down the costs of AR technology, eventually bringing it down to something “similar to a high-end phone.”
What does this mean?
Leaving my demo at Meta’s headquarters, I recalled that in 2016 I first tested a prototype wireless VR headset that would become known as the Quest. at the time, it was immediately clear, even to the casual VR user, that wireless, room-tracking headsets were the future of the company’s VR business. Now, it’s almost hard to believe there was a time when Meta headphones weren’t fully enclosed.
Orion has greater potential. Now, Meta isn’t just trying to create a more comfortable form factor for mixed reality enthusiasts and gamers. It’s a glimpse into what the future looks like and what our lives might look like when we’re no longer tethered to our phones.
For now, Orion is still just that: a vision. It’s more sophisticated than anything the company has attempted with VR. Meta still has a long way to go before an AR-enabled future becomes a reality. But the prototype shows that much of that vision is closer than we think.
