Meta Missed Out on Smartphones. Can Smart Glasses Make Up for It?
At Meta’s Connect developer conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed off Orion, a futuristic pair of smart glasses that the company hopes will lead the next foundational shift in personal computing.
To call this holographic display concept “new” isn’t totally accurate. Snap has similarly used projector and waveguide technology in its Snap spectacles. The heavily hyped mixed-reality company Magic Leap also attempted to pioneer waveguide technology. Even small startups like North, which couldn’t sustain itself and was eventually sold for parts to Google, have attempted to build their own custom projector and waveguide technology into stylish glasses.
Meta spokesperson Bryan Pope said in an email to WIRED that the display in Orion is “unlike any other AR glasses product attempted to date as far as we know.” Pope said the lenses are made from silicon carbide, not glass, which has a “high refractive index” and contributes to Orion's relatively wide field-of-view (along with its intricate waveguide technology.) The projectors in Orion also use newer, uLED technology, which is supposed to be more power-efficient.
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