At this year’s Meta Connect 2024 event, Mark Zuckerberg dropped some big news — Meta exists in multiple realities. Not alternate dimensions (although who knows?), but rather the types of wearable technology the company is offering consumers — in addition to the virtual reality headset Meta Quest 3S , Meta has announced Orion, its most advanced set of augmented reality glasses to date. Unlike VR, which animates or otherwise presents immersive visual information to a user, augmented reality (AR) overlays digital information and images onto your actual surroundings, allowing you to interact with real world elements. The technology, which has been around in some form for years, has been expected to eventually become a more important interface for a wide range of applications, including business, educational, entertainment, and more.
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With the Apple Vision Pro and now Meta’s new Orion glasses, augmented reality is poised to take a much bigger step into the mainstream. One big hurdle for the tech has been the bulky hardware, which isn’t practical to walk around with. Unlike VR, which can be used in a stationary setting for most purposes, augmented reality could be useful throughout your day, which is why the tech needs to be unobtrusive as you wear it. Meta’s Orion isn’t much larger or heavier than a standard pair of eyeglasses — plus they look like eyeglasses, so you won’t need to feel self-conscious about standing out with an odd-looking accessory, which was a common complaint when Google tried launching its similar product, Google Glass , over a decade ago.
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