Meta Quest 3S launched, Orion holographic AR prototype

[paulmelis]

As rumoured, the 3S was launched during Meta Connect:

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:

Compared to Quest 3:

• Fresnel lenses instead of pancakes
• Lower display resolution (3.5MP instead of 4.5MP)
• Lower FOV (H 96 instead of 110)
• No depth sensor
• Stepped IPD
• A lot less storage
• 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.

• Orion, fully-functioning prototype, 100g weight
• Holographic display, wide FOV (70 degrees)
• See-through optics wave-guide, not passthrough
• Custom silicon and sensors
• Voice and AI interaction. Hand and eye tracking.
• Has wrist-based neural interface
• See https://www.facebook.com/MetaforDevelopers/videos/449444780818091 from around 1:18:00
• By the way, CEO of NVIDIA is one of the folks whose reaction is filmed while wearing them around 1:24:00 (grey hair, leather jacket)
• Displays need more sharpness. Glasses smaller form-factor. More affordable production.
• For now an internal development kit, and for a few external partners.
• “Next version to be first consumer holographic AR glasses”

So, this is really cool. If they really pull this off technically I strongly belief this will be the next big thing

[WilcoBoode]

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.

[paulmelis]

@WilcoBoode

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.

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.”

[Jeroen_Boots]

Also don’t forget the new passthrough API, something I’m very excited about for research.

For the developers they said some general things which are also very nice, some of my notes:

• 10% better performance in new updates in unreal
• 30 modules for Unity for drag and drop building of vr scenes
• ⁠Depth API - closer to real time depth simulation
• ⁠2000 sqft play area / 600m2
• ⁠interaction sdk micro gestures(openxr support dus ook andere platforms)
• ⁠camera pass through API!!(with object tracking)
• the promise of more stable releases of their SDK so it won’t break every time we update SDK

[paulmelis]

Some very technical details (guesses) on the optics of the Orion prototype. https://www.reddit.com/r/augmentedreality/comments/1frdjt2/meta_orion_ar_glasses_the_first_deep_dive_into/

[paulmelis]

@Jeroen_Boots

Also don’t forget the new passthrough API, something I’m very excited about for research.

Yes, definitely a great step!

Some other things I only now noticed:

• Progressive web apps are going to be allowed in the Meta Horizon Store, including WebXR.

• There’s an open face gasket for sale, getting closer to what Quest Pro offers (the latter being retired apparently, but not that surprising).

  

• 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

  

  Edit: I’m apparently behind This thing is at least 3 months old already

Btw, funny, this wikipedia entry on the name of the Quest Store (which apparently got renamed again):

[WilcoBoode]

@Jeroen_Boots

Also don’t forget the new passthrough API, something I’m very excited about for research.

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.

[paulmelis]

@paulmelis

Some very technical details (guesses) on the optics of the Orion prototype. https://www.reddit.com/r/augmentedreality/comments/1frdjt2/meta_orion_ar_glasses_the_first_deep_dive_into/

More optics analysis from Karl Guttag, https://kguttag.com/2024/10/06/meta-orion-ar-glasses-pt-1-waveguides/

Some interesting bits from the extensive article:

As far as I can tell, there are no true “through-the-optics” videos or pictures (likely at Meta’s request). All the images and videos I found that may look like they could have been taken through the optics have been “simulated.”

It is a little disappointing that they also only share the demos with selected “invited media” that, for the most part, lack deep expertise in display technology and are easily manipulated by a “good” demo […] As a result, there is no information about the image quality of the virtual display or any reported issues looking through the waveguides (which there must be).

I suspect that the design methods to meet the size and FOV requirements meant that the issue of “eye glow” could not be addressed.

If it does use a polarization-based dimming structure, this will cause problems when viewing polarization-based displays (such as LCD-based computer monitors and smartphones).

It is well known that going to a higher index of refraction substrates supports wider FOVs, as shown in the figure below. The problem, as Bosworth points out, is that growing silicon carbide wafers are very expensive. The wafers are also much smaller, enabling fewer waveguides per wafer. From the pictures of Meta’s wafers, they only get four waveguides per wafer, whereas there can be a dozen or more diffractive waveguides made on larger and much less expensive glass wafers.

“It was a very on-rails demo with many guard rails. They walked me through this very evenly diffused lit room, so no bright lights.” I appreciate that Norm recognized he was getting at least a bit of a “magic show” demo

There is virtually no critical analysis of the display’s image quality or the effect on the real world. I may be skeptical, but I have seen dozens of different diffractive waveguide designs, and there must be some issues, yet nothing has been reported. I’m expecting there to be problems with color uniformity and diffraction artifacts, but nothing was mentioned.

There was also little to no discussion in the reviews of Orion’s very low angular resolution of only 13 pixels per degree (PPD) spread over a 70-degree FOV (a topic for my next article on Orion). This works to about a 720- by 540-pixel display resolution.

Several people reported seeing a 26PPD demo, but it was unclear if this was a form factor or a lab-bench demo. Even 26PPD is a fairly low angular resolution.

This is a really interesting point of view:

As I have repeatedly pointed out in writing and presentations, optical AR prioritizes the view of the real world, while camera passthrough AR prioritizes the virtual image view. I think there is very little overlap in their applications. I can’t imagine anyone allowing someone out on a factor floor or onto the streets of a city in a future Apple Vision Pro type device, but one could imagine it with something like the Meta Orion. And I think this is the point that Meta wanted to make.

[paulmelis]

iFixit’s Meta Quest 3S teardown reveals a Quest 2 ‘hiding inside’

Meta makes the Quest 3S cheaper in some obvious ways, but it has one surprise improvement over the Quest 3.

What if I told you the Meta Quest 3S is in some ways just a more powerful Quest 2 with color passthrough? “Yes, of course it is,” someone who’s read our coverage might say, but iFixit shows just how true that is in the teardown video it published today.

The first hint of that is the headset’s Fresnel lenses, which iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari writes in a blog post are “100% compatible” with those used by the Quest 2. The headset has the older headset’s IPD adjustment mechanism, as well; and it shares the same single LCD panel, rather than using one panel per eye, like the Meta Quest 3.

Legacy parts aside, iFixit found that the 3S uses two IR sensors for depth mapping instead of a single depth sensor. That “rare iterative improvement over the Quest 3” performed “exceptionally well in unlit spaces,”

As iFixit notes, none of this should be considered a bad thing. The changes make the headset cheaper — the Quest 3S costs $299.99, while the Quest 3 is $499.99.

[WilcoBoode]

i got to try out the new 3S last week, and it really does feel like a mid step.
Pretty good for people who dont want to spend the money for a regular 3.

Also, some students worked with it and said performance seemed better than the 3, because the resolution is lower.

That said, i’d still prefer the 3 if the money is not an issue