At Meta Connect 2024, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Meta, unveiled a prototype for the much-hyped Orion device, a pair of AR smart glasses.
During the event, Zuckerberg called the device “the most advanced glasses in the world and our first prototype of full holographic AR.”
Zuckerberg also unveiled a significant breakthrough: neural interface interaction. Orion allows, via a wrist device, users to interact with smart glasses using their brain’s electrical activity.
Earlier in the year, Zuckerberg spoke on neural interfaces, stating:
When people hear neural interface, the first instinct is it must wire into your brain. But I think most people are not going to want something wired with their brain. But your brain sends signals to your body through your nervous system. – So you can have a wristband that gets trained to pick up different signals and pathways of your brain communicating to move your hand.
Zuckerberg noted at the time that workers could use a neural interface for typing documents or controlling a curser, “so that coupled with the glasses is going to enable a bunch of pretty amazing use cases.” The CEO also noted that neural interfaces won’t just become part of Meta’s roadmap; the technology will soon be on the radars of other firms.
Meta is tight-lipped on full device details at the moment. However, the firm is debuting Orion as a developer kit ahead of a consumer release, working internally and with a handful of external partners to develop the AR prototype to realise the futuristic device fully.
In closing, during Connect, Zuckerberg said:
The right way to look at Orion is a time machine; these glasses exist, they are awesome, and they are a glimpse into a future that’s pretty exciting.
More on Meta AR Smart Glasses
Alongside the Orion developments, Meta unveiled developments towards its Ray-Ban Meta AR-lite smart glasses, which users can try today. The updates include new AI integrations, translation abilities, and remote assistant integrations.
Earlier this year, Zuckerberg confirmed the success of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and hinted at plans to expand production. He mentioned, “The demand for the Ray-Ban Meta product has been much higher than we expected. While it’s great to see, it’s also disappointing that we haven’t made enough of them, and they’re sold out in most styles.”
Meta’s future with AR smart glasses is becoming increasingly evident in 2024. Zuckerberg has been vocal about his belief in the potential of this hardware. During SIGGRAPH this year, he expressed optimism about AR smart glasses’ future.
For smart glasses we’ve been going at the problem from two different directions. On the one hand, we’ve been building what we think is the technology that you need for ideal holographic AR glasses, it’s really quite impressive. We’re doing all the custom silicon work, all the custom display stack work, all the stuff that you need to do to make that work. And their glasses, right? It’s not a headset. It’s not like a VR headset. They look like glasses, but they’re still quite a bit far off from the glasses that you’re wearing now.
Meta has announced that it will discontinue Spark, its AR SDK, to focus on developing more advanced smart glasses. This means developers can no longer create AR content using Spark for Meta’s smartphone social media platforms. However, AR integrations on platforms like Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook will still be available, but only first-party Meta AR content will be accessible on these applications.
The discontinuation of Meta Spark is controversial; however, it seems to be a way for Meta to gain more control over the distribution of AR content across its applications, part of Meta’s efforts to focus on AR smart glasses in the future.
“We looked at what it would take to build great experiences in MR/AR; we realized that Spark was the wrong technical foundation for that type of work. So we gotta move to what we think is the right one to enable [that]”, remarked Andrew Bosworth, CTO.
Smart Glasses Forecasts
Meta’s AR smart glasses roadmap comes as the sector is looking to boom and overtake AR smart glasses. According to some market forecasts, the growth rates of smart glasses have the potential to bring new opportunities to enterprises and could replace VR headsets.
Research and Markets recently released its “Smart Augmented Reality Glasses—Global Strategic Business Report,” highlighting the growth rates of smart glasses, potential opportunities for enterprises, and how smart glasses could replace VR headsets.
The report indicated that the global market for smart glasses reached approximately 678,600 units in 2023. Furthermore, Research and Markets expect the market to grow significantly to 13 million units by 2030, amounting to a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 53.0 per cent from 2023 to 2030.
On a regional level, the smart glasses market in the US expanded to encompass around 432,300 units in 2023, contributing to the projected 2030 market forecast. Research and Markets also anticipate market growth in China, with a projected 62.5 per cent CAGR and 613,300 unit shipments by 2030.
