Meta’s Orion AR glasses are still a ways off, but from what I've, I believe that they are the tech leap that could finally make AR specs the next big thing.
However, recent news also has me a little nervous.
Here’s the lowdown — Meta posted a blog a few days ago about Orion’s Compute Puck, and how it helps make the AR glasses possible. I wanted to take some time to process it all, because as the smart glasses guy, this is going to be a monumental product launch for me.
And I’m left feeling torn about it. On the one hand, what we learn about what’s possible with the additional puck, from the 6 degrees of freedom (6 DOF) tracking to the AI compute power, has me believing that this is the secret-sauce spatial computing has been waiting for.
But on the other hand, I’m getting serious “trying to answer a question nobody asked” vibes. Like I did when I saw my fiancée’s FaceTime Persona when using Apple Vision Pro.
Some parts of this just ring the “gimmick” alarm bells to me, like some of the features I'm seeing in Android XR, too. But I’ll lay out my case and you can decide.
It used to hang around your neck
We’ll start with the fun history lesson. The way Meta arrived at the Compute Puck is quite the “dramatic arc” in Meta’s own words, which includes a series of prototypes that make you look like a Cyberpunk NPC.
But ultimately, the initial vision was a device codenamed Omega — putting all the computing in a horseshoe-shaped device around your neck. Now, I’ve been trying something similar to this over the past few weeks to talk to you about: Viture’s Pro Neckband.
Spoiler alert: I do like it a lot, but there are some issues with it. Mainly, my beef with it is what it actually brings to the table compared to your phone.
Because sure, Viture talks about “ultra freedom for gaming and streaming,” and it’s fun for that, don’t get me wrong. The 3D conversion tech is a nice added bonus.
But beyond hand gesture controls that are pretty janky at the moment, I can’t confidently say this is a worthy option next to just connecting to your phone or laptop. And that goes double for all the looks you’ll get wearing it.
In one way, I’m kind of happy Meta went a different direction — talking about the frustration of giving someone an extra device to carry around, Product Design Engineering Manager Jared Van Cleave talked about how the team “explored how to turn the bug into a feature.”
However, while some people will definitely see it as a feature, others may look upon it as yet another thing to carry around to make the glasses work.
Holograms straight out of Star Wars
“Orion is about connecting people and bringing us together,” product manager Matt Resman writes. “One of the initial concepts for the puck was to help create this sense of presence with other people and enable this richer form of communication.”
Faster than you can say “help me, Obi Wan Kenobi,” a projection fires out of the surface of the puck for you to talk to.
Faster than you can say “help me, Obi Wan Kenobi,” a projection fires out of the surface of the puck for you to talk to — the hardware working as an anchor point.
To image you, there is what is called a sensor bench on the side that you’d point towards you. With this, you’re a hologram on the other side.
According to the blog, this was one of the first ideas for this handheld computer, and to a nerd like me, it sounds so cool from an engineering perspective.
But when I look at the current ways to video call, I’m struggling to figure out exactly what the must-use element of this is.
So Meta added AR games as an additional feature.
Ping pong is cool again?
We saw a version of this using hand gestures in the demos following Meta Connect 2024 — with some journalists getting to play a game or two with Zuck himself.
But this is a demonstration of the rapid response time to any controller movements.
This Pong game sticks a paddle on the end of your controller to play against an AI opponent, and it’s a solid statement maker that the computing device for smart glasses needs to be more than what the current best phones are.
“Because it’s not a phone, that gave us a lot of design freedom,” Director of Product Management Rahul Prasad wrote.
“It can be thicker, I can make it more rounded so it fits comfortably in your hand as a controller. It’s pretty incredible that the puck is actually smaller than the average phone, but it’s more powerful than a phone because it has a Meta-designed co-processor for AI and machine perception.”
Wingardium Levios-AR!
Getting your Harry Potter on sounds (and looks) like a whole lot of fun, and mapping out shapes to cast different spells to take out ghosts is a nifty little demo of the motion control here.
This is also where we find out that AR games will rely on a mix of eye gaze, hand tracking and that EMG wristband — rather than traditional joysticks and buttons. But for these early games, this is showing off the built-in haptics and sensors to track movements.
I think that machine perception is at play here too, to map your foes logically within the space. It’ll be interesting to see just how the remainder of these sensors can come together for more gaming experiences.
Doing what phones can’t
“We would talk about the need to carry this extra thing,” Van Cleave commented. “How do we make it more useful?” As you can see, Meta’s throwing everything at it from 6DOF tracking and AI to make it make sense.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from showing AR glasses and their additional accessories to my friends, it’s that the level of resistance against packing another thing in your pocket is real. It’s an obstacle that you need a killer app for.
And from what I’m reading at the moment, there are a whole lot of awesome use cases on full display here, but none of them really feel like a killer app. Time will tell whether this must-have feature arrives.
Meta Orion Outlook
We’ve seen just a portion of what this puck computer can do, so I don’t want to definitively say one way or the other. But right now I’m left equally excited and nervous for whatever Project Orion ends up appearing to be.
AR glasses have tried in numerous ways to be more than just the glorified external monitors on your face, and with Android XR getting Meta spooked, it’s clear that there is a race here.
My only question now is whether this is something we’ll all be using — whether this will be the next true smartphone moment.
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