Gamingdeputy reported on April 28 that Caitlin Kalinowski, head of Meta’s augmented reality (AR) glasses hardware department, said,The upcoming AR glasses will give users the same shocking experience as the original Oculus Rift headset, making people say “Wow! This is incredible!”
Kalinowski was previously responsible for the hardware development of consumer VR devices including the original Oculus Rift, Oculus Touch, Oculus Go, Rift S, Oculus Quest, Quest 2 and Quest Pro. Two years ago, she turned to be responsible for the AR glasses hardware business.
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Kalinowski did not reveal specific details about the glasses;Only mentioning that it will provide “high FOV immersion”. It's unclear whether she was referring to an AR glasses demo prototype that Meta may plan to show off at the Connect conference later this year, or a downgraded version of the product that is reportedly slated to hit the market in 2027.
Gamingdeputy notes that Meta has been working in the field of AR glasses for at least eight years and has invested billions of dollars in this effort.Mark Zuckerberg wants this technology to be like iPhone With the same revolutionary impact, the company has repeatedly expressed its willingness to bring AR glasses to the market since 2017, and revealed in 2021 that the project is codenamed “Project Nazare”.
However, according to a report by Alex Heath of The Verge in 2022, Meta no longer plans to release the original AR glasses, code-named “Orion”, as an actual product. Meta will distribute these glasses to select developers in 2024 and use them to demonstrate the future of AR, Heath wrote.
Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth (Andrew Bosworth) seemed to confirm this statement in an interview with Heath in December. Bosworth said the glasses “may be one of the most advanced consumer electronics devices in human history” and could even be said to be “built on a technology route that is too expensive” and not suitable as an actual product.
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This also seems to line up with a report from The Information's Wayne Ma last year. Ma reports that the Orion prototype glasses use microLED displays and silicon carbide waveguides.
MicroLED is a completely new display technology, but no company can yet afford to mass-produce microLED displays with excellent resolution. MicroLED has self-luminous properties (similar to OLED), which means that the pixels can emit light by themselves to display colors without the need for a backlight, are more energy-efficient, and can theoretically achieve higher brightness. This makes it ideal for glasses, which need to be able to be used in sunlight while also relying on small batteries for power. In 2019, Facebook signed a contract with a start-up supplier for all future output, but according to Ma reports, the two parties were still unable to achieve high-yield production, which meant that only a small number of displays could be produced at a high cost.
Silicon carbide waveguides are also extremely challenging to source. This material offers a wider viewing angle than the glass waveguides currently used in transparent AR headsets, but is also extremely expensive. Additionally, Ma's report explains that because the material is used in military radars and sensors, the U.S. government imposes strict controls on its exports. This means that glasses using this material must be assembled in the United States, which will significantly increase production costs.
Ma reports that in order to bring the AR glasses to market as an actual mass-produced product, Meta will use downgraded components: LCoS displays and glass waveguides.
LCoS displays are essentially LCD microdisplays, except that they form images through reflection rather than transmission. LCoS is not a new technology and has been used in projectors and AR products such as HoloLens 1 and Magic Leap 2 since the 1990s. Compared with the potential display effects of microLED, LCoS consumes more power and is less bright, but the cost is much lower in the short term.
It is reported that the silicon carbide waveguide of the Orion glasses can achieve a diagonal viewing angle of approximately 70°, while the glass waveguide used in the actual product can only achieve a diagonal viewing angle of approximately 50°, the same as HoloLens 2 and Nreal Light. In contrast, non-transparent headsets that use camera see-through can have viewing angles well beyond 100°.
Ma reported that the target release time for this AR glasses product is approximately 2027. Of course, that plan may have changed over the past few months.