In this video, the speaker discusses Meta's first pair of Augmented reality glasses, Orion, which is a demonstration of what could be developed in Meta's hardware lineup over the next few years. Although Orion is not a product available for purchase, its technology represents the future trajectory of smart glasses. The presenter had the chance to test these glasses for a couple of hours and experienced activities like browsing the web, gaming, and making video calls through Messenger.

The video explores Orion's innovative components including the Neural wristband, eye and hand tracking, and a wireless Compute puck. The wristband, akin to a Fitbit, uses Electromyography to interpret Neural signals, enabling users to control the glasses through Gestures. The experience was highlighted by a vast 70-degree field of view and sensors in the frames that anchor virtual objects in space, making it possible to incorporate generative AI for practical tasks.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. Augmented reality [ɔɡˈmɛntɪd riˈæləti] - (n.) A technology that overlays digital information on real-world objects.

Orion is the first pair of aeroglasses I've tried that made me feel like that future isn't so far away that it feels like a pipe dream.

2. Neural [ˈnʊrəl] - (adj.) Related to nerves or the nervous system.

The glasses themselves, a Neural wristband for controlling them with finger movements.

3. Electromyography [ɪˌlɛktrəʊˌmaɪˈɑːɡrəfi] - (n.) A technique for recording and analyzing the electrical activity produced by muscles.

It's about the size of a Fitbit and uses Electromyography to interpret Neural signals.

4. Gestures [ˈdʒɛstʃɚz] - (n.) Movements of the body, often hands, to express an idea or meaning.

The main Gestures it recognizes are pinching your index finger with your thumb.

5. Prototype [ˈproʊtəˌtaɪp] - (n.) An original model or sample on which later versions are based.

Meta is showing Orion to the world if you can't buy a pair? It's impressive, even for a Prototype.

6. Compute [kəmˈpjut] - (n.) The act of processing data electronically.

A wireless Compute puck that offloads app logic from the glasses.

7. Haptic [ˈhæptɪk] - (adj.) Related to the sense of touch.

There's Haptic feedback on the band to let you know when it recognizes a gesture.

8. Wave guides [weɪv ɡaɪdz] - (n.) Structures that guide the waves, such as light or sound.

Uled projectors inside the frame of Orion beam graphics in front of your vision via Wave guides.

9. Silicon carbide [ˈsɪlɪkən ˈkɑːrbaɪd] - (n.) A hard material.

Wave guides in the lenses, which are made of Silicon carbide and not glass.

10. Metaverse [ˈmetəˌvɜrs] - (n.) A collective virtual shared space.

...these glasses are the end state of Zuckerberg's big bet on the Metaverse.

Meta's Orion: The Future of AR Technology

This is Orion, Meta's first pair of AR glasses. Up top. I want to be clear. Orion was supposed to be a product you could buy, but it's not. Instead, it's a peek at what Meta has coming for hardware it's releasing over the next few years. And in a bigger way. It's a marker of where the smart glasses of today are eventually headed.

I was one of the first people outside of meta to try orion. For about 2 hours, I used the glasses to browse the web, play games and video call with people through messenger. Oh, and Mark Zuckerberg beat me in pong. Oh, this is gonna be the whole interview. It's just an hour of us going. It's like we were gonna ask questions, but instead I just. You say you're undefeated. No, no, no. Okay. Absolutely not. I'd never won a game before this week, okay? Oh, okay. I'd only been defeated. Good game, good game. You have an unfair advantage. But that's all right. I played a few more.

Orion exists in three parts. The glasses themselves, a Neural wristband for controlling them with finger movements, and a wireless Compute puck that offloads app logic from the glasses to help improve battery and reduce heat. The way you navigate the interface is through eye and hand tracking, voice, and most importantly, the Neural wristband. It's hard to compare this experience to a laptop or phone, but in the simplest of terms, your eyes or hands act as the mouse and you click by pinching your fingers together.

If you've ever used the vision Pro, you'll get how the eye tracking works pretty quickly. I want to focus on the wristband for a second because it's truly one of the most magical experiences I've had with a piece of new technology. And I think the world will be seeing it in the wild even before the commercial successor to Orion is released.

It's about the size of a Fitbit and uses Electromyography to interpret Neural signals and translate them into the input for the glasses. The main Gestures it recognizes are pinching your index finger with your thumb to select, pinching your middle finger and thumb to invoke the main menu, and swiping up or down with your thumb against your closed palm to scroll. There's Haptic feedback on the band to let you know when it recognizes a gesture, which is a helpful signal that made me quickly comfortable with using it.

