(Bloomberg) -- From the outside, Meta Platforms Inc.’s Orion glasses look like a normal pair of spectacles — if somewhat chunky and tinted. But they are anything but normal.
The device, still in development, is the latest attempt to turn the sci-fi concept of augmented-reality glasses into a practical product. When you put them on, you have a clear vision of the world around you, but images and text are overlaid by tiny little projectors using micro LED technology.
During a rare test of the glasses at Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, Bloomberg used Orion to display YouTube clips and text messages, make video calls, and generate recipe suggestions by scanning a table of ingredients. The display is controlled by eye movements, and an accompanying wristband turns subtle finger twitches into a “click” or “scroll” on the screen.
Tasks that you might handle on your phone or laptop today “become faster, richer, more convenient,” said Rahul Prasad, a senior product executive inside Meta’s Reality Labs division, which made the glasses.
Orion won’t be sold to consumers — at least not in its current form. It’s being “dog-fooded” by Meta employees, meaning they’re testing the product internally before releasing it for public consumption. The hope is to ultimately develop a product priced at the same level as a high-end laptop.
The team working on Orion also developed Meta’s latest Ray-Ban spectacles — smart glasses that have an AI assistant but stop short of true augmented reality. Orion relies on some of the same parts, like speakers and microphones, and the miniaturization of components has helped both devices progress.
The reason the Orion glasses are slightly tinted is because the lenses aren’t made of glass at all. They’re silicon carbide, a material known for use in electric vehicles for power conversion and battery systems.
The material bends light at very extreme angles, allowing you to have a clear view of the real world — like normal lenses — while showing images without rainbow effects or stray light rays. That’s been an issue with other AR headsets. Silicon carbide is also lighter than glass, which helps address another longstanding problem: weight.
The frame of the glasses is made of magnesium, which helps make Orion lighter as well. And the metal is conductive and evenly radiates heat. That makes users less conscious of all the electronics packed into the device.
The Orion system is actually made up of three hardware pieces: the glasses, a wristband and a wireless computer known as a “puck.”
The glasses have five front-facing cameras that help Orion know where it is. The device relies on a process called simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM. The cameras also provide information that feeds the AI functions, and they track a user’s hand movements. To the outside observer, the cameras aren’t too obvious.
There are two more cameras on the inside of the frame to track eye movement. Meta has built more than 10 proprietary silicon chips for Orion, which control everything from hand tracking to eye tracking to graphics. They also use less energy to help keep the glasses from overheating.
The experience is akin to using your eyeballs as a computer mouse. You simply look at the app or icon you wish to trigger, and it illuminates. You can then “click” on that app or icon using subtle hand or finger gestures, which are detected by the wristband.
Pinching the thumb to index finger is like clicking the mouse, while pinching the thumb to your middle finger takes you back to Orion’s home page. These hand controls quickly became second nature — and the experience is one of the more impressive parts of the device.
The puck, meanwhile, doesn’t have to be carried around. It just needs to be at a reasonable distance within the room. The puck is like a portable computer that powers all the magic.
Images are clear and crisp in the wearer’s field of vision, but contained clearly within the parameters of the lenses. The position of various tabs and apps can also be altered, including the depth of where they appear in the room.
A version of the video game pong can be projected over a table, with two Orion wearers playing opposite each other. The real-world elements are melded into the game in a way that’s not possible with virtual reality goggles. Even Apple Inc.’s Vision Pro, which combines AR and VR, doesn’t let you look directly at the world around you.
One potential downside: A person using Orion may still be unaware of how strange they look to an outsider. While using pinches and hand gestures is intuitive, you can become absorbed by the experience and not realize that your arm is dangling out like an awkward T. rex.
In a final demo, we were able to scroll through Instagram with the Reels video feed floating there in front of our eyes. A motion akin to flipping a coin with a thumb causes the feed to scroll. The SLAM technology keeps the display in a fixed position relative to the room, unless manually repositioned.
So if you turn your head away to the right or left or lean to speak to someone, the Reels feed comes in and out of vision in the glasses. It doesn’t follow your line of sight. That helps keep you a bit more grounded in the real world.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.
