Pre-orders open now, ships october 15. Interesting price point. Wondering how it compares to the regular Quest 3 in feeling. RoadToVR has a nice comparison table:
Same XR2 Gen 2 chipset, same passthrough resolution, same weight
Some other things from the Meta Connect keynote:
Look at a Windows 11 system while wearing a Quest and it will mirror the screen in VR (I would expect Apple to have patented that, but okay)
Photorealistic spaces coming, “Hyperscape”. Use phone to scan a room and view in VR. Looks really good, probably Gaussian Splatting based. Can run Quest 3 and 3S, standalone. Horizon Hyperscape beta app (US only).
And apart from some Ray-Ban glass updates (with a really cool transparent frame limited edition), the Orion holographic AR prototype took the stage.
Incredibly stoked that Meta is finally showcasing their work on holographic (superimposed, passthrough, however you want to call it) glasses.
Did you also see their updates on Horizon OS? They are really working on multi-tasking, and every-day use. Curious if other companies get to support holographic displays as well, with Meta’s recent policy of licensing the OS to different hardware manufacturers.
Quallcom will have a lot of work to catch-up with them, they seemed to be well underway with their Spaces OS, but this big push from Meta is miles beyond what their platform can do at the moment.
Not yet, still need to watch the developer keynote. I did hear something about the passthrough feed becoming available to developers next year?
Nice overview and details at The Verge. Some interesting things:
The hardware for Orion exists in three parts: the glasses themselves; a “neural wristband” for controlling them; and a wireless compute puck that resembles a large battery pack for a phone. The glasses don’t need a phone or laptop to work, but if they’re separated from the puck by more than 12 feet or so, they become useless.
The neural wristband feels more polished than Orion itself, which is likely because Meta will start selling it soon. While the company won’t comment, my sources say that Meta is planning to ship a pair of glasses with a smaller heads-up display that the wristband will also work with, codenamed Hypernova, as soon as next year.
Orion was supposed to be a product you could buy. When the glasses graduated from a skunkworks project in Meta’s research division back in 2018, the goal was to start shipping them in the low tens of thousands by now. But in 2022, amid a phase of broader belt-tightening across the company, Zuckerberg made the call to shelve its release.
ballpark US$10,000 per unit to build
And a nice quote on all the money spent
It’s clear that perception — that Meta is spending a lot of money with little to show for it — has played into the company’s decision to show off Orion now. “We’re not just making this shit up here,” says Bosworth. “We’re not burning cash. The investments we’re making are a real, tangible technology.”
A Logitech stylus, the MX Ink MR, is now available. This might be interesting for applications where more precision in 3D and more natural interaction is needed. Looks quite nice in this video
I do wonder about the exact implementation though. They have been very focused on the privacy aspect before, so will they provide direct access to the pass through camera, or will they add some type of layer that you can run detection models via an api? Also, will it be available within their OpenXR SDK, or only in their proprietary SDK.
That said, were also very excited for this, since it will massively improve on cross-compatibility with other platforms, and hopefull support for tools such as Immersal, Lightship and others to add global VPS support.