Do you like using hand tracking at all with this, or do you mostly just do the band? It depends on what the app is. I mean, for some of the things I think it is still pretty natural to reach out and touch it and all that. But I don't know. I mean, the band is just going to keep getting better and better. Right now you have to do these little subtle Gestures. But I mean, the plan is over the next few years to make aesthetics and just pick up almost motionless Gestures that you make. So I think that'll be pretty wild once you get there.

The first thing you notice when you put Orion on is its 70 degree field of view, which is much wider than any pair of AR glasses I've tried to date. A narrow field of view means that AR graphics don't fill much of what you're seeing. But with Orion, I had to get up pretty close to something before its edges started to disappear. This made a huge difference for the overall experience.

Uled projectors inside the frame of Orion beam graphics in front of your vision via Wave guides in the lenses, which are made of Silicon carbide and not glass. Seven cameras and sensors in the frames sense the world around you to anchor virtual objects in space. You can leave a window open, turn your head and walk away, come back, and it's still there.

The quality of the graphics isn't at the level that I'd want to watch a movie in the glasses, but I had no problem reading text on a webpage that was several feet away.

My demo consisted of experiences designed to simulate how 1 may use AR glasses throughout the day in the future. It's clear meta has an idea for how people will use glasses like these, but the software is early. My demo was very much on rails and guided by meta employees in the room, though, I was able to navigate the glasses on my own a little bit and jump in and out of apps.

The coolest part of the demo was using meta AI to identify ingredients for a smoothie that were out on a table and then have the glasses show me a recipe to make them with instructions. It was a peek at how generative AI can intersect with a form factor like this in pretty powerful ways. Did you guys know that I make smoothies like every morning? Like, this is kind of getting creepy. I'm not going to.

Good to see you, man. Yeah. Give me a smoothie recipe. Sure. Let me take a look at what ingredients you already have. Then I can put a recipe together for you. I found several ingredients. Let me make a recipe. That's all right. It missed the pineapple, but that's okay. You don't really want that in your smoothie deep down. Okay, here we go. Matcha banana boost incorporates most of your ingredients, I would do that. I've never done matcha in a smoothie.

We also chatted with our editor in chief, Neelai Patel. Can you see me at all? What do you see? I see nothing. I see a gray screen. That's what Alex looks like on the subject. I can see you, but I've got verge pulled up on a pain here, and then you're just like a video hanging out in the middle. Do you see a whole square? Am I just floating? Is it just my head? Yeah, you're floating. It's a square window. You're floating. And I can come up to you. What's the resolution like? I just came off the verge cast. I got very french headphone hair going on here. Can you see that? Good. It's something.

I mean, it's like it's, you know, it's not like you're gonna, like, watch Avatar, but it's like it's good. Like I can see you. Well, you sound great. I have to say. I can't tell if that is the microphone on the glasses or the speakers on the iPhone, but you sound great. It's the glasses. Yeah. It's weird that I can't see you. Are they gonna add avatars to this thing?

Yeah, so the glasses have inward facing cameras, so they will scan my face and represent me as a codec avatar when I'm calling you. And they're not, but they're not selling this thing. Yeah, they're not. They didn't make many. They cost a lot of money. Amazing. Well, tell them to send me one. Yeah, yeah. Nilay wants one.

Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about AR glasses for a long, long time. He's called them the holy grail device that will eventually replace smartphones. And Orion is the first pair of aeroglasses I've tried that made me feel like that future isn't so far away that it feels like a pipe dream.

But there was a moment in my demo that showed me just how much work meta still has to do to get this right. At one point, I had multiple windows open to the side while sitting across from someone at a table. And an incoming video call then pushed one of the windows directly over the person I was sitting across, and I.

At that point, it felt like the glasses weren't augmenting reality, but breaking it. Orion was going to be a product meta sold to the world until a couple of years ago when it realized it couldn't manufacture them in a way that would even make sense at an ultra high end price point, so instead it's made about 1000 of them for internal prototyping and demos like the one I received.

So why is meta showing orion to the world if you can't buy a pair? It's impressive, even for a Prototype. And it's not an exaggeration to say these glasses are the end state of Zuckerberg's big bet on the Metaverse. After all these years and the billions of dollars poured into making them, I think the company wants to have something to show off, even if AR glasses still aren't quite ready for primetime. I do like the visual of this looking like Mime wars.

It's like, yeah, well, this is like one of the oldest video games ever, right? So I guess it's appropriate we're doing it on here, but we got some more dimensions.

Innovation, Technology, Science, Augmented Reality, Meta, Future Tech