Meta shared a brief video displaying off the working system interface of its Orion AR glasses prototype.

The Orion AR glasses prototype was offered at Meta Join 2024 in September. Whereas Orion itself will not develop into a product, as the corporate admits it could’t be virtually mass produced, Meta does plan to finally launch AR glasses that “construct on our R&D efforts with Orion”, although with a narrower area of view.

As a part of the Orion effort, Meta mentioned it put collectively a prototype working system, together with person interface and key apps, within the months main as much as the Join reveal. The brand new video exhibits off this interface, in addition to a few of these apps.

To Meta’s credit score, the video seems to point out the sphere of view slicing off realistically and most digital interfaces and objects as translucent, reflecting the restrictions of the show system.

Developer Alex Coulombe, who revealed his Orion demo impressions on UploadVR, confirmed that the video is just not an idea. “For these questioning, no this isn’t an idea video, that is truly what it appears and appears like in there”, Alex mentioned on 𝕏.

It is attention-grabbing to notice, nonetheless, that regardless of being lower than 20 seconds, Meta’s new video appears to point out not less than six separate app launcher major menu interfaces. This might counsel that some are ideas, or simply that the corporate is experimenting with a number of approaches.

Chances are you’ll be questioning why Orion does not simply use Horizon OS, Meta’s working system for its Quest headsets. There are two seemingly causes for that, they usually each stem from the truth that AR glasses are a separate product class to blended actuality headsets, not a alternative.

The primary is that Horizon OS is designed for (comparatively) broad area of view headsets able to full opacity, with a large hand monitoring quantity, which might be used largely indoors, and largely stationary. This leads to fairly totally different design concerns and constraints than AR glasses you’d need to use whereas outside and on the go.

The second is the efficiency envelope. Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth not too long ago mentioned of Orion that “the compute envelope is 10x smaller” than Quest, and a former worker mentioned he informed workers to consider Orion as “extra according to a Gameboy Advance or a DS, not a PS3 or perhaps a PS2 or PS1”. Meaning a simplified interface with a special structure and simplified, much less formidable apps.

It is a state of affairs considerably akin to why iPhone did not run macOS and Apple Watch did not run iOS. Whereas these platforms do share core tech, as Meta has mentioned Orion’s OS does with Horizon OS, the app structure and interface are fairly totally different, owing to the totally different type issue. With the primary shopper product reportedly slated for 2027, Meta shall be spending the subsequent three years determining what interfaces and approaches swimsuit the distinctive type issue of AR glasses, transferring what’s seen within the video above from a tough prototype to what the corporate seemingly hopes would be the dominant platform for the way forward for computing.