Meta Aims to Transform Orion Glasses into an AR Device for Everyone | Meta Facebook login | Facebook app | WhatsApp Meta Download | Turtles AI

Meta is aiming to transform its Orion AR glasses into an AirPods-like product in the augmented reality space, aiming to make them practical, discreet and accessible. The company is trying to overcome the difficulties of traditional AR headsets, creating a device that integrates without invading everyday reality.

Key points:

• Meta aims to make Orion glasses an AR device as accessible and practical as AirPods. 
• Orion glasses are seen as a response to the limitations of bulky and expensive AR headsets. 
• The Orion glasses are designed to be similar to traditional glasses, contrasting with more complex devices like the Vision Pro.
• Meta’s Joshua To emphasizes that Orion is not intended to “transform” reality, but to offer an enriched and unobtrusive view of it.

Meta is developing the Orion AR glasses with the ambition of making them the ultimate wearable device in the AR sector, similar to Apple’s AirPods in the audio field. The idea is to offer a practical product that does not replace reality, but enriches it without invading it, a bit like Apple’s earphones did with music and audio content management. This approach represents a major evolution compared to traditional AR viewers, which, while offering advanced features, present significant challenges in terms of size and cost. The first prototype of the Orion, unveiled by Meta in September, has attracted some interest for its technical features and design, which is closer to a pair of ordinary glasses than a complex high-tech device, such as Apple’s Vision Pro. Although the latter offers superior performance, its high price and bulky shape make it difficult to use practically in everyday life, while the Orion is designed to be lighter and easily wearable, like a pair of sunglasses. Meta’s vision is to make Orion a device that can be easily put on and taken off, just as AirPods have become an integral part of users’ daily lives, without being intrusive or difficult to use. Meta is trying to create a product that offers an augmented view of reality, without replacing or radically modifying it, but enriching it in a discreet and useful way. Unlike viewers like the Vision Pro, which promise an immersive experience but are limited by their size and cost, Orion could represent a more versatile solution, aimed at a wider audience, who can appreciate its potential without the need for a significant financial commitment. Joshua To, vice president of product design at Meta, said that Orion is not intended to be a place where the user is completely immersed in a new reality, but rather a device that integrates useful information in a silent and discreet way. In this regard, Meta’s vision for the future of AR glasses seems oriented towards practicality, where the device can be used as a wearable computer, which does not radically alter the perception of the surrounding environment. This is a radically different approach from Apple’s, which is instead focusing on larger and more immersive devices.

However, the distance between the Orion prototype and what could be an actual consumer product is still significant. While Meta is showing the progress of its project transparently, Apple continues to keep a low profile, without revealing details about the development of possible AR glasses, despite the commercial success of its other wearable devices. The Orion could therefore arrive on the market before Apple’s eventual AR glasses, but it remains to be seen which direction the market will take and how the competition between the two companies will evolve.

In this scenario, the future of augmented reality seems promising, but time will tell which company will be able to create an AR product that meets the daily needs of users, without imposing an invasive experience.

If Meta’s Orion manages to establish itself as the AirPods in the AR world, it could mark the beginning of a new era for wearable devices.